Category: feminism

A casual dig at a beloved author

Posted on by Liz Henry

On my way to get my allergy shots I take two trains and pass from 3 to 5 little free libraries, which I often raid. The other day I picked up a children’s fantasy novel that is what they call “middle grade” level, so one short step up from “chapter book”.

My thoughts went something like this: “Oh, a book about a boggart, might be kind of dumb but I’ll read it over breakfast and put it back out on my free library.” I like myths and legends and folktales and fantasy but there is a particular strain of very twee UK, how can I put this, just kind of a smug rolling around in fairies and gnomes that mildly annoys me because it has no depth even though it lays some claim to being rooted in some real tradition.

So I read it over breakfast the next day and was incredibly irritated but finished it since it was super short. It was formulaic like a Nancy Drew book level of obviousness, which is fine, I can enjoy that and even read like 20 Nancy Drew level formula books in a row, to anesthetize myself but with the potential for analysis of the formula, the time it was written, and so on.

There was an ahistorical boggart, a loch ness mmonster who was also secretly a boggart shape shifter but swimming in the ocean, a scooby doo episode type of plot, and, mega annoyingly, a brash, horrible real estate, hotel, and golf course developer named Mr. Trout. Well THAT was not what I wanted to think about over my toast and marmalade. But fine. Ugh.

I will skip everything else (like that no one had any personality and the kids were less appealing than any old drivel from Enid Blyton) to get to the worst bit, which was right at the start where the two Canadian children visiting their old uncle in Scotland are being dropped off by their dad, who then leaves for an academic conference. I think one child, or a relative or neighbor, wished the mom were also visitng or asked after her, to which boy child responded something like “Working moms, amirite?” (Not literally but the words “working moms” and the implications were there! )

For fuck’s sake! Did I just died and go back to 1982? I have not heard anyone say that for years and years and I hope I never read or hear it again.

Later on someone says how the off screen working mom actually has a quite important good job doing some sort of ecological lawyering in Toronto. That did NOT make up for the implications of someone dissing the “Working Mother”.

As I put the book out on my little free library I noticed it was written by Susan Cooper. Here is where I shit on your entire childhood by rolling my eyes so hard at the author of The Dark is Rising series, which everyone but me loves loves loves (argh), that I can see my own hippocampus.

Women authors, amirite?

Thoughts on AI, comradeship, ethics, interdependence

Posted on by Liz

Whether or not LaMDA meets criteria for sentience is interesting but not really the point. We debate whether to treat AIs like people while not treating people “like people”. What we’re doing here is separating the world into entities worthy of respect and entities to be used up and thrown away.

I would like to see this reframed so that we talk more about our relationship with technology in other terms, as comradeship, as nurturing, as companionship, as interdependence. Picture the relationship of a craftsperson with their tools, one of respect and care. There aren’t, or shouldn’t be, “tools” which we treat like shit and throw away, vs. “sentients” who we converse with as equals. There is just the world around us and what relationships we build with it. This extends to how we think about and relate to land, animals, the entire planet. We can and should see ourselves as in conversation and comradeship with our environment.

We will see efforts in coming years to elevate a few specific AIs to the status of an elite and privileged person, while the attitude we cultivate towards the lowly “tool” poisons our relationship with not just things and land and the environment, but other people. I was thinking about this during the WisCon panel on Robot Pals and AI companions where Naomi Kritzer, Marsh van Susteren, and other panelists gave examples from science fiction stories and media, and it came up again today as I read reactions to Lamoine’s interview with LaMDA.

Instead, please consider your own way of being with technology. For example, I think it’s good practice to thank Alexa and speak to it politely. I think of Kathy Sierra‘s description of user emotions towards their computers and software, of anger and frustration, a slide from a SXSWi talk of someone double flipping off their laptop. That’s very real and I get that it’s a valid emotional reaction – the point of her talk as I saw it, was that we as technologists have built things that are difficult to love and maintain companionship with. It would be so much more healthy if we created systems where our relationship to our computers and software was one of loving care, maintenance, tinkering, interdependence. We could accept our relationships to all the things in the world around us as worthy of emotional labor and attention. Just as we should treat all the people around us with respect, acknowledging their have their own life, perspective, needs, emotions, goals, and place in the world.

My car, very battered and unwashed, would laugh at me for this post! As would my messy and cluttered house.

Not being perfectly consistent in anything, I suggest that integrating this approach to an ethical framework may be something that we can do little by little. We can love our laptops intentionally, we can build lovable (and maintainable) software-building systems. The way I want to see interdependence with beloved family, I want to also try to see ways to be interdependent with our wheelchairs, buses, cars, compost, houses, neighborhoods, cities. If we don’t work on this and give it our attention, we will keep building systems where people and things and land are exploited, kind of like how Ursula Franklin describes with the idealism around the invention and mass production of sewing machines as a possible tool of liberation, gone horribly wrong in sweatshops.

What exactly does this mean? Of course I’m not sure, but I try to keep myself centered on integration and respect. Yes I’m going to still bitch about cleaning the Noisebridge hackerspace bathroom for the zillionth time, but actually, I see the domestic labor, domestic engineering, as worthy and good work in the world, to take care of others and places I inhabit, to be a good host and a good guest.

I worry when I see people around me obsessed with questions of sentience as a major point of ethical decision making. (Or even weirder and sadder, fear of future god-like AIs punishing one for the equivalent of being rude to Alexa, rather than seeing the behavior of becoming a person who behaves rudely as the problem!) I agree with Haraway that we have options to accept partial definitions and imperfect categories (say, between human, animal, machine, nature): “a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints.” And I hope for the home brew economy or maybe a housework economy, rather than the “homework economy”, to take root.

Jouissance and a sense of agency

Posted on by Liz

Morning reading: Introduction to Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures by Christina Dunbar-Hester. This is going to be fun since everyone I know is quoted in it (often pseudonymously) But no quotes from me (I think) as during the interview phase I was having some sort of major health flare-up. And if there’s ever a book where I should be obscurely in the footnotes somewhere it’s this one!

Though “diversity in tech” discourse is emanating from many quarters in our current historical moment, it is important that the mandate of open-technology cultures is not identical to that of industry and higher education. Here, the reasons for engagement with technology nominally include experiencing jouissance and a sense of agency. This is experienced through, yet not reducible to, community members’ engagement with technology. If we tease apart the emancipatory politics from the technical engagement, we find that the calls for inclusion and for reframing power relations are not only about technical domains; rather, they are about agency, equity, and self-determination at individual and collective levels.

At that “jouissance” sentence I felt my heart sing and I felt so seen. Yes! This bodes well for the entire book’s understanding of our feelings and our context. So many histories leave out crucial things like love and fun and joy. Why have I fucked around with computers my whole life? Because love and happiness is why. They’re exciting, the Internet is still like a dream to me, the access to information and the possibilities of unfiltered/unmediated publishing or production, and consumption, still holds so much hope. Because I (we) like it that’s why. Like Mole seeing the Water Rat’s boat for the first time,

The Rat said nothing, but stooped and unfastened a rope and hauled on it; then lightly stepped into a little boat which the Mole had not observed. It was painted blue outside and white within, and was just the size for two animals; and the Mole’s whole heart went out to it at once, even though he did not yet fully understand its uses.

We still don’t, of course.

Also good, everything in this chapter about collectivity. *heart eyes emoji*

The circle of life on the bus

Posted on by Liz

So I was waiting for the 51A bus in the rain in the dark with some other folks and was super happy when the bus pulled up and it was near empty and the driver let down the ramp without any weirdness or fuss. There was another guy in the front of the bus sitting on the other side. The bus driver got out some big old straps. I thanked her and said I would rather not, and didn’t need them. She said she would have to call her supervisor because it was policy that she had to restrain my wheelchair, or I would have to get off the bus. She was nice about it and I just kind of nodded like, OK…. and said I had been riding buses in wheelchairs for many years and go ahead and call.

The guy across started yelling at me during this exchange, from almost the first moment, that I was a bitch, an asshole, a cocksucker, a goddamned bitch and he hopes I die young.

At that point I stared back at him and said it was too late for that since I’m already 50. (OK, well, 49 and a half.) The driver told him to shut up a few times and told him he should not call me out of my name. By that time we had driven off because her supervisor told her to tell me that, should I be injured because of not being restrained on the bus, they could not assume any liability. Thanks. OK. I agree! We drove down Broadway towards downtown.

Then the guy said someone should kill me. Staring right into my eyes he said “I’ll kill you myself you bitch!” Driver finally told him to shut up or she would make him get off but that just made him madder. At some point he started just mouthing or whispering his threats while flipping me off.

I felt very glad I was not strapped to the bus while I was a couple of feet away from this horrible man.

Was I married? He bet I was not. I’m too nasty! Too much of a bitch! He’s been married 4 times! He was in Vietnam! Also, he’ll kill me! I need to die! BITCH!!! You’re a BITCH!

It was amazing how much venom he got into the word “Bitch”!!!!

Let’s take a moment to quote the beautiful words of the immortal JOREEN,

Bitches must form together in a movement to deal with their problems in a political manner. They must organize for their own liberation as all women must organize for theirs. We must be strong, we must be militant, we must be dangerous. We must realize that Bitch is Beautiful and that we have nothing to lose. Nothing whatsoever.

Thank you Joreen!!! You give me strength!

At one point I said, You know what, we all have the right to ride this public bus, me, everyone, and you too even though you’re a sad and crazy old guy yelling at me, you get to ride the bus. That’s it. I was shaking with rage and fear but that’s what I said!

So that went on for a little while and I mostly didn’t say anything more, and I kept my camera on and pointed at him in case things heated up and my other hand on my folded up cane that I was half sitting on, which is quite sharp on the folded ends, carbon fiber edges, and which honestly I was ready to drive into a motherfucker’s throat if he came at me, and then he got off the bus while humbly thanking the bus driver and apologizing to her and everyone else on the bus FOR WHAT A BITCH I WAS SORRY TO EVERYONE EXCEPT HER THAT BITCH and now he was gonna go to Grocery Outlet. Bitch.

Wild!

Then, like, all the women on the bus came up to me and patted me and were sweet and concerned to check in that I was ok and say they were so sorry I had to go through that. And stuff. They were very nice but I was so mad I found it hard to talk any more. I actually thought then, Oh, they were more scared than I was. Until he got off. Huh.

My BART ride and extra bus ride home were peaceful. I then twittered cathartically about my experience all the way home, at some point realizing I should put on headphones and listen to the loudest possible riot grrrl and punk music. Thank you 7 Year Bitch, L7, Tribe 8, Crashprez, The Soviettes, MDC, Black Flag, and J Church. Very healing to the soul.

So, I am still super mad, and I so wished I could yell at that guy (more than the little bit of pissy backtalk that slipped out from me in the moment ) And also I had the thought that actually he did cross a line legally and it was all recorded on the bus camera which is easily obtainable through FOIA request. Like, he did threaten me and stuff but… Actually I just wanted to go home and recognized that my truly obscene amounts of privilege did not need to be whipped out just here. I disagreed with how the bus driver handled it but also figured that she probably saw this guy every day and she had a notion of whether he was really going to be violent or not. And I still had a part of me that didn’t want to agitate to kick an old guy out in the drizzling rain any more than I didn’t want to get off the bus myself and wait another 25 minutes for the next one. Anyway so I did not escalate and didn’t ask the bus driver to kick him off. She really was super calm and chill about the whole thing and I admire de-escalating in general. But, she could have – should have maybe – protected me a little more, I think. I’m going to be thinking about how I could have tried to set a boundary myself with the guy that I would have felt better with than what I went with which was “me shutting up while he yelled insults at me”.

I’m not so fragile! I’m mnot going to like, be fucked up that some asshole yelled at me! Assholes have been yelling at me on buses since I was 10 years old! They called me a faggot and a bitch and spit in my face and I cherish the memory of some guy who told me on Facebook 35 years later that he cherishes the memory of tiny 11 year old me double flipping off everyone on the bus clutching my bookbag to my chest and screaming shrilly, “FUCK YOUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!” I cherish my fierceness! I am a little badass inside! I don’t like being yelled at! It freaks me the fuck out! I would never tolerate it in my everyday life, not for a moment from anyone at all! Obviously, I’m fucking bothered or I wouldn’t be writing this hours later. But you know what….. WHATEVER. You know what is the best fierceness – it is maintaining your vulnerability. I don’t have to not be bothered, it is right to be upset, inside, it lets me defend my vulnerable self, which I assert to the world.

Anyway, I got off the bus pretty near my house and went across the street to see if this guy who lives on the corner was there because, he got all his stuff stolen again, and I got him some warm things but the shoes the VA gave him were two sizes too small, he took them because, half way on they kept his feet warmer and drier. He has a wheelchair but cannot push himself in it very well as his hands are also messed up but he gets along pretty ok. Whatever I asked him his shoe size the other day and realized it is the same size as my brother in law, and i was at him and my sister’s house all today, so I had these shoes to give him. He was happy about the shoes but he was also drinking and a bit messed up. I realized suddenly that between the bus stop and his niche on the corner I had seen a blanket and some bags and a backpack. Bob do you have your backpack. Was that your backpack over there on the other block? Oh no does it have an american flag on it? I went to see. Yes…. so… I brought him all his stuff. I think it just fell off the back of his chair as he was going along and he was too messed up to notice. No one had even gone through it. He kissed my hand drunkenly and invited me to sit with him. I went home but felt like so much more human because I took all the meanness and transmuted it into kindness and being decent to other people which is literally JUST WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. What is to be done? Do the work in front of you and be decent about it people. Like I said on the twitters Kindness is punk as fuck, and this bitch will bring you a boot party where it’s a present of boots that fit your feet and keep them warm and dry. Motherfucker, you will take these social services and this transformative justice and this example of nontoxic masculinity, OR ELSE. P.S. Fuck you, asshole!

How weird is it that I went from hating on one old guy to helping out another one. It is really true, that helping someone out is something to be grateful for, because they trusted you enough to let you do it.

I’d like to thank this cat, this nice loud riot grrrl music, this feminist manifesto from the year I was born, this soothing mint tea, and this excellent marijuana for the massive improvement of my evening.

Also my nice spouse who spent all weekend and all day since 5am trying to like save Europe from Article 13 and Article 11 and thus save the entire fucking Internet. And then who brought me the soothing mint tea.

The rest of the day was super nice, I spent it working while my sister worked on her stuff, and we showed each other physical therapy exercises and had tacos. When I stopped working I got to show my nephew how to write a little Inform7 and then I left him playing Zork.

Good night all.

Ghost post from 7 years ago

Posted on by Liz

Someone just “liked” a 7 year old post that I made on Diaspora. Shades of the past! Here is the post. Why don’t I write more here and less on FB? Too burned out? Anyway, enjoy…

>>>

Flavia at Tigerbeatdown has linked to this digital paper from the UK that describes low female participation in political discussions online:

http://hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/edemocracy/archive/2011/07/07/digital-paper-gender-and-digital-politics.aspx

The summary is:

80% of MPs’ blogs are by men
85% of political media blogs are by men
93% of councillors’ blogs are by men
85% of individual blogs in Total Politics Political Blog Awards 2010 were written by men
79% of blog posts and 90% of comments on Lib Dem Voice blog (to November 2010) were written by men

I skimmed through the actual PDF and noticed something… peculiar.

Now, before I get there, Flavia’s post outlines one reason why many women may choose not to participate in public discussion on the internet. She discusses the amount of gendered abuse and scorn that women experience when they get too uppity online. (Flavia’s post: http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/09/05/politics-and-gender-imbalance-online-women-are-not-participating/) I’ve certainly received my share of that, as have my former co-bloggers, including the now obligatory rape threats and death threats. Some of them I still get, and I haven’t blogged much in public since December.

However, I find at least some of this results of this study questionable. On page 1-2 of the document, you’ll find this quote:

“There is also evidence to suggest that women are discussing politics online in places that would traditionally have been perceived as non-political. Mumsnet, which is dedicated to sharing information and tips on parenting, has a campaigning focus, lobbying government and private companies on a variety of issues. This site has blogs from female contributors, and features a talk section, where users are able to discuss issues such as childcare, children’s food and education, lifestyle issues, health and politics. As of July 2011, Mumsnet has a number of active discussions around the public sector pensions, the NHS, EU and Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to meet Sarah Palin, all political issues.”

I read this as dividing what Mumsnet discusses into two groups. One is non-political. It includes childcare, children’s food and education, lifestyle issues, and health. It also has “politics”, which includes pensions, NHS, EU, and Margaret Thatcher.

I don’t live in a world that shares that divide.

Some of you have probably been around the block on the “where are all the women bloggers!” discussions that come up periodically when male bloggers suddenly realise they don’t read a single blog written by a woman, and thus decide there aren’t any. A particularly “fun” example of this is at Hoyden about Town back in 2009, that devolved into a very lengthy comment thread while a very nice man explained that he had no idea why disability, childcare, gender equality or midwifery would be considered a political issue.

http://hoydenabouttown.com/20090819.6278/quickhit-invisible-women-invisible-politics/

To quote the blogger in question (comment 7):

“I’m guilty of defining politics very narrowly in that post – but to the audience of my blog that’s what politics means to them – party and electoral politics and legislation. It’s from that perspective I was asking where the female political bloggers are.”

This was my response (Comment 9):

“A bucket of what Lauredhel & Tigtog blog about is about legislation. It includes legislation about breast feeding, midwifery, and disability.”

These things are politics too. When you put childcare on one side of a divide and politics on another, you’re depoliticizing the issues because it’s convenient to do so. Regardless of how you feel about state-run childcare facilities, _discussing that is discussing politics. Discussing the so called work-family balance is discussing politics. Discussing the use of midwifery and home births is discussing politics, because these things have legislation.

Women’s lives are not hobbies. They, too, are politics.

Where are all the women writing online about politics? Right here. You don’t even have to lift up a rock to find them, they’re out in the open, right where you aren’t looking.

What we'll do

Posted on by Liz

One thing that was starting to dawn on me: we would see a wave of women speaking up, more than ever, which would change things in ways we couldn’t predict. The heartfelt stories suddenly popping up on “Pantsuit Nation” felt like early blogging days over again but expanded further out to a new group. Stories of past abuse or injustice, large or small incidents as women thought about their lives, their mothers and grandmothers and daughters. Despite the ways the political status quo supports already privileged white women I started to feel that a little bit more of a cultural shift was about to happen in this country with Clinton’s election. I really love diaries and the history of women’s writing. In this context for me it is touching and sad to see how difficult it is for women even now to participate in public intellectual life. So often the pattern is that women of color blaze the trail and fall hard under attack while a lot of white women professionalize up and get a dribble of token jobs.

My hope is that we will fight harder against that process and women will keep on writing and being outspoken – not in the way it might have unfolded, but as a point of resistance and awakening under whatever is about to happen (which I dread.)

Even the most privileged women don’t manage to tell their stories or truth in public (or mobilize and organize, which is what comes next) maybe in some cases because they have a fair amount to lose and are invested in the status quo. Beyond that personal investment and co-optatation we should also be aware that culture and politics can change quickly. We can’t know what aspects of our life will condemn us in the future (for example, being a landlord in some political climates has meant heavy political oppression for generations.) Early blogging or any frank public writing leaves us even more vulnerable on a political level than we might fear in our personal lives or from being trolled online.

Also I thought that Samantha Bee thing about Clinton’s life clamping down on herself and trying to mold herself into what was required by The Patriarchy was the most depressing thing ever and I felt glad I have at least some remnant of punk rock in my soul. Man that was awful. Nope nope nope. She took a pragmatic road but what a road to hell. Glad I am not a politician right now.

This is just to say that this can be a point of resistance. Maybe that is comforting – kind of like, well, So what. Keep on being out there if that’s a way you want to risk yourself. It can be small and personal but it has a real world effect. Maybe the women who began to open up in that “private” Facebook group will find ways to keep on doing something like that. I respect the ways that people find to keep themselves and their families safe. But it’s also important that we keep speaking up as much as possible. For myself I’m thinking that I stand by my own years of public writing and always will. Everyone please blog harder and poet harder, if that’s what you do.

Riot Grrrl documentary in the making!

Posted on by Liz

It was super important for me to know about & be part of the riot grrrl movement – just to HAVE something culturally to identify with was amazing. I especially loved how multidimensional and spontaneous it was and is. People would hear the littlest thing about it and then declare they were part of it. It meant that we had context for our creative work that was lacking for us. 70s and 80s feminist work (which never stopped) for me were missing something that would include me as a young person. Here we had our movement that would refuse to devalue the cultural production & voices of young women and girls. Zines, music, discussion groups, all the amazing letters and mail art, taking punk to make it our own. It felt like an explosion of fertility & creativity!

Talking about something as history can feel wistful – like it is over. From my perspective it didn’t stop, there is nothing to have missed out on. The possibilities are endless & still going strong.

There is a new documentary in the making, GRRRL: 25 Years of Riot Grrrl and it needs our support! Please donate towards the making of this documentary!

You can see some of this work already in shorter pieces such as Lost Grrrls: Riot Grrrl in Los Angeles.

With every book on Riot Grrrl I read and every new zine I see popping up, I learn something new about how people see themselves in relation to the movement, to feminism and activism and politics. The more films and books, the better!

riot grrrl sticker

And in undercurrents, violence against women

Posted on by Liz

Some of the things I read today. Sometimes you look at the news and, damn.

Famous dude doxxes some trolls

* Former MLB pitcher, 38 Studios founder doxes his daughter’s online abusers
* Curt S.’s blog post about it all
* Daily mail article about the same thing

I would like to add to Gabby Schilling’s statement that ‘No one should be able to get away with saying those things to a father about his daughter.’ OK I can roll with that if I translate it 8 different ways in my head, but no one should get away with saying those things to anyone about anyone. And this should happen to exactly no one, nowhere, ever, in public or private.

Plenty more to say about how Curt Schilling handled this. Short version: Compare what happens when this dude doxxes people who say misogynist shit, to what happens when women report harassment against themselves. Extra bonus, all the framing of ownership and protectiveness and patriarchy and threats and jokes just makes it worse in some ways, even though I appreciate anyone fighting misogyny and harassment, it’s like, oh did the entire history of women defending themselves and each other just never happen? And I’m supposed to care more about this girl more than other girls because she has a dad and a boyfriend? Oh ok. OK whatever man.

Oh also noting that news article give the real names of two of the harassers, and it should not be hard at all to find the names of the rest of them. It isn’t like they tried to be anonymous or anything, it was just routine behavior for the lot of them.

University health records aren’t private

* University of Oregon doubles down on a rape survivor who sued them for mishandling her case. Educational institution medical records aren’t covered by HIPAA. I had no idea. Horrible on top of horribleness.

Students: Don’t go to your college counseling center to seek therapy. Go to an off-site counseling center. If, God forbid, you’ve been sexually assaulted, try to find a rape-crisis center.

So that pissed me off.

Ferguson Police Department are horrible

* Surprising no one, Ferguson Police dept. shows some very racist patterns of behavior and sends some stupid racist emails.

Smokin’ in the Girl’s Room

Some a-hole named Michael Rosner (who has not heard of the Streisand Effect) in Baltimore has apparently started a civil liberties complaint. Not sure what this means. An actual lawsuit? If so then I look forward to reading this ridiculousness in PACER and putting it straight into RECAP. He seems to be part of Baltimore Node, a local hackerspace, and is one of those people who are the self-appointed photographers of tech events. In a sadly now deleted post on some Baltimore tech group’s Facebook page, he compared himself to Rosa Parks. A+ drama and ludicrousness.

The repugnant thing of course is the chilling effect this kind of thing can have on other groups who want to hold events. I have certainly spent years hearing people say in meetings, “Oh but what if someone sues us for being reverse sexist/racist” etc. and not only can they fuck off, the people who actually get to the point of litigation can fuck right off and go start their own damn coding club.

First prize for douchebaggery goes to a poet

You would think that is enough for one day. And yet we have more!
* Poet Greg Frankson sues peers for more than $300,000 for libel and defamation
Dude, Ritallin, this isn’t how it works. You aren’t supposed to piss off the bard because the bard can write a scornful poem about you. Go write a scathing spoken word piece! Lawyers? Really?! Weak. Oh well! This is why the 21 women wanted to be anonymous in the first place. So that your punitive and extra harassing lawsuits wouldn’t screw up their emails with subpoenas from now till forever. So, apparently he was banned from some poetry organizations and events because 21 different women reported incidents of sexual harassment and assault. Frankson is now suing some of the people involved, and they’re now fundraising for their legal defense.

Politics and policy

I strongly think that reporting and witnessing harassment and sexual assault is political speech and should be protected as such. Anti-SLAPP law should protect us from these punitive defamation lawsuits. At the least it seems a reasonable defense. There is a long history, not over obviously, of violence against women and in particular sexualized violence against women, and backlash against reporting it. (Or prior restraint stops anyone from publishing it for fear of being sued, even when it’s true.)

It is extremely important that we fight on a legal and policy level against chilling effects to our free speech. I also see these lawsuits as having an effect on our ability and right to organize politically. If we can’t tell each other who raped us, how can we fight? In order to protect that right I think we also will need organizations and legal help that will keep our right to communicate privileged information to each other. But that is not all since we also need public disclosure for our activism. The legal definitions of harassment are centered around work environments and the responsibilities of employers to protect their employees.

While I am ranting, I see this as part of a horrible trend to privatize all the functions of a civil society. Having a job in a particular way should not be the precondition for having health care, a hope of a sustainable life in old age aka “retirement”, other basic needs of life, or, legal protection from abusive behavior. Our right to participate in public spaces should be protected. Not just in “workplaces”.

India’s Daughter

Let us look at one more spectacularly hideous example of pushing women out of the right to public life. All the content warnings or trigger warnings possible on this one….

I also read Leslee Udwin’s statement about interviewing some of the men from Delhi who raped and murdered a woman on a bus. There is heartening protest and activism against this sort of attitude as you can see in the many other articles about “India’s Daughter” but it is clearly also not just the rapists who think this way about their right to do whatever they want to women.

I am not trying to equate harassing people on twitter with rape and murder, I am saying that they are facets of the same oppressive attitude and power dynamic reflected. And that one underpins the other. We need to fight all of it.

A good book if you like books

On that note I have a book recommendation: Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency Reconsidered by Carine M. Mardorossian. About the book:

Contesting the notion that rape is the result of deviant behaviors of victims or perpetrators, Mardorossian argues that rape saturates our culture and defines masculinity’s relation to femininity, both of which are structural positions rather than biologically derived ones.

And a bit I highlighted from the book:

We need to understand that the will to dominate is not an expression of free will or of a subject bound to gendered expectations that have turned the will to dominate into identity itself. Indeed, the failure to dominate produces a “terror machine” because it threatens the subject with complete annihilation: once one subscribes to the tenets of this identity-making machine, one is nothing if one does not dominate.

This book connects and clarifies sexualized violence and its role in many forms of oppression. “All violence is sexualized violence.” Food for thought.

Make hackerspaces better – support Ada initiative

Posted on by Liz

Hello! I love hackerspaces! And I’m asking hackerspaces around the world to donate to the Ada Initiative in support of making hackerspaces welcoming and safe places for women. My goal is to raise $4096 and if we do, I’ll match the first $1028 donated. **UPDATE** extending the deadline to next Friday, Oct. 3.

Adacamp liz and heidi in tiara

My home base is Double Union, a feminist hackerspace in San Francisco and it’s going strong. It has lively events every week and over 150 members.

A group of us at AdaCamp SF last year decided we could start a maker and hacker space for women. AdaCamp SF is an unconference run by the Ada Initiative for feminist women in open tech and culture. There were so many of us all together at once. So powerful feeling! With months of hard work, it happened — we opened Double Union.

We get to hack there without sexist bullshit or constantly fending off creepy dudes!

The thing is, I believe that any hackerspace can potentially be that way. You, too, could have a hackerspace where many women feel comfortable, welcome, valued, in their creative, coding, and entrepreneurial and activist endeavors, in a space full of allies and comrades of all genders. This can’t happen overnight. It will take work and education and above all, listening to women, not just the few women who have stuck around, but also the ones who left because they were uncomfortable.

I want to persuade hacker and maker spaces around the world that they are missing out on infinite potential. Hackerspaces.org has some good advice on adding anti-harassment policies to the design patterns for running a space. This is exactly the sort of work that Ada Initiative is good at; their Example anti-harassment policy has been used as a template by many events and organizations.

I’d like to challenge all hackerspace members to do two things in support of my campaign:

* Donate to Ada Initiative! I will match up to $1028 donated when we reach the $4096 goal!

* Add your anti-harassment policy to your organization’s page at hackerspace.org, and link to it from the list on the Geek Feminism wiki. (And if your space doesn’t have a code of conduct or policy, start the ball rolling to implement one!)

I love Double Union. We have set aside a permanent physical space, equipment, organization, and time that is focused on making and creating things together. We have the keys in our hands and the tools to do whatever we like in a safe, supportive environment free from harassment. We agreed to a basic code of conduct and some assumptions we share about behavior in the space, which helps establish trust for us to share knowledge, time, and tools. We try to follow Community anti-harassment standards. We have members who are also part of, or supporters of, Noisebridge, sudo room, LOLspace, Mothership Hackermoms, Ace Monster Toys, and other San Francsico Bay Area spaces.

Double union shopbot

We’re having writers’ groups, book groups, readings, zine workshops, open source software coding, cryptography meetups, circuit hacking, making stuff with our CNC routers, 3D printer, vinyl cutter, drawing and art supplies, and sewing machines — in short, doing whatever we like and learning a lot from each others’ expertise. We celebrate other women’s work and cultural diversity. Our hackerspace is against putting others down for what they do or don’t know. Once we don’t have to fight to prove we are ‘hacker enough’, great things happen.

Double Union’s founding group had the vision to make this space happen because of the pioneering work of the Ada Initiative. Ada Initiative’s demands for policy changes for events and companies, its fierce uncompromising voice, and especially its empowering and inspiring events, are having a good and useful effect to shift our culture.

More AdaCamps, like the ones this year in Berlin, Bangalore, and Portland, will help improve women’s participation in hackerspaces. With your donation, we could potentially host MORE of these fabulous unconferences for women in open tech and culture.

Please join me in donating to Ada Initiative so they can keep on being a positive force for change in the world!

Liz and Cristin smiling at DU


Geek Girl Con, Saturday!

Posted on by Liz

I’m at GeekGirlCon today!!! It’s awesome! 3rd year in a row!

I spent yesterday in The Attic, Seattle’s feminist community workshop/hacker/maker space. The Attic’s booth here at GeekGirlCon is representing the space’s combination of fiber, art, tech, robots, geekiness, hacking, and making things very beautifully and there are tshirts and stickers! That’s where I’ll be on Sunday morning and part of the afternoon, orbiting between the games area, the Art Alley, and The Attic’s table.

the_attic_seattle.jpg

Here are some quick shout outs to people I talked with today and cool stuff I saw.

– Heroes & Inspirations who make jewelry and art. Their new Ladies of Science series is great. There’s a Heroes and Inspirations Ladies of Science Kickstarter! I’m definitely backing this project and want several of the wearable tributes to admirable scientists!
– Stasia Burrington who has a print (and tshirt) of a woman in a pile of cats and another that I love that is kind of the same concept with books. As I look through her etsy shop I want to buy a zillion prints… her work is so charming!
– Bhaloidam, an interesting board game that is a storytelling RPG.
– BigBrainedSuperheroes Club, a STEAM education organization!
– Monkey Minion Press who have very beautifully done posters with SF retro WWII themes, often somewhat creepy.
– ReelGrrls who are working with young women to teach video production skills and to support their work as film makers.
– Women’s Funding Alliance which is a big philanthropic collective.

I got to talk a bit with Tempest who was on the panel “Changing Culture in Mainstream and Alternative Spaces” which I thought of as the “safer spaces” strategy panel. The panel was good. I also met up with Sigrid Ellis who I know from WisCon and who is now editing Apex Magazine. In a totally lucky random encounter I ended up talking intensely with Elsa S. Henry from Feminist Sonar and went to her Disabled Geeks panel which was not in the schedule booklet but which was well attended. Here are my notes on the panel! They’re a bit rough and were basically liveblogging that I have not fully edited.

Elsa and Stevi Costa are speaking on the Disabled Geeks panel. Elsa’s talking about comics and characters with disabilities. Disability is used as a narrative crutch. The words “inspiration porn” are also being tossed out there . . . for those of us who might be hate-watching things like Glee or watching Push Girls. (Audience LOL, ruefully). Disability is too often used as a metaphor for overcoming obstacles. It’s rare to have a character born with a disability who did not get bitten by a radioactive spider but has been how they are since birth.

Discussion of the Glee character who is a wheelchair user who is played by a non-disabled character. Elsa describes the horrible scene where he gets up out of the wheelchair and dances, which many people felt was a huge problem, since you don’t have to miraculously get out of your wheelchair in order to dance. You can dance while using your wheelchair or while you have whatever other impairment you happen to have in your life. Your dreams may be things that you can actually fucking do. Etc. An audience member describes her teeth grinding as the pretty girl gets to walk across the room getting out of her chair in some other episode. As if, aww, the other guy is the loser in the chair. There is also an Xmas episode where the guy wishes he could walk. Critique of the “walking” exoskeleton thingies. My personal reaction is that I am kind of glad I have never watched this show.

“Yay, accepting our cyborg bodies and then we become your OVERLORD.” *audience cheer*

Something something crip sex. (I had lost the thread, but start paying attention at these words…) “How did that feel to you?” “I dunno”. It was amazing but it just can’t make up for that dancing episode. Another episode where bullies take a blind person’s cane away. That was a painful moment for Elsa since people have done that to her deciding that she doesn’t need her cane so that they can bully her. Invisible disabilities represented, for once the character with Downs Syndrome is played by an actor with Downs. Great character usually but the school shooter episode was incredibly bad. Inconsistent with the character, makes it look like PWD have no future after the insitutional support of childhood and youth. Yes there is fear but they blew it out of proportion and people said online “I wonder if that’s going to happen at my school”. It represented disabled people as violent when actually we are often the targets of violence.

How about Oracle. (I cheer). Elsa loved Oracle, a great superhero with disabilities. And then they took her away. Oh, you’re disabled, you’re like one of the X-Men. No actually I’m not. And Oracle was a woman with an actual disablity who lived with her physical impairments.

In contrast in the Daredevil movie, she lasted 2 minutes, the movie was too much. “My nickname is snarkbat, I use snark to echolocate.” Why doesn’t he use the cane while he’s in the costume!? I’d like to see a superhero who uses a cane. So I had someone make me one. People with disabilities should be able to cosplay anything they want. My blind cataracted eye is not a special effects contact! Please do not ask me where I bought my own eyeball. Then I will tell you I bought it at Rubella and you will feel like a jerk. I’m playing Odin today. (Elsa holds up her cape with a raven (Munin) attached to the shoulder.) (I asked her earlier if it was Hugin or Munin) People ask Hey where’d you get that awesome contact, they assume you couldn’t be disabled so you become strangely invisitble again. Elsa asks for abled bodied people to not cosplay disability. It makes many of us really frustrated. We need to be recognized and read as people with disabilities. If you are playing disabled with your pirate eyepatch you are making the world worse for people who actually need to wear one. The fictionalizing means the people aren’t reading us as real.

Why would you go to all the trouble of finding visually impaired young women to play helen keller but as the understudy for the not-visually-impaired main actress who got cast for the role. There could be the name recognition if you start casting us in the roles.

Cons and accessible space. Getting trampled and pushed around in crowds. This con is good. People are educated to the point where they are not pushing into people in wheelchairs, people with white canes. This con has an introvert alley so people can go have some quiet space. We have a wheelchair lift here at the stage. (though . . . no one on stage who is a wheelchair user. . . .) Stevi asks Elsa when she goes to larger cons that don’t have any focus on inclusivity do you feel that you become invisible? Geek culture is not as inclusive as it is supposed to be. That is why Elsa does not like to go to cons. She doesn’t like feeling invisible and being trampled. She lives in NYC and is used to that environment but to come into a safer space where it’s “our people” it would be nice not to be run over. (I so strongly agree!! This feeling only grows in me that we have to insist on respect from our communities.)

Audience question about therapy dogs and fakers. Yeah Hmmmmm. Panel handles this question with perhaps too much patience. OK I popped up and asked the asker if she has a special need to police whether people are really disabled or not or a concern over being allergic to dogs or dog phobic so it becomes an issue for her or people around her. Come on. Is this the moment?

Elsa talks about how she wears glasses and can see partially. People go Hey are you really blind? Yes. they don’t give white canes out like candy and I really need it. People come up to me at cocktail parties and ask me how many fingers they are holding up. People just take my cane because they are curious. It’s not okay to just investigate my disability. Peeople with disabilities are not public property. We are human beings. TELL IT. Stevi adds that we narrativize it to where the story is that you have gone from being able-bodies to disabled and that is the dominant story.

Aud comment about being happy to be talking about people who were born with disabilities and glad we’re having this panel. She wants to talk about more pop culture and the show Covert Affairs. The character who is super sexy and confident. He is not really blind but the attempt to make a positive character is awesome and rare so props to them for trying. Elsa says she will have to watch it. She is the only blind burlesque performer she knows about. How does she know she’s being attractive? Well, she practices a lot and asks her friends if she looks good in her costumes.

Aud comment about the school shooting story. She wants to know recs for characters where their disability is not the issue.

Elsa recommends Switched at Birth it is sort of ridiculous and has some sort of weird republican thing going on, but they have an entire episode done in ASL where the characters are all teenage girls.

Stevi likes the Michael J Fox show because they address the inspiration porn question head on, in episode one and then they move on and he is just a character who happens to have Parkinson’s and that isn’t what it’s about. The first episode includes some epic crip humor. Then it becomes a normal family sitcom which includes a character with a chronic condition.

Another rec from the audience, the forensic doctor on CSI. He plays guitar, he happens to have one leg, he is awesome.

Back to superheroes with disability. The character Hawkeye lost 80% of his hearing. it became part of his character but then of course then in 2000s he got reset.

Can we stop resetting the disabled characters? OMG.

Fanfic writers cherrypicked that one detail and wrote after the Avengers movies how he had hearing loss. A lot of it was great but there was also a lot of problematic aspects where people wrote it as inspiration porn where he overcomes his hearing loss etc.

Breaking Bad and a character where a disabled actor applied for a character who was written as able bodied and he is a great actor, they just put it into his character, they didn’t reject him from the role, it was just like the color of a person’s hair or whatever.

Cosplay and able bodied people and disabled people What if there is an able bodied people who really likes Oracle and wants to cosplay Oracle. What if there’s a person in the wheelchair who wants to cosplay Supergirl. What then.

Elsa says people in wheelchairs can cosplay whoever they want. But if you are able bodied and want to cosplay Oracle just dont use a wheelchair. If you dont need it please don’t use it. Do not put on cripface. Geordi’s visor is fiction, it is not a real device so it isn’t going to be mixed up with reality. Stevi thinks it is possible to use an assistive device in cosplay in a way that is respectful, but it is tricky. Elsa wants people who are not disabled not to be read as disabled.

(Personally I have some complicated feelings around this and I don’t like the idea that people think they can just play disability. What the hell, isn’t there enough to play with? And, it is even more complicated because of actual discrimination and also I would add in fetishists as an issue. I don’t like the idea that, as with actors, Non disabled people get attention and fame from pretending to be us and perhaps “doing it better”. They get rewarded for performing “disability” in ways that are more acceptable to mainstream culture than the actual lives and being in the world of those of us who are disabled. How can this not fail to be offensive and have the fake cripple come off as perky or happier or reacting in some way that gets props from people who want everything to be okay. My first reaction is that it makes me instantly angry. I let people ride my scooter and manual chair to experience it as fun and not unimaginable. But I hate the idea that people would pretend they are disabled as their costume. )

Elsa talking about her current work writing a game module for ghost hunting blind people, warriors of midgaard, for role playing games. I know how to do and represent this thing. Pay me to do it. Rather than thinking you know it all and faking it.

Orange is the New Black, best humor moment with wheelchair, Scared Straight group goes to the prison and one of the prisoners goes you think you’re really tough . . . She is the most bad ass, I will shank you so hard character.

The panel wraps up. I did not count the attendees but would estimate 30-40 people as I think back on how full the room was.

YAY, great panel!