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I truly don’t understand what the hope to gain from self-classifying this is “feminist”. “FEMINIST HACKING: BUILDING CIRCUITS AS AN ARTISTIC PRACTICE – an inte
by fxtentacle 5mo ago
I truly don’t understand what the hope to gain from self-classifying this is “feminist”.
“FEMINIST HACKING: BUILDING CIRCUITS AS AN ARTISTIC PRACTICE – an international art-based research project financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)”
Doesn’t that kind of invite the worst type of trolls? They seem to imply that feminist = artistically produced, as opposed to professionally produced PCBs. So masculine = professional? But clearly that wasn’t their intention?
- huflungdung 5mo ago[dead]
- JCTheDenthog 5mo agoAnd it's taxpayer funded, to boot. I definitely wouldn't be happy as an Austrian if I knew my taxes were going to something like this (meanwhile hobbyists elsewhere do projects like this on their own dime).
- oulipo2 5mo ago[flagged]
- JCTheDenthog 5mo ago[flagged]
- oulipo2 5mo ago[flagged]
- JCTheDenthog 5mo ago[flagged]
- dang 5mo agoPlease don't cross into personal attack and please avoid tit-for-tat spats on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 5mo agoPlease don't cross into personal attack and please avoid tit-for-tat spats on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- kennywinker 5mo agoWhere do you see taxpayer funding? It looks like the hack space has gov funding - but i didn’t see any acknowledgement of grants for this project.
- pron 5mo agoGovernments have long funded artistic projects. I'm sure some people oppose government funding for the arts, but there's nothing unusual about it. Obviously, not all artists get government funding, but such funding is an established process.
- kube-system 5mo agoProbably not, generally Western Europe has a very different opinion compared to the US when it comes to funding the arts.
- Drupon 5mo agoEuros generally understand that taxes aren't purely for what they themselves want to be done.
- lostlogin 5mo agoIt’s hard to tell how it works as and the link is dead. https://feministhackerspaces.cargo.site/Supporters https://feministhackerspaces.cargo.site/Supporters However in a brief visit to Vienna I was blown away by the city. It’s amazing, and wish my city had a fraction the arts, sites and budget that Vienna seems to have had for a huge period of time.
- oulipo2 5mo agoWell if you were a creative/researcher-type of person, the mere fact that you don't understand what she hopes to gain would push you to read about it. You'd discover the very real links between tech and gender inequalities (or the reinforcement of other minority inequalities) and you'd have learn something
- fwipsy 5mo agoI think parent comment is probably aware of gender inequalities in tech.
- oulipo2 5mo agoI don't think so, since he's making it clear that he, in fact, doesn't: "I truly don’t understand what the hope to gain from self-classifying this is “feminist”."
- fwipsy 5mo agoThe rest of the comment shows that they understand the need to represent women as equally professional to men in tech. The first line is just a polite way to say "I think this is counterproductive" while leaving the door open for discussion. You may disagree (and I do,) but at least engage with the point they actually made.
- oulipo2 5mo agoIt has nothing to do with "equally professional to men in tech". It has to do with the fact that the power dynamics in tech are inherently anti-feminist, and they recognize that, and try to fight against it. You can read about it here: > Feminist theories of technology also imagine technologies that do not (yet) exist, and that would be desirable and liberating. They are engaged in writing diverse code to reflect different bodies and minds, and transforming developer-user dynamics to return autonomy to those who inhabit these technologies. They are invested in creating friendly ways of managing our information, communication and memory-related needs. https://digitalfreedomfund.org/why-we-need-feminist-technology/ https://digitalfreedomfund.org/why-we-need-feminist-technolo...
- mlyle 5mo agoThis is going to really confuse future archaeologists.
- beepbooptheory 5mo agoThe opposite of feminist is not masculine. You are conflating feminist with feminine which does indicate why your are maybe confused here. Feminism is not about being partisan like this, and you are operating through a strawman of so-called "second wave feminism" which is like over half a century old and defunct to everyone but guys who get angry at stuff like this. Consider how calling yourself "atheist" or "rationalist" comes with some broad commitments and political tendencies, but not necessarily. We say we are an "atheist" to indicate a particular belief but also perhaps a broad attitude to culture as it stands, but not one thing or the other. Its like the same thing here!
- 3form 5mo agoWhat are you asking about exactly? About classifying the project as feminist or the perceived feminist = artistic implication? You start with this: >I truly don’t understand what the hope to gain from self-classifying this is “feminist”. To which I say - why not? Is this the problem?
- setr 5mo ago> To which I say - why not? Because it creates weird, presumably unintentional implications. One such implication: > They seem to imply that feminist = artistically produced, as opposed to professionally produced PCBs. So masculine = professional? But clearly that wasn’t their intention?
- foltik 5mo agoThe article doesn’t say or imply that whatsoever. That a feminist art project or collective has to be defined in opposition to something else is entirely your own framing. This is where your mind goes when you read “feminist,” which reveals your priors.
- jedimastert 5mo agoThe name of the site and I think the group itself is "feminist hacking", the entire point of the research group appears to be examining the ethics of technology and hacking through a feminist lens. https://feministhackerspaces.cargo.site/Ethical_issues https://feministhackerspaces.cargo.site/Ethical_issues Instead of just trying to make a rather obtuse guess, you could have instead tried looking around the website. It took me like half a second to find that link, even with the more free form UX. The term "feminism" as an actual technical definition outside of just like "female empowerment vibes" it might be used for in the everyday language.
- setr 5mo agoI mean, the technical definition provided “the movement to end sexism, sexual exploitation and sexual oppression'” is expanded quite rapidly into including racism and then labor practices (which I’m very much struggling with the jump; the link appears to be that both involve power relationships?). And I’m not really clear why this doesn’t extend further into basically all of human suffering in any society. Or perhaps extended upwards and encapsulate systems-thinking and any graph-relationship whatsoever The term "feminism" as an actual technical definition seems to be quite loose; this strikes me as a 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon definition
- jedimastert 5mo ago> expanded quite rapidly into including racism and then labor practices The jump you referring to is a quote with a reference attached. But in short terms so that might be useful to Google, but in short the concept of intersectionality means that things like feminism and anti-racism and other forms of prejudice can potentially be inter-related in terms of using different forms of marginalization as tools to enforce a hierarchy. > which I’m very much struggling with the jump; the link appears to be that both involve power relationships? And I’m not really clear why this doesn’t extend further into basically all of human suffering in any society. Or perhaps extended upwards and encapsulate systems-thinking and any graph-relationship whatsoever Not to really go off the rails too much but you sort of just given a not too bad description of anarchism, so like yeah it wouldn't necessarily be a leap to extrapolate that and plenty of people do
- pron 5mo agoFeminism is not femininity and so is not to be contrasted with masculinity [1]. Feminism is originally about gender (power-) equality (and so is orthogonal to femininity and masculinity), but has been extended to other forms of power equality. I think that in this context it's about concern for certain things that established practices don't show concern for. Such concern could perhaps translate to certain power dynamics. [1]: One of the feminist icons in recent popular culture is Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, who is also an icon of butch masculinity. I don't know if he would have loved or hated this. On the one hand, the description sounds hippy, which he would have hated; on the other hand, it's about do-it-yourself, non-industrial craftsmenship, which he would have loved.
- culi 5mo agoYes, that's exactly the focus of modern feminist studies. Figures like Donna Haraway have pushed for a field of study that goes beyond identities of womanhood. > She advocates for political organizing based on "affinity"—conscious coalitions and political choices—rather than essentialist identities based on biology or shared oppression.
- fxtentacle 5mo agoIf the goal is to decouple feminism from feminine identities, which by definition means it then also needs to apply to masculine identities, then I think they need a new name. Also, it appears that >99% of feminism researchers are publishing their scientific papers with a feminine name. I can easily understand why the general public might confuse the 2 groups with each other. Which brings me back to the question: what do you think the authors hope to gain by invoking this association? Especially now that we have established that their word choice is highly likely to be misunderstood?
- pron 5mo agoFirst, confusing feminism with femininity or, conversely, patriarchy with masculinity is such a basic error - and not one of nuance - that shows at least an intentional disinterest. There is no "goal to decouple", because if an ideology believes a certain group is disempowered then it strives to empower it and there is no "decoupling". But if you can't tell the difference between, say, being white and being a white supremacist, then you should probably find out what it is. Second, every academic discipline, from history to physics, suffers from misinterpretation by "the general public", and the disciplines don't generally let this problem shape their work. Non-introductory writing doesn't cover the basics. That's what Wikipedia is for.
- fwipsy 5mo agoI think "feminist" here means "socially conscious," not "small-batch/artistic."
- logicallee 5mo ago>I truly don’t understand what the hope to gain from self-classifying this is “feminist”. I like it a lot. For example, it's obvious that if the NSA wanted to come into a feminist open source phone baseband for an open telephone and say "We men will tell you who you can and can't call" it will be rightly called out as patriarchal nonsense. Yet that's the world we live in today. Just the other day Zoom gave me a password of "OPSexr" on a business meeting (I created the Zoom call myself). Obviously this was a hack by NSA and not a first-party chosen by Zoom (which is professional meeting software) or random (the word doesn't have the entropy of passwords).
- jayd16 5mo agoThe site/group is Feminist Hacking. They happen to do a fun project and put it up. That idea that you think these things are unnatural or an odd match is probably why it's a good idea they did it. If it was a bee keeper group talking about Bee Keeper Hacking: Clay PCB would you be asking them to hide their identity?
- chromacity 5mo agoEveryone has an identity. We have people with near-religious beliefs about AI, people who cram functional programming where it doesn't belong, etc. Our hobby projects are often a consequence of these identities and make no sense otherwise. A guy who builds a web server on a Z80 CPU is doing something fundamentally pretty stupid, but we like it, right? So, how does a Z80 webserver differ from a PCB made out of clay? Why does this particular project need to have the right kind of ideology underpinning it before we can enjoy it? If we're uncomfortable or "have questions" because someone brings up feminism as a justification for their geeky hobby... that's on us.
- tptacek 5mo agoThe intent is to gently exclude the kinds of people who would be hung up on this question.