Blogs

I found myself being confronted with the issue of anonymity and accountability in different ways at the AWID Forum. At the Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) and Connect Your Rights events that took place just before the Forum, we discussed about the different and increasingly sophisticated ways that internetⁱ technologies have been used to erode any sense of anonymity online.

The question in the headline elicits a complicit smile. Have you ever? Or have you spied on their new partner? Or have you googled someone you just met and liked a lot? At the interactive session on “Privacyⁱ and pleasure” that was held as part of the 2012 AWID Forum there were a variety of participants, of diverse ages, that raised their hands, recognizing that both Facebook and Google are tools not just for finding friends, but also for watching and following the lives of the people who interest us, or that we should have stopped being interested in, but who are still in some corner of our hearts.

Flavia from GenderIT.org based her feminist talk on Maria Suárez Toro’s notes for the session “Harnessing the Power-Politics of Communications: A New Edge for Feminist Transformative Activism” that took place during the 12th AWID International Forum on Women’s Rights in Development. The session was organized by APC WNSP and took place on 12 April 2012 in Istanbul. María Suárez Toro, from the initiative ESCRIBANA, described the initiative’s work developing feminist autonomous capacity to communicate feminist perspectives and women’s voices under the motto: “In the midst of destruction, open way for creativity”.

In a trend that is becoming all too familiar, distribution of an alleged gang rape video has again made the news this week. Like the Jules High School case, the cell phone video went viral and was finally reported to the police by an upset parent who found the video on a teenager’s cell phone. The video triggered outrage online among netizens, with many users expressing their anger using the hashtag #RapeVideo on Twitter. Sadly, at the same time, a number of social media users made requests to see the video and jokes about it.

Who said we should write things in our own names? It makes it personal. Today there was a debate at AWID Forum about a letter that was distributed criticising the exclusion of a certain discourse in the MENA region, and a point that was used to attack the letter was that it was not signed, you can't identify the authors of the letter, and no one "to take responsibility" for its content.