Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
finished the outline of the history section
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
  • Loading branch information
mallory committed Jun 25, 2019
1 parent 9d2df14 commit 2f01eca
Showing 1 changed file with 12 additions and 3 deletions.
15 changes: 12 additions & 3 deletions draft-feminism.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -150,9 +150,18 @@ This document addresses the opportunities and vulnerabilities incorporated into

## Brief history of feminism and the internet

It is significant to highlight the ways in which feminists have understood, used and mobilised on the internet. Given myriad expressions of feminism online and feminist movement building online, one
thread is perhaps instructive to this exercise. More about the nature of the complex community that created the Feminist Principles of the Internet can be found at feministinternet.org.

The ways in which feminists have understood, used and mobilised on the internet is significant for a baseline understanding of how internet protocols and feminism intersect. Intersectional feminist action and anaysis can be collected into two strategies: addressing the status quo and creating alternatives. Feminists on the early internet embodied both.

It is important to note here that there has always existed a gender gap in access to the internet, which is exacerbated by global wealth inequality.

Since the 1980s, feminist movements have used the internet to challenge power. Globalisation. Development. Cyberfeminism. Internet governance. There is a deeper connection to the internet and social justice struggles in which communication becomes the primary strategy to address inequality. Indeed, in "A History Of Feminist Engagement With Development And Digital Technologies" Anita Gurumurthy writes, "the history of the right to communicate reveals the contestation between powerful status quoist forces and those who seek transformative, global change for justice and equality."

At the same time, feminists were using the internet to create feminist space.

Author Feminista Jones argues in "Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets" that the feminist alternative spaces have become mainstream and are leading analysis and critique of the status quo, a merging and strengthening of the two strategies that emerge from this particular historical framing.

Given these myriad expressions of feminism online and feminist movement building online, one thread is perhaps most instructive to this exercise, which we use as the basis for this document: Feminist Principles of the Internet. More about the nature of the complex community that created the Feminist Principles of the Internet can be found at feministinternet.org. The principles, drafted and revised by hundreds of feminists mostly in the global south, highlight historical feminist themes for the digital age in its main categories: access, movements, economy, expression and embodiment.

# Expression as a framework of understanding

With the popularization of the internet, the freedom of expression of both women and other gender identities traditionally marginalized from public life and social acceptance (whom we refer to as queer) has been greatly enhanced. In contexts where women do not have their rights fully guaranteed, or where sexual and gender diversity are socially condemned, the Web has served to meet, organize and resist.
Expand Down

0 comments on commit 2f01eca

Please sign in to comment.