As practitioners and supporters of feminist hacking and hackerspaces, we’re outspoken about shared commitments to equality, accessibility and inclusion—but what’s the lay of the land when it comes to acknowledging and including deaf and disabled feminists among us? As a disabled woman artist who still codes atrociously (hey, learning is a process), but loves working in and with hackerspaces and hackers, I often think about diversity between and among different tech communities and different disability cultures, how various groups intersect and interact, and how this manifests in the level of true equality, accessibility, and inclusion for disabled folk. So what would accessible feminist hackerspaces and hacker cultures look like, and how do we get from where we are to where to we need to be?
The Recompiler: Ramping Up – disabled feminisms and hacking by Khairani Barokka
Yes. What else is there to be? Everything else is being an asshole. These are your choices. I have three sisters, and no brothers. In my family it is all women, and they are very strong, opinionated, professional women, and the idea that they would be in some way disadvantaged by comparison to men was just ludicrous, and if you had tried to suggest it to them you’d have got hit. So I learned it early.
Salman Rushdie, in 15 Famous Men on Whether or Not They’re Feminists
I’m taking this class right now called Technologies of Feminism, and we spend a lot of time talking about whether or not software can be biased. It’s hard to explore in a print story. This is where my mind is right now. I’m thinking about how Facebook and Google are trying to get the rest of the world into their version of the internet. When you sign up somewhere in the developed world, do you sign up for Facebook’s version of the internet? Are you automatically ascribed to their version of data collection and privacy policies? Are we creating digital imperialism? Is this the new imperialism? I don’t know. These are the things I’m trying to understand.
Interview with Jenna Wortham of the New York Times
