Gender Tech Online/Offline Cyberfeminism

Title of the tutorial	Online/Offline Cyberfeminism
Attributions
Kind of learning session	Gender and Tech
Tutorial category	Discussion
Duration (hours)	2
Learning objectives	Understanding what is the Relationship between Offline and Online from a cyberfeminist perspective; Understanding essential properties of Internet in relation to shaping identity online and displaying subjectivities.
Prerequisites	Have been able to read some selected extracts, or all the articles/books used for guiding the conversation.
Methodology	The relationship between the online and offline worlds were addressed early on by cyberfeminist scholars and activists. In her book Zeroes + ones: digital women + the new technoculture, Sady Plant suggests that cyberspace has a feminist essence, and is therefore a natural space for women to inhabit. Rosi Braidotti, in her book Nomadic Subject, focuses on the fluidity and mobility aspects of online spaces that allows, she suggests, the creation of collective bonds among women. In other words, cyberspace makes global feminism possible in one's offline world as it is linked to the intimate, the immediate, the personal and the collective. Donna Haraway, in her Cyborg Manifesto, framed the internet as a force that might help shift forms of gender power on the Internet in turn enabling feminists to somewhat escape patriarchal structures online. This utopian view of cyberspace has since then been tone down as escaping gender, race or other intersectional forms of oppression has been much harder than first thought. But safe spaces are one way to experience and enable forms of collective and individual empowerment both online and offline.
Number of facilitators involved	1
Technical needs	Printed extracts and/or complete articles;
Theoretical and on line resources	[[Theoretical and on line resources::* Zeroes + ones: digital women + the new technoculture, Sady Plant Nomadic Subject, Rosi Braidotti Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway]]