GenderIT.org
In the past year we have seen a number of countries implement laws that recognise diverse gender identities and expand the rights of transgender people. Uruguay is one such example. In October 2018, Congress passed a law setting out legal gender recognition through self-determination, defining gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy as a right paid for by the national government, reserving 1% of government jobs for transgender people, and setting up a fund to pay reparations to trans peo...
Fighting for a free and open internet for all involves recognising the many ways that online access and experience are affected by identity and social position. This understanding has not only informed but motivated the work of APC and its community throughout our existence. Our projects always seek, in one way or another, to level the digital playing field. One of the most significant factors impacting digital access and use is gender: worldwide, women are significantly less likely than men ...
Nyangi, an 18-year-old woman in Kenya, was turned back for lack of documents when she went to register for the Huduma number. The unique number has been the talk in the village. Without it, she will not be eligible for government aid programmes such as the Community Development Fund and Joint College Admission, among others. In future, she will have trouble acquiring Kipande, an ID card. Youth ...
TikTok is a mobile platform for creating and sharing 15-second videos. Or as described by Wired, “a short-form monitised musical meme machine”. TikTok users lip sync, dance and perform to popular songs, dialogue or voiceovers from films and television shows and other audio clips from popular culture and edit the videos creatively using the templates and effects provided on the platform. It ...
A large number of the world’s population is now living online. Since 2016 especially, there has been a huge increase in people’s connectivity and interest in social media. The year 2016 also witnessed several online controversies and events both globally and locally during the elections in the USA, the Ghana elections and the Gambian elections that happened almost concurrently. About half o...
In the recent report from Privacy International, From Oppression to Liberation: Reclaiming the Right to Privacy, author Eva Blum-Dumontet frames privacy legislation as a “protector of human dignity and an enabler of autonomy”. Privacy allows women and members of marginalised communities to create safe spaces of expression and makes available tools that challenge norms that restrict equality...
There are so many places to get porn. The online space is awash with naked bodies, a good majority of them on there consensually and a small but disturbing proportion not. The watching of naked bodies is big business, with one porn-based hub stating that in 2018 alone, 111 years (or one million hours) were uploaded onto their platform. This would mean that even if you dedicated your entir...
The sociotechnical infrastructure that determines the way human activity is conducted largely functions within broader structures of surveillance capitalism and biopower. The former recognises the effective monetisation of data and information about people for (economic) activity. When probed, these inherent structures reveal an irreconcilability between modern surveillance states and fundament...
The headline in a media report of 23 March 2017 says “BJP’s social media campaign in Manipur was a hit”. According to the report, the Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) kicked off a high-pitched social media campaign in Manipur on more than 100 WhatsApp groups, a number of Facebook pages, Twitter handles and Twitter channels. This proves to be true considering the result. Comparatively, in the 2...
“So many years past being raped, I tell myself what happened is 'in the past.' This is only partly true. In too many ways, the past is still with me. The past is written on my body. I carry it every single day. The past sometimes feels like it might kill me. It is a very heavy burden.” These words from Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxanne Gay are more or less the exact words a victim of...
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