The machines and the women mimic their humanity, but they never simply
become it. They may aspire to be the same as man, but in every effort they
become more complex than he has ever been. Cybernetic feminism does not, like
many of its predecessors, including that proposed in Irigaray’s recent work, seek
out for woman a subjectivity, an identity, nor even a sexuality of her own: there is
no subject position and no identity on the other side of the screens. And female
sexuality is always in excess of anything that could be called “her own”. Woman
cannot exist “like man”; neither can the machine. As soon as her mimicry earns
her equality, she is already something, and somewhere, other than him. A computer
which passes the Turing test is always more than a human intelligence;
simulation always takes the mimic over the brink.