Posts tagged with 'Feminism'
Note: This how-to became quite popular, and I wanted to be clear that it is available for reposting and reuse for other campaigns, so long as you respect the Creative Commons license (Attribution non-commercial share-alike).
THE INTRO
For background on the #dearjohn campaign, check out these posts from Sady Doyle and Amanda Marcotte.
If you’re not on Twitter, but you’d like a helping hand through the sign-up process, go here.
If you’re new to Twitter, and want an introduction to basic concepts– retweets, hashtags, and mentions, oh my!– go here.
THE GOODS
One of the more attractive social media tactics when it comes to creating a stir is to use hashtags. Hashtags, in the case of campaigns and politics, can be useful to:
- collect all the tweets about a particular topic in one place;
- put pressure on public figures to respond to a topic (because of the above);
What’s a hashtag? It’s an agreed-upon keyword preceded by the pound sign that’s added to your tweet. In this case, we’re using #dearjohn. No special skill is required–just type it into your tweet, or copy and paste it.
Tweets with the #dearjohn hashtag should convey one or more of the following:
- A sense of urgency about sexual assault and reproductive rights.
- A personal story–storytelling is what gets to people, not isolated facts and figures.
- Deep conviction. You don’t have to tell your story to be authentic, but your words should be your own.
UPDATE: Check out Sady’s newer post for content ideas and guidelines.
Consider also monitoring the #dearjohn hashtag (how to do that is explained below) and retweeting posts that you agree with. Amplifying powerful messages and diverse voices goes a long way towards building critical mass.
It’s also helpful to include the Twitter handles of people that you want to hear your message. House representatives who are sponsoring the bill should be considered first–start with @SpeakerBoehner himself. A list of the rest of the co-sponsors–all 173 of them!– can be found here (click on “Co-sponsors” under Representative Christopher Smith). You can use GovLuv to find the Twitter handles of the representative you wish to mention. Consider also sending messages of thanks to representatives who are speaking out and standing up for women in this fight. UPDATE: Amaditalks on Tumblr compiled the whole list here.
You might also think about starting (or joining an existing) an act.ly petition to collect #dearjohn tweeters in yet another online location.
A word about decency/politeness: You don’t have to be nice in your tweets when confronting folks that support HR3. But calling names, making false or libelous accusations, etc., only hurts the rest of the movement. Be outraged, but keep your head on straight.
A word about trolls: If you’re new to this kind of thing, you might not have had much experience with trolling behavior. Basically, a troll is someone who actually isn’t interested in having a productive discussion, and only posts extremely inflammatory comments to derail the entire conversation. Ignore them. Block them. Do not, repeat, do not respond in any way, shape or form–do not even tell them that you’re blocking them. Trolls are vampires: they are emboldened and strengthened by any response to their antics, and you will inevitably be weakened. I know it’s hard to ignore them. But trust me, it is the only way.
To see the running log of all #dearjohn posts, you can do a few things:
- Keep coming back to this post and clicking on #dearjohn
- Look at the top of your Twitter page–there’s a search box. Enter #dearjohn into it, and when you see the search results, you’ll notice a button at the top right of the results–”Save this search.” Click that. Then, to find it again, look at the top of your Timeline for the “Searches” link. Click on it, and you’ll be shown a list of your saved searches.
- For more advanced options, you can perform an advanced Twitter search here: https://search.twitter.com/advanced
I’ll continue to update this post as the movement builds and evolves. Have a tip for me? Feel free to @me on Twitter, or drop a line.
It’s the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment today, where women voting in the US finally became legal. A tweet by the Women’s Media Center asked if anyone else got irritated by the phrase, “Women were given the right to vote.” And then a number of people responded yes, they were irritated, because it wasn’t given to them, women won the right to vote.
Both of these frames are problematic. It’s challenging to articulate exactly why, but I’m going to give it my best shot–because language has evolved within the same power structures we seek to tear down, we don’t always have the words to describe the problem.
Human rights within both frames are treated as a commodity that is traded. This is based on our market understanding of what we do with commodities: we accumulate, we spend, we give, we win, we lose. But if we really believe that certain rights are inalienable to humans, we can’t and shouldn’t commodify them. By doing so we support a power structure where rights are doled out and taken away at the whims of the dominant paradigm.
It also, in a deeper metaphorical sense, suggests that women aren’t necessarily fully human– they must be given the right to vote, or they must fight and win it for themselves. It’s not assumed that women would naturally vote in the grand scheme of things. We think so now (mostly), but if we continue to use this language, we support the antiquated structures that keep women from being recognized fully as humans.
If you’re into this kind of thing, by the way, and have the patience for heavy academic text, I highly recommend Women, Fire & Dangerous Things by George Lakoff. There’s a section called “Anger, Lust & Rape” that is truly disturbingly insightful as to how unraveling language can reveal our darkest cultural secrets. I’ll see if I can get in touch with George and post the piece here.
Today over at Gizmodo, blogger Joel Johnson posted what was intended to be encouragement and a challenge for his cohorts of the world to start following people who are different than them on Twitter: “Why I Stalk a Sexy Black Woman on Twitter (And Why You Should, Too).”
Conceptually, encouraging dominant cultures to divesify is fabulous –I subscribe to the DNA model of ecosystems and social spaces, so I support it wholeheartedly. As I’ve said in my book and recent talks:
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Some more thoughts on my previous post, and a couple of things to clear up. Two misconceptions arose from my post because I chose not to lay out a lot exposition on some of my own beliefs on how the world works. Let me rectify that now.
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UPDATE, 1/19: Follow-up post is here.
A post from Internet analyst/author/smart-person Clay Shirky titled “A Rant About Women” has got quite the discussion going around the Intertubes. Read (or at least skim) it before continuing; let me also take this introductory opportunity to do the obligatory feminist thing and thank the dude for taking time out of his busy schedule to wrestle with the giant questions of why don’t women do as well as men at X. Here it comes… thank you. OK, so I’m being a wee bit sarcastic, but seriously: it really is nice to see these conversations happen outside of the usual suspected fora of listservs, blogs, etc, all for and by the ladies.
Much of the resulting discussion has been a bit heavy-handed on both sides– “OMG, he’s totally right!” “OMG, he’s totally wrong!” Some great points have already been well covered by others, especially Jezebel blogger Anna’s point that women aren’t allowed culturally to be the aggressive jerks that successful men are. This was also the place where I had the most visceral reaction — the conclusion that we need to teach women to be more like men: more assertive and aggressive, demanding of what they want and need. This approach to solving the “where are teh womenz” problem misses the mark in a way that 70s & 80s power feminism also missed the mark for me. The “we’re just as good as men” statements and subsequent actions set the wrong frame. It assumes:
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Incredibly exciting news came across the transom last night while I was at the Women Who Tech after-party in NYC: I’ve been offered a book deal with the stellar Berrett-Koehler publishing group in San Francisco. I’m absolutely thrilled to be working with Johanna Vondeling, their vice president of editorial and digital, and the rest of the staff there. Their commitment to social change as well as digital innovation for publishing makes them the perfect fit for what I want to do.
What do I want to do, I hear you asking yourself? In short — I do want you to buy the book, after all — I’m going to be describing the social media moment as a huge opportunity for social change and action. If you’ve read some of what I’ve written about Twitter and other services, and my ideas about the giant gene pool and the desperate need for diversity, you have an idea of where the book will go. Plus, it’ll be stunningly entertaining to boot!
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I wanted to share with you an amazing worldwide conference that I’m participating in next week. It’s called “Women Who Tech,” and it brings together hundreds of women who leverage their technology savvy to inspire change and transform the world. And it takes place all online and on the phone!
Women Who Tech
When: May 12, 2009. Panels are 50 min long and run from 11AM EDT to 6PM EDT.
Where: Everywhere via phone and web
http://womenwhotech.com/
A mere $10 for a whole day of goodness
I participated last year, and at first I thought the distance thing was going to be strange– but it’s absolutely incredible, and I highly recommend joining in the fun. What’s great is that this is really not just for women who currently tech– if you’re interested social media, launching a startup, learning about new tools… this is *the* place to be.
I’ll be moderating this panel:
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[For background on what AmazonFAIL is, see my article at the Women's Media Center.]
As the day has worn on, more parts of the story are unfolding, and all these little tidbits at the intersection of tech, culture, media and commerce are more than fascinating. This is the kind of story that sends me down the rabbit hole of musing for days.
Let’s start with the tech side of things
According to Jessica Valenti (and her publisher, Seal Press), Amazon reps are claiming that this is a purely internal issue caused by the mysteriously “glitch” spoken of last night. I don’t think the reps know what they’re talking about, frankly. What I think is going on: there is a severe vulnerability in the Amazon flagging-for-inappropriate system, and it’s been found and exploited by one or more nerds with too much time on their hands. Amazon’s mistake, vis a vis the brave new world of social media, is two-fold:
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Last weekend was the last of my three sessions with the Progressive Women’s Voices program… and while I’m excited to run out into the world with the stacks of knowledge that I gained, I’m sad that it was our last class! Here’s our group with the staff of the Women’s Media Center, plus a certain famous lady that helps make it all happen:
Bonus: I also played superfangrrl and got my picture taken with Jane Fonda.
As many of you know, I was accepted into the first 2009 class of the Progressive Women’s Voices program. I’ve been through the first of three weekend trainings, and I cannot say enough good things about the program and the women who run it: it’s part boot-camp, part summer camp and part group therapy. I thought I was pretty media savvy before I went into this, but I’ve been blown away with the amount of material I’ve learned so far, and how much it’s already shaped the work I’m doing.
In short, every woman I know should apply for this program. The deadline for applications to get into the next round of classes is coming soon: March 10. Women from all disciplines, backgrounds and identities are strongly encouraged to apply! Don’t let geography or other constraints prevent you from applying — the staff is more than willing to work with candidates that get accepted. This is one of the most brilliant programs for empowering women with real skills that I’ve ever seen– get your application in today.
