Difference between revisions of "Manual introduction"

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This manual came out of the Gender and Technology Institute, organised by Tactical Technology Collective and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) at the end of 2014. The event brought together almost 80 participants and facilitators, mostly from the Global South, to focus on some of the issues faced daily by women and trans* persons on the internet and to share strategies and tools for better protecting our privacy and security online.
  
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== Motivations behind this manual + Oriented at - target audience ==
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Since then, the network has expanded, with the result that this manual has involved the input and review of a wide range of people, and is informed by the stories and creative practices of grassroots activists working all over the world. Many of whom have been using and developing alternative technologies for some time in order to tackle gender based violence and advance gender social justice around the world.
  
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This manual is the result of a global conversation between women, queer and trans persons about how to develop practices that enable us and our allies to include privacy and digital security into our lives, and how can we keep on learning meanwhile helping others to learn about those concepts, methods and tools? Recurrently our reduced amount of free time, fragmented and precarious lives and lack of individual and collective self care cultures are pointed at as major challenges. How can we include and pack those fast evolving privacy and digital security practices into our already very busy lives as human rights defenders and activists? How can we find collective mechanisms of support to keep advancing together and empower each other?
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The internet is not a safe space for women and trans* people, and it is all too common to see the work of feminists and activists being deleted, (self)censored, and actively prevented from being seen, heard or read. In such a hostile environment, how then can we then as women and trans* persons develop trust when creating content and interacting with others online, and grow our trusted networks, to create safe space among us? This manual seeks to present some of the strategies and tools to help develop that trust so that women and trans* people can continue to safely enjoy the freedoms and empowerment that the internet offers. 
  
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== Why those sub chapters? ==
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The first part of the manual looks at the information traces you leave behind on the internet, and offers various strategies and tools available for taking control of these traces. It presents what metadata and digital shadows are, and why these matter; how you can minimise, create and manage new online identities; and what are the risks and potentials involved in using different types of identities such as anonymity, pseudonyms, collective names and real names. 
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The second part focuses on safe spaces. It starts with the online world and discusses how safe spaces can be created for community-building, organising and support. Then, it looks at some creative tactics for addressing exclusion and harassment of women and trans* people online. Finally it discusses different methods for creating safe space in the physical world where women and trans* persons can learn about privacy, digital security and technologies in order to be empowered and further contribute to those fields.
  
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==='''Safe Spaces as Feminist Practices'''===
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While you're reading this manual (and putting some of what's in it into practice), it's important to keep some things in mind.
  
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Safe spaces have been used by groups marginalized in societies and communities for many decades now. Safe spaces have been a way to care for one-self and for a collective, to design and craft strategies and tactics of resistance and to create an oasis of peace in what sometimes can be a tiring struggle for resistance. Safe spaces have taken different meanings and bear different names depending on a variety of factors be it geographical, temporal, spatial, cultural and social, among others. The British author Virginia Woolf's has talked about a Room of One’s Own, a term often used by feminists to describe safe spaces.  
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Including gender into privacy and security requires us to take an intersectional approach  - one that engages with a diversity of culture, social status, gender identification, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and other power structures that create inequality for individuals and communities with regard to their access to security tools and practices. Besides, this is also based on the recognition that specific forms of violence against women, trans*, and queer persons happen in a structural way along the entirety of the technological cycle - from the moment a specific form of technology is assembled, to its usage, right through to its disposal.  If this particular manual is, of course not able to address the entire scope of this; it is nonetheless useful to keep the big picture in mind. This includes:
  
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===='''What is the Relationship between Offline and Online?'''====
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* Acknowledging that gender gaps, discrimination and gender-based violence are structural, and influence the conditions of women and trans* persons in relation to their experience of and with ICTs.
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* Understanding how different women and trans* persons in different conditions find ways of accessing technologies, and how they can protect themselves and others in the process.
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* Sharing skills and knowledge on the ground so that women and trans* persons can strengthen their freedom of opinion and expression.
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* Remembering it is important to make women and trans* experiences in the management and development of technologies visible (not just the digital ones, but also appropriated ones like health and self-care technologies for instance).
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* Working to enable a greater participation of women and trans* persons in institutions which contribute to the governance of internet, as well as inside companies and organisations delivering services which support our networking and online identity.
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* Imagining liberating technologies where everybody is truly welcomed and respected is not work for women and trans* persons only, it is the responsibility of anybody involved in creating an inclusive,accessible, decentralised and neutral internet.
  
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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.  
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With these points in mind, we should ask ourselves when choosing to use a specific technology, if it is a liberating or alienating one for other groups and individuals. Liberating technologies can be defined as those that do not harm and are fairly produced and distributed; that are rooted in free and open-source software and free culture principles; and that are designed by default against gender based violence, surveillance, opacity and programmed obsolescence [1].
  
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===='''What are Safe Spaces?'''====
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Because of these, it's important to have a look at the Feminist Principles on the Internet [2] developed by the APC in 2014, when they gathered a group of woman human rights defenders and feminist activists to a Global Meeting on Gender, Sexuality and the Internet, with the mandate to come up with a first list of principles. Those look at the ways in which the internet can be a transformative public and political space for women, trans* and feminists. They place tech-related violence on the continuum of gender-based violence, making clear the structural aspect of violence linking, expanding and/or mirroring online attitudes with offline prejudices.  The principles also highlight surveillance and lack of privacy as patriarchal tools, whether they are used by the state, private individuals or corporations to control women's and trans* persons' bodies and thoughts.
  
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A common understanding of safe spaces are that they share common values, whether explicit, through a community agreement, or implicit through the sharing of values and enable members of a group to flourish, empower themselves and create community. The concept of safe spaces as embodied in second wave feminism in the western world was “explicitly committed to safety for individuals or communities that are targets of oppression” (Newman 2011, 138)1. Safe spaces are known to have provided a safe speaking and awareness raising environment for women involved in the women's liberation movement in the 60s and 70s in many countries where women could discuss about their experience in a patriarchal environment. Safe spaces are also about pushing boundaries and confronting certain difficult issues among a group of people such as: Who can be part of a women's only group? Who can be define as a woman? As these are important questions to be addressed, they need reflection, trust and the understanding of where our own assumptions come. We will come back to those questions later on in the manual.
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''How to use this manual''
  
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Safe Space strategies have been used recently during the USA Occupy movements where many women, queer and trans did not feel safe to camp in the squares and parks. Some resorted to women-only tents, or women of color-only affinity groups while others mostly transwomen, opted for an online presence has putting their bodies on the line were deemed too dangerous. In Tahrir Square in Egypt, Operation Anti Sexual Harassment (OpAntiSH) was set up to react to a hostile environment and as a way to protect women and/or confront harassers and support survivors of sexual abuse and harassment. In Kenya, the women-only Umoja village was created for women survivors of rape and sexual assaults where they could feel safe and secure, raise their kids, earn a living collectively, heal and reclaim their dignity.  
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This manual is written for anybody that is interested in including gender with an intersectional approach to digital security and privacy practices. It aims to raise questions in your mind and inspire you, not to give you step-by-step configuration advice on X tool (but it gives you links where you can find that!). It is also not a comprehensive security guide, it focuses on a few dimensions speaking to the needs of women and trans* persons. There are however some first-step digital security and privacy measures that you should already have in place before reading this manual (see what's recommended: https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Security_disclaimer).  
  
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1) Newman, E. (2011). “Safer Spaces of Decolonize/Occupy Oakland: Some Reflections on Mental Health and Anti-Oppression Work in Revolutionary Times.” <em>Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology</em>, 3(2), 138-141.  
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The manual is broken into a shorter printed (and online) version and a more extensive wiki. The wiki goes in depth,explaining how to manage identities online and build safe spaces, in addition to giving examples and instructions on how to turn abstract concepts into practice. The wiki will continue to be added to by the community from the Gender and Tech Institute. We intend it to be a repository of critical resources for women's human rights defenders and activists from the global south and the global north.
  
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===='''Safe Space Online?'''====
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[1] A longer version of the methodological aspects of this introduction can be found hereː https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Introduction
  
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Digital spaces are unique in multiple ways. Many women have reported experiencing the internet as a safe space for resisting gender oppression that they encounter in their every-day life. Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone talks about the internet as Wings of Freedom for Iranian women.  Scholar Saskia Sassen argues that the internet allows women to be involved in new forms of contestations, build global community and potentially transform local women’s conditions.   While these emancipatory experiences exist, and cannot be undervalued, women can also experience cyberspace in very different ways. Anita Sarkeesian who is behind the Feminist Frequency web platform was in 2012 the target of an online harassment campaign following the launch of her Kickstarter project called Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. She was harassed online and still is because she highlights sexism in video games.  This story is not a unique case, it happens over and over.  
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[2] The Feminists principles of the internet can be consulted hereː http://www.genderit.org/articles/feminist-principles-internet
  
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Using safe spaces tactics and strategies is a good way to start inhabiting online and offline spaces according to the boundaries we want to set for ourselves and for our friends. This manual intends to do just that. To provide you with concrete suggestions on how to create safe spaces online and offline. It is divided in three core parts. First, a set of tools will be highlighted to move forward with starting to build safe spaces for you and your collectives/organizations through online communication such as mailing list, pads, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), etc. Second, it will focus on how to build safe spaces in “hostile” environments such as howto organize Wikipedia storming, how to install bots against trolls, how to do feminist counter-speech and finally, how to build safe spaces off line such as through women-only/feminist-only space to learn and Do-it-Together.
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[[Category:Resources]]
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===='''What are Feminist Principles on the Internet?'''====
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What is closer to today's feminist practice on the internet, which goes beyond simple politeness, are the Feminist Principles on the Internet. Those principles were developed in 2014, almost 20 years after the drafting of the above netiquette principles. The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) gathered a group of feminists to a Global Meeting on Gender, Sexuality and the Internet with the mandate to come up with a first list of principles. Their principles are about the ways in which the internet can be a transformative public and political space for feminists. It situates online violence and tech-related violence on the continuum of gender-based violence making clear the structural aspect of gender violence online and offline. The principles also highlight surveillance as a patriarchal tool whether it is used by the state, private individuals or corporation.
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===='''Why are these principles important?'''====
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The Feminist Principles on the Internet are a good way to address the relationship between the online and offline world making for instance the link clear between online and offline violence. The goal behind these principles are two-fold. First, it is a tool for feminists to guide them in understanding the internet as a new public space and how this space can be informed by feminist principles. In other words, it is about reframing the conversation around gender, sexuality, sexual rights and the internet.  Second, it is a way to reclaim the Internet in creating spaces for feminists. In other words: safe spaces. If you want to contribute to the discussion join the hashtag #ImagineaFeministInternet.
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== How to use this manual? ==
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Latest revision as of 14:19, 4 June 2015

This manual came out of the Gender and Technology Institute, organised by Tactical Technology Collective and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) at the end of 2014. The event brought together almost 80 participants and facilitators, mostly from the Global South, to focus on some of the issues faced daily by women and trans* persons on the internet and to share strategies and tools for better protecting our privacy and security online.

Since then, the network has expanded, with the result that this manual has involved the input and review of a wide range of people, and is informed by the stories and creative practices of grassroots activists working all over the world. Many of whom have been using and developing alternative technologies for some time in order to tackle gender based violence and advance gender social justice around the world.

The internet is not a safe space for women and trans* people, and it is all too common to see the work of feminists and activists being deleted, (self)censored, and actively prevented from being seen, heard or read. In such a hostile environment, how then can we then as women and trans* persons develop trust when creating content and interacting with others online, and grow our trusted networks, to create safe space among us? This manual seeks to present some of the strategies and tools to help develop that trust so that women and trans* people can continue to safely enjoy the freedoms and empowerment that the internet offers.

The first part of the manual looks at the information traces you leave behind on the internet, and offers various strategies and tools available for taking control of these traces. It presents what metadata and digital shadows are, and why these matter; how you can minimise, create and manage new online identities; and what are the risks and potentials involved in using different types of identities such as anonymity, pseudonyms, collective names and real names.

The second part focuses on safe spaces. It starts with the online world and discusses how safe spaces can be created for community-building, organising and support. Then, it looks at some creative tactics for addressing exclusion and harassment of women and trans* people online. Finally it discusses different methods for creating safe space in the physical world where women and trans* persons can learn about privacy, digital security and technologies in order to be empowered and further contribute to those fields.

While you're reading this manual (and putting some of what's in it into practice), it's important to keep some things in mind.

Including gender into privacy and security requires us to take an intersectional approach - one that engages with a diversity of culture, social status, gender identification, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and other power structures that create inequality for individuals and communities with regard to their access to security tools and practices. Besides, this is also based on the recognition that specific forms of violence against women, trans*, and queer persons happen in a structural way along the entirety of the technological cycle - from the moment a specific form of technology is assembled, to its usage, right through to its disposal. If this particular manual is, of course not able to address the entire scope of this; it is nonetheless useful to keep the big picture in mind. This includes:

  • Acknowledging that gender gaps, discrimination and gender-based violence are structural, and influence the conditions of women and trans* persons in relation to their experience of and with ICTs.
  • Understanding how different women and trans* persons in different conditions find ways of accessing technologies, and how they can protect themselves and others in the process.
  • Sharing skills and knowledge on the ground so that women and trans* persons can strengthen their freedom of opinion and expression.
  • Remembering it is important to make women and trans* experiences in the management and development of technologies visible (not just the digital ones, but also appropriated ones like health and self-care technologies for instance).
  • Working to enable a greater participation of women and trans* persons in institutions which contribute to the governance of internet, as well as inside companies and organisations delivering services which support our networking and online identity.
  • Imagining liberating technologies where everybody is truly welcomed and respected is not work for women and trans* persons only, it is the responsibility of anybody involved in creating an inclusive,accessible, decentralised and neutral internet.

With these points in mind, we should ask ourselves when choosing to use a specific technology, if it is a liberating or alienating one for other groups and individuals. Liberating technologies can be defined as those that do not harm and are fairly produced and distributed; that are rooted in free and open-source software and free culture principles; and that are designed by default against gender based violence, surveillance, opacity and programmed obsolescence [1].

Because of these, it's important to have a look at the Feminist Principles on the Internet [2] developed by the APC in 2014, when they gathered a group of woman human rights defenders and feminist activists to a Global Meeting on Gender, Sexuality and the Internet, with the mandate to come up with a first list of principles. Those look at the ways in which the internet can be a transformative public and political space for women, trans* and feminists. They place tech-related violence on the continuum of gender-based violence, making clear the structural aspect of violence linking, expanding and/or mirroring online attitudes with offline prejudices. The principles also highlight surveillance and lack of privacy as patriarchal tools, whether they are used by the state, private individuals or corporations to control women's and trans* persons' bodies and thoughts.

How to use this manual

This manual is written for anybody that is interested in including gender with an intersectional approach to digital security and privacy practices. It aims to raise questions in your mind and inspire you, not to give you step-by-step configuration advice on X tool (but it gives you links where you can find that!). It is also not a comprehensive security guide, it focuses on a few dimensions speaking to the needs of women and trans* persons. There are however some first-step digital security and privacy measures that you should already have in place before reading this manual (see what's recommended: https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Security_disclaimer).

The manual is broken into a shorter printed (and online) version and a more extensive wiki. The wiki goes in depth,explaining how to manage identities online and build safe spaces, in addition to giving examples and instructions on how to turn abstract concepts into practice. The wiki will continue to be added to by the community from the Gender and Tech Institute. We intend it to be a repository of critical resources for women's human rights defenders and activists from the global south and the global north.

[1] A longer version of the methodological aspects of this introduction can be found hereː https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Introduction

[2] The Feminists principles of the internet can be consulted hereː http://www.genderit.org/articles/feminist-principles-internet

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