Comment by fxtentacle
20 hours 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?
Feminism 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.
Yes, 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.
If 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?
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Everyone 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.
This is going to really confuse future archaeologists.
The 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
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.
I 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
> 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
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You would hope that people who visit hacker news would be willing to spend a few minutes doing some research, but I guess that does get engagement.
What 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?
> 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?
The 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.
And 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).
Governments 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.
It’s hard to tell how it works as and the link is dead. 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.
Where 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.
Probably not, generally Western Europe has a very different opinion compared to the US when it comes to funding the arts.
Euros generally understand that taxes aren't purely for what they themselves want to be done.
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Please 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
The 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?
I think "feminist" here means "socially conscious," not "small-batch/artistic."
Except "free-range feminist eggs" is sort of a weird sentence.
The group clearly has a strong sense of humor that the typical HN crowd is struggling to pick up on
It mostly is the (simple) recognition that capitalism is inherently anti-feminist (read about it if you want to learn more).
So feminism, in order to truly exist, HAS to fight against capitalism
The intent is to gently exclude the kinds of people who would be hung up on this question.
The 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!
>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).
Well 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
I think parent comment is probably aware of gender inequalities in tech.
I 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”."
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