Difference between revisions of "Complete manual 2"

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== Chapter 2: Safe spaces ==
 
== Chapter 2: Safe spaces ==
  
Safe spaces can be understood as spaces that are created though explicit community agreement, or through implicit sharing of values. They enable members of a group to flourish, empower themselves and create community. Safe environment for discussion and awareness raising have played a key role since the women's liberation movement in the 60s. Still nowadays, safe spaces strategies enable different groups at risk such as survivors of sexual abuse, harassment and violence to feel safe and secure, catch up and develop their skills, heal and reclaim their dignity. There are many shared logics underpinning the creation of safe spaces online so that women, trans* and other groups can communicate and exchange in a nurturing and welcoming environment, as there are variations of the safe space logic in the development of events, activities, meetings in the physical world for enabling more women and trans to access and learn about technologies related fields without having to fear sexist language and attitudes or being '''mansplained''' meanwhile learning.
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Safe spaces can be understood as spaces that are created though explicit community agreement, or through implicit sharing of values. They enable members of a group to flourish, empower themselves and create community. Safe environments for discussion and awareness-raising have played a key role in many women's liberation movements.
  
You might assume that online communities you take part in through social media, email discussion lists, phones and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels are inherently democratic, horizontal, participatory and relatively safe. However online spaces often reproduce hierarchies, privileges and power relations that exist in society. We need to be mindful of this and to think through ways to mitigate and limit these downsides to get the best out of our spaces. Using such strategies is about caring for ourselves and for the communities we are part of. Making these issues explicit and visible is also about agency, social justice and feminism, helping to better shape the spaces we care about, we organize in and in which we grow. Creating safe spaces is a process that takes place within groups and thus as an intrinsic collective dimension at the core of any of its principles.  
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As explained by integrated security trainer, Sandra Ljubinkovic, safe spaces are important for any integrated approach to security because they enable an environment that support people to express their emotions without fearing any judgment: “Creating a safe space is crucial for creating a sense of physical safety as well as a sense of confidence in a group. It is important for participants who usually have no time to relax to feel comfortable and enjoy simple things­. And if they live in a country where their lives are in danger it is even more crucial to make sure that they feel physically safe. Safe space in a group means a space to feel comfortable and speak openly and freely about feelings, challenges, and emotions as they may arise. In the workshops where issues personally affect people (whether those are physical, emotional, or spiritual threats and challenges), participants may have strong emotions as they do their own inner work facing their own oppression, privilege, anger, hurt, pain and suffering”.
  
This chapter aims to provide you with concrete suggestions on how to create safe spaces. First, a set of tools will be highlighted to build safe spaces online for us and our collectives through a tactical use of mailing lists, chat and collaborative tools such as forums, wikis and pads. Second, it will focus on strategies of resistance in public spaces which are not inherently safe such as for instance Twitter and Wikipedia. Those examples will give us insights about how to create safety on-line collectively. Finally it will loop back to the offline and discuss ways to build safe spaces offline such as through women and trans* only spaces to learn and Do-it-Together.
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Safe spaces can be temporary and take place during a one time event or training, they can also become permanent spaces when collectives or organisations embed the basic principles of safeness, support, respect and inclusiveness in their own space management.  
  
== Tools for collaboration ==
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Whatever  format or style is used, a safe space should allow allow women and trans* persons to access and learn about technology and related fields without having to fear sexist language and attitudes, being challenged, mocked or mansplained. There are many possible event formats and styles which can support the creation of safe spaces, both online and offline, to allow women, trans* and other groups to communicate and exchange in a nurturing and welcoming environment. 
  
While the collaboration of many individuals can help create a rich collective identity, managing a collective project may have some security and technological challenges we should keep in mind. Since a single weak link in a security chain can break the entire system, our security and anonymity depend on the precautions each member of our group takes. We may decide that we don’t want to be absolutely anonymous; that our close friends can know about our collective activities. The degree of security we may want to attain for our group depends on the possible threats we face and on our adversaries’ power and skills.
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You might assume that the online communities you create or take part in through social media, discussion lists  and chat  channels are inherently democratic, non-hierarchical, participatory and relatively safe. However online spaces often reproduce the same hierarchies, privileges and power relations that exist in society, in the offline world.  
  
Nonetheless, there are some important things we don't want want to lose, like the password to our collective mailbox or to our group’s social networking accounts. If we decide that we are going to share those passwords with the whole group, each member needs to be trained on how to store a password securely.
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It's important to be mindful of this and to think through ways to mitigate and limit these downsides in order to get the best out of our spaces. Using such strategies is about caring for ourselves and for the communities we are part of. Making these issues explicit and visible is also about agency, social justice and feminism, helping us to better shape the spaces we care about, we organise in and within which we grow.  
  
To minimise this kind of risk, we should try to use services that provide for different accounts and passwords whenever possible. If coordination really needs to happen through Facebook, it is much better to share information in a dedicated group rather than do everything within a collective account. Similarly, instead of using a single mailbox, we may create a mailing list that all the group members subscribe to.   ''TRANSITION''
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This section, will first look at building safe spaces online for enabling a better and safer collaboration among us through the use of mailing lists, chat, and other collaborative tools such as forums, wikis and pads. It will also look at how to use these tools tactically, in a way that supports the creation and maintenance of safe space. The tools that have been highlighted in this section have been included because they are free and open source, and are designed and administered with increased privacy and security in mind, minimising the amount of traces we leave online.  
  
===  Mailing list ===
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Second, the section will focus on strategies of resistance in public spaces which are not inherently safe - for instance Twitter and Wikipedia. Those examples are designed to give us insight into how we can create safety online collectively by developing feminist counterspeech, storming and swarming together in order to protect and support each other.
  
Mailing lists are one of the oldest forms of social networks, allowing a group to discuss and organise, to share information, exchange video, audio and pictures. A mailing list is a list of addresses to which the same information is being sent.  The most common types of mailing lists are announcement lists and discussion lists. The below section will help you in the steps to setting up a safe space mailing list.  
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Finally it will loop back to the offline world and discuss ways to build safe spaces offline in the physical world, such as through women and trans* only or mixed spaces, to learn and Do-it-Together.
  
If you have decided with group collective that you need a secure communication channel for your collective and that you do not want to use corporate services, there are many alternative services to choose from that are recommended for human rights defenders. For example: Riseup, Aktivix or Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective), all those options are free but they still prioritise security and user privacy.
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== Collaboration ==
  
To read about their services visit [http://www.autistici.org/en/services/lists.html%20 Autistici lists] and [https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo Aktivix lists information].
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=== Mailing lists ===
[https://help.riseup.net/ Riseup] have many feminist and queer oriented lists and therefore are a great collective to host your mailing list. To see some of the existing public mailing lists go to: https://lists.riseu.net/www/.
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Finally, there are also many different mailing lists oriented at women and feminist interest in the relation between gender and technologies. You can find below some examples.
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FemTechNet
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Mailing lists are one of the oldest forms of social networks, allowing a group to discuss and organise, to exchange information, video, audio and images. A mailing list is a list of addresses to which the same information is sent simultaneously.  The most common types of mailing lists are announcement lists and discussion lists.
Fembot
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Queer Geek Feminism
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Femmehack
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TransHackFeminist
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GTI Participants
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Ada initiative mailing list
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Lady tech mafia
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Cyberfeministas
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==== Open or closed ====
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If you have decided within your group that you need a secure communication channel and that you do not want to use corporate services, there are some good alternative services to choose from, often recommended for human rights defenders. Riseup, Aktivix and Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) are all free services that prioritise security and user privacy. Riseup in particular has many feminist- and queer-oriented lists and is therefore a great place to host your mailing list. On their website you can also have a look at the lists that already exist.
  
Once you are ready to create your mailing list you need to decide whether it will be open or close. An open list allows anyone to subscribe, receive announcements or participate in the discussion. A list becomes really public when it is advertised to the world and anyone can request subscription. For example  the mailing list run by [http://femtechnet.newschool.edu/mailman/listinfo/femtechnet FemTechNet].
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'''Riseup lists:''' https://lists.riseup.net/www/
  
But a list mustn't be necessarily publicized and can be run on a need-to-know basis. In other words, you can choose not to advertise your list publicly and to keep it invitation-only. You could have for instance a publicized list which is closed i.e. a list that people know about (literally everyone!), but which requires approval as mentioned above. A closed list is limited to the subscribed email addresses that will have been approved by you or your collective. In deciding what is best, check if choosing to keep a list open to new subscriptions automatically implies that the archives of the list are available to anyone on the web and will eventually end up on search engines (such as Google). In some cases, the archives of a closed list are only accessible to those who have the subscription password. In other cases, you can choose whether you keep the archives public or not.
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'''Aktivix lists:''' https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo
  
If you intend to talk about sensitive issues (and talking about feminist related topics is often a sensitive issue!) or if trust within the group is important for creating your safe space, you might want to set up a closed list and to keep your archives closed. If you do choose to leave your archives accessible, it is important to inform everyone subscribed to the list that any delicate topic or personal detail that pops up in your discussions will be potentially visible to anybody.  
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'''Autistici lists:''' http://www.autistici.org/en/services/lists.html
  
If you want a high level of security, there is the possibility of encrypting mailing lists. However, it is important to understand that this requires every participants to the list to already use PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)/GPG (GNU GPG). This type of list, based on a software named [http://schleuder2.nadir.org/ Schleuder] and developed by the German Tech Collective Nadir.org, is designed to serve as a tool for group communication, but this time with a strong emphasis on security.
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If you or your organisation has your own server you can also install your own software for managing mailing list and ensure that all your communications remains hosted and safe in your own machine and can not be intercepted by unintended third parties. More information at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_mailing_list_software
  
Once you have your list set up, you might want to start inviting people. Make sure you have a discussion on who can be part of this list. Besides, when suggesting new additions ensure that the reasons why such and such person should be added are communicated to members of the list and that you get a green light from your collective before adding this person to your mailing list. How much open or close is your mailing list will contribute to the shaping of your mailing list policy.
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==== Open or closed? ====
  
==== Policies ====
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Once you are ready to create your mailing list you need to decide whether it will be open or closed.
  
Agreeing on a mailing list policy from the start will save you a lot of time and difficult conversations. Publishing your policy and the ways in which to report violations of the policy, even if it is a closed list, might be helpful in creating the online safe space you want everyone to enjoy. The policy can provide guidelines for everyone using the list, on how to behave. It can address tensions like the fact that expression of emotion is an important feminist principle, but losing your temper and attacking someone you don't agree with on the list is not ok.  
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'''Open:''' An open list allows anyone to subscribe, and then once they have joined the list, to receive announcements or participate in the discussion. Subscription can either be automatic, or it can be approved by a moderator. This type of mailing list is good for reaching out to your potential allies, contributors and followers and keeping them update about your activities.  
  
Having a visible and explicit policy will send a strong signal of the value of creating a safe space on a mailing list. The Geekfeminism wiki is a great example of a [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose/Women-only_communities women-only policy for online communities]. They also have a similar policy or [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose:_communities_including_men%20 agreement for online communities that includes men]. Check them out and adapt them to your needs, beliefs and desires.  
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'''Closed:''' Another option is to keep your mailing list closed. In a closed list, membership is limited, and all subscribers require approval before they can join the list.  It's possible to have a list that is publicised - ie that everyone knows about - but still closed. This type of list is useful when you want to discuss sensitive or personal topics and be sure that all members in the conversation are trustworthy.  
  
To make sure that the policy does not get forgotten, you can regularly remind it to the subscribers. The [https://adainitiative.org/ Ada Initiative mailing list], for example, adds a link to each email sent on the list.  
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Note that sometimes the archives of a list can be made public to anyone on the web, and will also therefore end up on search engines (like Google). Check if keeping a list open to new subscriptions automatically implies that the archives of the list will be made publicly available, or if they will only be accessible to those who have the subscription password. Sometimes you can choose whether you keep the archives public or not.
  
Administering the list involves handling subscriptions and moderating content. One person can be responsible for doing it but if your list suddenly becomes very chatty, this might be too demanding for just one person to do. You can also choose to have more than one administrator of the list. A list can even be collectively managed. As a general rule, moderation has three main goals. First, a well-moderated community will be more productive and
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If you intend to talk about sensitive issues (and talking about gender related topics is often a sensitive issue!) or if trust within the group is important for creating your safe space, you might want to set up a closed list and to keep your archives closed. If you do choose to leave your archives accessible, it is important to inform everyone subscribed to the list that any delicate topic or personal detail that pops up in your discussions will be potentially visible to anybody.  
efficient in generating and distributing valuable information and knowledge to its members (subscribers). Moderation will also increase the accessibility and openness of online communities enabling respectful dialogue among its members. Finally, a good moderation will do its work making as few demands as possible on the infrastructure and on participants.  
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=== Chat with IRC ===
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'''Encrypted lists:''' If you want a high level of security, there is also the possibility of encrypting mailing lists. However, it is important to understand that this requires every participants to the list to already use encryption software like PGP or GPG. This type of list, based on software called Schleuder (http://schleuder2.nadir.org/) and developed by Nadir.org, is designed to serve as a tool for group communication, but this time with a strong emphasis on security.
  
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a chat service, which can be hosted on different servers, and accessed from through different user clients. It provides the ability to set up channels or chatrooms where many people can discuss and gives you the option to encrypt your communication. You can’t embed video, audio or pictures, but you can link to them. IRC can be used to facilitate collaboration in addition to decision-making processes.
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==== Policies ====
  
IRC can take a little time to get used depending on the skills in your group. Regardless of your skills, developing relationships across a purely text-based channel such as IRC can be challenging. Writing is not easy for everyone and/or that many might not be using their mother tongue. IRC can also go very fast, particularly if you are many in the discussion, so allowing everyone to slow down and let people read all the inputs can help to facilitate an empowering discussion.  
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Agreeing on a mailing list policy - a set of do's and don'ts for the list - from the start will save you a lot of time and possibly difficult conversations. Even on a closed list, publishing your policy - which should include the ways in which moderation takes place and how to report violations of the policy, - can be helpful in creating the online safe space you want everyone to feel comfortable in. Your policy can address tensions like the fact that being free to expressing emotion is an important feminist principle, but losing your temper and attacking someone you don't agree with on the list is not ok. In the end any good mailing list policy will set its own rules for achieving a correct balance between freedom of expression and opinion and impeding flames and racist, sexist, or homophobic attacks for instance to take place within the list.
  
There are several ways to chat through an IRC network. The easiest way to start out is to use a web browser application such as those provided by [https://irc.indymedia.nl/%20 Indymedia] or [https://webchat.freenode.net/%20 Freenode]. You can instantly create a nickname and a channel which you can give to your colleagues to connect with you.  
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Having a visible and explicit policy sends a strong message about the value of maintaining the mailing list as a safe space. It can also help you to decide who can be added to your list and who not. To make sure that the policy does not get forgotten, you can regularly remind subscribers about it, with a link at the end of each mail you send out.  
  
Using a web application is however not the most secure option so if you are a more advanced user, or have already tested IRC out and think it will work for you, it is recommended you access your chosen IRC network from a chat client. There is advice and instructions on how to access an IRC network this way, provided by [https://freenode.net/using_the_network.shtml Freenode], [https://www.autistici.org/en/stuff/man_irc Autistici] and [http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Sysadmin/IrcHowTo Indymedia]. The last two also allow us to anonymise our connections through Tor.
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'''Relevant links:'''
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* Sample mailing list policies that can be adapted and used for your own purposes: for women-only communities (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose/Women-only_communities) and for communities including men (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose/Communities_including_men).
  
There are several chat clients which you can choose from. For example Xchat for GNULinux and Windows and XChat Aqua/Azure for Mac OS, and many more. For more information on chat clients, look at the [https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/pidgin/windows Pidgin and Off The Record Section on Security in-a-Box] and [https://prism-break.org/en/protocols/irc/ Prism-Break web platform], a site that has been developed after the Snowden revelations which supports you to opt out of mass surveillance programs.
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==== Administration ====
  
Once you start your meeting it is useful to appoint a facilitator that will keep track of time and topics to be discussed and who might ask participants to re-focus if the discussion goes off track. When you start a conversation take time to greet people, in particular newcomers. In order to create a welcoming environment and a safe space, acknowledging and valuing the voice of everyone will be key on IRC.
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'''Administrating a list:''' involves handling subscriptions and moderating content. You can choose how many administrators you want your list to have. Be aware that if your list suddenly becomes very chatty, this might be too demanding for just one person. Besides that, any communication tool including many members should not rely on only one person for administration duties. Take into account that this person could have problems, disapear or simply become abusive because of their power. Because of this, you should include more people helping with administration and moderation duties. A list can also be collectively managed and you can distribute those responsibilities among members of the list.  
  
You might for instance decide that people should be given turns to speak in order to ensure that everyone has space to express themselves. You can simply assign turns in alphabetical order of nicknames (or any order you want to give) for each of the points addressed. This can help structure the conversation and stop one or a small group of people dominating the conversation. It can also be useful to end your conversation with “over” or “finish” or "done" so everyone knows when you have stopped speaking and because IRC meetings can be tiring, you can set a time limit beforehand. Whichever methods you choose to use, make them visible and explicit beforehand, in the email where you will be inviting people for the IRC meeting for example.
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'''Moderating a list:''' as a general rule, moderation has three main goals. First, a well-moderated community will be more productive and efficient in generating and distributing valuable information and knowledge to its members (subscribers). Second, good moderation will increase the accessibility and openness of online communities by enabling respectful dialogue among its members. Finally, it will lessen the demands on the infrastructure, as well as on the list members.
  
Chat services and [[Safe Mailing list|mailing lists]] will only take you so far. When it comes to managing collaboration between people living in different places, you will probably find yourself looking for something with more functionality.  
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Remember that any online safe space will apply the basic principles of ''net etiquette'' and that any good administrator, moderator and mailing list policy should review, adapt and include those principles in their core social norms and values and ask members of the list to discuss, understand and accept those. In a nutshell net etiquette requires users to: be nice, learn internet acronyms, keep messages brief, do not shout, protect personal information, help others, and to not send mails if feeling angry! (For more information see: http://www.networketiquette.net/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette_in_technology)
  
=== Forums, Wikis and Pads===
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==== Mailing list examples ====
  
One of the oldest tools used for public discussions online is '''internet forums''',  where discussions can be hosted over time and are at least temporarily archived. What really distinguishes a forum from a mailing list or IRC chat is that it has a tree-like structure and can contain a number of sub discussions, each with a different topic.
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Before setting up your own mailing lists, you might want to engage with some of the established mailing lists focused on gender and technology. for example:
  
If you are looking for a tool to collaboratively write a text with many sections or even to create the initial structure and content for a website, a '''wiki''' can be useful. This is a web application that allows for hierarchical structuring of content and tracks the edits and additions of the users, easily allowing you to revert changes, move around and delete content.
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Open Mailing lists:
  
Both forums and wikis need to be installed in a web space, so will require the expertise of a website manager. However you will find these tools, together with many others, in one of the most versatile platforms for managing groups and collective projects, [https://we.riseup.net/crabgrass/about Crabgrass]. Crabgrass is hosted by the autonomous server '''Riseup''', [https://we.riseup.net/ we.riseup.net], the tech collective providing tools for activists, already mentioned above.
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'''Take Back the Tech!:''' the mailing list associated with the collaborative campaign to reclaim information and communication technologies (ICT) to end violence against women (VAW). To register: https://lists.takebackthetech.net/mailman/listinfo/takebackthetech
  
Pads are a great way to collaborate in real-time on documents.  They are a good alternative to corporate services like Google Docs and more effective for co-editing text than mailing back and forth.  The main thing you need to look for in a pad is that it is hosted with an encrypted connection via SSL. A list of such pads can be found [https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/wiki/Sites-that-run-Etherpad-Lite here].
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'''FemTechNet:''' is a network of scholars, students, and artists who work on, with, and at the borders of technology, science, and feminism in a variety of fields including Science and Technology Studies (STS), Media and Visual Studies, Art, Women’s, Queer, and Ethnic Studies. To register: http://femtechnet.newschool.edu/mailman/listinfo/femtechnet
  
When you create a pad you decide on the name of the URL. Just like with creating passwords, you should make it long and inventive. For example: https://pad.riseup.net/p/feminists is not secure. You want to use a more complicated URL such as https://pad.riseup.net/p/FeministsRockAndTheyWillBeDoingGreatThingsToghether.  Once the pad is created you can send the URL to your friends and colleagues to start collaborating on a document. Remember whoever has the URL can access the pad, so don't share it in public spaces.
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'''Queer Feminism Geek:''' is a network of feminist, queer and trans* hackers, makers, geeks and artists who organise activities and assemblies at the Computer Chaos Camp and Congress. To register: https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/queerfeministgeeks
  
Pads allow you to choose to be anonymous, use a moniker or use your real name. There is a colour-based system that differentiates the contributions of each participants on the pad, so being anonymous will not bring too much confusion while writing. If are worried about your pad being found by others, you might consider a password protected pad. For this check out: https://www.protectedtext.com/
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'''Subscription after endorsement by others on the list:'''
  
== Safe spaces in the public sphere ==
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'''Fembot:''' is a network of scholars and students who focus on gender, media & technology. To register: https://lists.uoregon.edu/mailman/listinfo/fembot
  
If you use Twitter, 4chan or any online forums where comments are allowed, you might have noticed that they tend to not be very safe spaces. [http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point/ Kathy Siera says] there is a “koolaid point” for women and queers who start to gather a following and be listened online. At this point, a certain group of people may decide that you have too much influence, and make it their mission to silence you or discredit you. We have seen this in numerous high profile cases but also in constant reports from women and queer writers, activists and organisers. This is called trolling.
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'''Femmehack:''' is a list created to organise a Global Feminist Hackathon that took place past 23th of May 2015 in loving memory of Sabeen Mahmud, a Woman Human Right Defender shot to death in Pakistan: https://f3mhack.org
  
There are ways to counter the vulnerability and intimidation we might feel online. This can be achieved by caring for our personal and collective safety, through using security and privacy enabling tools and techniques. This can also be achieved by resistance. Organising online collective actions can be a very powerful exercise to resist what can be an unsafe environment. They can also bring attention and visibility to certain issues and in turn help bring about transformation.  
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'''TransHackFeminist:''' is a list that was created after the first THF convergence in 2014 where intersectional feminists, queer and trans* people of all genders met to better understand, use and ultimately develop free and liberating technologies for social dissent. It gathers members from all the over the world and uses Spanish and English to communicate: http://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/files/2015/01/THF_report_Eng.pdf
  
For instance, feminist counterspeech has been used as a response to making sexism visible and as a response to online attacks and harrassment. It can be an effective tactic to trigger a new narrative online, create a sense of belonging and make visible the effectiveness of collective feminist actions online. Feminist counterspeech is a form of discursive resistance that allows you to call out misogyny and sexism online and make visible feminist networks  meanwhile developing activities and initiatives that overcome those challenges. There are many examples of these which you have probably seen and appreciated. For example, the Everyday sexism project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis, the #yesallwomen was created as a response to the #notallmen hashtag on Twitter and was also used to document women's stories of harassment and abuse.
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'''Closed mailing lists:'''
  
Feminists have criticised the way in which knowledge is produced, made and constructed on Wikipedia. As explained by members of the Wikimedia Foundation, a [http://web.archive.org/web/20110713180348/http://www.wikipediasurvey.org/ 2010 survey] conducted by the United Nations University found that only 13% of Wikipedia contributors identified as female. The fact that Wikipedia’s contributors are mostly male in their twenties and thirties and disproportionately Western are important factors that influence content. Women who have played a significant role in history are often missing from Wikipedia and, at times, feminist, queer and trans content are not always easily accepted on the online encyclopedia. Therefore to truly increase diversity in those communities and type of content, the ecosystem needs an ever-increasing number of creative solutions. Partnerships, research, community organizing, socio-cultural and technical interventions should all be considered.
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'''Gender and Technology Institute Participants:''' The GTI list is a closed list of people who participated in the Gender and Technology Institute that took place past December 2014, inasmuch as it is opened to people trained by Tactical Technology Collective to privacy and digital security from a gender perspective.  
  
Storming Wikipedia or organising an Edit-a-thon are for instance tactic to respond to the lack of women, feminist, queer and trans* content on Wikipedia. These empower participants to learn collectively  how to edit and change content to better reflect their communities and histories. Learning to edit Wikipedia can seem daunting so collectively editing and creating pages is a great way to confront fears, add feminist, queer and trans content on the online encyclopedia and Do-It-With-Others (DIWO) in a safe space. There are always great reasons to organise a wikistorming on any day but if you are looking for broader impact and be connected to others such gatherings often happen on these two days: [http://findingada.com/about/faq/ Ada Lovelace Day] in mid-October and March 8 International Women's Day.
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'''Ada camp:''' is a closed list that is dedicated to speaking about issues related to women in open source. It is composed of the people who participated in Ada Camp: https://adacamp.org/
  
Once you have decided on a date, gather a group of friends and friends of friends who want to learn or already know how to edit Wikipedia and identify a safe space where to hold the event. It can be held in someone’s home, in a community centre, at an art centre or at a community organisation. Make sure you find a place that is accessible and ideally that already has a feminist base. Wikistorming may last for a day or half a day.  Before the wikistorming or as part of it, decide which Wikipedia entries you want create or which existing page you want to edit. Be realistic in your goals and don't put too many edits on your plate! To edit Wikipedia carefully it takes time. If you want to organise a wikistorming visit: http://femtechnet.newschool.edu/wikistorming/
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=== Chat with IRC ===
  
[[File:We Can Edit.jpg|thumbnail|center]]
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Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a chat service which can be hosted on different servers and accessed through different user clients. It provides the ability to set up channels or chatrooms which allow many people to contribute to a discussion in real time. IRC also gives you the option to encrypt your communication. You can’t embed video, audio or pictures, but you can link to them.
  
=== Bots Against Trolls ===
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While IRC can be a great tool for facilitating collaboration, there are things to bear in mind if you decide to use it. First, IRC can take a little time to get used to, depending on the skills in your group. Second, developing relationships across a purely text-based channel such as IRC can be challenging. Writing is not easy for everyone; and some in the group might not be using their mother tongue.
  
A troll was once just a mountain-dwelling monster in kids stories. Then a troll became the word for early internet users who intentionally sowed discord on IRC and chat forums, often targeting and singling out new users. But now the word is used more broadly to describe people who target and harass others online. This can include anything from constant derogatory and belittling messages to edited images and even threats. Most often the subjects of this kind of abuse are marginalised groups like women, queers and people of color. In recent years there have been more and more cases of people speaking out about how they are harassed.  
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'''Accessing IRC through your browser:''' There are several ways to chat through an IRC network. The easiest way to start out is to access an IRC network directly through your browser, such as one from Indymedia (https://irc.indymedia.nl/) or Freenode (https://webchat.freenode.net/). You can get set up immediately by creating a nickname and a channel, which you can then give to your colleagues to connect with you.  
  
======How should you deal with trolls?======
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'''Accessing IRC through a chat client:''' Connecting to an IRC network through your browser is, however, not the most secure option out there. If you are a more advanced user, or if you have already tested out IRC out and think it will work for your group, it can be better to access your chosen IRC network from a chat client.
  
There are two key ways you can deal with trolls: one is to block them and report them to the platform you are using or to engage with them. This decision depends on what you want to achieve. Blocking them can definitely work and you can continue with your work unimpeded. A project like “Block Together” was developed to help people who are harassed share their blocklists with each other. Historically platforms like Twitter and Facebook have not handled reports of intimidation and violence very well. However this is changing, as they recognise how severe this problem is and how it deters people with important voices from using their services. When blocking doesn't help is when users are really committed to trolling and create numerous different profiles (called “sock puppet accounts”) to continue the harassment. Then your blocking has to keep up with their new account generation and it becomes tedious. You might consider the alternative of engaging trolls. There are a few tactics for engaging trolls. One is to try and enter into rational arguments with them and interrogate their views. Another way is to try to shame them or use humour to deflate them.  
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There are a few different chat clients which you can choose from, including Jitsi and Pidgin. You can read more about these clients and how to use them on Tactical Tech's Security in-a-Box: Jitsi (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/jitsi/windows) ; Pidgin (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/pidgin/windows).
  
Effective engagement with trolls can actually help to generate a debate and public interest around the act of harassment and involve others online in talking about safe spaces, violence, sexism and online behaviour. It can also be a source of empowerment for the subjects of trolling: seeing others laugh at your harasser can be very uplifting.
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'''How to use a network:''' Advice and instructions on using an IRC network can be found on Freenode (https://freenode.net/using_the_network.shtml), Autistici (https://www.autistici.org/en/stuff/man_irc), and Indymedia (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Sysadmin/IrcHowTo). The last two also allow us to anonymise our connections through Tor.
  
======Swarming======
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'''Facilitating a meeting:''' Once you start an IRC meeting, it is useful to appoint a facilitator to keep track of time. This person might also be in charge of making sure the discussion sticks to the topics at hand. In order to create a welcoming environment and a safe space, acknowledging and valuing the voice of everyone is key on IRC. When you start a conversation, take time to greet people - in particular newcomers.  When facilitating a conversation:
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* Set a time limit and stick to it because IRC meetings can be very tiring.
  
The method of swarming can be used to drown out harassers. This can be done in retro style by creating communities of support with your allies in social media spaces where you are likely to encounter harassment. When someone is being targeted, others can quickly be alerted and bombard the harasser with messages. The content of that message is up to you: it could be scolding, educational, or loving. Another option is: instead of directing messages towards the harasser, the swarm can fill the victim's content stream in order to quickly make the negative, violent content disappear into online history.
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* You might decide that people should be given turns to speak in order to ensure that everyone has space to express themselves. You can simply assign turns in alphabetical order of nicknames (or any order you want to give) for each of the points addressed. This can help structure the conversation and stop one person or a small group of people dominating the conversation.  
  
======Do I have to use my own account?======
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* IRC can go very fast, particularly if there are many people involved in the discussion. Getting everyone to slow down and read all the inputs can decrease frustration.
 +
 +
* It can be useful to end your input with “over” or "done", so everyone knows when you have stopped speaking.
 +
 
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Whatever the facilitation methods you choose, communicate them explicitly to all the participants beforehand, for example in the email where you invite people to join the meeting.
  
If you want to engage with trolls, and even if you consider using the “swarming” method, you might prefer to stay anonymous to avoid having your real identity trolled. Setting up a network of second accounts to do your troll-response work can be a good idea for your organisation or your community of friends. It might be easier too, psychologically, to say some of the things you want to trolls, than you would when it is linked to your main identity. And it is more performative: you can create any kind of identity you want and style it with an avatar, a funny name, a character etc. (see "'''Creating a new online identity'''" and the following chapters in '''Step 1''').
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=== Forums, Wikis and Etherpads===
  
======Automation======
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Chat services and mailing lists can be extremely useful, but they will only take you so far. When it comes to managing collaboration between people living in different places, you will probably find yourself looking for something with more functionality.
  
While battling the trolls in the old-fashioned human way can be fun and eye-opening, it can also be a time waster. Another option to consider is automation. For this you need someone who can do some coding to start from scratch or work with freely available code someone already uploaded on Github.
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'''Internet forums:''' One of the oldest tools used for public discussions online are internet forums, where discussions can be hosted over time and are at least temporarily archived. What really distinguishes a forum from a mailing list or IRC chat is that it has a tree-like structure and can contain a number of sub discussions, each with a different topic.
  
======What's a bot?======
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'''Wikis:''' If you are looking for a tool to collaboratively write a text with many sections, or even to create the initial structure and content for a website, a wiki can be a useful tool. A wiki is a web application that allows for hierarchical structuring of content and tracks the edits and additions of the users, easily allowing you to revert changes, and move and delete content.
  
A bot is a software application that runs an automated task over the internet. Bots perfom tasks at a greater velocity than humans can. There are many different breeds of bots: for example the spambot which harvests email addresses and contact information or the attention bot which fakes clicks on Youtube videos to make them look more popular than they actually are. They can post content, gather information and click on things. Twitter is filled with bots which use algorithms to harvest information and tweet. Many of these are humorous and random: like @twoheadlines which randomly grabs news headlines and combines them to create funny combinations. The below steps address Twitter mainly. However some of these ideas can be used across other platforms too.
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Both forums and wikis need to be hosted on a server, so you'll need to know how to set one up and manage it.  
  
====== How can a bot battle a troll? ======
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'''Etherpads''': For collaborating in real-time on documents, Etherpads are a great resource.  They are also a good alternative to corporate services like Google Docs, and are far more effective for co-editing text than, for example, sending mails back and forth.  The main thing you need to check for in an etherpad is that it is hosted with an encrypted connection (via SSL). A list of such etherpads can be found here: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/wiki/Sites-that-run-Etherpad-Lite.
  
A bot can be programed to document trolls' activities or talk to them, so that you don't have to. There are a few ways of doing this: the autotweet bot and a silent data-gathering bot in combination with the talking bot(s). The examples below speak specifically about what is possible on Twitter. However the ideas could be applied to other platforms.  
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* To '''create a new etherpad''' (ie, a new document that you are going to collaborate on), you need to decide on the name of the URL. Because each pad is open to anyone who has the URL,  you should give each pad a long and inventive name, so that it can't be easily guessed. For example: https://pad.riseup.net/p/feminists is not secure. A more complicated URL such as https://pad.riseup.net/p/FeministsRockAndTheyWillBeDoingGreatThingsToghether is much more secure. Once the etherpad has been created you can send the URL to your friends and colleagues to start collaborating on a document.  
  
1. The data-gathering bot
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* If you are worried about your etherpad being found by others, you can also consider a '''password-protected pad'''. For more on this, see: https://www.protectedtext.com/
  
The data-gathering bot quietly scans Twitter gathering tweets, usernames and any other available information you program it to, and places this in a .csv file for you to analyse or use for further purposes outlined below. This first kind of bot can be useful just for understanding what kind of content is out there and maybe doing a first stage analysis of abuse.
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* Etherpads allow you be anonymous, use a pseudonym or use your real name. There is a colour-based system that differentiates the contributions of each participants on the Etherpad, so you can always see who is contributing what.
  
2. The simple tweeting bot
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== Safe spaces in the public sphere ==
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There are many spaces which will feel inherently unsafe either because they explicitly or implicitly exclude women and trans* people, or because they harbour bigots. There are a number of ways to counter the vulnerability and intimidation we might feel online. One is through caring for our personal and collective safety, through using security -and privacy- enabling tools and techniques and managing safely our online identities. Another is shaping with others methods to reclaim and stay safe in the public sphere. Organising collective actions can be a powerful act of resistance, bringing attention and visibility to the situation and in turn helping to bring about transformation.  
  
If you follow the #gamergate hashtag on Twitter, you will see a bot called @everyethics which tweets different humorous reasons for the #gamergate trolling, ridiculing of the claim that Gamergate was not about attacking women in gaming but about “ethics in game journalism”. While this bot could be seen as spam, it was actually clearly a strategy to undermine and make fun of the trolls.  
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'''Feminist counterspeech''' - creating counter-narratives online, or "talking back" -  is one strategy for making sexism visible and for responding to online attacks and harassment. It can be an effective tactic to create a sense of belonging and make visible the effectiveness of collective feminist actions online. There are many examples of feminist counterspeech in action - many of which you have probably seen and appreciated. The Everyday Sexism Project (https://twitter.com/everydaysexism), for example, catalogues instances of sexism experienced by women on a day-to-day basis; or Byefelipe (https://instagram.com/byefelipe/), the Instagram account which reposts abuse my men who turn hostile when rejected. Feminist counterspeech can also include tactics to enable the inclusion and visibility of women's contributions to knowledge platforms such as Wikipedia.
  
3. The retweet bot
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=== Storming Wikipedia ===
  
The retweet bot is programmed to scan the Twitter API for a list of words, phrases or hashtags defined by you, and to retweet those. This would be a strategy to document and publicise Twitter abuse. Here's an[[ https://lilithlela.cyberguerrilla.org/?p=17418| example of such a bot]] you can download and install.  
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There have been many studies that have criticised the way in which knowledge is produced on Wikipedia. A 2010 survey (https://web.archive.org/web/20100414165445/http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf)  conducted by the United Nations University found that only 13% of Wikipedia contributors identified as female. The fact that Wikipedia’s contributors are mostly men in their twenties and thirties, and disproportionately western, are important factors that influence content.  
  
4. The autotweet bot
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Women who have played a significant role in history are also often missing from Wikipedia, and feminist, queer and trans* content is often challenged.  
  
The “autotweet” bot is similar except that every time it finds a tweet with one of the words, phrases or hashtags you have programmed it to look for, it will tweet a prewritten tweet to that user. There are a number of examples of this in Twitter history: @stealthmountain which corrects any Twitter user who spells “sneak peek” wrong. These bots get shut down much quicker now as was shown by @fembot which responded to racists and sexist tweets that it spotted and was blocked after making only 75 tweets. Unfortunately Twitter does not make it so easy to do this anymore.  
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The lack of gender and cultural diversity in the content on Wikipedia demands creative responses. Because of this partnerships, research, community organizing, socio-cultural and technical interventions should all be considered.
  
5. The tweeting bot in combination with the data-gathering bot
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'''Storming Wikipedia''' or organising '''Edit-a-thons''' are two possible interventions. These enable participants to learn collectively how to edit and change content to better reflect their communities and histories. Learning how to edit Wikipedia can seem daunting, so collectively editing and creating pages is a great way to confront fears; to Do-It-With-Others (DIWO) in a safe space. Besides you will learn about the Wikipedia community values and principles and how such a large community-driven effort has, through the development of bottom-up social rules, become the most important encyclopedia in the world. All together, Wikipedia remains an important space worth investigating and reclaiming!
  
You can use a data-gathering bot to find the users tweeting violent things, compile them in a spreadsheet for you to read over and check for accuracy and remove any false positives. Alongside the data-gathering bot, you can have a talking bot or a team of talking bots which can tweet whatever you decide is useful information, to those users.
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Organising a wikistorming involves gathering a group of friends (and friends of friends) who want to learn or already know how to edit Wikipedia, and identify a safe space in which to hold the event. It can be held in someone’s home, in a community centre, at an art centre or at a community organisation. Wikistorming can (and should) of course be organised for any day, but Ada Lovelace Day in mid-October and International Women's Day on March 8 are two specific days on which such gatherings often happen. A wikistorming can last for half to a whole day.  Before the wikistorming or as part of it, decide which Wikipedia entries you want create or which existing page you want to edit. Be realistic in your goals and don't put too many edits on your agenda! To edit Wikipedia carefully takes time.  
  
======Things to watch out for======
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'''Relevant links:'''
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* Advice on organising a wikistorming: http://femtechnet.newschool.edu/wikistorming
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* Great examples of wiki storming: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/05/wikipedia-edit-a-thons-international-womens-day/
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* Lectures about the gender gap in wikipedia and how to overcome it: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap
  
1. Language is slippery
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[[File:We Can Edit.jpg|thumbnail|center]]
  
If you want to tackle violence against women online, you will have to be very careful about what kind of language you search for. For example, every time someone uses the word “bitch” on Twitter to intimidate or harass a woman, there are probably at least five other people using it to tell their friend how much they love them or talk about the latest celebrity affair. The best way to figure out which language is used to harm women is to crowdsource it from people who have been harassed and then do a number of tests, pulling tweets from the Twitter API and then analysing it yourself.  
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=== Dealing with Trolls ===
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Women and trans* persons who begin to grow a following and have influence online might experience what Kathy Siera describes as a “koolaid point” (http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point/). This is a point at which a certain group of people decide that you have too much influence, and make it their mission to silence you or discredit you. This is commonly referred to as 'trolling' - although it is more often than not targeted, discriminatory in nature and hate-based. A troll's tactics can include anything from sending constant derogatory and belittling messages, to editing and distributing images, and even making threats.  
  
2. Twitter is smart (and strict)
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''Block or engage?''
  
Twitter is not against bots and if you just want to create a bot that scans information from Twitter for you to analyse, or a bot that just tweets out to no one in particular, you will not encounter any problems. However if you want to tweet @ other Twitter users, you have to take into account Twitter's policy against spam. See Twitter's guide to [https://support.twitter.com/articles/76915-automation-rules-and-best-practices# Automation Rules and Best Practices].
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There are two key ways you can deal with trolls. One is to '''block''' them and then '''report''' them to the platform you are using. The other is to engage with them. The decision on which way to go depends on what you want to achieve.  
  
======Evading Twitter's spam filters======
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'''Blocking''' trolls can sometimes be effective, and can allow you to continue with your work unimpeded. Projects like Block Together (https://blocktogether.org/) and Block Bot (http://www.theblockbot.com/sign_up) were developed to help people who are harassed share their blocklists with each other.
  
There are a few things to keep in mind when trying to bypass Twitter's spam filters:
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When trolls are really committed to harassing you, however, blocking doesn't really help. A determined troll can create numerous different profiles (called “sock puppet accounts”) to continue the harassment, and this means your blocking has to keep up with their new account generation. This quickly becomes very tedious.
  
1. Safety in numbers
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Historically, platforms like Twitter and Facebook have not handled '''reports of intimidation and violence''' very well. However, this is beginning to change, as they recognise the severity of problem and see how it deters people with important voices from using their services.
The more bots you have to distribute the work amongst, the more successful you will be. The group Peng! Collective did such an action in 2015 which they called “[http://zerotrollerance.guru/ Zero Trollerance]”. They ran a silent data-gathering bot to identify trolls through a long list of keyword combinations, hashtags and phrases. They then ran 160 bots which tweeted at the database of 3000 trolls, sending them new messages daily for an entire week. They were for the most part able to avoid being blocked by Twitter or users because they had so many bots and they rotated the tweeting across the bots.
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2. Rate Limit
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You might consider the alternative - '''engaging''' the trolls who are harassing you. One way to do this is to try and enter into rational arguments with them and interrogate their views. Another way is to try to shame them, or to use humour to deflate their egos. Effective engagement with trolls can actually help to generate debate and public interest around the act of harassment, and can involve others online in discussions about safe spaces, violence, sexism and online behaviour. It can also be a source of empowerment for the subjects of trolling: seeing others laugh at your harasser can be very uplifting.
  
Twitter monitors each account's activity and has a “rate limit” that limits your number of tweets, to ensure that no one floods the content stream. This is also the way that they figure out which accounts might be spambots.  If the frequency of tweeting looks like it doesn't come from a human, Twitter will block the account. If you try to tweet the same tweet, many times right after each other, you will receive a message telling you that your tweet looks like spam and that Twitter is blocking you in order to protect their users. At the time of writing, tests were done with tweeting 15 times with 8 minute intervals and this passed under the radar.  
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'''Swarming''' can be another way to drown out the voices of the harassers. This can be done in retro style by creating communities of support with your allies in social media spaces where you are likely to encounter harassment. When someone is being targeted, others can quickly be alerted and bombard the harasser with messages. The content of that message is up to you: it could be scolding, educational, or loving. Another option is: instead of directing messages towards the harasser, the swarm can fill the victim's content stream with lots of new content in order to quickly make the negative, violent content disappear into online history.
  
3. Content
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If you want to engage with trolls, or try “swarming”, you might prefer to stay anonymous to avoid having your real identity trolled. Setting up a network of second accounts to do your troll-response work can be a good idea for your organisation or your community of friends. It might be easier too, psychologically, to say some of the things you want to trolls, than you would if the comments were linked to your main identity. And it is more performative: you can create any kind of identity you want and style it with an avatar, a funny name, a character etc.  
  
If you are tweeting the exact same tweet over and over again, this is also a red flag to Twitter's spam filters. How to avoid this is to pad every tweet with a random word from a readable language that is not the same as the language you are tweeting in. The easiest way to do this is a compile a long list of these words, and program your script to draw from this list randomly for every tweet.  
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However, while battling the trolls in the old-fashioned human way can be fun and eye-opening, it can also be a time waster. Another option to consider is automation using '''bots'''. For this you need to do some coding, or you can work with freely available code that someone has already uploaded on a software repository such as Github.
  
4. Location of the tweets
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===== Bots against trolls =====
  
Use a VPN which gives you a new IP address every time you reconnect to fool Twitter into thinking that the accounts are being managed from different locations. To learn more about what a VPN is, read "'''Anonymising your connections'''" in Step 0.
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A bot is a piece of software that runs an automated task over the internet, performing tasks much faster than we can.
  
======How to set up a Twitter account to be used as a bot======
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There are many different types of bots. There's the spambot, for example, which harvests email addresses and contact information; and there are also the 1800 approved bots on the English Wikipedia, which help to semi-automate the editing of Wikipedia pages. Bots can post content, gather information and click on things.  Twitter is also filled with bots which use algorithms to harvest information and tweet. Many of these are humorous and random - for example @twoheadlines, which grabs random news headlines and combines them to create funny combinations.
  
You still need to write the script for you or to configure a script already created by someone else and downloaded from Github, or to find someone else to do this for you. But what is easy to do and what even volunteers might like to do is to help you set up all the Twitter accounts so that they can be easily controlled by the script.  
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A bot can be programmed to document trolls' activities, or talk to them, so that you don't have to. The possibilities outlined below apply mainly to Twitter; however some of these ideas can be used across other platforms as well.
  
1. Create a new account as you would normally and make sure to give it a photo, follow some people and do some tweeting (recently registered, faceless accounts with 0 followers will get blocked very quickly).
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'''The data-gathering bot:''' quietly scans Twitter and gathers up tweets, usernames and any other available information you have programmed it to collect. It places this information in a file for you. This bot can be useful for understanding what kind of content is out there, and for doing a first-stage analysis of abuse. Foxxydoxing is such an example; it is intended to help you analyse who your harassers are (https://github.com/DeepLab/FoxyDoxxing).  
2. In order to function as a bot the account needs to be verified with a valid phone number. To do this you can use your own phone number, volunteers numbers or buy a bulk of cheap sim cards. Don't use the same phone number for numerous accounts – again this will be a quick sign to Twitter that the account is dodgy.
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3. Now you need to register an application with the Twitter API which will allow your bot to make “calls” to the API, i.e. retrieve or send data. Go to [https://apps.twitter.com/app/new apps] and create a new application. You can provide any dummy content in the fields there and then you can set your permissions to “read and write” and generate the keys you will need.
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More on these steps and some simple bots to download and test out at [https://lilithlela.cyberguerrilla.org/?p=9247 Cyber Guerilla].
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'''The simple talking bot:''' if you follow the #gamergate hashtag on Twitter, you will see a bot called @everyethics which tweets different humorous reasons for the #gamergate trolling, ridiculing the claim that the major trolling which has been called "Gamergate" was not about attacking women in gaming but about “ethics in game journalism”. While this bot could be seen as spam, it was actually clearly a strategy to undermine and make fun of the trolls.  
  
===='''Dos and dont's supporting people subject to online violence'''====
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'''The retweet bot:''' is programmed to scan Twitter for a list (created by you) of specific words, phrases or hashtags, and to retweet those. This would be a strategy for documenting and publicising Twitter abuse. Here's an example of such a bot you can download and install yourself (https://lilithlela.cyberguerrilla.org/?p=17418). 
  
When you or your friends are under attack online there are a few steps to follow to support you or them.
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'''The autotweet bot:''' is similar to the retweet bot except that every time it finds a tweet with one of the words, phrases or hashtags you have programmed it to look for, it will tweet a pre-written tweet directed at that user. These bots get shut down much faster now, as was shown by @fembot, which was programmed to automatically respond to racist and sexist tweets. @fembot was blocked after only 75 tweets.  
  
Try to be quick in bringing support. But remember that knowing what to do and how to do it in such situation needs a lot of practice to become good at it. But as a general rule, you should tell yourself that gender-based violence and harassment online is unacceptable. This should be your main message if you don't have a lot of practice in dealing with such phenomenon.  
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'''The data-gathering bot in combination with the talking bot:''' in this example the data-gathering bot finds the users according to your search terms, and compiles them for you to read over, check for accuracy and remove any false positives. Alongside the data-gathering bot, you can have a talking bot or a team of talking bots which can tweet whatever you want to those users. The campaign Zero Trollerance (https://zerotrollerance.guru) used this method, employing 160 talking bots which enrolled 3000 identified trolls in a self-help program and then sent them humorous motivational messages and video clips over a period of one week.  
  
If you are close to the person under attack offer immediate assistance. In the event of doxing, where confidential info has been released on the internet about the person, you might want to offer a safe space (a home) if the person does not feel safe to stay where she/they lives.
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If you are considering creating bots to work for you to fight online bigotry and harassment, there are some things you need to watch out for. Twitter is not against bots and if you just want to create a bot that scans information from Twitter for you to analyse, or a bot that just tweets out to no one in particular, you will likely not encounter any problems. However if you want to tweet @ other Twitter users, you have to take into account Twitter's policy against spam.  
  
If you do not know (well) the person, you can speak out. Since collective actions are often more effective than individual actions, make sure you gather a group of friends, and friends of friends, for a Twitter storming for instance. Make visible the issue! This will show to the person under attack that you and others care and that such acts are not OK.  
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Also keep in mind that language is slippery and if you want to tackle violence against women and trans* persons online, you will have to be very careful about what kind of language you search for. For example, every time someone uses the word “bitch” on Twitter to intimidate or harass a someone, there are probably at least five other people using it to tell their friend how much they love them or talk about the latest celebrity affair. The best way to figure out which language is being used for harm is to crowdsource it from people who have been harassed and then do a number of tests, pulling tweets from Twitter and then analysing the results yourself.
  
Depending on the nature and context of the attack, you might want to speak out to the media and highlight the gendered nature of online attacks. Using the media to bring light to a situation can be an important way to bring about visibility to such issue. As a best practice, though, we recommend that you consult the persons under attack before speaking to the mainstream media. If you do not know her/them, go through the web of trust. Also, we recommend you to contact a friendly and/or feminist media or journalist. Prior to doing so, we recommend that you form a group of people in opposition to such violence, draft a press release and explain what gender-based violence and harassment online are and why they exist. This will bring visibility to the issue and concentrate less on the person who has been or who is under attack. Thinking about the harm and added stress that the person can go through if she is made visible in the mainstream media is a feminist issue that you should carefully assess.   
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Read more of this section, including how to set up Twitter accounts to be bots for you:
  
If you are part of an organisation or network you can write a solidarity statement that explicitly says you condemn online gender-based violence and harassment online. If it's a person from your organisation who has been under attack, make sure she/they read the solidarity statement before it is being released. The person will feel that her team mates care and respect her/their wishes. It will also allow the person to have agency over what is written. What is even better is to have an organisational policy on what to do when someone is under attack. If you have a policy and specific steps to follow when such situation occurs, chances are you will do less harm and be more effective in your strategy.  
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Relevant links:
 +
* Simple bots you can download and test out yourself with a little patience, from Lilith Lela: https://lilithlela.cyberguerrilla.org/?p=9247
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* How to evade Twitter's spam filters with your bot: https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Step_2#Evading_Twitter.27s_spam_filters
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* Twitter's guide to Automation Rules and Best Practices (https://support.twitter.com/articles/76915-automation-rules-and-best-practices).
 +
* Video global Voices "Do We Feed the Trolls?"ː https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YRZTeea9ohM
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* How the Zero Trollerance bot army worked: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/11535405/How-do-you-stop-Twitter-trolls-Unleash-a-robot-swarm-to-troll-them-back.html
  
As an ally, that is someone who wants to support a disadvantaged group but is not part of that group (e.g. men are allies when it comes to women's rights issues), you ought to speak out and say “NO” to online harassment and violence. Speaking out ought to happen in the public spaces. This is very important. Do it all the time that you witness online violence! Otherwise, the culture of impunity to online harassment will continue.
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=== Supporting others ===
  
====What are some of the current platforms which document online violence?====
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It can feel daunting to know what to do when you see someone experiencing online violence, and sometimes in trying to help you can inadvertently worsen the situation. Knowing how to act in the best possible way is our individual and  collective responsibility in helping to create a safe space online for everyone.  If you are someone who wants to support a disadvantaged group but is not part of that group (men are allies when it comes to women's rights issues), it's important to speak out and say “NO”, in a public space, to online harassment and violence. Otherwise, the culture of impunity to online harassment will continue. Now when your friends or allies are being harassed and/or attacked online, there are some best practices you can follow:
  
Documenting instances of online violence and harassment is key to showing the extent of the problem and is very powerful as it makes visible the structural aspect of violence in societies. A few initiatives have started to document this process. We highlight a few examples below.  
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'''Offer quick support:''' When someone is being attacked or harassed, try to be quick in bringing in support. If you are close to the person under attack, offer immediate assistance. Bear in mind that this person might feel overwhelmed and might not have a clear set of instructions in mind about how to best supported. Remain quiet, attentive and patient and try to not create any extra pressure or stress.  In the event of doxing - where confidential info has been released on the internet about that person - you might want to offer a safe space (a home) if the person does not feel safe in their own home. You can also offer to moderate your friend's Twitter feed or blog comments to allow her/them to take a break from it.  
  
APC's '''Take back the Tech''' has collected more than 500 stories of women who have experienced violence online. These stories were collected using the open source platform called Ushahidi. The data visualisation can be see here: https://www.takebackthetech.net/mapit/ . The overall results of those who have participated in this exercise show that women between 18 and 30 who are using Facebook are most likely to be under online threat. To read about the story visit: http://www.genderit.org/articles/mapping-strategy-disclose-online-violence-against-women
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'''Speak out:''' If you do not know the person well, you can at least speak out against what is happening. It's not enough to simply send a private email or a tweet to the person who is under attack telling them that you think this kind of behaviour is unacceptable (sometimes, if the person under attack is being flooded with tweets and mails, it's even better not to write at all). Instead, speak out about it in your networks and raise your voice against such behaviour. You can, for instance, commend publicly the work that the person under attack has been doing. Don't be silent, especially if you are a colleague or a team-mate. Make your voice resonate online - particularly if you are a man! Here is a great exemple of Jay Smooth calling On Men To Challenge Anti-Feminist Internet Trolls (https://vimeo.com/44117178)
  
'''HarassMap''' was born as a response to the persistent problem of sexual harassment on the streets of Egypt. Since the crowdsourcing platform based on Ushahidi is anonymous, Harassmap allows to document instances of sexual harassment whether you are the victim or a witness (http://harassmap.org/en/). To read about the effectiveness of crowdsourced data visit: http://harassmap.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Towards-A-Safer-City_full-report_EN-.pdf [PDF]. Similar to HarrassMap is Hollaback, an initiative that aims at stopping street harassment using technology all over the world (http://www.ihollaback.org/).
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'''Organise collectively:''' If you want to have more impact, think about crafting a "collective action" as those are often more effective than individual actions. Gather a group of friends, and friends of friends, for a Twitter storming, for instance. This will show to the person under attack that you and others care and that such acts are not OK.  
  
HeartMob is a platform that aims at providing real-time support to individuals experiencing online harassment and empowers bystanders to act. This platform is being built and you should stay abreast of its development. It is an initiative of Hollaback. Visit their Kickstarter project to know more about the initiative: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4096561/heartmob/description
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'''Write a solidarity statement:''' If you are part of an organisation or network, you can write a solidarity statement that explicitly says you condemn online gender-based violence and harassment. Having feminists review the statement of solidarity is a best practice. If it's a person from your organisation who has been under attack, make sure she/they read the solidarity statement before it is released. You can also prepare an organisational policy in advance on what to do if someone is under attack. If you have a policy and specific steps to follow when such a situation occurs, chances are you will do less harm and be more effective in your response. see for instance Tor Solidarity against online harassment (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/solidarity-against-online-harassment).
  
=== Building our safe spaces offline ===
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'''Talk to the media:''' Depending on the nature and context of the situation, you might want to speak out through the media and highlight the gendered and sexist nature of online attacks. It's always best practice to consult the persons targeted before speaking to the mainstream media. If you do not know the person personally, go through the web of trust - your trusted online network.  Thinking about the harm and added stress that the person can go through if they are made visible in the mainstream media is something that you should carefully assess.  Consider especially that this is not about you: this is about fighting sexism online and supporting others!
  
All the ideas about creating and maintaining safe spaces detailed so far can of course also be applied offline when you think about bringing women and trans* persons together to network, learn and collaborate. In the case of security and privacy training, you also need to consider how your participants might learn skills to protect themselves when the topics themselves can very easily be frightening or overwhelming.
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'''Resources for support:'''
  
Ideas have arisen in women and trans* tech conferences and skills workshops as how best to build safe spaces. Groups such as Flossie.org, Fossbox, Autonomous Tech Fetish (ATF), and Eclectic Tech Carnival (ETC) have each used a different set of principles to build safe spaces and are thus good examples to explore to highlight some of the differences, how to facilitate discussion about them, and how to arrive at a shared idea of an appropriate space for women and trans* persons to engage with tech.  
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*'''Block Bot:''' (http://www.theblockbot.com/sign_up) will block known harassers and trolls on Twitter for you.
  
Every group has to work out their own idea of an appropriate space for their participants. Once you have arrived at a shared ideal, it's time to look at the practicalities of implementing these ideas in material, offline, spaces. This will include thinking about how much formality you want, what kind of formalities, how you will accommodate diversity, how you will facilitate participation for all the participants both in terms of your practical arrangements and in the way you formalise the social space.
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*'''Block Together:''' (https://blocktogether.org/) allows you to share your block lists with others on Twitter.  
  
==== How do you create a safe space? ====
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*'''Foxxydoxing:''' (http://foxydoxxing.com/) scripts to help you analyze the connections between your attackers on Twitter and a wonderful graphic story to explain how it works.
  
The difficulties in defining what a "safe space" should look like are inherent in the fact that you are bringing a diversity of people together, who might be considered to be part of the same community but all have different histories, contexts and needs. What one person might find politically, socially or personally threatening, might mean very little to another. And everyone will of course also come with different experiences and levels of knowledge and skills in technology.  
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*'''Crash override network: ''' (http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com/) a support network and assistance group for victims and targets of unique forms of online harassment, composed entirely of experienced survivors. They work preventatively and reactively with survivors during episodes of harassment to keep them safe and provide them with the means to reduce harm and rebuild, as well as disempower their harassers.  
  
We need to remind ourselves then that whenever we create a space, even a safe space, it will never be experienced in the same way by the people involved. It is important to be aware that, in struggling to perfect a feminist safe space, one always runs the risk of creating, instead, yet another form of social control and pressure to conform to a particular image of what a woman or trans* identified person is.
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*'''The Online Abuse Prevention Initiative (OAPI): ''' is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing and mitigating online abuse through the study and analysis of abuse patterns, the creation of anti-harassment tools and resources and collaboration with key tech companies seeking to better support their communities. It works in collaboration with the Crash Overide network (http://onlineabuseprevention.org/)
  
So, overall, the most important thing to remember is that everyone is different, with their own set of experiences, history, context and needs. There is always risk and vulnerability in opening yourself to new experiences. The more diverse the environment, the more emotional risk we open ourselves to as ideas and ways of being may be fundamentally challenged. So we are not aiming for the avoidance of any kind of conflict or emotional risk but, instead, to provide buffers, understanding, reciprocation, support, love, and care for each other and for our shared endeavour. We must take every possible step to ensure that practical needs are met (protecting anonymity, respecting diversity, dealing with harassment, providing appropriate living space, etc.), and focus on collaboration, facilitation and mediation.
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*'''Zero Trollerance:''' (https://zerotrollerance.guru) a humorous, video-based self-help program for sexist Twitter trolls. You can send your Twitter trolls links to individual videos or to the main website zerotrollerance.guru. You can also contact @ztrollerance on Twitter to do it for you.
  
==== Women and trans* only? ====
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*'''HeartMobː''' is a platform for real-time support to individuals experiencing online harassment and empowers bystanders to act. Visit their Kickstarter project to know more about the initiative (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4096561/heartmob).
  
This question can be one of the most divisive as it will often touch on people's strongly held sense of their political, personal, sexual and social identities. It can raise up issues of sexual orientation and gender identity as well as mobilising all kinds of other loyalties. Some will prefer a women and trans* only environment, some will feel that this opens up an opportunity for external attacks on the whole project by adversarial forces, whilst some will feel that cis-men friends and colleagues will be unfairly excluded and resentful. Discussion can sometimes divide along lines of sexual orientation or of feminist conviction - or just between women who regularly work alongside cis-men in the tech industry and women who would like to learn tech but find learning alongside cis-men challenging. These divisions will also never be clearly defined - individuals don't take neat "sides" as they probably have multiple modes of identification.  
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*'''Trollbusters:''' (http://www.troll-busters.com/) still in development, this tool plans to counteract Twitter abuse by flooding your timelines with love messages.
  
If you need to have a debate about this, some things to consider are:
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=== Documenting violence ===
  
* Think about boundaries for the debate -- agreed framework, rules of engagement? How do we define "woman" and "trans*"? How do we define "safe"?
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Besides directly supporting and showing solidarity with people subjected to violence, you can also populate and contribute to the documentation of instances of online violence and harassment. Those initiatives are key in order to show the extent of the problem and to make visible some of the structural aspects of violence in societies.
* Who do we want to include or influence, specifically women and trans* or also potential sympathisers? 
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* What is the balance of positions on feminism present in the group, is there a prevalent "flow" of opinion? 
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* How important versus how contentious? Is it worth alienating some people from the group? How can we frame the debate to avoid alienating people who don't agree with the decision?
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* How will the decision affect the actual experience of people within the space?
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* Do we have all the skills we need to deliver this project among our networks or will we need specific additional skills? Where will we get them?
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* How will the space be formalised to promote equal participation, especially if cis-men are included?
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Take your time to decide these questions. It's probably a good idea to record them somewhere so they can be referred to in future. If you use chat channels (IRC, pads, etc.) you can probably take a log of the discussion. If not, some form of minutes will be useful. You can then use this record as a basis for any formal codes of conduct or policies you want to draft later and to avoid getting stuck in endless arguments by having something clear to refer back to and for new participants to catch up.
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'''Resources for documentation:'''
  
==== What are you trying to do? ====
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* APC's '''Take back the Tech:''' has collected more than 500 stories of women who have experienced violence online. These stories were gathered using the open source platform called Ushahidi. The data visualisation can be see here: https://www.takebackthetech.net/mapit/ . The overall results of those who have participated in this exercise show that women between 18 and 30 who are using Facebook are most likely to be under online threat (http://www.genderit.org/articles/mapping-strategy-disclose-online-violence-against-women).
  
For some groups, discussion and reflection is a key activity which renders the whole group activity meaningful. For others, discussion is a source of vexation and obstruction from practical objectives. Again, this is a somewhat false divide as everyone needs to reflect and everyone needs to be practical. Nevertheless, there may be important differences in emphasis and these may be based on what you are actually trying to do. It's all too easy to become engrossed in politics and to neglect to make sure there's enough discussion on the specific aims of the project itself and on the experience of diverse participants.  
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* '''GenderIT.org:''' emerged from APC's Women’s Rights Programme’s advocacy work in information and communications technologies. The need to have examples of national policy, gender-sensitive language, tools for lobbying, and an understanding of the impact of poor or positive policy all within easy access has been expressed by ICT advocates and policy makers alike (http://www.genderit.org/).
  
Building offline spaces is easiest and most successful when you're clear about what you're trying to do and how you plan to go about it. Being clear about what you're trying to do can also shift debate through less painful channels and provide very clear, practical arguments for specific choices, making the discussion feel less emotive.  
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* '''The Geek Feminism Wiki''' has been documenting sexist incidents in geek communities. To see the timeline of incidents: (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_incidents). You can also check out their resource pages for allies supporting support women in geek communitiesː (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Resources_for_men)
  
The first thing which must be considered is exactly what the event is intended to achieve. Women and trans* and tech events can probably be categorised something like this (again, this abstract division may not reflect the 'messiness' of practical activism):  
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* '''Women, Action, and the Media (WAM!)''' has written a report on online violence on Twitter (https://womenactionmedia.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/05/wam-twitter-abuse-report.pdf/) and created a Twitter Harassment Reporting Tool (https://womenactionmedia.wufoo.com/forms/wam-twitter-harassment-reporting-tool/).
  
* Advocacy: How do we change the culture of tech sectors to be more amenable for women and trans* persons, and/or let the world know that they are great at tech, and/or get more women involved?
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* '''Breaking the circle''' is an international campaign to raise awareness on the fact that gender violence is a problem that concerns both men and women, which focus on the role of men and include them as agents of change. They have developed a series of tools and information that will help us spread the message and raise awareness (http://en.breakingthecircle.org/).
* Skills: How can we learn to do xyz?
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* Support, networking and boundary-crossing: What does it mean to be a woman or trans* person in tech? How can women from different places or sectors come together to spark off new ideas and practices? How can we support each other as women and trans* persons in tech?
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We can see right away how these different types of event might develop different gender policies even if the same group of people were organising them. For example, it's difficult advocating change in the male culture of tech sectors if you haven't invited cis-men to hear what you want to say - but you might prefer to discuss *how* to do this in a women and trans*-only environment first. Or are you advocating engagement with technology to women and trans* and mainly want free, frank and mutually supportive discussion or skills-sharing? In this case, a women and trans* environment suggests itself.  
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* '''Crowdmaps in Indiaː''' After the Delhi Gang Rape there was a lot of interest in how tech could be used to address the issue of sexual violence against women in offline spaces. These initiatives emerged from spaces where  tech meets gender in order to see how tech can be used to tackle gender based violence gender problems. See for instance Harassmap in Bombay (www.akshara.crowdmap.com ) and the Safecity -Pin the creep (www.safecity.in) and the 'Safetipin' app for safely auditing public spaces.  
  
With skills workshops, there is research to suggest that women and trans* persons learn tech skills best with each other so these workshops have a very clear and communicable reason for being exclusive. But you may still hear cis-men allies grumbling that they also wanted to learn that skill and it isn't fair. So, in that case, we can either explain the benefits of exclusive learning environments and recommend that a cis-man step forward to run an open workshop, or we might consider compromising with women and trans*-only as facilitators but inviting open participation. Another possibility is to run an event twice, once for women and trans* participants and once for open participation. As a side-effect, this can help others to experience the safe space methodology and change their own practice.
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* '''Macholandː''' This french platform wants to voice actions, embedded in the public, media and political speech, driven by citizens who refuse to see sexism spread massively without reacting. Each user can participate and propose an action that pin with humor brands, organizations and public figures (http://macholand.fr/)
  
It's also important to remember that building offline spaces is resource- and labour-intensive and often many compromises have to be made. It may be a good idea to try to identify as early as possible which values are shared, important, and relevant to the event so that you can constantly remember to prioritise those and de-prioritise less important or potentially divisive issues.
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* '''Feminist Frequencyː''' This project includes the video series Tropes vs. Women, created by Anita Sarkeesian with Bitch magazine to examine common tropes in depictions of women in film, television and video games, with a particular focus on science fiction. Videos produced in this series include “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl”, “Women in Refrigerators” and “The Smurfette Principle” (http://feministfrequency.com/)
  
==== Choosing a format that fits ====
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== Safe spaces offline ==  
  
Once you have settled the basic questions about what your event is *for* and who you want to invite, it's time to think about the format you will use for your event. There are many different ways of organising different kinds of spaces, the following is just an outline of a few of those most popular with FLOSS communities.  
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Many of the principles of creating and maintaining safe spaces online can also be applied offline. As noted in the introduction of this chapter, safe spaces can either be temporary and take place during a one time event or training or can also become permanent spaces where collectives or organisations embed the basic principles of safety, support, respect and inclusiveness in their own space management.  
  
* Temporary Autonomous Zone: An alternative to traditional models of revolution, the T.A.Z is an uprising that creates free, ephemeral enclaves of autonomy in the here-and-now. [[http://beautifultrouble.org/theory/temporary-autonomous-zone/ | Beautiful Trouble]]
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In the case of security and privacy training, you also need to consider how participants can best learn skills to protect themselves when the topics themselves can be frightening or overwhelming. The environment also has to be suited to the participants share stories about threats they have been facing online and offline. Those stories can be very traumatic and personal and should be handled carefully, but at the same time they are a very important part of the process of developing security and privacy strategies.  
  
* Un-Conference: creating a space that helps people make connections, share knowledge, collaborate and create brainchildren. To take part, attendees are encouraged to give a presentation, create a discussion, or even chair a debate [[http://lanyrd.com/blog/2012/unconference-howto/ | Lanyrd on running an unconference]] and [[http://openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/ | Open Space]]. Pros: relatively egalitarian (watch out for tyranny of structurelessness) and relatively easy to organise (no messing about with programmes, scheduling and advanced prep). Cons: can be extremely intimidating and therefore exclusionary towards less experienced or skilled participants and stressful if you need to organise tech or other resources for specific activities in advance.  
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The difficulties in defining what a "safe space" should look like are inherent in the fact that you are bringing a diversity of people together, who might be considered to be part of the same community but who all have different histories, contexts and needs. What one person might find politically, socially or personally threatening might mean very little to another. And everyone will of course also come with different experiences and levels of knowledge and skills with regard to technology.  
  
* Workshop: transferring skills or knowledge in an interactive session - there are thousands upon thousands of workshop methodologies, so selecting a workshop format is very much about being clear about what you want to achieve. Workshops are a good format for building skills or for maker and design activities.  
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It is important to be aware that, in struggling to perfect a safe space, one always runs the risk of creating instead yet another form of social control and pressure to conform to a particular image of what, for example, a woman or trans* person is or should be.  
  
* Hacklab/Hackerspace/Makerspace: Hacklabs, hackerspaces and [[http://makerspace.com/ | makerspaces]] are community spaces with hardware and/or tools - great for people to "get their hands dirty", you can mess about with anything from taking computers apart to installing Linux to making music with bananas or even building a WWII PoW radio out of razorblades and copper wire! To learn more about hacklabs and hackerspaces, read Maxigas' article "Hacklabs and Hackerspaces: Shared Machine Workshops", in: http://www.coredem.info/IMG/pdf/pass11_an-2.pdf [PDF]
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=== Boundaries ===
  
* Sprint: A sprint is a get-together of people involved in a project to further a focused development of some aspect of the project such as working on sections of code, writing manuals or books, etc. These are effective at getting a lot done quickly for code and manuals (less so for other forms of writing) but very exhausting and emotionally demanding - make sure you keep food and drink coming! To read more about sprints, visit: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_%28software_development%29 | Wikipedia on sprints]] and [http://www.flossmanuals.org/service/booksprints | Flossmanuals Booksprints]].
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When trying to create a safe space, you might encounter the issue of who is included and who is excluded from it. It can very divisive, as it will often touch on people's strongly held sense of their political, personal, sexual and social identities. Issues of sexual orientation and gender identity will likely come up. Some will prefer a women and trans* only environment, some will feel that this opens up an opportunity for external attacks on the whole project by adversarial forces, while some will feel that cis-men friends and colleagues are being unfairly excluded, and feel resentful. If you are having a debate about this, some things to consider are:
  
* Hackathon: with their motto "programming till someone drops from exhaustion", hack events can also mix different groups like NGOs with hackers to come up with new approaches to building tech for that group. To learn more about hackatons, read:  [[http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/11/23/hackathons-in-droves-how-is-a-hackathon-organised/ | Global Voices on how to run a hackathon]].
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* Is there an agreed framework and rules of engagement? How do we define "woman" and "trans*"? How do we define "safe"?
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* Who do we want to include, influence or support? Specifically women and trans* persons, or also potential allies? 
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* How important versus how contentious? Is it worth alienating some people from the group? How can we frame the debate to avoid alienating people who don't agree with the decision?
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* How will the decision affect the actual experience of people within the space?
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* Do we have all the skills we need to deliver this project among our networks, or will we need specific additional skills? Where will we get them?
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* How will the space be organised to promote equal participation, especially if cis-men are included?
  
* Seminar: bringing together small groups for recurring meetings focusing on a particular subject, in which everyone present actively participates, or offering information or training on specific topics. Pros: structured activity supports women with less experience or confidence, planning for tech/resource support is easier, people know what to expect. Cons: can be overly structured and lacking spontaneity for more experience participants , more 'carnivalised' or 'top-down', more organisational effort in advance. Read [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seminar | the page of Wikipedia on Seminars]].
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It's important to remember that building offline spaces is resource- and labour-intensive, and often many compromises have to be made. It may be a good idea to try to identify as early as possible which values are shared, important, and relevant to the event, so that you can constantly remember to prioritise those and de-prioritise less important or potentially divisive issues.  
  
Your choice of format is going to be about:
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Building offline spaces is easiest and most successful when you're clear about what you're trying to do and how you plan to go about it. The second thing which must be considered is exactly what the event is intended to achieve. For example:
  
* what you're trying to do - ask yourself which format will support this activity best
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* '''Skills:''' How can we learn to do xyz?
* participants' needs, existing skills, experience and preferences
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* '''Advocacy:''' How do we change the culture of tech sectors to be more amenable for women and trans* persons, and/or let the world know that they are great at tech?  
* practical considerations - what physical spaces are available, what will they allow you to do, what resources do you have, etc.?
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* '''Support, networking and boundary-crossing:''' What does it mean to be a woman or trans* person in tech? How can women from different places or sectors come together to spark off new ideas and practices? How can we support each other as women and trans* persons in tech?  
* Your organisational resources - how much can you take on?  
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Choice of workshop or seminar format is obvious for skills sharing, but it can get more difficult to decide for advocacy and networking events. Advocacy events can be some of the most challenging as it's easy to spend the entire day "re-inventing the wheel" with people who are new to the questions. If you have participants from diverse backgrounds in your advocacy event, it's probably best to go with a more structured format. Unconferencing and hacking works best with activists or experienced practitioners who are used to a high level of self-determination and with a shared understanding of implied rules and structures. Having said that, it can work well to try more open formats anyway, but be prepared for some skilled facilitating to make it safe and fun for less experienced participants as well as the more experienced.  
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Different aims will inform different safe space policies. For instance, it's difficult advocating for change in the male-dominated tech sector if you haven't invited cis-men to hear what you want to say - but you might prefer to discuss *how* to do this in a women and trans*-only environment first. If, on the other hand, you are advocating for engagement with technology to women and trans* persons and mainly want free, honest and mutually supportive discussions or skills-sharing, then in this case, a women and trans* only environment suggests itself.  
  
It's perfectly fine to mix and match approaches to suit what you're trying to do and whom you're doing it with - so go ahead and experiment.
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With skills workshops, there is research to suggest that women and trans* persons learn tech skills best with each other, so these workshops have a very clear and communicable reason for being exclusive. Another possibility is to run an event twice, once for women and trans* participants and once for open participation. This can have the positive side-effect of enabling others to experience a safe space methodology and thereby change their own practices in the spaces they organise, but it will be clearly more time consuming.
  
==== Codes of conduct ====
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=== Choosing a format that fits ===
  
It's important, especially in mixed environments, to think about what's acceptable behaviour in the space and what isn't. In order for this to have any practical effect, you also have to think about what you'll do if individuals breach this - or when things go wrong generally.
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Once you have settled the basic questions on what your event is for and who you want to invite, it's time to think about the format of your event. Deciding which format to use can be helped by your answers to some key questions:
  
You can find plenty of information and example policies on the [[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Adoption | Geek Feminism Conference anti-harassment/Adoption page]]
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* What are you trying to do? Which format will support this activity best?
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* What are the participants' needs, existing skills, experience and preferences?
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* What physical spaces are available, what will they allow you to do, and what resources do you have?
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* What are your human and organisational resources - how much can you take on?
  
Make sure your participants understand your policy and how that relates to their behaviour. It can be useful to make time in your schedule at the beginning of the event to share your policy, and reach consensus with the group on how to maintain a safe space over the days of the event.
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There are many different ways of organising events. Some of the most popular in FLOSS and tech-related communities are:
  
Your policy should at the base be about preventing aggressive behaviour and not about trying to "police" how people identify, communicate or present themselves as long as this is not creating a serious threat to other participants. It's also worth remembering that people who are struggling in a culturally unfamiliar environment can become confrontational more easily than they usually would. There may be many reasons why a participant might be struggling to communicate positively at any given moment. It's key to remain calm and to provide a non-judgemental space for the expression of emotions like anger or frustration. We are different, let's celebrate it, even when it's difficult to do!
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* '''Un-Conference''': helps people to make connections, share knowledge, collaborate and inspire each other. To take part, participants are encouraged to give a presentation, create a discussion, or even chair a debate (http://lanyrd.com/blog/2012/unconference-howto/ ; http://openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/). This format can be relatively egalitarian and relatively easy to organise (no messing about with programmes, scheduling and advanced prep) but you should watch out for the tyranny of structurelessness. Thy can also be extremely intimidating and therefore exclusionary towards less experienced or skilled participants; and can be stressful if you need to organise tech or other resources for specific activities in advance. 
  
==== Respecting Privacy ====
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* '''Workshop''': transferring skills or knowledge in an interactive session. There are many possible workshop methodologies. Selecting a workshop format is very much about being clear about what you want to achieve. Workshops can be a good format for building skills or for maker and design activities. For instance in Pakistan Hamara Internet is a campaign by Digital Rights Foundation that seeks to raise awareness about violence against women online through various workshops. It literally means ‘Our Internet’ in English and works to impart digital security tips and training to women and bridge the gender digital divide in Pakistan (http://hamarainternet.org/).
  
* Don't take or circulate sound, video or photos without permission - if anyone present faces significant external risk then don't take photos at all unless participants have given express permission and an opportunity to cover their identity.  
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* '''Hackathon:''' With its general motto "programming till someone drops from exhaustion", hack events can mix different groups - like NGOs with hackers - to come up with new approaches to building technology for that group. For instance IGNITE (Women Fueling Science and Technology from the Global Fund for Women International) organised a global Hackathon called #hackgirlsrights. This  24-hour, multi-country coding event, targeted girl coders which collaborate to develop a website or application that address specific challenge facing girls and young women (http://ignite.globalfundforwomen.org/gallery/ignite-international-girls-hackathon). On the past 23th of April 2015, another global feminist hackaton called femhack was organised around the world in loving memory of Woman Human Rights Defender Sabeen Mahmud (https://f3mhack.org). You can read more about how to run a hackathon here: (http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/11/23/hackathons-in-droves-how-is-a-hackathon-organised/)
  
* If you wish to record the event, prepare formal consent forms telling people exactly what audio-visual records are being made and how they will be stored and used and ask for clear consent with a signature.  
+
* '''Sprint:''' A sprint is a gathering of people involved in a specific project to further the focused development of some aspect of the project, such as working on sections of code, writing manuals or books, etc. These are effective at getting a lot done quickly for code and manuals (less so for other forms of writing), but can be exhausting and emotionally demanding - make sure you keep food and drink coming! To read more about sprints, visit wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(software_development) and Flossmanuals: (http://www.flossmanuals.org/service/booksprints). To note for instance that this manual was edited during an editorial sprintǃ
  
* Don't share details of anyone's participation, speech or actions on social media without their express permission.
+
* '''Seminar:''' A seminar brings together a small group for recurring meetings which focus on a particular subject. In a seminar, everyone actively participates, or offers information or training on specific topics. On the one hand, this kind of structured activity supports people with less experience or confidence; planning for tech/resource support is fairly straightforward; and people know what to expect. On the other hand, the event can be experienced as overly structured and lacking spontaneity for more experienced participants; more 'top-down'; and requires more organisational effort in advance. Check out for instance The documentation of the Feminist Server Summit which consisted in a feminist review of mesh- cloud- autonomous- and D.I.Y. servers (http://vj14.constantvzw.org/r/about).
  
* Refer to Infrastructure sections to understand how to set up secure networks.
+
More stable kinds of safe spaces for experimenting and learning technology include:
  
==== Case Studies ====
+
* '''Hacklab, hackerspace or makerspaceː''' These are community spaces with hardware and/or tools - great for people to "get their hands dirty" and play around with anything -  from taking computers apart to installing Linux to making music with bananas or building a radio out of razorblades and wire. Read more about hacklabs and hackerspaces here: "Hacklabs and Hackerspaces: Shared Machine Workshops":(http://www.coredem.info/IMG/pdf/pass11_an-2.pdf). You can also visit the following portalsː (http://makerspace.com/) (http://hackerspaces.org/)
  
In the following, two women-and-tech spaces will help illustrate what was covered until now in this section of the manual, which pertains to the aims, participants and context which influence format.  
+
* '''Feminist hackerspace:''' Those vary in shape, form, and size. What often unites them is a set of boundaries that are decided on collectively (who can be a member, who can be a guest, what are the policies, etc.) and an explicit belief in feminist principles. Feminist hackerspaces provide a place to work on individual and collective projects in a supportive environment.  To know more about feminist hackerspaces you might want to visit the website Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna (http://www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/), The Mothership Hackermoms in Berkeley (http://mothership.hackermoms.org/), Double Union in San Francisco (https://www.doubleunion.org/) and FemHack in Montreal (http://foufem.wiki.orangeseeds.org/).
  
===== Eclectic Tech Carnival (ETC) =====
+
For sharing skills, setting up a feminist hackerspace, or choosing an unconference, workshop or seminar format makes a lot of sense. For advocacy and networking events, the choice is not so obvious. Advocacy events can be some of the most challenging as it's easy to spend the entire day "re-inventing the wheel" with people who are new to the questions. If you have participants from diverse backgrounds in your advocacy event, it could be best to go with a more structured format. Unconferences and hackathons work best with activists or experienced practitioners who are used to a high level of self-determination, and who have a shared understanding of the implicit rules and structures of the space. Having said that, it can work well to try more open formats anyway, but be prepared for some skilled facilitating to make it a safe and fun space for both experienced and less experienced participants. Sometimes a mixed approach is what's needed - and some experimentation!
  
ETC was organised on an "unconference" model using a combination of university spaces, art centres and community centres. It is relatively well-funded and so is able to bring participants in from all over the world. It is located in a different city each time and organised by a group from that city in collaboration with the core ETC collective. It provides "full board" space for participants and also partners with additional arts events located in the host city.
+
=== Fixing gender gap in tech ===
  
ETC made the decision to be for women-only. Participants are culturally diverse but mostly from arts, academic, non-profit and related tech backgrounds. This means that they have a lot of experience in self-organising and thrive in a relatively unstructured environment. The code of conduct tends to be implicit rather than stated.  
+
In order to get some inspiration we list below a selection of initiatives specially oriented at getting more women in ICT and technological related fields.
  
Eclectic Tech Carnival spawned [[http://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/ | Transhack 2014]] and also Flossie.org. ETC and Transhack's relatively coherent culture has fostered the development of a strong focus on reflection and feminist practice. It has been an influential and much-loved space for more than a decade.
+
* '''Asikana Network (Zambia)ː''' is a group of females aiming to empower women in ICT related fields by changing mindsets and eliminating negative stereotypes attached to girls and women in ICT (http://asikananetwork.org/).
 +
* '''Akirachix (Kenya)ː''' is an african wide network of women in technology to make tech and to inspire and mentor other women to be technologists (akirachix.com).
 +
* '''Donestech (Spain)ː''' is a cyberfeminist and activist research group which develops also workshops and audiovisual productions in relation to gender and ICT access, uses of and desires. Lelacoders project is about studying and making visible the presence of women in the development of computer sciences, free software and hacker cultures (www.donestech.net) (https://n-1.cc/g/donestech+lelacoders).
 +
* '''Feminist Approach to Technology (India)ː'''  mission is to empower women by enhancing women’s awareness, interest and participation in technology (http://fat-net.org/).
 +
* '''Flossie (UK)ː''' runs a conference and also skills workshops and it is intended to combine advocacy, boundary-crossing, support and skills-sharing bringing together women involved in digital arts with coders, artists, and makers (http://www.flossie.org/).
 +
* '''Speakerinnenn (Germany)ː''' aim is to increase the visibility of women in the field of public speaking. With the help of our list it will be easier for organisers to find female experts to speak at their events (http://speakerinnen.org/).
 +
* '''The Ada initiative (Global)ː''' organises AdaCamp, a series of conferences dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture: open source software, Wikipedia and other wiki-related projects, open knowledge and education, open government and open data, open hardware and appropriate technology (https://adacamp.org/).
  
===== Flossie =====
+
=== Codes of conduct ===
  
Flossie runs a conference and also skills workshops and was based on the ETC format. It is intended to combine advocacy, boundary-crossing, support and skills-sharing bringing together women involved in digital arts with coders, artists, and makers. There are various problems with trying to bring the ETC format to the UK, which has an extremely marketised academic/arts/non-profit sector and is outside of the Schengen area, making it very difficult for non-EU participants to attend in person. Eventually, it was decided to do something a little different. There was a small amount of funding from Google which didn't cover "full board" and, in any case, it was impossible to find spaces such as the schools used in ETC in Austria in the marketised UK public sector. Videos were made and the links were available for women outside of EU to contribute. The whole event was not streamed publicly because of bandwidth problems at the university which hosted the event.  
+
It's important, especially in mixed environments, to think about what's acceptable conduct in the space and what isn't. In order for this to have any practical effect, it's also important to think about what you'll do if individuals breach this - or when things go wrong generally. You can find plenty of information and example policies on the Geek Feminism Conference anti-harassment/Adoption page (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Adoption)
  
In the end the biggest difference came from involving more women from pure tech and engineering sectors. Flossie worked with Ubuntu Women and the Women's and Open Source Groups at the British Computer Society to involve women from purely technological backgrounds as well as digital artists, activists and makers in order to foster wider skills sharing and open up access to high-level computer skills for women. This was very popular but also opened out all kinds of communication difficulties as the groups had quite different cultures and backgrounds.  
+
Make sure your participants understand the policy and how it relates to their own conduct. It can be useful to make time in your schedule at the beginning of the event to share your policy, and reach consensus with the group on how to maintain a safe space over the days of the event.  
  
The first issue raised by this was that many of the students who joined the collective wanted a more structured environment as they didn't feel confident in self-organising and more experienced organisers also felt the unconference structure could be a problem given the diversity of backgrounds and interests. The second was that a reflective approach became more difficult. In the first year, a panel was held to consider how to go about building a positive representation of women in technology. This quickly became very dislocated and adversarial because, as the group began to realise, there were many different models of feminism ''and'' of technology between women who were primarily tech/engineering, academics, and women who were primarily activists or artists. It was decided that the group would focus on the basic value that all shared - supporting more women to make better use of open technology and to move from being consumers to being producers. The group had to deprioritise feminist reflection or debates about practice. This proved very effective in holding together these very different groups and building lasting networks with a positive and collaborative atmosphere.
+
Your code of conduct should be about preventing aggressive behaviour and not about trying to police how people identify, communicate or present themselves. It's also worth remembering that people who are struggling in a culturally unfamiliar environment can become confrontational more easily than they usually would. There may be many reasons why a participant might be struggling to communicate positively at any given moment. It's key to remain calm and to provide a non-judgmental space for the expression of emotions like anger or frustration. Because of this, a code of conduct should also include some people that will be assigned to receive feedback if any problem takes place. They should be good facilitators or moderators and be calm and patient. We are different, let's celebrate it, even when it's difficult to do!
  
===='''What is a Feminist Hackerspace?'''====
+
Last not least, your code of conduct should include an agreement about how participants will respect other participants' '''right to privacy'''. Some general guidelines could include the following:
  
Building a feminist hackerspace is another way of creating a safe space offline for women in tech in addition to reach out to women activists and artists who might not be drawn to traditional hackerspaces.
+
* '''Don't take or circulate sound, video or photos without permission'''. If anyone present faces significant external risk then don't take photos at all unless participants have given express permission and an opportunity to cover their identity.
 +
* If you wish to record the event, '''prepare formal consent forms''' telling people exactly what audio-visual records are being made and how they will be stored, used, licensed and ask for clear consent with a signature.
 +
* '''Don't share details of anyone's participation''', speech or actions on social media without their express permission.
  
But first what is a hackerspace? Hackerspaces are often volunteer-run spaces based on the concept of openness, where in theory anyone who is interested in learning about and playing with technology (software, hardware, etc.) can go. However, throughout the world women have remained underrepresented in these spaces despite the attempts to proposed remedial strategies in certain space, such as women-only hack nights and the adoption of codes of conduct. The women-only hack night particularly has been met with controversy in many spaces since it is deemed to go against the principle of openness.
+
=== How safe is the space? ===
  
Other reasons have been highlighted to explain the emergence of feminist hackerspaces such as the difficulties in recognizing and acknowledging privileges along the lines of gender, race, ethnicity and class in addition to the patriarchal behaviours that many women recognise as prevalent in hackerspaces. To change the aforementioned state of affair, feminist geeks, makers, artists and hackers have decided to start feminist hackerspaces. This shows that women are interested in technology, want to learn, improve their skills, look for a like-minded community and want to share their skills with others. And it is fun too! 
+
As a check-list, here are some questions that can help you assess whether a space is safe or not.  
 
+
Feminist hackerspaces are not all the same. They vary in form, shape and size. What seems to unite them though is a set of boundaries that they decide collectively (who can be a member, who can be a guest, what are the policies, etc.) and an explicit belief in feminist principles. Feminist hackerspaces provide a place to work on individual and collective projects in a supportive environment. 
+
 
+
To know more about feminist hackerspaces you might want to visit the website of: the Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna (http://www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/), The Mothership Hackermoms in Berkeley (http://mothership.hackermoms.org/), Double Union in San Francisco (https://www.doubleunion.org/) and FemHack in Montreal (http://foufem.wiki.orangeseeds.org/).
+
 
+
===='''Which Criteria Do I Use to Assess Whether a Space is Safe or Not? '''====
+
 
+
As a summary and check-list, you will find below the criteria (or rather questions) by which to assess whether a space is safe or not. These questions will be useful when you are assessing whether a space can be considered a safe space.
+
 
   
 
   
- What is the history of the space? Why was it decided to start this space and who started it? How many women are/were involved?  Documenting yourself about a space is very important. Asking questions is always relevant.  
+
* '''Background:''' What is the history of the space? Who started it and why? How many women and trans* persons have been involved?   
 +
* '''Participation:''' Who has stopped participating in the space since it was founded, and why? Is it mostly women who have left?
 +
* '''Policies:''' Does the space have policies? If so, what kind? Are the policies regularly put in practice? Ask members in the space, particularly women.
 +
* '''New people:''' How does the space welcome newcomers? The first time you went to the space, did you get a tour? Did people say hello? Were the people in the space friendly?
 +
* '''Regular assemblies:''' Are there regular meetings (assemblies) that offer possibilities to raise concerns, to suggest collective projects, to suggest the organisation of workshops, to discuss the space (its cleanliness, etc.), to present yourself, etc.? 
 +
* '''Language:''' Is the language and vocabulary used on the website and in the space explicitly feminist? Read the website carefully, or go and see for yourself what the space looks like.
 +
* '''Trust:''' Do you know people who you trust in the space or do you know friends of friends? The web of trust can be very useful here.  
 +
* '''Access:''' Who can go into the space and under which conditions? This should be made explicit on the website, otherwise ask.
 +
*  '''Accessibility:''' Is the space itself easily accessible? In which part of town is it located? Are there bathrooms? What are the opening hours? Who has access to the keys of the space?
 +
* '''Cost:''' How much does it cost to become a member? Is there a sliding scale policy?
  
- Who has left the space since the beginning and for which reasons? Is it mostly women who have left the space?
+
No space is perfect; a safe space should always, however, at least provide an environment and a set of boundaries in which to meet up, talk, and address and raise difficult issues. If you feel the space has potential and you want to get involved, don't be shy!
  
- Does the space has policies? If so, what kind? Go and read it. 
+
'''Relevant links:'''
  
- Are the policies regularly put in practice? Ask members in the space, particularly women.
+
'''* Integrated Security Manual:''' (http://www.integratedsecuritymanual.org/) a resource for planning, convening, and hosting your workshop which prioritize your participants' emotional and physical well-being.
 
+
- How do they welcome new comers? The first time you went to the space did you get a tour? Did people say hello? Were the people in the space friendly?
+
 
+
- Are there regular meetings (assemblies) that you can attend to raise issues of concerns, to suggest collective projects, to suggest the organisation of workshops, to discuss the space (its cleanliness, etc.), to present yourself, etc.? 
+
 
+
- Is the language and vocabulary used on the website and in the space explicitly feminist? Read the website carefully, or go and see for yourself how the space looks like.
+
 
+
- Who can go in the space and under which condition? This should be made explicit on the website, otherwise ask.
+
 
   
 
   
- Do you know people who you trust in the space or do you know friends of friends? The web of trust can be very useful here.  
+
'''* Level Up:''' (https://www.level-up.cc/resources-for-trainers) resources for digital security trainers and organisers of these trainings too.
 
+
- Is it an accessible space? In which part of town is it located? Are there bathrooms? What are the opening hours? Who has access to the keys of the space?
+
 
+
- How much does it cost to become a member? Is there a sliding scale policy?
+
 
+
No space is a perfect space, even a safe space is not perfect. But safe spaces should at least provide an environment and a set of boundaries to talk, meet, address and raise difficult issues, among others. If you feel the space has potential and you want to get involved, don't be shy!
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Latest revision as of 08:32, 4 June 2015

Chapter 2: Safe spaces

Safe spaces can be understood as spaces that are created though explicit community agreement, or through implicit sharing of values. They enable members of a group to flourish, empower themselves and create community. Safe environments for discussion and awareness-raising have played a key role in many women's liberation movements.

As explained by integrated security trainer, Sandra Ljubinkovic, safe spaces are important for any integrated approach to security because they enable an environment that support people to express their emotions without fearing any judgment: “Creating a safe space is crucial for creating a sense of physical safety as well as a sense of confidence in a group. It is important for participants who usually have no time to relax to feel comfortable and enjoy simple things­. And if they live in a country where their lives are in danger it is even more crucial to make sure that they feel physically safe. Safe space in a group means a space to feel comfortable and speak openly and freely about feelings, challenges, and emotions as they may arise. In the workshops where issues personally affect people (whether those are physical, emotional, or spiritual threats and challenges), participants may have strong emotions as they do their own inner work facing their own oppression, privilege, anger, hurt, pain and suffering”.

Safe spaces can be temporary and take place during a one time event or training, they can also become permanent spaces when collectives or organisations embed the basic principles of safeness, support, respect and inclusiveness in their own space management.

Whatever format or style is used, a safe space should allow allow women and trans* persons to access and learn about technology and related fields without having to fear sexist language and attitudes, being challenged, mocked or mansplained. There are many possible event formats and styles which can support the creation of safe spaces, both online and offline, to allow women, trans* and other groups to communicate and exchange in a nurturing and welcoming environment.

You might assume that the online communities you create or take part in through social media, discussion lists and chat channels are inherently democratic, non-hierarchical, participatory and relatively safe. However online spaces often reproduce the same hierarchies, privileges and power relations that exist in society, in the offline world.

It's important to be mindful of this and to think through ways to mitigate and limit these downsides in order to get the best out of our spaces. Using such strategies is about caring for ourselves and for the communities we are part of. Making these issues explicit and visible is also about agency, social justice and feminism, helping us to better shape the spaces we care about, we organise in and within which we grow.

This section, will first look at building safe spaces online for enabling a better and safer collaboration among us through the use of mailing lists, chat, and other collaborative tools such as forums, wikis and pads. It will also look at how to use these tools tactically, in a way that supports the creation and maintenance of safe space. The tools that have been highlighted in this section have been included because they are free and open source, and are designed and administered with increased privacy and security in mind, minimising the amount of traces we leave online.

Second, the section will focus on strategies of resistance in public spaces which are not inherently safe - for instance Twitter and Wikipedia. Those examples are designed to give us insight into how we can create safety online collectively by developing feminist counterspeech, storming and swarming together in order to protect and support each other.

Finally it will loop back to the offline world and discuss ways to build safe spaces offline in the physical world, such as through women and trans* only or mixed spaces, to learn and Do-it-Together.

Collaboration

Mailing lists

Mailing lists are one of the oldest forms of social networks, allowing a group to discuss and organise, to exchange information, video, audio and images. A mailing list is a list of addresses to which the same information is sent simultaneously. The most common types of mailing lists are announcement lists and discussion lists.

If you have decided within your group that you need a secure communication channel and that you do not want to use corporate services, there are some good alternative services to choose from, often recommended for human rights defenders. Riseup, Aktivix and Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) are all free services that prioritise security and user privacy. Riseup in particular has many feminist- and queer-oriented lists and is therefore a great place to host your mailing list. On their website you can also have a look at the lists that already exist.

Riseup lists: https://lists.riseup.net/www/

Aktivix lists: https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo

Autistici lists: http://www.autistici.org/en/services/lists.html

If you or your organisation has your own server you can also install your own software for managing mailing list and ensure that all your communications remains hosted and safe in your own machine and can not be intercepted by unintended third parties. More information at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_mailing_list_software

Open or closed?

Once you are ready to create your mailing list you need to decide whether it will be open or closed.

Open: An open list allows anyone to subscribe, and then once they have joined the list, to receive announcements or participate in the discussion. Subscription can either be automatic, or it can be approved by a moderator. This type of mailing list is good for reaching out to your potential allies, contributors and followers and keeping them update about your activities.

Closed: Another option is to keep your mailing list closed. In a closed list, membership is limited, and all subscribers require approval before they can join the list. It's possible to have a list that is publicised - ie that everyone knows about - but still closed. This type of list is useful when you want to discuss sensitive or personal topics and be sure that all members in the conversation are trustworthy.

Note that sometimes the archives of a list can be made public to anyone on the web, and will also therefore end up on search engines (like Google). Check if keeping a list open to new subscriptions automatically implies that the archives of the list will be made publicly available, or if they will only be accessible to those who have the subscription password. Sometimes you can choose whether you keep the archives public or not.

If you intend to talk about sensitive issues (and talking about gender related topics is often a sensitive issue!) or if trust within the group is important for creating your safe space, you might want to set up a closed list and to keep your archives closed. If you do choose to leave your archives accessible, it is important to inform everyone subscribed to the list that any delicate topic or personal detail that pops up in your discussions will be potentially visible to anybody.

Encrypted lists: If you want a high level of security, there is also the possibility of encrypting mailing lists. However, it is important to understand that this requires every participants to the list to already use encryption software like PGP or GPG. This type of list, based on software called Schleuder (http://schleuder2.nadir.org/) and developed by Nadir.org, is designed to serve as a tool for group communication, but this time with a strong emphasis on security.

Policies

Agreeing on a mailing list policy - a set of do's and don'ts for the list - from the start will save you a lot of time and possibly difficult conversations. Even on a closed list, publishing your policy - which should include the ways in which moderation takes place and how to report violations of the policy, - can be helpful in creating the online safe space you want everyone to feel comfortable in. Your policy can address tensions like the fact that being free to expressing emotion is an important feminist principle, but losing your temper and attacking someone you don't agree with on the list is not ok. In the end any good mailing list policy will set its own rules for achieving a correct balance between freedom of expression and opinion and impeding flames and racist, sexist, or homophobic attacks for instance to take place within the list.

Having a visible and explicit policy sends a strong message about the value of maintaining the mailing list as a safe space. It can also help you to decide who can be added to your list and who not. To make sure that the policy does not get forgotten, you can regularly remind subscribers about it, with a link at the end of each mail you send out.

Relevant links:

Administration

Administrating a list: involves handling subscriptions and moderating content. You can choose how many administrators you want your list to have. Be aware that if your list suddenly becomes very chatty, this might be too demanding for just one person. Besides that, any communication tool including many members should not rely on only one person for administration duties. Take into account that this person could have problems, disapear or simply become abusive because of their power. Because of this, you should include more people helping with administration and moderation duties. A list can also be collectively managed and you can distribute those responsibilities among members of the list.

Moderating a list: as a general rule, moderation has three main goals. First, a well-moderated community will be more productive and efficient in generating and distributing valuable information and knowledge to its members (subscribers). Second, good moderation will increase the accessibility and openness of online communities by enabling respectful dialogue among its members. Finally, it will lessen the demands on the infrastructure, as well as on the list members.

Remember that any online safe space will apply the basic principles of net etiquette and that any good administrator, moderator and mailing list policy should review, adapt and include those principles in their core social norms and values and ask members of the list to discuss, understand and accept those. In a nutshell net etiquette requires users to: be nice, learn internet acronyms, keep messages brief, do not shout, protect personal information, help others, and to not send mails if feeling angry! (For more information see: http://www.networketiquette.net/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette_in_technology)

Mailing list examples

Before setting up your own mailing lists, you might want to engage with some of the established mailing lists focused on gender and technology. for example:

Open Mailing lists:

Take Back the Tech!: the mailing list associated with the collaborative campaign to reclaim information and communication technologies (ICT) to end violence against women (VAW). To register: https://lists.takebackthetech.net/mailman/listinfo/takebackthetech

FemTechNet: is a network of scholars, students, and artists who work on, with, and at the borders of technology, science, and feminism in a variety of fields including Science and Technology Studies (STS), Media and Visual Studies, Art, Women’s, Queer, and Ethnic Studies. To register: http://femtechnet.newschool.edu/mailman/listinfo/femtechnet

Queer Feminism Geek: is a network of feminist, queer and trans* hackers, makers, geeks and artists who organise activities and assemblies at the Computer Chaos Camp and Congress. To register: https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/queerfeministgeeks

Subscription after endorsement by others on the list:

Fembot: is a network of scholars and students who focus on gender, media & technology. To register: https://lists.uoregon.edu/mailman/listinfo/fembot

Femmehack: is a list created to organise a Global Feminist Hackathon that took place past 23th of May 2015 in loving memory of Sabeen Mahmud, a Woman Human Right Defender shot to death in Pakistan: https://f3mhack.org

TransHackFeminist: is a list that was created after the first THF convergence in 2014 where intersectional feminists, queer and trans* people of all genders met to better understand, use and ultimately develop free and liberating technologies for social dissent. It gathers members from all the over the world and uses Spanish and English to communicate: http://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/files/2015/01/THF_report_Eng.pdf

Closed mailing lists:

Gender and Technology Institute Participants: The GTI list is a closed list of people who participated in the Gender and Technology Institute that took place past December 2014, inasmuch as it is opened to people trained by Tactical Technology Collective to privacy and digital security from a gender perspective.

Ada camp: is a closed list that is dedicated to speaking about issues related to women in open source. It is composed of the people who participated in Ada Camp: https://adacamp.org/

Chat with IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a chat service which can be hosted on different servers and accessed through different user clients. It provides the ability to set up channels or chatrooms which allow many people to contribute to a discussion in real time. IRC also gives you the option to encrypt your communication. You can’t embed video, audio or pictures, but you can link to them.

While IRC can be a great tool for facilitating collaboration, there are things to bear in mind if you decide to use it. First, IRC can take a little time to get used to, depending on the skills in your group. Second, developing relationships across a purely text-based channel such as IRC can be challenging. Writing is not easy for everyone; and some in the group might not be using their mother tongue.

Accessing IRC through your browser: There are several ways to chat through an IRC network. The easiest way to start out is to access an IRC network directly through your browser, such as one from Indymedia (https://irc.indymedia.nl/) or Freenode (https://webchat.freenode.net/). You can get set up immediately by creating a nickname and a channel, which you can then give to your colleagues to connect with you.

Accessing IRC through a chat client: Connecting to an IRC network through your browser is, however, not the most secure option out there. If you are a more advanced user, or if you have already tested out IRC out and think it will work for your group, it can be better to access your chosen IRC network from a chat client.

There are a few different chat clients which you can choose from, including Jitsi and Pidgin. You can read more about these clients and how to use them on Tactical Tech's Security in-a-Box: Jitsi (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/jitsi/windows) ; Pidgin (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/pidgin/windows).

How to use a network: Advice and instructions on using an IRC network can be found on Freenode (https://freenode.net/using_the_network.shtml), Autistici (https://www.autistici.org/en/stuff/man_irc), and Indymedia (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Sysadmin/IrcHowTo). The last two also allow us to anonymise our connections through Tor.

Facilitating a meeting: Once you start an IRC meeting, it is useful to appoint a facilitator to keep track of time. This person might also be in charge of making sure the discussion sticks to the topics at hand. In order to create a welcoming environment and a safe space, acknowledging and valuing the voice of everyone is key on IRC. When you start a conversation, take time to greet people - in particular newcomers. When facilitating a conversation:

  • Set a time limit and stick to it because IRC meetings can be very tiring.
  • You might decide that people should be given turns to speak in order to ensure that everyone has space to express themselves. You can simply assign turns in alphabetical order of nicknames (or any order you want to give) for each of the points addressed. This can help structure the conversation and stop one person or a small group of people dominating the conversation.
  • IRC can go very fast, particularly if there are many people involved in the discussion. Getting everyone to slow down and read all the inputs can decrease frustration.
  • It can be useful to end your input with “over” or "done", so everyone knows when you have stopped speaking.

Whatever the facilitation methods you choose, communicate them explicitly to all the participants beforehand, for example in the email where you invite people to join the meeting.

Forums, Wikis and Etherpads

Chat services and mailing lists can be extremely useful, but they will only take you so far. When it comes to managing collaboration between people living in different places, you will probably find yourself looking for something with more functionality.

Internet forums: One of the oldest tools used for public discussions online are internet forums, where discussions can be hosted over time and are at least temporarily archived. What really distinguishes a forum from a mailing list or IRC chat is that it has a tree-like structure and can contain a number of sub discussions, each with a different topic.

Wikis: If you are looking for a tool to collaboratively write a text with many sections, or even to create the initial structure and content for a website, a wiki can be a useful tool. A wiki is a web application that allows for hierarchical structuring of content and tracks the edits and additions of the users, easily allowing you to revert changes, and move and delete content.

Both forums and wikis need to be hosted on a server, so you'll need to know how to set one up and manage it.

Etherpads: For collaborating in real-time on documents, Etherpads are a great resource. They are also a good alternative to corporate services like Google Docs, and are far more effective for co-editing text than, for example, sending mails back and forth. The main thing you need to check for in an etherpad is that it is hosted with an encrypted connection (via SSL). A list of such etherpads can be found here: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/wiki/Sites-that-run-Etherpad-Lite.

  • To create a new etherpad (ie, a new document that you are going to collaborate on), you need to decide on the name of the URL. Because each pad is open to anyone who has the URL, you should give each pad a long and inventive name, so that it can't be easily guessed. For example: https://pad.riseup.net/p/feminists is not secure. A more complicated URL such as https://pad.riseup.net/p/FeministsRockAndTheyWillBeDoingGreatThingsToghether is much more secure. Once the etherpad has been created you can send the URL to your friends and colleagues to start collaborating on a document.
  • If you are worried about your etherpad being found by others, you can also consider a password-protected pad. For more on this, see: https://www.protectedtext.com/
  • Etherpads allow you be anonymous, use a pseudonym or use your real name. There is a colour-based system that differentiates the contributions of each participants on the Etherpad, so you can always see who is contributing what.

Safe spaces in the public sphere

There are many spaces which will feel inherently unsafe either because they explicitly or implicitly exclude women and trans* people, or because they harbour bigots. There are a number of ways to counter the vulnerability and intimidation we might feel online. One is through caring for our personal and collective safety, through using security -and privacy- enabling tools and techniques and managing safely our online identities. Another is shaping with others methods to reclaim and stay safe in the public sphere. Organising collective actions can be a powerful act of resistance, bringing attention and visibility to the situation and in turn helping to bring about transformation.

Feminist counterspeech - creating counter-narratives online, or "talking back" - is one strategy for making sexism visible and for responding to online attacks and harassment. It can be an effective tactic to create a sense of belonging and make visible the effectiveness of collective feminist actions online. There are many examples of feminist counterspeech in action - many of which you have probably seen and appreciated. The Everyday Sexism Project (https://twitter.com/everydaysexism), for example, catalogues instances of sexism experienced by women on a day-to-day basis; or Byefelipe (https://instagram.com/byefelipe/), the Instagram account which reposts abuse my men who turn hostile when rejected. Feminist counterspeech can also include tactics to enable the inclusion and visibility of women's contributions to knowledge platforms such as Wikipedia.

Storming Wikipedia

There have been many studies that have criticised the way in which knowledge is produced on Wikipedia. A 2010 survey (https://web.archive.org/web/20100414165445/http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf) conducted by the United Nations University found that only 13% of Wikipedia contributors identified as female. The fact that Wikipedia’s contributors are mostly men in their twenties and thirties, and disproportionately western, are important factors that influence content.

Women who have played a significant role in history are also often missing from Wikipedia, and feminist, queer and trans* content is often challenged.

The lack of gender and cultural diversity in the content on Wikipedia demands creative responses. Because of this partnerships, research, community organizing, socio-cultural and technical interventions should all be considered.

Storming Wikipedia or organising Edit-a-thons are two possible interventions. These enable participants to learn collectively how to edit and change content to better reflect their communities and histories. Learning how to edit Wikipedia can seem daunting, so collectively editing and creating pages is a great way to confront fears; to Do-It-With-Others (DIWO) in a safe space. Besides you will learn about the Wikipedia community values and principles and how such a large community-driven effort has, through the development of bottom-up social rules, become the most important encyclopedia in the world. All together, Wikipedia remains an important space worth investigating and reclaiming!

Organising a wikistorming involves gathering a group of friends (and friends of friends) who want to learn or already know how to edit Wikipedia, and identify a safe space in which to hold the event. It can be held in someone’s home, in a community centre, at an art centre or at a community organisation. Wikistorming can (and should) of course be organised for any day, but Ada Lovelace Day in mid-October and International Women's Day on March 8 are two specific days on which such gatherings often happen. A wikistorming can last for half to a whole day. Before the wikistorming or as part of it, decide which Wikipedia entries you want create or which existing page you want to edit. Be realistic in your goals and don't put too many edits on your agenda! To edit Wikipedia carefully takes time.

Relevant links:

We Can Edit.jpg

Dealing with Trolls

Women and trans* persons who begin to grow a following and have influence online might experience what Kathy Siera describes as a “koolaid point” (http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point/). This is a point at which a certain group of people decide that you have too much influence, and make it their mission to silence you or discredit you. This is commonly referred to as 'trolling' - although it is more often than not targeted, discriminatory in nature and hate-based. A troll's tactics can include anything from sending constant derogatory and belittling messages, to editing and distributing images, and even making threats.

Block or engage?

There are two key ways you can deal with trolls. One is to block them and then report them to the platform you are using. The other is to engage with them. The decision on which way to go depends on what you want to achieve.

Blocking trolls can sometimes be effective, and can allow you to continue with your work unimpeded. Projects like Block Together (https://blocktogether.org/) and Block Bot (http://www.theblockbot.com/sign_up) were developed to help people who are harassed share their blocklists with each other.

When trolls are really committed to harassing you, however, blocking doesn't really help. A determined troll can create numerous different profiles (called “sock puppet accounts”) to continue the harassment, and this means your blocking has to keep up with their new account generation. This quickly becomes very tedious.

Historically, platforms like Twitter and Facebook have not handled reports of intimidation and violence very well. However, this is beginning to change, as they recognise the severity of problem and see how it deters people with important voices from using their services.

You might consider the alternative - engaging the trolls who are harassing you. One way to do this is to try and enter into rational arguments with them and interrogate their views. Another way is to try to shame them, or to use humour to deflate their egos. Effective engagement with trolls can actually help to generate debate and public interest around the act of harassment, and can involve others online in discussions about safe spaces, violence, sexism and online behaviour. It can also be a source of empowerment for the subjects of trolling: seeing others laugh at your harasser can be very uplifting.

Swarming can be another way to drown out the voices of the harassers. This can be done in retro style by creating communities of support with your allies in social media spaces where you are likely to encounter harassment. When someone is being targeted, others can quickly be alerted and bombard the harasser with messages. The content of that message is up to you: it could be scolding, educational, or loving. Another option is: instead of directing messages towards the harasser, the swarm can fill the victim's content stream with lots of new content in order to quickly make the negative, violent content disappear into online history.

If you want to engage with trolls, or try “swarming”, you might prefer to stay anonymous to avoid having your real identity trolled. Setting up a network of second accounts to do your troll-response work can be a good idea for your organisation or your community of friends. It might be easier too, psychologically, to say some of the things you want to trolls, than you would if the comments were linked to your main identity. And it is more performative: you can create any kind of identity you want and style it with an avatar, a funny name, a character etc.

However, while battling the trolls in the old-fashioned human way can be fun and eye-opening, it can also be a time waster. Another option to consider is automation using bots. For this you need to do some coding, or you can work with freely available code that someone has already uploaded on a software repository such as Github.

Bots against trolls

A bot is a piece of software that runs an automated task over the internet, performing tasks much faster than we can.

There are many different types of bots. There's the spambot, for example, which harvests email addresses and contact information; and there are also the 1800 approved bots on the English Wikipedia, which help to semi-automate the editing of Wikipedia pages. Bots can post content, gather information and click on things. Twitter is also filled with bots which use algorithms to harvest information and tweet. Many of these are humorous and random - for example @twoheadlines, which grabs random news headlines and combines them to create funny combinations.

A bot can be programmed to document trolls' activities, or talk to them, so that you don't have to. The possibilities outlined below apply mainly to Twitter; however some of these ideas can be used across other platforms as well.

The data-gathering bot: quietly scans Twitter and gathers up tweets, usernames and any other available information you have programmed it to collect. It places this information in a file for you. This bot can be useful for understanding what kind of content is out there, and for doing a first-stage analysis of abuse. Foxxydoxing is such an example; it is intended to help you analyse who your harassers are (https://github.com/DeepLab/FoxyDoxxing).

The simple talking bot: if you follow the #gamergate hashtag on Twitter, you will see a bot called @everyethics which tweets different humorous reasons for the #gamergate trolling, ridiculing the claim that the major trolling which has been called "Gamergate" was not about attacking women in gaming but about “ethics in game journalism”. While this bot could be seen as spam, it was actually clearly a strategy to undermine and make fun of the trolls.

The retweet bot: is programmed to scan Twitter for a list (created by you) of specific words, phrases or hashtags, and to retweet those. This would be a strategy for documenting and publicising Twitter abuse. Here's an example of such a bot you can download and install yourself (https://lilithlela.cyberguerrilla.org/?p=17418).

The autotweet bot: is similar to the retweet bot except that every time it finds a tweet with one of the words, phrases or hashtags you have programmed it to look for, it will tweet a pre-written tweet directed at that user. These bots get shut down much faster now, as was shown by @fembot, which was programmed to automatically respond to racist and sexist tweets. @fembot was blocked after only 75 tweets.

The data-gathering bot in combination with the talking bot: in this example the data-gathering bot finds the users according to your search terms, and compiles them for you to read over, check for accuracy and remove any false positives. Alongside the data-gathering bot, you can have a talking bot or a team of talking bots which can tweet whatever you want to those users. The campaign Zero Trollerance (https://zerotrollerance.guru) used this method, employing 160 talking bots which enrolled 3000 identified trolls in a self-help program and then sent them humorous motivational messages and video clips over a period of one week.

If you are considering creating bots to work for you to fight online bigotry and harassment, there are some things you need to watch out for. Twitter is not against bots and if you just want to create a bot that scans information from Twitter for you to analyse, or a bot that just tweets out to no one in particular, you will likely not encounter any problems. However if you want to tweet @ other Twitter users, you have to take into account Twitter's policy against spam.

Also keep in mind that language is slippery and if you want to tackle violence against women and trans* persons online, you will have to be very careful about what kind of language you search for. For example, every time someone uses the word “bitch” on Twitter to intimidate or harass a someone, there are probably at least five other people using it to tell their friend how much they love them or talk about the latest celebrity affair. The best way to figure out which language is being used for harm is to crowdsource it from people who have been harassed and then do a number of tests, pulling tweets from Twitter and then analysing the results yourself.

Read more of this section, including how to set up Twitter accounts to be bots for you:

Relevant links:

Supporting others

It can feel daunting to know what to do when you see someone experiencing online violence, and sometimes in trying to help you can inadvertently worsen the situation. Knowing how to act in the best possible way is our individual and collective responsibility in helping to create a safe space online for everyone. If you are someone who wants to support a disadvantaged group but is not part of that group (men are allies when it comes to women's rights issues), it's important to speak out and say “NO”, in a public space, to online harassment and violence. Otherwise, the culture of impunity to online harassment will continue. Now when your friends or allies are being harassed and/or attacked online, there are some best practices you can follow:

Offer quick support: When someone is being attacked or harassed, try to be quick in bringing in support. If you are close to the person under attack, offer immediate assistance. Bear in mind that this person might feel overwhelmed and might not have a clear set of instructions in mind about how to best supported. Remain quiet, attentive and patient and try to not create any extra pressure or stress. In the event of doxing - where confidential info has been released on the internet about that person - you might want to offer a safe space (a home) if the person does not feel safe in their own home. You can also offer to moderate your friend's Twitter feed or blog comments to allow her/them to take a break from it.

Speak out: If you do not know the person well, you can at least speak out against what is happening. It's not enough to simply send a private email or a tweet to the person who is under attack telling them that you think this kind of behaviour is unacceptable (sometimes, if the person under attack is being flooded with tweets and mails, it's even better not to write at all). Instead, speak out about it in your networks and raise your voice against such behaviour. You can, for instance, commend publicly the work that the person under attack has been doing. Don't be silent, especially if you are a colleague or a team-mate. Make your voice resonate online - particularly if you are a man! Here is a great exemple of Jay Smooth calling On Men To Challenge Anti-Feminist Internet Trolls (https://vimeo.com/44117178)

Organise collectively: If you want to have more impact, think about crafting a "collective action" as those are often more effective than individual actions. Gather a group of friends, and friends of friends, for a Twitter storming, for instance. This will show to the person under attack that you and others care and that such acts are not OK.

Write a solidarity statement: If you are part of an organisation or network, you can write a solidarity statement that explicitly says you condemn online gender-based violence and harassment. Having feminists review the statement of solidarity is a best practice. If it's a person from your organisation who has been under attack, make sure she/they read the solidarity statement before it is released. You can also prepare an organisational policy in advance on what to do if someone is under attack. If you have a policy and specific steps to follow when such a situation occurs, chances are you will do less harm and be more effective in your response. see for instance Tor Solidarity against online harassment (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/solidarity-against-online-harassment).

Talk to the media: Depending on the nature and context of the situation, you might want to speak out through the media and highlight the gendered and sexist nature of online attacks. It's always best practice to consult the persons targeted before speaking to the mainstream media. If you do not know the person personally, go through the web of trust - your trusted online network. Thinking about the harm and added stress that the person can go through if they are made visible in the mainstream media is something that you should carefully assess. Consider especially that this is not about you: this is about fighting sexism online and supporting others!

Resources for support:

  • Foxxydoxing: (http://foxydoxxing.com/) scripts to help you analyze the connections between your attackers on Twitter and a wonderful graphic story to explain how it works.
  • Crash override network: (http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com/) a support network and assistance group for victims and targets of unique forms of online harassment, composed entirely of experienced survivors. They work preventatively and reactively with survivors during episodes of harassment to keep them safe and provide them with the means to reduce harm and rebuild, as well as disempower their harassers.
  • The Online Abuse Prevention Initiative (OAPI): is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing and mitigating online abuse through the study and analysis of abuse patterns, the creation of anti-harassment tools and resources and collaboration with key tech companies seeking to better support their communities. It works in collaboration with the Crash Overide network (http://onlineabuseprevention.org/)
  • Zero Trollerance: (https://zerotrollerance.guru) a humorous, video-based self-help program for sexist Twitter trolls. You can send your Twitter trolls links to individual videos or to the main website zerotrollerance.guru. You can also contact @ztrollerance on Twitter to do it for you.
  • Trollbusters: (http://www.troll-busters.com/) still in development, this tool plans to counteract Twitter abuse by flooding your timelines with love messages.

Documenting violence

Besides directly supporting and showing solidarity with people subjected to violence, you can also populate and contribute to the documentation of instances of online violence and harassment. Those initiatives are key in order to show the extent of the problem and to make visible some of the structural aspects of violence in societies.

Resources for documentation:

  • GenderIT.org: emerged from APC's Women’s Rights Programme’s advocacy work in information and communications technologies. The need to have examples of national policy, gender-sensitive language, tools for lobbying, and an understanding of the impact of poor or positive policy all within easy access has been expressed by ICT advocates and policy makers alike (http://www.genderit.org/).
  • Breaking the circle is an international campaign to raise awareness on the fact that gender violence is a problem that concerns both men and women, which focus on the role of men and include them as agents of change. They have developed a series of tools and information that will help us spread the message and raise awareness (http://en.breakingthecircle.org/).
  • Crowdmaps in Indiaː After the Delhi Gang Rape there was a lot of interest in how tech could be used to address the issue of sexual violence against women in offline spaces. These initiatives emerged from spaces where tech meets gender in order to see how tech can be used to tackle gender based violence gender problems. See for instance Harassmap in Bombay (www.akshara.crowdmap.com ) and the Safecity -Pin the creep (www.safecity.in) and the 'Safetipin' app for safely auditing public spaces.
  • Macholandː This french platform wants to voice actions, embedded in the public, media and political speech, driven by citizens who refuse to see sexism spread massively without reacting. Each user can participate and propose an action that pin with humor brands, organizations and public figures (http://macholand.fr/)
  • Feminist Frequencyː This project includes the video series Tropes vs. Women, created by Anita Sarkeesian with Bitch magazine to examine common tropes in depictions of women in film, television and video games, with a particular focus on science fiction. Videos produced in this series include “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl”, “Women in Refrigerators” and “The Smurfette Principle” (http://feministfrequency.com/)

Safe spaces offline

Many of the principles of creating and maintaining safe spaces online can also be applied offline. As noted in the introduction of this chapter, safe spaces can either be temporary and take place during a one time event or training or can also become permanent spaces where collectives or organisations embed the basic principles of safety, support, respect and inclusiveness in their own space management.

In the case of security and privacy training, you also need to consider how participants can best learn skills to protect themselves when the topics themselves can be frightening or overwhelming. The environment also has to be suited to the participants share stories about threats they have been facing online and offline. Those stories can be very traumatic and personal and should be handled carefully, but at the same time they are a very important part of the process of developing security and privacy strategies.

The difficulties in defining what a "safe space" should look like are inherent in the fact that you are bringing a diversity of people together, who might be considered to be part of the same community but who all have different histories, contexts and needs. What one person might find politically, socially or personally threatening might mean very little to another. And everyone will of course also come with different experiences and levels of knowledge and skills with regard to technology.

It is important to be aware that, in struggling to perfect a safe space, one always runs the risk of creating instead yet another form of social control and pressure to conform to a particular image of what, for example, a woman or trans* person is or should be.

Boundaries

When trying to create a safe space, you might encounter the issue of who is included and who is excluded from it. It can very divisive, as it will often touch on people's strongly held sense of their political, personal, sexual and social identities. Issues of sexual orientation and gender identity will likely come up. Some will prefer a women and trans* only environment, some will feel that this opens up an opportunity for external attacks on the whole project by adversarial forces, while some will feel that cis-men friends and colleagues are being unfairly excluded, and feel resentful. If you are having a debate about this, some things to consider are:

  • Is there an agreed framework and rules of engagement? How do we define "woman" and "trans*"? How do we define "safe"?
  • Who do we want to include, influence or support? Specifically women and trans* persons, or also potential allies?
  • How important versus how contentious? Is it worth alienating some people from the group? How can we frame the debate to avoid alienating people who don't agree with the decision?
  • How will the decision affect the actual experience of people within the space?
  • Do we have all the skills we need to deliver this project among our networks, or will we need specific additional skills? Where will we get them?
  • How will the space be organised to promote equal participation, especially if cis-men are included?

It's important to remember that building offline spaces is resource- and labour-intensive, and often many compromises have to be made. It may be a good idea to try to identify as early as possible which values are shared, important, and relevant to the event, so that you can constantly remember to prioritise those and de-prioritise less important or potentially divisive issues.

Building offline spaces is easiest and most successful when you're clear about what you're trying to do and how you plan to go about it. The second thing which must be considered is exactly what the event is intended to achieve. For example:

  • Skills: How can we learn to do xyz?
  • Advocacy: How do we change the culture of tech sectors to be more amenable for women and trans* persons, and/or let the world know that they are great at tech?
  • Support, networking and boundary-crossing: What does it mean to be a woman or trans* person in tech? How can women from different places or sectors come together to spark off new ideas and practices? How can we support each other as women and trans* persons in tech?

Different aims will inform different safe space policies. For instance, it's difficult advocating for change in the male-dominated tech sector if you haven't invited cis-men to hear what you want to say - but you might prefer to discuss *how* to do this in a women and trans*-only environment first. If, on the other hand, you are advocating for engagement with technology to women and trans* persons and mainly want free, honest and mutually supportive discussions or skills-sharing, then in this case, a women and trans* only environment suggests itself.

With skills workshops, there is research to suggest that women and trans* persons learn tech skills best with each other, so these workshops have a very clear and communicable reason for being exclusive. Another possibility is to run an event twice, once for women and trans* participants and once for open participation. This can have the positive side-effect of enabling others to experience a safe space methodology and thereby change their own practices in the spaces they organise, but it will be clearly more time consuming.

Choosing a format that fits

Once you have settled the basic questions on what your event is for and who you want to invite, it's time to think about the format of your event. Deciding which format to use can be helped by your answers to some key questions:

  • What are you trying to do? Which format will support this activity best?
  • What are the participants' needs, existing skills, experience and preferences?
  • What physical spaces are available, what will they allow you to do, and what resources do you have?
  • What are your human and organisational resources - how much can you take on?

There are many different ways of organising events. Some of the most popular in FLOSS and tech-related communities are:

  • Un-Conference: helps people to make connections, share knowledge, collaborate and inspire each other. To take part, participants are encouraged to give a presentation, create a discussion, or even chair a debate (http://lanyrd.com/blog/2012/unconference-howto/ ; http://openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/). This format can be relatively egalitarian and relatively easy to organise (no messing about with programmes, scheduling and advanced prep) but you should watch out for the tyranny of structurelessness. Thy can also be extremely intimidating and therefore exclusionary towards less experienced or skilled participants; and can be stressful if you need to organise tech or other resources for specific activities in advance.
  • Workshop: transferring skills or knowledge in an interactive session. There are many possible workshop methodologies. Selecting a workshop format is very much about being clear about what you want to achieve. Workshops can be a good format for building skills or for maker and design activities. For instance in Pakistan Hamara Internet is a campaign by Digital Rights Foundation that seeks to raise awareness about violence against women online through various workshops. It literally means ‘Our Internet’ in English and works to impart digital security tips and training to women and bridge the gender digital divide in Pakistan (http://hamarainternet.org/).
  • Hackathon: With its general motto "programming till someone drops from exhaustion", hack events can mix different groups - like NGOs with hackers - to come up with new approaches to building technology for that group. For instance IGNITE (Women Fueling Science and Technology from the Global Fund for Women International) organised a global Hackathon called #hackgirlsrights. This 24-hour, multi-country coding event, targeted girl coders which collaborate to develop a website or application that address specific challenge facing girls and young women (http://ignite.globalfundforwomen.org/gallery/ignite-international-girls-hackathon). On the past 23th of April 2015, another global feminist hackaton called femhack was organised around the world in loving memory of Woman Human Rights Defender Sabeen Mahmud (https://f3mhack.org). You can read more about how to run a hackathon here: (http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/11/23/hackathons-in-droves-how-is-a-hackathon-organised/)
  • Sprint: A sprint is a gathering of people involved in a specific project to further the focused development of some aspect of the project, such as working on sections of code, writing manuals or books, etc. These are effective at getting a lot done quickly for code and manuals (less so for other forms of writing), but can be exhausting and emotionally demanding - make sure you keep food and drink coming! To read more about sprints, visit wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(software_development) and Flossmanuals: (http://www.flossmanuals.org/service/booksprints). To note for instance that this manual was edited during an editorial sprintǃ
  • Seminar: A seminar brings together a small group for recurring meetings which focus on a particular subject. In a seminar, everyone actively participates, or offers information or training on specific topics. On the one hand, this kind of structured activity supports people with less experience or confidence; planning for tech/resource support is fairly straightforward; and people know what to expect. On the other hand, the event can be experienced as overly structured and lacking spontaneity for more experienced participants; more 'top-down'; and requires more organisational effort in advance. Check out for instance The documentation of the Feminist Server Summit which consisted in a feminist review of mesh- cloud- autonomous- and D.I.Y. servers (http://vj14.constantvzw.org/r/about).

More stable kinds of safe spaces for experimenting and learning technology include:

  • Hacklab, hackerspace or makerspaceː These are community spaces with hardware and/or tools - great for people to "get their hands dirty" and play around with anything - from taking computers apart to installing Linux to making music with bananas or building a radio out of razorblades and wire. Read more about hacklabs and hackerspaces here: "Hacklabs and Hackerspaces: Shared Machine Workshops":(http://www.coredem.info/IMG/pdf/pass11_an-2.pdf). You can also visit the following portalsː (http://makerspace.com/) (http://hackerspaces.org/)
  • Feminist hackerspace: Those vary in shape, form, and size. What often unites them is a set of boundaries that are decided on collectively (who can be a member, who can be a guest, what are the policies, etc.) and an explicit belief in feminist principles. Feminist hackerspaces provide a place to work on individual and collective projects in a supportive environment. To know more about feminist hackerspaces you might want to visit the website Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna (http://www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/), The Mothership Hackermoms in Berkeley (http://mothership.hackermoms.org/), Double Union in San Francisco (https://www.doubleunion.org/) and FemHack in Montreal (http://foufem.wiki.orangeseeds.org/).

For sharing skills, setting up a feminist hackerspace, or choosing an unconference, workshop or seminar format makes a lot of sense. For advocacy and networking events, the choice is not so obvious. Advocacy events can be some of the most challenging as it's easy to spend the entire day "re-inventing the wheel" with people who are new to the questions. If you have participants from diverse backgrounds in your advocacy event, it could be best to go with a more structured format. Unconferences and hackathons work best with activists or experienced practitioners who are used to a high level of self-determination, and who have a shared understanding of the implicit rules and structures of the space. Having said that, it can work well to try more open formats anyway, but be prepared for some skilled facilitating to make it a safe and fun space for both experienced and less experienced participants. Sometimes a mixed approach is what's needed - and some experimentation!

Fixing gender gap in tech

In order to get some inspiration we list below a selection of initiatives specially oriented at getting more women in ICT and technological related fields.

  • Asikana Network (Zambia)ː is a group of females aiming to empower women in ICT related fields by changing mindsets and eliminating negative stereotypes attached to girls and women in ICT (http://asikananetwork.org/).
  • Akirachix (Kenya)ː is an african wide network of women in technology to make tech and to inspire and mentor other women to be technologists (akirachix.com).
  • Donestech (Spain)ː is a cyberfeminist and activist research group which develops also workshops and audiovisual productions in relation to gender and ICT access, uses of and desires. Lelacoders project is about studying and making visible the presence of women in the development of computer sciences, free software and hacker cultures (www.donestech.net) (https://n-1.cc/g/donestech+lelacoders).
  • Feminist Approach to Technology (India)ː mission is to empower women by enhancing women’s awareness, interest and participation in technology (http://fat-net.org/).
  • Flossie (UK)ː runs a conference and also skills workshops and it is intended to combine advocacy, boundary-crossing, support and skills-sharing bringing together women involved in digital arts with coders, artists, and makers (http://www.flossie.org/).
  • Speakerinnenn (Germany)ː aim is to increase the visibility of women in the field of public speaking. With the help of our list it will be easier for organisers to find female experts to speak at their events (http://speakerinnen.org/).
  • The Ada initiative (Global)ː organises AdaCamp, a series of conferences dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture: open source software, Wikipedia and other wiki-related projects, open knowledge and education, open government and open data, open hardware and appropriate technology (https://adacamp.org/).

Codes of conduct

It's important, especially in mixed environments, to think about what's acceptable conduct in the space and what isn't. In order for this to have any practical effect, it's also important to think about what you'll do if individuals breach this - or when things go wrong generally. You can find plenty of information and example policies on the Geek Feminism Conference anti-harassment/Adoption page (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Adoption)

Make sure your participants understand the policy and how it relates to their own conduct. It can be useful to make time in your schedule at the beginning of the event to share your policy, and reach consensus with the group on how to maintain a safe space over the days of the event.

Your code of conduct should be about preventing aggressive behaviour and not about trying to police how people identify, communicate or present themselves. It's also worth remembering that people who are struggling in a culturally unfamiliar environment can become confrontational more easily than they usually would. There may be many reasons why a participant might be struggling to communicate positively at any given moment. It's key to remain calm and to provide a non-judgmental space for the expression of emotions like anger or frustration. Because of this, a code of conduct should also include some people that will be assigned to receive feedback if any problem takes place. They should be good facilitators or moderators and be calm and patient. We are different, let's celebrate it, even when it's difficult to do!

Last not least, your code of conduct should include an agreement about how participants will respect other participants' right to privacy. Some general guidelines could include the following:

  • Don't take or circulate sound, video or photos without permission. If anyone present faces significant external risk then don't take photos at all unless participants have given express permission and an opportunity to cover their identity.
  • If you wish to record the event, prepare formal consent forms telling people exactly what audio-visual records are being made and how they will be stored, used, licensed and ask for clear consent with a signature.
  • Don't share details of anyone's participation, speech or actions on social media without their express permission.

How safe is the space?

As a check-list, here are some questions that can help you assess whether a space is safe or not.

  • Background: What is the history of the space? Who started it and why? How many women and trans* persons have been involved?
  • Participation: Who has stopped participating in the space since it was founded, and why? Is it mostly women who have left?
  • Policies: Does the space have policies? If so, what kind? Are the policies regularly put in practice? Ask members in the space, particularly women.
  • New people: How does the space welcome newcomers? The first time you went to the space, did you get a tour? Did people say hello? Were the people in the space friendly?
  • Regular assemblies: Are there regular meetings (assemblies) that offer possibilities to raise concerns, to suggest collective projects, to suggest the organisation of workshops, to discuss the space (its cleanliness, etc.), to present yourself, etc.?
  • Language: Is the language and vocabulary used on the website and in the space explicitly feminist? Read the website carefully, or go and see for yourself what the space looks like.
  • Trust: Do you know people who you trust in the space or do you know friends of friends? The web of trust can be very useful here.
  • Access: Who can go into the space and under which conditions? This should be made explicit on the website, otherwise ask.
  • Accessibility: Is the space itself easily accessible? In which part of town is it located? Are there bathrooms? What are the opening hours? Who has access to the keys of the space?
  • Cost: How much does it cost to become a member? Is there a sliding scale policy?

No space is perfect; a safe space should always, however, at least provide an environment and a set of boundaries in which to meet up, talk, and address and raise difficult issues. If you feel the space has potential and you want to get involved, don't be shy!

Relevant links:

* Integrated Security Manual: (http://www.integratedsecuritymanual.org/) a resource for planning, convening, and hosting your workshop which prioritize your participants' emotional and physical well-being.

* Level Up: (https://www.level-up.cc/resources-for-trainers) resources for digital security trainers and organisers of these trainings too.