Cyborgs are a synthesis of inert machines and living organisms, nature and artifice.

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. (1)

According to Donna Haraway we are all cyborgs because the boundaries have broken down, the boundary between human and animal, between 'animal human' and machine, and between the physical and nonphysical. These boundary breakdowns are clearly described in Body of Glass. Bodies are extensively modified, minds are linked with machine and human organs are harvested by organ scavengers.

Piercy explores the construction of gender through the story of Yod the cyborg and his predecessors. There is no reason why cyborgs should be gendered. Machines are not, although some people react to them as if they were; (ships, cars, computers etc.). Avram has created the cyborgs to be male. He says that he created Yod 'anatomically correct', with a functional penis, to fit in (no pun intended). To do otherwise would have been to build him 'mutilated'. (This might relate to the Oedipus complex). For Avram Yod must meet certain male gender stereotypes. Yod's predecessors were stereotypically male in the worst sense insofar as they were inherently violent. Yod is programmed, nurtured, by a woman, Malkah. This transforms him. He is able to express tenderness and explore situations empathetically. He can form relationships and wants to please sexually. He has been designed to kill. He enjoys killing, if a moral directive dictates.

In Body of Glass gender roles have dissolved because of the social and economic changes brought about by global catastrophies and scientific advances. Most of the population have very low fertility rates, due to the effects of war and environmental pollution. The wealthy who work for the all powerful 'Multis', (the giant conglomerations which now effectively govern the world) use extensive and expensive technological interventions in order to conceive and bear children. Children are not carried to term. To conceive naturally and to carry to full term is considered a rejection of the ethos of Y-S.

Members of multis are modified to fit the racial type they represent, that is Japanese in the case of Yakamura-Strichen. Workers in a multi are owned by that group and permitted behavior, including gender roles and sexual relationships are dictated by the multi. Shira and husband Josh have not accepted the social structure of Y-S, they have tried to hold on to their Jewish identity. The multi considers this to be characteristic of a throwback and potentially subversive.

Shira's hometown is a 'free town' and is Jewish in faith. It trades in advanced software, but otherwise is apparently low tech yet even so members have major physical enhancements, such as artificial organs. Hidden underground in the heart of the black zone, which before the times of conflict was Israel and Palestine, is Nili's community, an entirely female society. They have very advanced fertility technology and also use nanotechnology for medical and surgical enhancement. Very few individuals are now wholly natural, without surgical enhancements. The boundary between human and machine is thoroughly breached.

There is a universal law making it illegal to build free moving robots with advanced artificial intelligence or to attempt to build machines which look human. However humans can be changed in any possible way, augmented, given artificial organs, changed skin colour. The technological workers can jack the computer link straight into the sockets fitted in their temples, joining their mind to the machine intelligence and communicating in cyberspace. There are organ scavengers who trap and kill to obtain organs for trade.

Communication technologies and biotechnologyies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new social relations for women worldwide. (1)

In Body of Glass the gendering of Yod is interesting. He has been created by a male scientist, Avram but socialized by a woman. Most of the previous models erupted into violence when they were first activated. Yod was designed to be a weapon to defend Tikva, just as Joseph the Gollum in the parallel story was built to defend the ghetto. Yod too is superbly strong, he can capture a flying bat out of the air; see in the dark; measure by touch, and grasp with absolute precision. He also finds that he enjoys fighting and killing.

Yod describes himself:

I believe we should explain to her that referring to me as 'him' is correct. I am not a robot, as Gimel now is. I'm a fusion of machine and lab-created biological components - much as humans frequently are fusions of flesh and machine. One of us should also explain that I am anatomically male, as you created me'. (5)

Although Yod is super male he also has female features. His skin is soft and smooth, his pubic hair is soft. He is capable of very great gentleness and he has been both programmed and taught to be a responsive and considerate lover. Shira finds him to be more caring and sympathetic than the men she has known. On first meeting Yod Shira could not accept the idea of a machine being gendered.

'What did it mean to speak of a machine as having a sex at all? (5)

How can Yod be male? How can ideas of the cyborg link with ideas of being female?

According to Haraway

Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. (1)

Haraway identifies female with cyborg for a number of reasons. The cyborg is 'the other' unknown and unknowable. Cyborg, like woman, is socially and psychologically constructed. She could also be described as 'man made'. However in film and in science fiction the cyborg is most commonly male in gender. Female cyborgs (replicants etc.) fit with what is stereotypically female. They are generally seductive, attractive and often manipulative. Their existence is still defined by the male, male android or man.

Yod, uncharacteristically is a male gendered cyborg who is sexually involved with human females, first Malkah, who was responsible for much of his programming, then later with Shira, Malkah's granddaughter. Such behavior is likely to threaten the egos of human males.

Shira is largely unmodified and as she is naturally fertile she has made little use of the extensive reproductive technology available. However this in itself distances her from most of her contemporaries. She discovers that she is genetically closely related to Nili who is also an outsider in a number of ways. Nili is closer to the ideal of a feminist cyborg. She was born, and has herself borne a daughter but she is heavily 'augmented'. Her body 'specs' can be favorably compared with Yod in terms of strength, speed and agility.

Stereotypically females are seen as less technological, less rational and closer to nature (because of reproduction) than males. Fictional cyborgs usually follow the most extreme stereotypic male qualities, they are violent macho killers, they have few or no emotional and interpersonal skills, relying wholly on force.

If Yod's sexuality sets him apart then it also makes him more an individual. One characteristic of constructed beings is that of being non-unique. Yod is physically like the versions which came before. In fiction cyborgs often appear, like any machine, to have interchangeable parts. In Body of Glass many human parts can be changed with artificial parts or 'donated' body parts yet there is still a strong sense of the individual.

If any one thing marks Yod as unique it is his ability to handle emotions. He can both love and lie. The emotional attachment is what has conferred personhood on Yod. He is gendered because he interacts. Gender does not exist in isolation, it requires interaction - even voyeurism requires a viewer.

The cyborg, like everyone else is a manifestation of mind, a projection of self but it requires a social milieu in which to be fulfilled.