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.

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.

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?

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).

The intent is to gently exclude the kinds of people who would be hung up on this question.

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."

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

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