Generell könnt ihr über zukünftige Queer Geeks Treffen in Wien auf http://queergeeks.at informiert bleiben. Wie es aussieht wirds jetzt regelmäßiger. Teilmengen der /bin sind auch dort zu treffen

Sadly, once again I have to take this issue up following some major incidents in hacker communities. Recently the 29c3 took place in Hamburg – the major annual hacker conference in the German speaking regions. And happily the incidents of last summer led the organisers to device an explicit anti-harassment policy for the conference. Of course nobody would have thought that this alone will hold back sexist jerks from harassing and insulting other people. But what came out in the end is more disappointing than I have imagined. A good summary of all the sexist crap that happend and was often tolerated is provided by Valerie Aurora at the Ada Initiative blog: Ending sexism in hacker culture: A work in progress.

For now I won’t go on any further, because I am a bit disillusioned. I actually thought after last summer that something might change and even ‘hackers’ (speaking in cliché) would grant more diverse people to join their ranks. And of course there are enough hackers who find all that awful too and who put a lot of effort into changing this, but they are clearly the minority. Interestingly some of the best efforts come out of male and hacker dominated contexts – they just seem to be ignored again by the majority of these context’s members. For example Anatol Stefanowitch gave a great talk (in German) on speech and platform neutrality at the last openmind conference – #om12. In this talk he explained very clearly from a linguist perspective how sexism, racism, classism and other forms of discrimination work in speech and what to do against them. If you understand German, give it a try, it is a very clear presentation and funny in it’s own way: Sprache und Plattformneutralität. So, not all Pirates seem to think they are post-gender (confer my article “No, we are not post-gender!” from May 2012).

Recently there was a lot of widely distributed talk about sexism on the web. Partly this was due to the great achievements of Anita Sarkeesian, who facilitates the wonderful feminist pop culture media critique blog at feministfrequencies.com. Last year, on this platform, she provided her widely received series of short videos under the title Tropes vs. Women, a series that “explores the reoccurring stories, themes and representations of women in Hollywood films and TV”. This year she planned on doing another series to “explore five common and recurring stereotypes of female characters in video games”. For that she started a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter under the title Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, to get a little funding for it. Although the initial goal was just 6.000 US-$, in the end a fascinating 158.922 US-$ were pledged. Well, so far so good. At the same time a load of harassment and online-mobbing against Sarkeesian started. The great thing she then did do was to document this publicly right from the start. This way a whole lot of media coverage set in and sexism on the web suddenly was a serious topic – for it has been so often neglected by online communities as individual problems that are not worthy public debate. Those who bring up critiques on sexist behaviour are usually silenced or discounted as oversensitive political agitators. Sarkeesian fortunately was experienced enough to put up with that, so instead of being silenced she made all the harassment public:

“Here is a very small sample of the harassment I deal with for daring to criticize sexism in video games. Keep in mind that all this is in response to my Kickstarter project for a video series called Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (which I have not even made yet). These are the types of silencing tactics often used against women on the internet who dare to speak up. But don’t worry it won’t stop me!”

This of course led to more harassment. But it also probably led to more backers for her project, which is a great side effect. To make money of all those sexist trolls, if you cannot get rid of them is after all not such a bad strategy, as the platform hatr.org already showed for critical german speaking online contexts. Well, now, I will not post all the articles Anita Sarkeesian put out on this issue, because it might be hard to go through all those violent examples, which she made transparent on her blog. If you are interested go to her website and just scroll down (she also put some trigger warnings there, where it starts to get awful, in case you are unsure if you want to take that in). To get some overview of the media coverage look at Sarkeesian’s media round up for the Kickstarter project.

Another recent description of sexism and outright sexual harassment in ICT-related communities then was described by Valerie Aurora, from the Ada Initiative. She worked by the way also on the HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux guide, on which we reported in a recent blog post on the notion of post-gender. But what she recently reported on was the outrageous examples of sexual harassment at the DEFCON conferences, the largest and most famous hacker conference worldwide. In her post at the blog of the Ada Initiativ on DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters, she presents her very interesting insights into the development of the DEFCON conferences and the problems with stereotypical male spaces, sexism and sexual harassment at such places. Just a few days ago then Bruce Schneier, well-known security guru, wrote a short blog entry on this issue to highlight this as a problem that should not be done away with easily. So, hopefully more people, especially males start to feel responsible too and this will lead to further debates and critical action to fight sexism and sexual harassment everywhere, but also especially in our technophile male-dominated domains around computer science and ICT.

If you still don’t think this is such a big issue, take a look at the timeline of incidents, “a timeline of sexist incidents in geek communities” at the Geek Feminism Wiki. It is shocking how common sexism is. At least now it is increasingly documented and taken up for debate. If you also want to debate on this, write us an e-mail (bagru at diebin dot at), or if you are in Vienna, just come by at one of our events.

Dass Cecile Crutzen, die selbst aus der Informatik kommt, in diesem Semester Gastprofessorin an der Uni Wien ist erfährt mensch als Informatik-Student*in kaum. Sie ist dies zudem am Institut für Politikwissenschaften, weil es leider nach wir vor keine “kritischen offenen Räumen innerhalb der Informatik” gibt. Genau diese allerdings zu schaffen ist uns jedoch ein Anliegen, also Räume in denen “die Informatik und ihr Handeln selbst Thema sein kann” (aus der Ankündigung).

Insofern möchten wir alle Informatik-Student*innen, denen eine soziale und den Menschen gerechte Informatik am Herzen liegt zum Vortrag von Cecile Crutzen einladen. Die volle Einladung inklusive Ankündigungstext findest du auf der Seite des Referats Genderforschung.

Passend zum Thema, wenn auch nun eher auf struktureller Ebene ansetzend, haben wir selbst kürzlich einen kurzen Artikel mit dem Titel “No, we are not post-gender!” in hier im Blog veröffentlicht.

So, in order to make room for more of such reflections, I want to invite all of you to join in diverse efforts to reflect on that and to establish more just practices in our daily lives, within and without the often fuzzy realms of computer science.

That it is possible is shown in several instances. The book “Unlocking the Clubhouse. Women in Computing” by Jane Margolis and Alan Fisher, which was cited in the blog entry of Mark Guzdial, gives some well elaborated impressions on that. If you are interested in that please write to bagru (ät) diebin.at, we might order it for our library then. A very practical guide comes out of the Linux community and may just as well be applied to many settings throughout computer science: HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux, written by Val Henson and many others presents some of the major problems many women* face when entering such techno-centric male-dominated domains like Linux or computer science. This is done not on some abstract theoretical level but by highlighting concrete situations that often drive women* out of the field. Another account on diverse inclusion strategies for the field of computer science is given by Vivian Annette Lagesen in her paper “The Strength of Numbers“, published 2007 in Social Studies of Science vol. 37 no. 1, which is available as full text on-line if you are using the network of the University of Vienna. If you do not get access you can just visit us in the /bin (next to HS 24 in the University of Vienna main building) and load the paper from there, or otherwise contact us digitally. Then of course, as Vivian Annette Lagesen also showed in another paper, just changing the ratio of women to men quantitatively does not solve all gender based issues. See therefore her paper “A Cyberfeminist Utopia? Perceptions of Gender and Computer Science among Malaysian Women Computer Science Students and Faculty“, published 2008 in Science, Technology & Human Values vol. 33 no. 1, also available in full text through the university network. In it she shows that even in those places where women make more then 51% of computer science faculty, there is still unequal distribution of power some dominant models and perceptions of what computer science is, should be about, and about how to apply it remain. But of course this is not any excuse for not trying to change the devastating situations we have here in and around Austria when it comes to quantitative inclusion. We only have to bear in mind that this is of course only one aspect of a broader struggle towards a socially responsible computer science and a more just society.

So, if you now are in the mood of discussing these issues with other interested people let us know at bagru (ät) diebin.at or write to me ( jackie (ät) diebin.at ). We might even work on a re on a new version of the self-organized seminar on “Computer Science & Sex/Gender”, which was held in 2009 and 2010, but so far only in German. I’d be glad to work on a revision of that course also in english, if there are some interested people out there. Meanwhile you can also take a look at the collection of papers, books and materials which we started for the course.

Hier also nun die Zusammenstellung:

Feminismus, Queer:
http://maedchenmannschaft.net
http://maedchenblog.blogsport.de
http://denkwerstattblog.net

(Anti-)Rassismus & Feminismus:
http://afrikawissenschaft.wordpres.com
http://andersdeutsch.blogger.de
http://medienelite.de
http://highoncliches.wordpress.com

Netz(politik) & Feminismus, Queer:
http://iheartdigitallife.de
http://hanhaiwen.wordpress.com
http://side-glance.de

Sexualität:
http://l-talk.de
http://puzzlestuecke.wordpress.com
http://bisexualitaet.org
http://kweens.de

Trans*gender / Transsexualität:
http://laufmoos.wordpress.com
http://trans.blogspot.de
http://lenaschimmel.de
http://mysvenja.blogspot.com

Soziale Herkunft & Feminismus:
http://gespenst-der-armut.org
http://anarchieundlihbe.blogsport.de

Feminismus, Religion & Politik:
http://ein-fremdwoerterbuch.com
http://antjeschrupp.com

Recht & Geschlecht:
http://rechtundgeschlecht.wordpress.com

Queer, Feminismus & Mutterschaft:
http://fuckmothers.wordpress.com
http://queere-elternschaften.blogspot.com

Eine haeufig gestellte Frage lautet: Wo sind die Feminist_innen von heute und was machen sie? Eigentlich sind sie fast ueberall: auf Ladyfesten, linken Demos, organisiert in Gewerkschaften, auf queeren Konzerten – und auch im Netz. Ob in sozialen Netzwerken, Foren oder Blogs, das WWW ist zu einem wichtigen Raum fuer queer/feministische Vernetzung, Wissensaustausch und Diskussion geworden. Die Veranstaltung behandelt verschiedene Formen queer/feministischen Aktivismus im Netz anhand von ausgewaehlten Beispielen.

Von der /bin wird zumindest 1, vielleicht auch mehrere Personen dort sein. Schau doch auch vorbei.

Selbstverständlich passiert auch Gewalt an Männern* (alleine die physische Gewalt von Männern an Männern* ist einer der größten Faktoren von physischer Gewalt global), nur leider ist die Gewalt an Frauen immer noch ein gewichtiger Aspekt von gender-basierter Gewalt und Kennzeichen unserer nach wie vor patriarchalen Gesellschaftsordnung. Es geht hier auch nicht nur um physische Gewalt. Ein Auszug aus einem Demoaufruf macht das gut klar:

GEWALT GEGEN FRAUEN HAT VIELE GESICHTER, strukturelle,
häusliche/familiäre oder sexualisierte Gewalt erhält das System
weltweit und hat System wenn Frauen zum Beispiel

…von Männern abhängig sind
…für denselben Job 2/3 Lohn bekommen
…beim Vorstellungsgespräch nach Kinderwünschen gefragt werden
…im Berufsleben gegeneinander ausgespielt werden
…und Mädchen über ihre Ausbildung nicht selber entscheiden dürfen
…nicht lieben dürfen wen sie wollen
… aufgrund ihrer Migrationsgeschichte rassistisch diskriminiert werden
…nicht zu Wort kommen und zugehört wird
…unverhältnismäßig Reproduktionsarbeit verrichten, d.h. Kochen,
Putzen, Kindererziehen und Beziehungsarbeit leisten
…mit blöden Witzen und verbalen Attacken angegriffen werden
…von sexualisierten Übergriffen betroffen sind
…ausgeschlossen, vereinzelt und alleine alt werden

Wer sich bei den diversen Aktionen einbringen mag, bitte informiert euch auch vorab, ob das open-for-all-genders- oder womyn-only-Veranstaltungen sind.

Auch für Männer* die gegen Gewalt an Frauen* aktiv werden wollen gibts eine gute Anlaufstelle: http://www.whiteribbon.at/