Feminist reflections on internet policies

The lockdown raises questions around digital security and safety. From online conferences being hacked to individual women tarteted for extortion, there is a lot happening. In this personal essay, one woman navigates sextortion through expression, art and fantasy.

In the second part of their article, Loreto Bravo and Peter Bloom alert us to the dangers of a romanticization of technologies and develop a psychosocial and feminist approach as a tool to face the new wave of hyperconnectivity that is announced with 5G.

More than 45,000 people have registered to return to their home-state Manipur, and a large number of them are women nurses who faced discrimination and harassment while they were doing their jobs in mainland India. Returnees now face a precarious future regarding where they live, their jobs and their future.

In the first half of this two parts article, Loreto Bravo and Peter Bloom delve deeper into a critique of the new networks that are emerging with the rushed transition to 5G, from a feminist and psychosocial perspective.

Essential workers and service workers in the United States of America, especially those who belong to LGBTQIA+ community, are increasingly more vulnerable at the workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are at risk of losing employment benefits, and are subject to discrimination and surveillance at their workplace.

Kira Xonorika exposes the absence of public policies for trans people in Paraguay during the lockdown by COVID-19 and denounces the serious social consequences of corporeal colonialism that pathologises gender diversity.

We often hear that the Internet is a cloud. But the Internet has a big footprint. With this first release we start a reflective webcomic series around Internet's infrastructure from a feminist technopolitical perspective.

The Feminist Internet Research Network intentionally seeks is to go beyond research to impact on policy and advocacy. But what should be a feminist approach to policy shifts, specifically coming from the global South?

There are increasing rates of domestic violence and abuse during the lockdown for COVID-19 imposed in different countries. This violence includes abuse that relies on online means and includes financial abuse and exploitation, that particularly harm the independence of those who are the targets.

Even as the world reels under the impact of the global pandemic, women in Poland have to protest against draconian and restrictive amendments to the abortion law that would make getting an abortion far more difficult than it already is.

How are the LBTQI+ people and communities facing the difficulties posed by the global pandemic and the lockdown? This article explores the emergence of solidarities amongst different marginalised groups including farmers and queer communities, to ensure food, work and basic survival.

How do we look at racism and bias embedded within research? In the light of recent events in South Africa around how racist biases are being reproduced in classrooms,  research and knowledge production, these are important questions that white liberals and researchers must address. 

Across different countries, there has been a recorded surge of domestic violence against women especially, but has there been an increase in violence and harassment online? Here Morgan Barbour shares how she dealt with an uptick in violence and harassment she faced since the lockdown began, and how she made it part of her artistic practice.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays during the bubonic plague, and now women and queer artists use the internet and social media to open up spaces for marginalised communities and bodies.

Much as there is the risk of the online space breeding great amounts of anxiety, this can also be a time to form different types of human connection, find out more about innovative ways to get off and take a look at your love lives. Here is how.

What do we recall about the first time we went online? What was the first thing we searched on the internet that we didn’t want our mothers to know? What information have we been unable to find due to limited content and connectivity,surveillance, censorship,exploitation and unequal representation? How can we use the internet if when trolls target our identities, political values and lived experiences? How do we sustain the growth, leadership and ethically representative visibility of our different movements online?

The practice of mapping was successfully enshrined within a month since the first outbreaks of Covid-19 as a means of rapid visualisation, accompanied by the division between those who manage data to create information and those who contribute their data (while suffering the consequences of it). But we could argue that a more just approach to information-based aid would be one in which all people have the autonomy to share or not share their situation – i.e. to contribute or not to data banks.

The pandemic has amplified our need for a safe and secure internet, but can we have one now without surveillance and censorship. Read here to know what happened at the original epicentre of the COVID-19 virus and what measures of internet censorship were deemed necessary by the Chinese government to bring the pandemic under control.

In India protests against the discriminatory and unilateral law to determine citizenship have been going on since December of 2019. The protests across India against the current authoritarian government were growing in power, in spite of the enormous pressure they came under, the attacks and arrests of leaders and now from the spread of COVID-19 and lockdowns.

The world is suddenly and radically changed. But this is not the radical change that we as feminists, activists, thinkers and campaigners had hoped for.