Contributing editor, Wired magazine

Annalee Newitz is currently a freelance writer and a contributing editor at Wired magazine, as well as a former policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and several academic journals and anthologies, including her two books White Trash: Race and Class in America(Routledge, 1997) and The Bad Subjects Anthology (NYU Press, 1998). She has a weekly syndicated column, Techsploitation. Her extended-play bio is here:
www.techsploitation.com/about

In this presentation, I will make the case for a pro-genetic engineering feminism. For thousands of years, women have been subjected to a genetic engineering program known as patriarchy – from an evolutionary perspective, patriarchy is a system in which men choose mates for women, and it has affected the culture and genetic makeup of countless generations. Today many of us live in post-patriarchal societies with fairly advanced reproductive technology. Can we use this technology in the service of a feminist genetic engineering project? I argue that we can. Topics I’ll touch on will include artificial wombs, altering the number and genders of parents who contribute genetic material to their offspring, new kinds of surrogacy, and the social roles of women who choose not to pass on their genetic material.