Revision as of 21:24, 13 May 2015

A) Building Online safe space for you and your collectives/organizations (net-ettiquete, moderation, shaping a policy for an online community, do and dont's mailing lists and other collective working environments)

B) Building safe spaces in “hostile” environments (do and don'ts supporting people subject to online violence, storming wikipedia and organising edit a thons, installing bots against trolls, feminist counterspeech – swarming together)

C) Building safe spaces off line (code of conducts for camps and conferences, getting more women in developing technologies – coding – making – biolabs, Building your feminist hackerspace, tech to identify/rate not/safe spaces)

Safe Spaces as Feminist Practices

Safe spaces have been used over and over by groups and individuals marginalized in societies and communities. Safe spaces have been a way to care for one-self and for a collective, to design and craft strategies and tactics of resistance and to create an oasis of peace in what sometimes can be a tiring struggle for feminist resistance. Safe spaces have taken different meanings and bear different names depending on a variety of factors be it geographical, temporal, spatial, cultural and social, among others. The British author Virginia Woolf's talked about a Room of One’s Own, a term often used by feminists to describe safe spaces. Cyberfeminist scholars and activists have early on recognized the internet as a whole as a perfect space for women. In her book Zeroes + ones: digital women + the new technoculture , Sady Plant proposes that cyberspace has a feminist essence, and is therefore a ‘natural’ space for women to inhabit. Rosi Braidotti in her book Nomadic Subject focuses on the fluidity and mobility aspects of online spaces suggesting that the collective bonds created by feminists on the internet is a distinctive practice and one of their priorities.

What is the Relationship between Offline and Online?

The relationship between the online and offline worlds were addressed early on by cyberfeminist scholars and activists. Donna Haraway in her Cyborg Manifesto questioned binaries such as women/men and human/machines. This was an important step in framing the internet as a force that shifts gender regimes of power and help feminists escape from embodiment. The issue of escaping gender, race or other intersectional forms of oppression has since then been further nuanced highlighting different experiences online particularly with the targeting of outspoken feminists and women’s rights defenders, and it’s repercussion offline. This has opened the door for a safe space framework that foster empowering experiences online.

While focusing on intersectional related experiences online, it is also crucial to remind ourselves of the materiality of cyberspace. Connecting the dots between the seemingly immaterial digital age and its material impact on the social, the labor, the environment, among others, is fundamental from a feminist perspective. We have to bear in mind that cyberspace is related to the intense extraction of resources such as rare minerals and metals, such as coltan, gold, copper, etc. to build our digital devices and the exploitative nature of labor, mostly females in electronics factories and the profound gender and race inequality in the Information Economy.

What are Safe Spaces?

A common understanding of safe spaces are that they share common values, whether explicit, through a community agreement, or implicit through the sharing of values and enable members of a group to flourish, empower themselves and create community. The concept of safe spaces as embodied in second wave feminism in the western world was “explicitly committed to safety for individuals or communities that are targets of oppression” (Newman 2011, 138)1. Safe spaces are known to have provided a safe speaking and awareness raising environment for women involved in the women's liberation movement in the 60s and 70s in many countries where women could discuss about their experience in a patriarchal environment. In this sense, safe space denotes the possibility to speak and act freely, generate strategies of resistance and build community, among others. Safe space are also about pushing boundaries and confronting certain difficult issues among a group of people such as who can be part of a women's only group? Who can be defined as a woman? As these are important questions to be addressed, they need reflection, trust, the understanding of where our own assumptions come from and therefore safe space are the perfect venue for this.

Safe Space strategies have been used recently during the USA Occupy movements where many women, queer and trans did not feel safe to camp in the squares and parks. Some resorted to women-only tents, or women of color-only affinity groups while others mostly transwomen, opted for an online presence has putting their bodies on the line were deemed too dangerous. In Tahrir Square in Egypt, Operation Anti Sexual Harassment (OpAntiSH) was set up to react to a hostile environment and as a way to protect women and/or confront harassers and support survivors of sexual abuse and harassment. In Kenya, the women-only Umoja village was created for women survivors of rape and sexual assaults where they could feel safe and secure, raise their kids, earn a living collectively, heal and reclaim their dignity. The concept of safe space has changed over the years, and has been interpreted differently depending on context, but nonetheless the concept is still central to feminist pedagogy, organizing and liberation. What is the difference between creating Safe Space Online and Offline?

The creation of safe spaces offline has been experimented with for many decades and championed by women's rights defenders, feminist, LGBTQI, anti-colonial movements and people of color movements, but the creation of safe spaces online is somewhat of a newer strategy. The question that emerges is: How can we transfer our knowledge of building safe spaces offline to the online world? This transfer might require a bit of tweaking around and creativity since the modalities under which digital spaces present themselves are relatively different from the offline world. What is certain though is that cyberspace makes global feminism possible in one's offline world as it is linked to the intimate, the immediate, the personal and the collective.

Digital spaces are unique in multiple ways. Many women have reported experiencing the internet as a safe space for resisting gender oppression that they encounter in their every-day life. Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone talks about the internet as Wings of Freedom for Iranian women. Scholar Saskia Sassen argues that the internet allows women to be involved in new forms of contestations, build global community and potentially transform local women’s conditions. While these emancipatory experiences exist, and cannot be undervalued, women can also experience cyberspace in very different ways. Anita Sarkeesian who is behind the Feminist Frequency was in 2012 the target of an online harassment campaign following the launch of her Kickstarter project called Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. She was harassed online and still is because she highlights sexism in video games. This story is not a unique case, it happens over and over.

Inhabiting the web as a feminist and according to the boundaries we want to set for ourselves is not always easy. Therefore, certain strategies and tactics might help in establishing safe spaces. As the web is relational, we should always remind ourselves of the potential impact that our behavior on the internet has on our network: What is the potential consequence of tagging someone on a picture? What does this picture reveals? What is the implication of revealing where you and your friends are or were on social networking sites? Do you need to have consent of your friends prior to putting info on and about them on social networking site or on discussion list? Whose is on this discussion list?

Using safe spaces tactics and strategies is a good way to start inhabiting the space both online and offline according to the boundaries we want to set for ourselves and for our friends. This manual intends to do just that. To provide you with concrete suggestions on how to create safe spaces online and offline. It is divided in three core parts. First, a set of tools will be highlighted to move forward with starting to build safe spaces for you and your collectives/organizations through online communication such as mailing list, pads, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), etc. Second, it will focus on how to build safe spaces in “hostile” environments such as howto organize Wikipedia storming and edit-a-thons, how to install bots against trolls, how to do feminist counter-speech and finally, how to build safe spaces off line such as through women-only/feminist-only space to learn and Do-it-Together.

A) Building Online Safe Space for you and your collectives/organizations

We often assume that online communities such as the ones we take part in through social media, email discussion lists, phones and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels are inherently democratic, horizontal, participatory and relatively safe. It is true that the affordances of those technological tools may no doubt foster participation, a sense of emancipation and reach that was unimaginable two decades ago, but to be able to really harness the power of these tools and create a safe space for us and our collectives a few steps are recommended. We start with the premise that we should carefully think about the type of spaces we want and the type of behaviors we aim at fostering online and offline and make those visible and explicit.

As in the offline world, we need to remind ourselves that online spaces and online communities often reproduce hierarchies, privileges and power relations that exist in society and therefore thinking through ways to mitigate and limit these downsides to get the best out of our spaces is important. This is about caring for ourselves and for the communities we are part of. Making explicit and visible these issues is about agency, social justice and feminism, and it will help better shape the spaces we care about, we organize in and in which we grow.

What is Netiquette?

First, we need to think about the basics: netiquette. Netiquette is a concept that emerged in the 90s with the increase in communication technologies through the Internet. It is a portmanteau of network and etiquette. With the realization that the internet has brought us a “cultural web” that cut across all sort of boundaries be it legal, geographical, cultural, social, etc. there was an attempt to identify common standard of etiquette. Others, mostly feminists and social justice activists have understood netiquette has going further than simple politeness. It is about embodying online the principles that you believe in offline. It is about individual and collective care and empowerment. It is about connecting the global feminist movement across boundaries in their diversity, their differences and similarities.

In 90s, two authors came up with recommendations of how to behave online using the humoristic Ten Commandments format to do so. Brakeman came up with The Ten Commandments of Etiquette on the Internet while Rinaldi came up with The ten Commandments of Computer Ethics. The commandments were a humoristic way to address the distinctive features of the Internet where it was believed that there is a general lack of authority on who is able to regulate the behavior of online participants. The commandments highlighted for instance to “Never forget that the person on the other side is a human being” or that you should “Give back to the community”. Today, when we read these commandments, some are still relevant, while others seem to somewhat go counter to the ways in which the Internet culture has developed and the strong presence of feminists online. Also, Ten Commandments framework have also emerged for social medial use, cell phones use, among others. What are Feminist Principles on the Internet?

What is closer to today's feminist practice on the internet are the Feminist Principles on the Internet . Those principles were developed in 2014, almost 20 years after the drafting of the above netiquette principles. The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) gathered a group of feminists to a Global Meeting on Gender, Sexuality and the Internet with the mandate to come up with a first list of principles. Their principles are about the ways in which the internet can be a transformative public and political space for feminist and queers. It situates online violence and tech-related violence on the continuum of gender-based violence making clear the structural aspect of gender violence online and offline. The principles also highlight surveillance as a patriarchal tool whether it is used by the state, private individuals or corporation.

Why are these principles important?

The Feminist Principles on the Internet are a good way to address the relationship between the online and offline world making for instance the link clear between online and offline violence. The goal behind these principles are two-fold. First, it is a tool for feminists, GLBTQI and women’s rights activists to guide them in understanding the internet as a new public space and how this space can be informed by feminist principles. In other words, it is about reframing the conversation around gender, sexuality, sexual rights and the internet. Second, it is a way to reclaim the Internet in creating spaces for feminist. If you want to contribute to the discussion join the hashtag #ImagineaFeministInternet.

FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE How to set up a Safe Space Mailing list?

Mailing lists are one of the oldest forms of social networks. They allow you to discuss, share information, exchange video, audio and pictures. The below section will help you in the steps to setting up a safe space mailing list.

Choosing a mailing list You have decided that you need a communication channel for your collective and/or your group, well you will be happy to know that you have many possibilities to choose from. For social justice activists oriented mailing lists you can look at Riseup collective and Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective). They both provide services that are an alternative to corporate ones.

Riseup is a tech collective which provides secure communication tools for people working on liberatory social change. They have many feminists and queer oriented lists and therefore are a great collective to host your mailing list. To see some of the existing mailing lists go to: https://lists.riseup.net/www/ Riseup also provides email addresses so if you are an activist and want to open an account it’s a great email address to have. The allocation of an email address is based on trust system. You can either get two invite codes from friends who already have riseup accounts or wait for Riseup to approve your detailed request. https://user.riseup.net/forms/new_user/first

Other tech collectives offer activists’ mailing-lists. Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) also provides mailing list. To read about their service visit: http://www.autistici.org/en/services/lists.html Open or closed list?

Once you are ready to create your mailing list you need to decide whether it will be an open or closed list. An open list allows anyone to subscribe and participate in the list. 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, you should remember that on open lists (or public lists) archives are available to anyone on the web, whereas closed list (or private list) are limited to those who have the subscription password. If you intend to talk about sensitive issues (talking about feminism is often a sensitive issue!) you might want to set up a private or closed list. Also, if you choose to set up a public list the messages sent through it will eventually end up on search engines (such as google). This is a privacy and safe space issue and feminist should be mindful of this.

Who should I invite?

Once you have your list set up, start inviting people you know to your mailing list. If friends are suggesting to add more people to the list, ask them to explain to the list the reasons why such and such person should be added. If you get a green light, add this person to your mailing list. Working through the web of trust is a good practice to follow when setting up a mailing list. Also, make sure you have a discussion on who can be part of this list. If you set up a feminist list, who can be part of this list? Do you for instance allow feminist men to be part of the list? If so, will you be setting up a policy for your list on the acceptable behavior? (See below for how to set up a policy) These are important questions that you need to discuss with your group. But don’t be too harsh on yourself and your group and know that you can always revisit these decisions if at some point you and your collective feel you want to change your collective mailing agreement.

Who will administrator the list?

Who will be administering the list? One person can be responsible for doing it, but depending on her/their time, availability and interest having only one administrator can be quite demanding. You can also choose to have more than one administrator of the list. It is really up to you to decide the ways in which they want it to be managed. A list can also be collectively managed. As a case in point, the Spoon Collective, a discussion list active in the 90s, had decided upon a strategy of central collective "ownership". This meant everyone had access to the administering of the list. In other words, the list was “owned” by all involved in the collective. The ways in which The Spoon Collective decided to operate was that all the people on the list would be responsible to manage it on the basis of a weekly rotation (adding new member, etc.). For feminist social justice activists, this is a strategy that can be best used when you are part of a closed knit collective. It also requires trust that all members will care for enough for the list to manage it collectively.

Before trying to figure out what best suits you, you should think about internet access and expectations from list members. Depending on where you are located, some people on the list might not have regular access to the internet and this needs to be factored in when taking the decision. Some tensions will inevitably arise from the collective administering process and therefore you and your collective need to think carefully about the ways in which you will handle these tensions. Are we ready to wait for a few days to have new members in the list? If each message needs admin approval, are we ready to accept waiting for the message to be approved for a few days, a week, more? What about unconscious errors being made by administers of the list (deleting the list, deleting members, changing the status of the list, etc.)? Since administering a list is a great way to learn is it only those who are tech savvy that might manage it or should we rather allow for learning to happen? If your expectations are clear the possibility for tensions and conflicts to emerge will be minimized.

Mailing list policies

Now that you have a mailing list and you are slowly getting started with it you might want to reflect about having a policy. Making visible your policy and the ways in which to report violation to the policy, even if it is a closed list, might be helpful in creating the online safe space you want everyone to enjoy. Having a visible and explicit policy will send a strong signal of the importance of creating a safe space on a mailing list. The geekfeminism wiki as a great example of a women-only policy for online communities (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose/Women-only_communities). They also have a similar policy or agreement for online communities that includes men. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose:_communities_including_men Check them out and adapt it to your needs, belief and desires.

To make your policy visible and remind everyone of its existence, Ada Initiative mailing list is an instructive example. They have decided to add to each email sent on the list a reminder that a policy is in place. Below is what you see at the end of each email message being received on the list.

Policies for behavior on this list: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose/Women-only_communities http://sf.adacamp.org/attendee-information/policies/#ahp Contact Adacamp-alumni-owner@lists.adainitiative.org to report violations Please avoid gendered assumptions and language about the list as a whole (eg "XX", "ovaries", "ladies") To unsubscribe, go to: http://lists.adainitiative.org/listinfo.cgi/adacamp-alumni-adainitiative.org

Dos and don’ts on mailing list

Mailing list have a particular set of features. Since they are text-based, they are susceptible to interpretation. First make sure you read carefully what is presented to you. Sometimes we read too fast and don’t fully understand what somebody is saying. Multilingual users can also be a challenging environment. What do you do if after carefully reading a message you disagree with what someone has said on a mailing list? Disagreeing on statements and points of view is fine and can be a good learning experience for all provided it is done in a respectful manner. Starting your email on a positive note and highlighting something positive will be a great opening for a constructive criticism.

If you are stressed you might be more sensitive and try to recognize this in you. If you have read an email that affects you emotionally, instead of replying right away try to come back to it later as to calm down. With the ubiquity of the instantaneity and immediacy afforded by social media we have a tendency to want to reply right way. If you find yourself too emotional you might want to wait a little bit before sending the message. Having said that as feminist we acknowledge that emotions and affect are important and ought to be made visible, so the suggestion to wait depend of course on the situation. You are the best judge of the practice you want to embrace.

Other Collective Tools

There are other good tools to working collectively on the internet. We suggest a few below with ways to create safe space.

What are Pads?

Pads are a great way to collaborate in real-time on documents with other feminists and social justice activists. They are a good alternative to replace google docs or replacing the tedious and sometimes confusion that arise from sending each other documents through emails. Pads can be used to collectively draft a mailing list policy, draft a statement that you want to release or else. A list of pads that are secure to use through encrypted connections via SSL can be found at: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/wiki/Sites-that-run-Etherpad-Lite

Riseup is a great and secure provider of pads, but you have to know that they will be deleted after 30 days of inactivity. If you want your pad to last longer you can use other pads.

When you create a pad you decide on the name of the URL. It is usually a good practice to use a long name for your pad. Having https://pad.riseup.net/p/feminists might not be the most secure name. You want to use a more complicated URL such as https://pad.riseup.net/p/FeministsRocksAndTheyWillBeDoingGreatThingsToghether. Once the pad is created you send the URL to your friends and colleagues to start collaborating on a document. Pads allow you and your collective members to be either anonymous, use a moniker or decide to use your real name. There is a color-based system (you can decide on the color you use) that differentiate the contributions of each participants on the pad, so being anonymous will not bring too much confusion while writing. If you want a more secure pad that are not open/public you can use a password protected pad. If you are scared that your pad might be vandalized by trolls even if you have a strong URL and use SSL resorting to a password protected pad might be a good option. For this check out: https://www.protectedtext.com/

What is Internet Relay Chat (IRC)?

IRC can be defined as a “group of electronic interaction media that combine orthographic form with the ephemerality of real-time, virtually synchronous transmission in an unregulated, global, multiuser environment”. In other words, it is a text-based social media that requires very little bandwidth. It’s like a multi-user chat and you have the option to encrypt if you want. But, you can’t embed video, audio or pictures, but you can link to them.

IRC can be used for multiple purposes. It can be used to facilitate collaboration between feminist activists and women’s rights defenders in addition to decision-making processes. You are thinking about starting a campaign to advocate for women’s rights or want to launch a project to supports feminist activists in your country, IRC might be a good way to start discussing about these projects in a collaborative manner. IRC allows for real-time collaboration provided of course that you have all easy access to the Internet. If access to the Internet is an issue you might want to consider using your mailing for better decision making process as it allows for asynchronous communication.

Also, when planning an international IRC session between many feminist participants this means determining who would get up early and who would stay up late. This is an important issue for women’s rights defenders and feminists who might have kids and older members of the family to take care of, or have to deal with power outages occurring at certain times, or other impediments that prevent them from being online at certain hours. This is why it is important to think about asynchronous (delayed-time conversation) and synchronous (same-time conversation) means of communication. Feminists might want to ask themselves how same-time (synchronous) and delayed-time (asynchronous) communication technologies affect collaboration and decision-making. Internet is such a great medium since it allows women’s rights defenders and feminist activists the opportunity to structure their interactions and practices as they wish and thus harnessing the affordances that the internet give us might be very empowering and allow to counter access barriers, language barriers, among others.

When you suggest to use IRC you should be mindful of the aforementioned. It is not because it is the tool used by feminist hackers and programmers that it is the best tool for you. If you still decide to use IRC, be mindful that feminists in your collective and other feminist activists might need time to understand this technology and to understand how to best collaborator on such platform. Depending on your skills, using IRC might appear to be fairly “easy” or a bit more difficult, but what is less tangible is the ways in which one develops interpersonal relationships and communicate socio-emotional content on IRC.

How it works?