The Black Lives Matter movement has swept society, through social media and t-shirts and activism. It’s been impossible to miss. And as it sweeps along, it’s also impossible to miss the murmers of people who don’t understand the point: “why isn’t it all lives matter?” As their website clearly spells out, “Black Lives Matter is … More Why Black Lives in Particular Matter
The #BlackLivesMatter movement has been brewing for the past few years, steadily gaining followers and supporters. This week we were asked to look at this movement, narrowing the lens to focus on the intersectionality of #BlackLivesMatter. The first article I came across was a post in The New Yorker by Jelani Cobb, The Matter of … More #BlackLivesMatter
The first article I came across pays attention to our current understanding of what constitutes police brutality; essentially where it occurs and how to address it. While black men face a more brutal, abrupt meeting, women experience this violence in a very specific gendered way. They experience this through sexual harassment and sexual assault. Currently the founders of … More Intersectionality: #AllLivesMatter
Intersectionality, as stated by these three articles, is a concept that can further the #BlackLivesMatter movement by helping understand systems of oppression working in conjunction against different identities and communities. Chamseddine frames her text around Islamophobia and Islamophobic violence, often treated as “isolated instances” and not systematic, which is how African Americans killed by police across America are now framed, … More Developing Networks of Intersectionality: #BlackLivesMatter
The first article I read on Anne and Femtechnet was on the emergence of the Collaborative Courses (DOCC) distributed online collaborative course which allows innovative thinkers to discuss and further deconstruct emerging technology. In an interview, she goes on to question the current state of cultural amnesia that we find ourselves in, how unfamiliar with the topic … More Femtechnet: A DIY Collaboration
In The New Yorker article entitled “The Matter of Black Lives,” the author Jelani Cobb discusses the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Much attention has been given to Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi as the founders of the movement. Alicia Garza is responsible for coining the name of the movement. … More Black Lives Matter: From Centralized Leadership to Decentralized Power
Throughout the past few years, there has been a huge progress made in the #blacklivesmatter movement. Under a time of overwhelming political stress and social dysfunction, the #blacklivesmatter movement has not only brought up the need for awareness in the ways in which black women and men are victims of police brutality, but it has … More Becoming Aware: Intersectionality in #BlackLivesMatter
The first article I found on FemTechNet was from the first issue of Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology. Here, the creators of FemTechNet, Alexandra Juhasz and Anne Balsamo discuss the process by which they created the FemTechNet, and why feminism and technology are so intimately intertwined. They mention they’re frustration that … More FemTechNet
FemTechNet is a loosely organized network of scholars and activists engaging in feminism, technology, and cyberfeminism. Their activities take a number of forms. Among the most prominent is the Distributed Open Online Course, a more collaborative approach to the traditional Massive Open Online Course model prizing respect for diveresity and difference and embracing variety in … More FemTech and Local Collaborative Outreach
FemTechNet, started by women techies, is about openness and accessibility, something that higher learning has historically been known to NOT be defined as. Often times universities are exclusionary, but FemTechNet is changing this. Students participate in learning through different perspectives, expertise is distributed, and learning is free (even when it involves expensive, private universities). FemTechNet’s … More Pedagogies of the Future
