

What Do Feminist Hackers Do? - roguecoder
http://bookmaniac.org/feminist-hacker-news/

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Jun8
I don't think efforts to create "the X for women" (e.g. X=reddit, anonymous,
etc.) would be effective or productive: as such they will always be wanna-be
or follower type efforts. What is _much_ better is to build on unique
strengths/problems/concerns that women have, e.g. I really liked the
nameyourrapist.com mentioned (although, of course, with a better name), e.g.
women can tell stories of harassment, inequality they faced in companies
(naming the company or not) and how they dealt with it. There were many
examples of such blog posts on HN recently, collecting them in a central,
searchable location would be very useful, I think.

On a different note, the hacker society is very meritocratic (as it should be,
since it is based on _doing_ stuff, as opposed to talking about it), so all
the ideas in the OP has to be prefaced with the effort to create more hacker
women with killer creds and skills. The Etsy-Hacker School effort is a great
step in this direction.

On still another tangent, read the story _Houston, Houston, Do You Read_ by
James Tiptree Jr.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston,_Houston,_Do_You_Read%3...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston,_Houston,_Do_You_Read%3F))
if you have the time, to see a provocative take on what technical and social
developments a world of women will produce (you should buy the collected
stories book, if you want to be cheap, you can read it here:
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/20608868/Houston-Houston-Do-You-
Re...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/20608868/Houston-Houston-Do-You-Read-Tiptree-
James)).

    
    
      "Thank you." He takes the small, pink bulb. "Just tell me," he says to Lady Blue,who is looking at the bullet gashes, "what do you call yourselves? Women's World? Liberation? Amazonia?"
    
      "Why, we call ourselves human beings." Her eyes twinkle absently at him, go backto the bullet marks. "Humanity, mankind." She shrugs. "The human race."

~~~
iuguy
The name your rapist idea is terrible in the form the author lays out as
there's no requirement for evidence. It would be relatively easy to game such
a site to discredit people, which in turn would discredit the site. To be
fair, an anonymous at both ends site could be a force for good. The author of
an article highlighting harassment could verify the story to a mod team, but
by not having the naming and shaming we can focus on the problems existence
(which seemed to be the problem the article author faced with 28c3) rather
than the inevitable backlash in the naming and shaming. I think this is much
more constructive, less high risk and overall has a better chance to influence
in a positive manner than naming and shaming alone.

~~~
bethly
Right, because 4chan and the like care so much about evidence and proof before
they start sending around rape threats and changing Wikipedia pages to porn.

Part of the point is imagining what the world would look like if women stopped
holding themselves to a higher standard than men do. I find it funny that some
men seem terrified by the idea: now you know how we feel _all the time_

~~~
jerrya
The author, Liz Henry, conflates Hacking with Anonymous.

 _At a couple of conferences lately, Hackmeet and She’s Geeky, as well as at
the feminist science fiction convention WisCon, I hosted a discussion of
feminist hackers and feminist hacking. I wanted to put the idea out into the
world and see what other women had to say about it. Though women are involved
with Anonymous and other instances of hacker activism, they aren’t part of the
story, of the myth of the hacker. If there were a particularly feminist or
womanist Anonymous, women working together, what would they be doing? What or
who would their targets be? What social justice or mischief making aims would
they have? What would our griefing and trolling look like or what does it
currently look like? What do hacker feminists do for lulz?_

But to many people Hacking and Anonymous have only the barest of
intersections. The article mainly seems to focus on how to get back at the
man, and the author expresses surprise and anger that in a different nation
and a different cultural context others were not sympathetic to her message.

The answers the author relays are mainly focused at getting back at the man, a
series of mostly negative societal inputs and few positive society building
inputs.

Few of the answers are about what most people at Hacker News would consider to
be Hacking, even as the author's post is titled "Feminist Hacker News" and is
supposedly about Feminist Hacking.

A better title for Mz. Henry's post might be Feminist MonkeyWrenching or
Feminist Anonymous.

What might feminist _hackers_ do?

    
    
        - create code
        - teach coding
        - support STEM education through code, outreach, ....
        - websites that discuss issues of discrimination similar to "name your rapist" but that adhere to fair/just rules of law
        - create APIs into gov't databases / sources of gender/wage information
        - create websites that discuss negotiation of salaries
        -    how to ensure your salary is competitive
        -    how to ensure your rights are protected
        -    how to hire and behired
        - create awesome websites regarding feminist issues: sexuality, rights, domestic violence, changing roles of marriage, etc.
        - create websites that create dialogue around these issues and are inclusive, not exclusive

~~~
iuguy
That bullet pointed list for some reason doesn't render properly in the
comments, but is brilliant and far more insightful than the article itself.
This is precisely the sort of positive constructive feminism that we need in
the hacker community, instead of destructive anger-fuelled negativity.

------
iuguy
I'm fairly appalled by the bulk of this article and frankly surprised to see
it on the front page of HN. There are some potentially good ideas that with
some smoothing out could fly, but there's a lot of stuff that's scummy, if not
illegal.

The biggest problem I have with this is that this post's intent seems not to
be to advance equality, or even the role of women through the hacker community
but to drive a wedge and almost treat the gender gap as some sort of war. In
her post, men only seem to be referred to in negative terms (as with the 28c3
panel and references to naming and shaming men who may or may not have done
bad things, as no burden of evidence appears to be needed), something that I
find deeply unsettling. When someone puts something like this forward as an
example of feminism, I see it not as feminism but as a form of misandry. If we
want to do good things for women that's fine as long as we can do good things
for men and accept our differences. But really, as hackers whenever we can we
should be doing good things for everyone.

------
pselle
Love it. Where's Fem Anon?

