1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,720 Part 3: Hacker feminism at the intersection 2 00:00:04,720 --> 00:00:10,120 In Hacker Women, Sollfrank writes: "even within the cyberfeminist community, 3 00:00:10,120 --> 00:00:15,240 there are only a few computer professionals and fewer nerds. 4 00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:20,800 Currently most women seem to prefer to undertake politically engaged work 5 00:00:20,800 --> 00:00:25,720 in a purely cultural environment and on a non-technological level. 6 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:31,200 Women are not actively influencing the development of hard- and software, 7 00:00:31,200 --> 00:00:35,760 and therefore are surrendering any chance to share the related power." 8 00:00:36,200 --> 00:00:41,640 That power grew to form the new dominant mode of production and took over the world, 9 00:00:41,640 --> 00:00:48,320 so ignoring it is impossible but imagining a different world seems almost equally hard. 10 00:00:48,680 --> 00:00:53,120 Nobody talks about cyberfeminism anymore because thats just feminism now, 11 00:00:53,360 --> 00:00:56,040 Cyberspace is enmeshed with the earth 12 00:00:56,040 --> 00:01:02,280 and the techno utopianism of the 1990s devolved into a full blown dystopia. 13 00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:09,000 Today asking someone to quit vectoralist media can be absurdly presumptuous, 14 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:15,240 like asking a peasant to quit the feudal land or a proletarian to quit the capitalist factory. 15 00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:19,920 Class domination means we really don't have a choice. 16 00:01:20,080 --> 00:01:23,280 To survive we are forced to carry smartphones 17 00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:27,160 that either run on iOS (owned by Apple) or Android (owned by Google) 18 00:01:27,160 --> 00:01:31,080 get jobs by signing up to sites like Linked In (owned by Microsoft) 19 00:01:31,080 --> 00:01:34,840 or Amazon Mechanical Turk or Uber (hosted on Amazon). 20 00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:40,160 To keep our jobs we are forced to sign in to apps like Whatsapp (owned by Facebook) 21 00:01:40,160 --> 00:01:42,560 and Zoom (hosted on Amazon). 22 00:01:42,760 --> 00:01:47,080 We have to be liked on Instagram (owned by Facebook) or Github (owned by Microsoft) 23 00:01:47,080 --> 00:01:50,160 before we can sell the fruits of our labor. 24 00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:54,840 As April Glaser puts it: "Deleting Facebook is a privilege." 25 00:01:55,040 --> 00:02:00,760 However, since our personal data is the source of vectoralist political power, 26 00:02:00,760 --> 00:02:07,280 feminist slogan "the personal is political" becomes even more meaningful & important. 27 00:02:07,520 --> 00:02:08,880 We have to make it clear 28 00:02:08,880 --> 00:02:12,000 that when we invite someone to our feminist whatsapp group 29 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:15,920 and our google drive to organize our new hashtag campaign, 30 00:02:15,920 --> 00:02:17,280 we are inviting them 31 00:02:17,280 --> 00:02:22,480 to do voluntary work that benefits the richest white cis men in the world 32 00:02:22,480 --> 00:02:26,440 like Larry Page, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. 33 00:02:26,440 --> 00:02:29,880 When we invite someone to our feminist Zoom assembly, 34 00:02:29,880 --> 00:02:33,200 we are inviting them to use services of a company 35 00:02:33,200 --> 00:02:36,840 that infringes the freedom of assembly to Uighur and Palestinian people 36 00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:42,200 on the servers of a corporation that provides Artificial Intelligence and facial recognition 37 00:02:42,200 --> 00:02:48,200 to the racist police force of the country with the highest prison population in the world. 38 00:02:48,200 --> 00:02:50,680 There is no good reason for using vectoralist apps 39 00:02:50,680 --> 00:02:54,440 to organize ourselves and our emancipatory struggles, 40 00:02:54,440 --> 00:02:57,880 because there are free open source alternatives 41 00:02:57,880 --> 00:03:00,920 for almost every popular vectoralist software 42 00:03:00,920 --> 00:03:04,200 and there is a federation of decentralized public servers 43 00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:08,080 for free open source social media that we can use right now. 44 00:03:08,080 --> 00:03:13,520 We can use IRC, Jabber, Matrix etc. instead of Whatsapp, 45 00:03:13,520 --> 00:03:15,480 Nextcloud instead of Drive, 46 00:03:15,480 --> 00:03:19,200 Mastodon instead of Twitter and Meet Jitsi instead of Zoom. 47 00:03:19,600 --> 00:03:24,640 These FOSS apps are not just as good, but they are better, 48 00:03:24,760 --> 00:03:26,600 not just ethically and politically 49 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:30,680 but also because they dont try to mess with our psychology through algorithms 50 00:03:30,680 --> 00:03:36,200 and thats why they need much less resources, which is better for the earth. 51 00:03:36,480 --> 00:03:42,480 As intersectional feminists we should be aware that we are all cyborg hackers 52 00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:48,200 and we have different response-abilities depending on our situatedness. 53 00:03:48,520 --> 00:03:53,360 Intersectional feminism upgraded with hacker class consciousness can and should 54 00:03:53,360 --> 00:03:56,000 be an entry point for people to learn 55 00:03:56,000 --> 00:03:59,400 how vectoralism intersects with all forms of oppression 56 00:03:59,400 --> 00:04:04,200 and which tools to use for hacking them in a revolutionary way. 57 00:04:04,840 --> 00:04:09,280 To begin with, we should differentiate between organization and outreach. 58 00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:13,760 For the purposes of organization and for personal/political communication, 59 00:04:13,760 --> 00:04:18,480 we should use free and open source software, not just because it's more secure 60 00:04:18,480 --> 00:04:21,320 but also for liberating ourselves from vectoralist exploitation 61 00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:23,360 and empowering each other. 62 00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:28,600 For outreach it might still make sense to use vectoralist platforms 63 00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:32,520 until most of the population is not there anymore 64 00:04:32,520 --> 00:04:35,920 but doing this successfully already requires a well organized hack, 65 00:04:35,920 --> 00:04:41,880 otherwise we would be just blocked like Signal ads were blocked by Facebook. 66 00:04:42,760 --> 00:04:46,960 On a personal level, we can start by migrating to foss operating systems 67 00:04:47,040 --> 00:04:53,320 installing peer to peer and darknet apps, getting a nextcloud, a matrix, a mastodon 68 00:04:53,320 --> 00:04:55,840 and even hosting our own servers, 69 00:04:55,840 --> 00:05:00,000 but we won't get much use of these if we don't have a community there. 70 00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:06,280 Also the learning curve is much lower when it's approached collectively. 71 00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:07,560 In the end, 72 00:05:07,560 --> 00:05:13,040 the greater part of the work is convincing our communities to come along with us. 73 00:05:13,280 --> 00:05:16,160 There is no technical solution to a social problem. 74 00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:23,080 For any of these FOSS to start genuine change, we need to reach a critical mass 75 00:05:23,080 --> 00:05:24,560 with network effect. 76 00:05:24,920 --> 00:05:28,160 To host and facilitate a digital mass migration, 77 00:05:28,160 --> 00:05:31,760 existing infrastructures wouldn't be enough, 78 00:05:31,760 --> 00:05:35,000 we would need to invest in decentralized infrastructure 79 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:38,800 and disperse the cloud by reclaiming our data. 80 00:05:38,920 --> 00:05:41,520 To spread this idea and turn it into reality, 81 00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:44,640 we can organize feminist hacker literacy campaigns, 82 00:05:44,640 --> 00:05:48,160 not just for coding but for everything we need 83 00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:50,840 to liberate and maintain our cyborg lives, 84 00:05:50,840 --> 00:05:56,520 like system administration, telecom engineering, hardware assembly and repair, 85 00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:02,520 and most importantly, wetware, which is the organic part of our cyborg bodies. 86 00:06:03,360 --> 00:06:07,360 The intersection of feminist and hacker politics goes back to witches 87 00:06:07,360 --> 00:06:10,200 who were hunted for having the power of knowledge 88 00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:14,240 detrimental to capitalist racist cisheteropatriarchy. 89 00:06:14,520 --> 00:06:18,280 Half century ago, when abortion was illegal in the United States, 90 00:06:18,280 --> 00:06:24,000 underground Jane Collective reappropriated the knowledge of performing abortions, 91 00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:29,800 to train and maintain a feminist network of illegal practitioners. 92 00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:31,200 In 2001, 93 00:06:31,200 --> 00:06:36,120 Gender Changers Academy started doing feminist hack workshops in Amsterdam 94 00:06:36,120 --> 00:06:40,080 which then toured cities in different countries 95 00:06:40,080 --> 00:06:41,840 under the name Eclectic Tech Carnival. 96 00:06:42,000 --> 00:06:47,000 In 2014, Feminist Principles of the Internet were drafted in Malaysia, 97 00:06:47,160 --> 00:06:51,200 meanwhile in Catalonia, TransHackFeminist convergence featured workshops 98 00:06:51,200 --> 00:06:56,520 ranging from do-it-yourself gynecology to creating feminist servers. 99 00:06:56,880 --> 00:07:01,600 Feminist principles of the internet on feministinternet.org 100 00:07:01,600 --> 00:07:05,760 is a good starting point for imagining a feminist internet 101 00:07:05,760 --> 00:07:10,240 but as it says on the Anarchaserver: "A feminist internet also requires 102 00:07:10,240 --> 00:07:13,800 self-managed and autonomous feminist servers." 103 00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:17,120 "This is about regaining control and gaining autonomy 104 00:07:17,120 --> 00:07:20,680 in the access and management of our data and collective memories. 105 00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:23,800 It is also about being able to have feminist mailing lists, 106 00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:28,200 pads, wikis, content management systems, social networks 107 00:07:28,200 --> 00:07:32,840 and any other online services managed by feminist tech collectives. 108 00:07:33,400 --> 00:07:37,000 It is also of course about continuing to argue that 109 00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:39,440 social justice in technologically driven environments 110 00:07:39,440 --> 00:07:45,440 needs a more gender and culturally diverse presence in general." 111 00:07:46,520 --> 00:07:50,680 Today there are a few feminist hacklabs and feminist servers 112 00:07:50,680 --> 00:07:57,040 that are doing a very important job by setting paradigms and leading by example. 113 00:07:57,840 --> 00:08:02,160 What we need urgently is the popularization of these practices 114 00:08:02,160 --> 00:08:05,840 by sharing material, technical and emotional resources. 115 00:08:05,920 --> 00:08:10,000 To have our own infrastructure, we have to make a collective decision 116 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:11,480 to invest in it. 117 00:08:12,200 --> 00:08:16,560 In the article "Feminist autonomous infrastructure: from zombies to ninjas" 118 00:08:16,560 --> 00:08:20,760 it explains how volunteering risks invisibilizing labor 119 00:08:20,760 --> 00:08:26,440 and donation campaigns are not enough to sustain feminist infrastructure projects. 120 00:08:26,960 --> 00:08:31,760 The article titled "Feminists are building their own technology to organise 121 00:08:31,760 --> 00:08:37,760 but where are funders?" explains how a feminist server project ceased to exist 122 00:08:37,760 --> 00:08:39,680 because it lacked proper funding. 123 00:08:40,160 --> 00:08:43,720 "The internet, like the streets, needs to be reclaimed. 124 00:08:43,720 --> 00:08:47,720 We can build new spaces of engagement, organizing and transformation 125 00:08:47,720 --> 00:08:48,640 but in order to achieve this, 126 00:08:48,640 --> 00:08:54,160 we need funding that can ensure those building the feminist internet 127 00:08:54,160 --> 00:08:57,840 that they can make decisions over where their knowledge goes." 128 00:08:58,360 --> 00:09:02,000 A server can cost less than the cheapest smartphone 129 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:05,400 or cheaper if you use a second hand computer 130 00:09:05,400 --> 00:09:08,480 but we also need the funding to spread the idea 131 00:09:08,480 --> 00:09:12,960 and give people the time and space to learn, exercise and develop. 132 00:09:13,320 --> 00:09:17,080 In cities like Barcelona where every neighborhood have feminist groups, 133 00:09:17,080 --> 00:09:21,320 every neighborhood can have a feminist hacklab with servers that federate. 134 00:09:21,320 --> 00:09:24,480 For neighborhoods that don't have a secure physical space, 135 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:32,800 bigger feminist organizations like Ca La Dona can share VPS and other services. 136 00:09:32,880 --> 00:09:37,160 Every feminist group should have access to feminist servers, 137 00:09:37,160 --> 00:09:41,840 if they're too small or ephemeral and can't afford to have their own, 138 00:09:41,840 --> 00:09:46,840 they should be able to find help from other feminist collectives that share services. 139 00:09:46,840 --> 00:09:49,560 Bigger feminist organizations in more privileged parts of the world should 140 00:09:49,560 --> 00:09:56,040 also have programs to share services with the feminists from rest of the world. 141 00:09:56,320 --> 00:10:01,040 Feminist infrastructure and servers should be seen as a necessity, 142 00:10:01,040 --> 00:10:04,240 especially for separatist feminist groups. 143 00:10:04,440 --> 00:10:09,040 We can't have truly no-mixto spaces on vectoralist platforms, because there 144 00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:15,920 even our close groups and personal messages are exploited by white cis men. 145 00:10:15,920 --> 00:10:19,640 On the other hand, imagine an internet without cis men at all, 146 00:10:19,640 --> 00:10:22,200 and believe that we can create it together. 147 00:10:22,600 --> 00:10:28,080 To realize that dream we don't need a new technology, we need a new culture. 148 00:10:28,920 --> 00:10:33,960 Hacker class consciousness must be a part of our intersectional feminist consciousness. 149 00:10:34,560 --> 00:10:37,880 We can update our consciousness raising practices 150 00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:42,400 by including conversations about how vectoralism effects us personally 151 00:10:42,400 --> 00:10:46,920 and sharing the knowledge of how to hack it for good 152 00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:50,040 with care and not condescension. 153 00:10:50,400 --> 00:10:56,880 We can throw crypto install parties combined with tupperware/sex parties 154 00:10:56,880 --> 00:11:00,760 where we demonstrate signal blocking pouches, tails sticks, 155 00:11:00,760 --> 00:11:04,520 single board computers, linux phones, etc. 156 00:11:04,520 --> 00:11:06,800 When we do these parties at each others homes, 157 00:11:06,800 --> 00:11:10,360 we can help set up home servers and labs. 158 00:11:10,360 --> 00:11:14,920 We can make signal blocking purses for smart devices fashionable. 159 00:11:14,920 --> 00:11:17,960 Take that textile back from military machis. 160 00:11:17,960 --> 00:11:21,840 If we do it on our own we could be singled out, 161 00:11:21,840 --> 00:11:24,200 so we should do it as a movement 162 00:11:24,200 --> 00:11:30,800 and exercise it as our right to not be accessible 24/7. 163 00:11:30,800 --> 00:11:36,760 Our culture should value a repairable cheap phone with killswitches 164 00:11:36,760 --> 00:11:39,440 more than the latest most expensive phone 165 00:11:39,440 --> 00:11:43,160 that doesn't allow a battery removal without breaking the warranty. 166 00:11:43,160 --> 00:11:47,320 Meanwhile, we can't forget where the lithium, koltan 167 00:11:47,320 --> 00:11:50,560 and everthing else that goes into a computer comes from, 168 00:11:50,560 --> 00:11:54,920 the people who mine it, carry it, process it, assemble it. 169 00:11:54,920 --> 00:11:58,120 We must interfere with technology at every layer 170 00:11:58,120 --> 00:12:03,040 from internet service provisions to supply-production chains 171 00:12:03,040 --> 00:12:06,880 to stop reproducing injustice and destroying our planet. 172 00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:10,040 To be able to take good care of each other and the earth, 173 00:12:10,040 --> 00:12:14,680 we must cultivate our response-abilities and radically change our culture. 174 00:12:14,680 --> 00:12:18,240 The future will be feminist or there won’t be future!