Feminist Approaches to Tactical Media
Over the past several years, cyberfeminist activists around the globe have taken action in developing a variety of tactical media approaches specifically addressing gender related social injustice and under-representation of women’s concerns in both cyber and real space. Models and applications range from hands-on hardware skills workshops, to floating reproductive health clinics and interventions in the erotic entertainment industry, to name just a few.
Compelled by the continuing urgent need for gender and racial diversification of cyberspace, and the seemingly never-ending reports of women’s rights violations around the world, it is timely to examine resistant feminist and activist responses to these issues in the context of this international gathering. Rather than focusing our debate primarily around theoretical discussions, the aim of this panel is to share first-hand practical and tactical experiences and methods in order to encourage an informed conversation between panelists and audience.
The Panel will be moderated by Beatriz da Costa. And participants will be invited to speak for 10 minutes about the practical aspects of their project. The discussion will then be opened to the floor for session participants to contribute to practical/tactical brainstorming. One goal of
this discussion is to gather ideas and materials for a handbook of cyberfeminist tactics, and we invite participants to contribute their ideas and suggestions during the session and at a subsequent workshop dedicated to this project.
The panel discussion will be preceeded by a presentation of the work of Gender Changers.
The Gender Changer Academy http://www.genderchangers.org is a non-profit organisation by women for women, its primary goal being to improve women's understanding and skills with regards to computer hardware. To attain this, the GCA provides workshops, makes and maintains a website and mailing list, and distributes a reader. The GCA was borne out of the ASCII (Amsterdam Subversive Code for Information Interchange), a free internet workspace.
The panel will be co-moderated by Beatriz da Costa and Faith Wilding