Issue 5.2 | Spring 2007 — Blogging Feminism: (Web)Sites of Resistance

Online Resources

Insights and Examples Outside the Blogosphere

While the blogosphere provides a new and growing site for activism and discourse, other resources on the Internet—such as magazines, forums and campaigns—are a necessary part of online feminist activism.

Center for New Words
The Center for New Words is dedicated to a simple mission: “To use the power and creativity of words to strengthen the voice of progressive women and women speaking from the margins of society.” CNW programs support diverse communities of women who engage with the written and spoken word in all of its expressions, from reading to blogging to creative writing to theater and performance to opinion-making in the media.

FIRE Radio
Radio Internacional Feminista (FIRE) began in 1991 as a bilingual (Spanish and English) short-wave radio program broadcast from Radio for Peace International on the campus of University for Peace in Costa Rica. Since 1998, it has switched to broadcasting through streaming audio over the Internet, and can be heard over http://www.fire.or.cr. FIRE, lead by Maria Suarez, also recently started the Women’s E-Media Pool. Used during this year’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the Media Pool was used to coordinate women media professionals covering the conference.

Girlistic.com
Self-described as the “ultimate feminist resource,” Girlistic.com features a blog, a quarterly online magazine, a calendar for posting local feminist events, a feminist clip art gallery, and forums on everything from arts & crafts to equality at work and home. The Spring 2007 issue of Girlistic Magazine focuses on feminism & technology.

Global Voices
Global Voices Online is a non-profit global citizens’ media project, sponsored by and launched from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. Global Voices is a cooperative effort of contributors from every continent and dozens of countries which aims to redress some of the inequities in media attention by leveraging the power of citizens’ media. Using a wide variety of technologies—weblogs, wikis, podcasts, tags, aggregators and online chats—Global Voices aims to call attention to conversations and points of view that they hope will help shed new light on our interconnected world.

Holla Back NYC
HollaBackNYC is a collective comprised of men and women who believe in building communities where everyone feels comfortable, safe, and respected. Many people, particularly men, are unaware of the frequency and severity of disrespect and intimidation that numerous folks, especially women, experience in public spaces on a daily basis. HollaBackNYC is set up in blog format and publishes the experiences of people who have been sexually harassed on the street, sometimes posting photographs of the offenders. In so doing, HollaBackNYC provides a revolutionary new way to use technology to expose and combat street harassment as well as provide an empowering forum in this struggle.

IndyMedia
The recent anthology The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism featured an article by the co-founders of the Independent Media Center (IndyMedia), Joshua Breitbart and Ana Nogueira. The article focused on the feminist nature of IndyMedia, stating that the online forum “combines technological innovations with feminist organizational principles in an attempt to open the media-making process up to multiple progressive voices.” Breitbart and Nogueira also link alternative media to activism, arguing that: “[t]oday’s media activists are fighting for the human rights to communicate not because it is more important than other struggles for social justice but because it is a necessary component of all those struggles.”

MisFortune500
MisFortune 500 is a project of Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO). A parody of Fortune Magazine’s annual listing of top profit-making companies, MisFortune 500 challenges corporate injustice against women. Instead of ranking “winners” and “losers,” MisFortune 500 exposes corporate activities that violate women’s rights, threaten lives and livelihoods, and destroy the environment. The website also documents women’s resistance and promotes corporate accountability by providing information on women’s activism worldwide, along with advocacy tools, related publications, and other useful resources.

MySpace Groups
Social networking websites like MySpace and Friendster are a fast-growing medium for activism. Existing organizations, magazines, and grassroots campaigns are using the amazing outreach capabilities of these networking sites to further their reach and their goals. By creating “groups” on MySpace of Friendster, like-minded activists can meet up, discuss issues, and network with people from across the US and internationally. Some groups include:

NYC-rapemap.org/ NYC-safestreets.org
After several rapes in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn in 2004, several women created NYC rapemap.org and NYC safestreets.org to map unsafe locations (locations where the rapes had taken place) and also provided a resource section, along with a “safe streets haven”—houses and businesses that serve as safe havens for someone in danger, indicated by a poster with a yellow whistle which is taped to the window. In addition to providing web resources, the project also works with area businesses to paste maps in public locations.

Our Truths/Nuestras Verdades
Our Truths/Nuestras Verdades is an online and print bilingual zine dedicated to bringing to light women’s (and men’s) abortion experiences. The magazine focuses on the voices of women of color because, according to their mission: “in many cases they are the most marginalized from the mainstream pro-choice movement and that they often have fewer opportunities to see their abortion experiences reflected in public spaces.”

Relief Map of Boston
This electronic project is designed to help people find “gender safe” public restrooms in Boston for transgendered and other gender variant people. The website, which is currently in its development stage, also lists whether or not restrooms are accessible. Several similar web-based maps have also popped up, including one run by the LGBT Resource Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia and another by People in Search of Safe Restrooms (PISSR) in San Francisco.

REAL hot 100
Recognizing that media is the new battleground for younger women, the REAL hot 100 was founded in 2005 in an effort to combat the lack of positive, strong images of young women in mainstream media. The REAL hot 100 defies the popular notion that all young women have to offer is their ability to appeal to men while highlighting, the important—but often overlooked—work young women are doing. The website, therealhot100.org, features nominee profiles and content relevant to the program’s targeted audience. In its first year, the REAL hot 100 received more than 350 nominations from around the country, from which its founders selected 100 REAL hot women who represented the intelligence, drive and diversity of young women in the US.

SheSource
The White House Project, Fenton Communications and the Women’s Funding Network are taking on the lack of women in the media with the newly-created SheSource. SheSource, which will launch in the fall of 2005, will provide an online resource of expert women who can serve as spokeswomen, pundits and sources: “Media presence is one of the most visible forms of political power—and women’s leadership, credibility and effectiveness in the public policy arena will increase in direct proportion to their influence in the news media. Despite their growing ranks as experts in fields ranging from national security and military spending to technology and health care, women are drastically underrepresented in the news media as shapers of policy and leading voices of experience and authority on critical issues. Our primary goal is to ensure that women are recognized as stakeholders and called upon as experts in all fields. SheSource will help amplify the voices of women and promote their solutions in the news media.”

Women’s eNews
Women’s eNews’ Mission Statement reads: “Women’s eNews is the definitive source of substantive news—unavailable anywhere else—covering issues of particular concern to women and providing women’s perspectives on public policy. It enhances women’s ability to define their own lives and to participate fully in every sector of human endeavor.”

Women in Media & News (WIMN)
Women In Media & News (WIMN), a national media analysis, education and advocacy group, works with journalists to broaden the quantity and diversity of women’s voices appearing in the media. WIMN was founded in 2001 by media critic and journalist Jennifer L. Pozner, with guidance from a diverse team of advisors including journalists, feminists, social justice activists and media reform advocates. WIMN works to increase women’s presence in the public debate by analyzing representations of women in media, training women’s and social justice groups to hold media outlets accountable to the public interest, and advocating for policy reform and structural change.