Need According to a recent Pew Study, 1 in 4 women have experienced online stalking or sexual harassment. Labeled as “social justice warriors,” prominent journalists, media makers, and bloggers have been harassed and threatened for writing about economic inequality, education, and racism in popular culture. The culture of fear that is being created impacts not just professionals, but more perniciously, young women and men who are developing their habits and […]
Feminism
Addressing Anti-Feminist Violence Online – beginnings
I’m delighted to announce here that the Digital Media and Learning Competition 5: The Trust Challenge has selected FemTechNet’s “Addressing Anti-Feminist Violence Online” for funding. This was a wonderfully collaborative effort that arose out conversations sparked by both GamerGate and the violences experienced in the summer of 2014 by female public intellectuals like Dr. Sarah Kendzior (which Eric Garland’s Urgent Dispatch from the Seat of White Privilege does a good […]
Build a better DH syllabus
Prompted by a discussion on twitter (ht to Whitney Trettien and Daniel Powell) today (2/18/2015) about the inexcusable absence of women’s work from DH syllabi, I’m creating a space for collecting resources (the initial set up is derived from the DHSI course on Feminist DH that I teach each year with Liz Losh – if you’re not on here, it’s not because I don’t know and love your work – […]
Addressing Anti-Feminist Violence Online
Too many people have regular and sustained experiences of violence, including efforts to shut down participation in work, civic engagement, and social interaction. Women and feminists have been targets for quite some time, but 2014 felt to me like a year in which the threats were particularly frequent and the injuries inflected acute. I’m not interested in promoting hurtful actions algorithmically or otherwise, so I’m not going to name or […]
Working Bibliography: Anti-feminist violence online and transformative justice resources
I’m sharing here the helpful resource collection work of the FemTechNet network. Errors are my responsibility and I’m happy to add reader contributions. Update 10/4: Fembot Collective and ICA respond to gamergate Anti-Feminist Violence Online+ Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Rights Programme, “End Violence: Internet intermediaries and violence against women online” Balsamo, Anne Marie. Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2011. Blanchette, Jean-Francois, and […]
Tips from the road: pumping breast milk while traveling (for work)
A few days before a recent trip to talk at the University of Michigan I sent inquiries out into my social media networks, asking for tips on traveling and pumping breast milk. I had hoped for a few hard won tales but got crickets instead. So, in the event that someone else asks a similar set of questions, I’m listing a few tips below. Feel free to share others in the […]
"Not a problem" – breastfeeding in academic workplaces
I’m emerging from a period of relative digital dormancy and there’s a lot to talk about (a new job, family, location, and research). I want to start with a post about things that have gone right lately – in particular, the support I’ve received in academic settings as a breastfeeding mom. In 2013 Miriam Posner wrote about the needs of breastfeeding and/or breastmilk producing moms at academic events and I […]
Feminist Digital Humanities: Theoretical, Social, and Material Engagements around Making and Breaking Computational Media
Here’s our Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) course Elizabeth Losh, University of California, San Diego (updated: William and Mary College, VA) Jacque Wernimont, Scripps College (updated: Arizona State University, AZ) Although there is a deep history of feminist engagement with technology, projects like FemTechNet argue that such history is often hidden and feminist thinkers are frequently siloed. In order to address this, the seminar will offer a set of background […]
Gendered Risk: Feminist Programming
I recently heard Audrey Bilger of Claremont McKenna’s Center for Writing and Public Discourse talk about the ways that social media can help bring certain feminist issues to the fore – in her example, the exclusions of women of color from mainstream feminist movements by way of the #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag. While a lot went wrong in the mainstream coverage of that story, including the elision of Mikki Kendall’s role in initiating […]
Feminist Programming – collecting resources
The FemTechNet group recently discussed a question posed by Pitzer College student Ari Schlesinger on the topic of feminist programming – it’s a topic related to my work on feminist markup and digital architectures, so I read the discussion with interest. What follows are some of the ideas that arose in the discussion – gathered here as a way of starting a kind of bibliography. I have a previous post on Feminism and […]