While reading “A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway, I could not help but think about a UFC fighter named Cristiane Justino Venancio, who currently goes by Cris Cyborg. Cris adopted the Cyborg surname from an ex-husband who used it as a professional alias. In the past, Cyborg has been caught and subsequently penalized for using performance-enhancing drugs that have also affected her physical appearance–but let’s be real, who doesn’t dope up anymore? Cyborg, who already struggles with the hardships that come along with being a foreigner living in modern American, is constantly criticized for her masculine appearance. I feel, however, that Cyborg is the epitome of one of Haraway’s main arguments: Cyborg politics are the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism” (57). Performing as a female in a male dominant sport hosts the perfect arena for patriarchally favored “dualism.” Although illegal, the fact that Cyborg utilizes the same performance-enhancing substances that the male athletes use to evoke more muscular physiques is just one example of a cyborg mentality that Haraway describes. Due to her appearance and the nature of the sport, Cyborg has been called an “it” and a “weapon” and has even been mocked by the president of the organization. The “othering” Cyborg endures are from both male and female critics alike, which I argue further strengthens her position as the type of cyborg that Haraway depicts (Haraway would also probably like the fact that Cyborg is originally Brazilian). Although Cyborg identifies as female (which could have something to do with the gendered divisions in the UFC that only provide male or female options), she is a step in the right direction towards “our reconstitution” of “the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender” (Haraway 67).
Work Cited
Haraway, Donna. “The Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York: Routledge, 1991.
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