Are there feminist data? (+ other questions)

Here’s a quick post containing eight ideas that made it into my notes from today’s “Feminism, Technology, and the Body” FemTechNet dialogue at the University of Michigan. It featured  Alondra Nelson, Jessie Daniels, Lisa Nakamura, Sidonie Smith, Carrie Rentschler, Sharon Irish, and a bunch of other people I didn’t write down. What a crew!

Eight Ideas About Feminism, Technology, and the Body:

1. Early ads for the Internet wouldn’t work today. We no longer aspire to leave our bodies behind. Or we can no longer imagine it.  Remember this ad?  (c. 1997)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioVMoeCbr…

2. If we’ve theorized the Internet and the body, what about social media and the body?

3. Is  the selfie inherently anti-feminist?

4. Are there “feminist data?” What are they?

5. “Just add women and stir” won’t work — mixing women and tech together is not in itself progressive. (cf. bell hooks)

6. Whatever happened to the emancipatory cyborg? (Haraway) Is a woman’s body still a trap?

7. Don’t forget where all this comes from. Facebook was born in a sexist moment. It was meant to make Harvard women available to the male gaze.

8. Forget the MOOC, it’s time for the DOCC.(*)

(* – Distributed Online Collaborative Course)