Initial Reflection before reading the Femifesto
1.How has the patriarchy affected you?
2. How has the patriarchy impacted your work?
3. How have you been complicit in perpetuating the patriarchy?
Femifesto overarching principles
Ethic of care/Ethical approach - We approach this work as human beings fully recognizing the humanity of those around us, working with us, whose work we rely on. We bring our holistic selves to this work and make space for others to do the same. Scholarship is not just an intellectual exercise: it involves human beings doing work with other human beings on subjects related to the lives of human beings. We bring our full embodied and intellectual selves to this work as we engage in different ways of knowing and unknowing.
Intersectional lens - We adopt an intersectional feminist lens for our work because it is the framework that speaks most to us. We see this work as going beyond an essentialist gendered frame to a more anti-oppressive, action-oriented commitment to engaging with our work. When we talk about an “ethic of care,” we’re talking about engaging with power in a way that promotes agency and breaks down barriers erected against those who are marginalized because of race, class, geography, gender, queerness, and (dis)ability.
Radical - We are committed to destroying the status quo for more inclusive, equitable, ethical ways of knowing and doing. We are activists in our contexts, acknowledging our positions of power, privilege, and marginalization, striving to always learn and grow and to encourage others in doing the same. This is hard and vital work and is not meant to be appropriated for the mainstream.
Inclusive - We acknowledge that there are many ways of doing, being, thinking, and creating. Inclusivity is more than a checklist of commoditized identities. We embrace an intersectional lens that allows all to bring their whole selves.
Language matters, el lenguaje importa - Language is important and should be used as a tool for inclusion rather than a barrier to participation. We strive to make this toolkit and its surrounding community a space for all people of all languages. We encourage those who engage with these principles to adopt, adapt, reuse, remix, and translate them in whatever ways are necessary for their local contexts.
Not one size fits all - translators and contributors should add their own examples - local context is valuable and valued
Process more important than product or deliverables - Whatever we do requires thought, relationship-building, and critical care. It is far more important for us to take a thoughtful, empowering journey together, than to reach a particular destination in the work we do. It’s about the “how” just as much or more than the “what.”
Importance of repatriation - We work to stop justifying the harm we do as humans in a patriarchal system and instead redress historical and continued violence.
Focusing on three main areas:
Building empowering relationships
Developing anti-oppressive description and metadata
Engaging in ethical and inclusive dissemination and publication
Principles for 3 main areas
1) Building empowering relationships
Ethic of care
Acknowledging historical and contemporary violence
Community-created and curated - We are committed to empowering and recentering communities, particularly marginalized communities, to decide what and how materials are preserved and shared.
Practices
From the very beginning, critically interrogate who is responsible for planning and defining the project. What communities will be affected by the work? Who should have a say in how the work is developed?
Ask around to those who will be involved with the project and those who are not involved to review your list of organizers and potential partners in a sort of “review.” Ask for suggestions for other individuals or communities who should be included.
As a collective, set norms or guidelines for the way in which your group will work and operate. Keep in mind that cultural differences may affect the ways in which people interact or wish to interact.
Allow for a lot of time for building trust. Allowing for slowness in the work can be a radical act.
Develop a plan for accessibility that allows participants to engage with the work in their own ways and spaces. Be careful not to make assumptions about what can be used or understood by others.
Examples
OpenCon DEI report " target="_blank">https://sparcopen.github.io/opencon-dei-report/intro.html
La integración social como parte de la descolonización del pensamiento http://www.analectica.org/articulos/gomez-integracion/
Epistemologías del Sur http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/media/EpistemologiasDelSur_Utopia%20y%20Praxis%20Latinoamericana_2011.pdf
A colonialidade do saber https://www.clacso.org.ar/sur-sur/publicaciones_detalle.php?idioma=ing&id_libro=164&pageNum_rs_libros=9s=7&s=7
Design for Diversity: Process and Partners https://desfordiv.library.northeastern.edu/tag/ethical-partnerships-process/
Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples, Linda Tuhiwai Smith https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/decolonizing-methodologies/
PretaLab https://www.pretalab.com
2) Developing anti-oppressive description and metadata
Ethic of care
Nothing about us without us
Importance of language inclusivity/lenguaje inclusivo
Taxonomy, controlled vocabulary for AI and human-readable
Practices
Establish respectful communication and mutual expectations that benefit everyone and account for power imbalances. Are you expecting that only dominant groups will benefit? Are you making space for what marginalized communties want or need from the relationship? It may turn out that the community partners find no benefit in the relationship and wish to forgo collaboration, and that's OK.
Examples
Ngā Upoko Tukutuku / Māori Subject Headings https://natlib.govt.nz/nga-upoko-tukutuku
National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA) https://nationalindigenousknowledgeandlanguagealliance.home.blog/
University of California, Los Angeles International Digital Ephemera Project Toolkit https://uclalibrary.github.io/ideptoolkit/
Design for Diversity: Metadata and Nomenclature https://desfordiv.library.northeastern.edu/tag/metadata-nomenclature/
Social Human Labels- https://www.docnow.io/social-humans/sh-labels.html
Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia: Anti-racist description resources https://archivesforblacklives.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/ardr_final.pdf
Text Encoding Initiative https://tei-c.org
Glosario de género: http://cedoc.inmujeres.gob.mx/documentos_download/100904.pdf
3) Engaging in ethical and inclusive dissemination and publication
Ethic of care
Nothing about us without us
Context is essential
Accessibility is key
Engagement/participation - empower creator communities/creators to establish how open, when and where to disseminate
Importance of repatriation
Preservation trumps access
Practices
When selecting platforms for publication or dissemination, consider whether they provide multilingual, cross-cultural, and cooperative support.
Is it open software? is it an open technology? libre technology? does it make use of CC licenses?
Does it support multilingual works?
Is that support well-formed for cross-cultural understanding, not just literal translation?
what form does it support cooperative live document? Is it real-time synchronized? Or does it work with asynchronized offline editing and committing?
Does it also provide integrated communication tools like IM, chatroom, or forum?
Does it have a code of conduct and explicit procedural accountability?
Reflect critically over potential resource cost and requirements on both the front and back ends.
How much computational resource does it require on both front and back ends?
Does it run on local networks or does it require Internet access?
Does it support older operating systems and hardware?
out platforms, resources, and materials that allow for scalability, flexibility, and compatibility.
Are its layout components flexible enough for varied forms of work?
Does it handle various media formats?
Is it scalable for big and small projects?
Is it customizable down to the code level?
Is it compatible with other platforms? Can it import and export content in well-organized and lossless ways?
Examples
South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) https://www.saada.org/
African Journals Online https://www.ajol.info/
Library Publishing Coalition Ethical Framework https://librarypublishing.org/resources/ethical-framework/
Refusal as research method https://discardstudies.com/2016/03/21/refusal-as-research-method-in-discard-studies/
Audra Simpson on ethnographic refusal https://pages.ucsd.edu/~rfrank/class_web/ES-270/SimpsonJunctures9.pdf
Contextualizing Openness https://press.uottawa.ca/contextualizing-openness.html