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
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.
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?