Results matching “SXSW”
It is clear that we have been in Austin for 6 days, I have lost my voice and we may have lost our minds. But please enjoy our take on being feminists at SXSW.
Check out our other posts on SXSW music and SXSW Interactive if you haven't already.
Full transcript after the jump.
One of the highlights of SXSW music so far for me has been seeing Grizzly Bear play in a church. Not only do the songs from their new album sound phenomenal, they played a cover of "He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss":
Not from SXSW, but you get the idea. MP3 is here.
You're perhaps familiar with this song. It was recorded by girl-group The Crystals in the 1960s, and produced by Phil Spector (musical genius, perhaps, but total fucking misogynist). Songwriters Carol King and Gerry Goffin penned the song after learning their nanny, singer Little Eva, was being abused. King and Goffin meant the song as a critique of domestic violence. But Spector pushed the Crystals to record the song in a pretty straightforward manner:
Someone tallied the numbers on how many women artists are here at South By Southwest music. I was kind of surprised at the low numbers, because I feel like we've seen a lot of female acts (both live, and on the schedule). But in relatively speaking, there are few. Only 388 of the more than 2,000 bands feature even one woman.
(via Jessica Hopper)
So we are in the music portion of SXSW and Ann and I are having a blast. The city has gone wild and there is so much live music it is a little overwhelming. I am discovering tons of music and checking out things that I already love.
Of all the bands we saw yesterday and last night, I think Ann and I were most excited and taken aback by female MC Rye Rye. She is 17, from Baltimore, has a female DJ (who is basically the rebirth of Spindarella) and two back-up dancers who come out and dance during the chorus of her tracks. It is an amazing show.
Young, independent, confident women of color tearing it up. That is something I can get behind.
Other music I am checking out includes, King Kahn and the Shrines, Toki Wright, Janelle Monae, Jean Grae, Kid Cudi and an encore show from Rye Rye. I am so not ready.
Having an Iphone has made these last few days in Austin a lot easier. Between the GPS and the scheduling function that SXSW has set up, I haven't been lost (unless I don't have service.) I understand I am very, very lucky to have an Iphone. I saved up for it and didn't splurge on other things, along with having a phone with an antenna (!) until a few months ago. Needless to say, similar to Nezua, I really love my Iphone.
If you are a nerd, like me, you have heard that the Iphone has released a new version of their Iphone software. It is going to add a whole new list of features that the current software fails to have. I am really excited about these new features. But as much as I love my Iphone, I have never thought seriously about having sex with my Iphone. I am going to be totally honest with you. Sometimes I want to make-out with my Iphone-it is just simply a divine piece of technology-but I haven't personally thought about using it as a vibrator or as device to have phone sex with someone.
These authors disagree. Both, My Sexy Professor and Gizmodo are discussing different ways you can have sex with your Iphone. Last year at SXSW I wrote about a panel that discussed the ways that humans interact with technology to have sex. I think this brings up really interesting questions about the role of technology in our sex lives. Generally, discussions of the role of technology (and by this I mean in the geek world, not dildonics) is generally skewed towards male sexuality (teledildonics, pornography, etc) but does the Iphone allow for a new more female centric form of sex via technology that the geek world has ignored until now?
I think it can be said that the Feministing/Pandagon Happy Hour was the best party at SXSW Interactive. We schmoozed, boozed, talked feminism and technology and more importantly got DOWN with some karaoke. Here are some pics from the party and sorry for the slow posting, our internet access has been spotty. Thanks for everyone that came out and note the picture of Amanda Marcotte singing "Lola" and Cecily singing "Heartbreaker" after the jump.
It's been interesting to note how many panels here at South By Southwest Interactive have a gender/sexism angle. On Saturday, Samhita and I caught a panel on the web and feminism with Heather Gold, Julia Angwin, Betty Flowers (director of the LBJ presidential library), and Danah Boyd. Boyd had some great thoughts on privilege and gender online, and we recorded some audio, which I'll post tomorrow.
Also, on Sunday, the awesome Liz Henry was kind enough to take super-detailed notes at Samhita, Amanda, Cecily and my panel about combating online misogyny. Her almost-transcript is here. A sample:
Ann: 6 of us who write on Feministing and we can all each other up and go "i know people say mean shit all the time but this one really got to me!" and we all know how it feels. sometimes you have to decide what is a good public fight to have, vs. "you just want to call me ugly and tell me to make you a sandwich" i know it sounds ridiculous but it is hard to tell the difference sometimes! we need help in figuring that out, when to engage and when not to. you can engage with people who just don't get it. But Feministing is on our terms. we don't like it, we can delete your comment. we can respond to just part of what you're saying and ignore the rest. or we can have a full blown back and forth, having a community to help decide and talk about how to engage has been crucialAmanda: the purpose is to shut you up and if they don't get what they want, they stop trying to shut you up, the more I don't go away, and don't shut up, the less harassment i get. just go out there and write every day and eventually they will give up. it's not working, it's straight up behavioral science.
Cecily: these tools that help us to get our voices out there, also hurt us. social networking tools.
Samhita: Twitter is a very useful tool. Communities, we have different community that comments on our youtube videos, twitter is another micro group environment and you get to know people a different way. That's very powerful. I've had friends on my twitter feed who in the blogging worlds we have knock down "your mama" fights but on twitter I'm like "Oh you do yoga? i do yoga toooo!" lol. It's less serious, less formal, commenting on Feministing can feel very formal.
Still hoping we'll have audio/video from the panel shortly.
Right now there's a panel going on about Obama and the afrosphere. You can watch the livestream here.
Oh, and remember, our happy hour with Pandagon is TONIGHT. If you're in Austin, stop by! Who doesn't love feminists taking over a bar and rocking the karaoke machine?
Previous SXSW posts:
SXSW 2009: Can Social Media End Racism?
Beating Down Online Misogyny: Links
More to come...
I'm caught in the SXSW whirlwind (about to attend a Cupcakes Take the Cake party!), so no WFR this week.
So consider this an open thread.... What have you been reading/writing this week?
Sitting in the panel right after ours at SXSW, "Can Social Media End Racism" and all of the panelists have agreed that social media cannot end racism, but is in fact a powerful tool to support in our overall goal to end racism. The panel is full of heavy hitters including, Kety Esquivel, Latoya Peterson from Racialicious, Jay Smooth from Illdoctrine and Phil Yu from Angry Asian Man. Latoya breaks it down that social media can help end racism by 1) spreading knowledge, 2) creating refuge, 3) mobilizing communities.
The audience seems deeply engaged with the content matter which is critical for SXSW. I am really happy this panel is following ours creating a deep and complex narrative around different ways that we as cultural and political workers and thought producers counteract narratives of race and gender.
Check the live twitter stream here.
Samhita and I just finished our SXSW panel with Amanda from Pandagon and Cecily Walker! Had a great conversation Will post video and more later today. In the meantime, check out the panel discussion on Twitter (#misosxsw).
As promised, here are a few links for additional info on the stuff that we discussed today:
University of Maryland: Female-Name Chat Users Get 25 Times More Malicious MessagesJessica Valenti: How the web became a sexists' paradise
Wikipedia: Disemvoweling (via epc on Twitter)
Feministe: AutoAdmit sued
Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog: Kill-filing repeatedly abusive commentors
Salon: Men who hate women on the Web
Ada Lovelace Day: "an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology" (via girlonetrack on Twitter)
Now we're watching a panel on social media and racism featuring Latoya from Racialicious, Kety from the Sanctuary, Jay Smooth from Ill Doctrine, and Phil from Angry Asian Man. (On Twitter, #racesxsw.)
More from SXSW later. And if you're here in Austin, come to our happy hour with Pandagon on Monday night! More info here.
I am finishing up the last of my packing to head to the airport to go to Austin, TX for the Annual SXSW Conference with Ann. We are going to rock it in Feministing style and don't worry, we will rep all of you that can't be there. If you are there, hit us up to say hello. You can follow me and Ann on twitter to get live updates of panels and web-star celeb sightings (haha.).
Finally, don't forget about our panel on Sunday morning, "That's Not My Name: Beating down Online Misogyny," the Feministing/Pandagon happy hour on Monday (that you don't need a badge to get into!) and please check back for liveblogging. I always find myself very inspired at SXSW, so I am excited to see what I will learn this year.
I can't wait. *squeal*
In light of my upcoming panel at SXSW, I was graciously interviewed by Belinda Acosta of the Austin Chronicle with two other panelists, Latoya Peterson and Steve Swedler, about social justice, activism, changing people's minds and the internet.
A snippet from the Austin Chronicle story,
AC: From your perspective, what is the "revolution"? What role do online communities and social networks play in it? What role do you play in it?Peterson: All revolutions should be revolutions of thought - an ongoing evolution of ideas, the encouragement of the critical thinking process, the willingness to look past things that keep us stagnant and will allow us all to move forward. I have been re-evaluating my whole purpose for being online recently and I ultimately came to the conclusion that I want to facilitate conversations and spread information. I feel like that is the most powerful thing you can do - to provide someone with an argument or an idea they can mull over, accept or reject ... or revisit later.
Mukhopadhyay: I think a revolution can only happen with changes in mindset, yes, but also strategic campaigns using grassroots organizing models. ... But even prior to that, I think changing people's minds is important work with respect to policy change, I just don't know if blogging does that. Changing people's minds is hard and I'm not sure if it just allows people to debate and if not, reify what they believe. On the other hand, I get tons of [e-mails] from women that have never heard about the things we write about at Feministing [saying] how it truly changed their lives.
Swedler: In my opinion, the "revolution" is undefined. It is up to every individual. My revolution might be very different than yours, but online communities can only be as effective as you make them. The level of discomfort in getting up on your soapbox on Facebook or Twitter is equal to the extent you are willing to go to make a difference in your "revolution." It can be difficult to be sure, evidenced by the complete lack of McCain support on Twitter. Is it because no one on Twitter voted for him, or was it because it was too uncomfortable to speak out in the vast sea of Obama supporters?
This interview really got me to thinking about the role of new media and political blogging in changing people's minds about different issues. I think this is one of those trends that is really hard to quantify. Does blogging raise awareness, get people on board with critical decisions and therefore impact policy changes?
I have found that blogging has led to an increase at the rate at which information can flow and the way in which people can intercept with ideas, that traditionally may have been more difficult to access and interact with. But as Steve mentions early in his interview, there are still more people off the internet than on. Outside of mobilizing my own personal voice and that of my co-bloggers and commenters, does blogging do more than give voice to issues and certain people? Does blogging change people's minds? Or does it just allow people to debate more about issues they already feel a certain way on? What do you as members of our community, commenters and/or lurkers and readers think?
Happy March, y'all. Just in case you haven't been keeping up with the events calendar, check out all of the great events on tap around the country. (They're listed below by date and location, to make things easier. Check the events calendar for more details on all events below.)
March 5
New York, NY: Commemorate the 1969 Abortion Speakout
New York, NY: The Lonely Soldier Monologue
College Park, MD: How are Women Affected by the War on Drugs?
Columbia, MO: Women's Health Gathering
March 6
Chicago, IL: Chicago Feminisms: Past, Present and Future
Newark, NJ: The Gender Dimensions of Terrorism: How Terrorism Impacts the Lives of Women
San Francisco, CA: National Lesbian Health Summit (through March 8)
March 7
Ithaca, NY: Summit on Women's Issues in Global Health & Development
Bangalore, India: Protest the attacks on women in Karnataka. Here's a list of events happening on March 7 and 8. If you can't make it in person, participate in a Pink Chaddi event in your town.March 8
International Women's Day! What are you doing? Also, from the community blog, check out this list of events in Canada.March 11
New York, NY: Susie Orbach: Loving Our BodiesMarch 12
Columbia, MO: Latina Visual Artists and the Politics of Everyday AestheticsMarch 15
Austin, TX: That's Not My Name: Beating Down Online Misogyny (panel discussion at SXSW featuring me and Samhita, as well as Amanda from Pandagon)March 16
Austin, TX: Feministing/Pandagon SXSW Happy Hour!
Kirksville, MO: Pap Art exhibitionMarch 18
Austin, TX: Bitch Magazine party at SXSWMarch 21
Washington, DC: National Young Women's Leadership Conference: From Campus to CongressMarch 24
Atlanta, GA: Motherhood at the Intersection of Race and Class: A Keynote Address for Women's History MonthMarch 25
Atlanta, GA: Legislate THIS! Reproductive Justice NowMarch 27
Cambridge, MA: Women, Action and the Media (WAM) Conference www.wam2009.org
Again, check out the calendar for more info on all these events. And remember that our calendar is only as good as you make it -- we rely on your event submissions!
Ann and I are traveling to Austin next week for the annual SXSW conference. We are presenting at SXSW Interactive on panel titled, "That's Not My Name: Beating Down Online Misogyny." If you are going to be at the conference, please come check us out!
And for those of you both that will be at the conference and those of you that are in the Austin area, we are joining forces for one night with Pandagon to have the ultimate feminist blog extravaganza. This event is before the music festival starts so you do NOT need a badge to get in.
Don't sleep on this. Come say hi, have a drink, talk feminism, technology and whatever else you want. And if you *really* want to party, stay after for the karaoke that starts at 10pm.
Monday, March 16, 2009
7:00pm-12:00am
Beerland
711 Red River ST
Austin, TX
If you are on Facebook you can RSVP here.
PS: Ann and I are also staying for music and plan to be at the Bitch/KRS party on Wednesday. Let us know of any other feminist friendly events we should show up to!
Thanks to votes from many of you, some of the Feministing ladies (myself and Ann) and Amanda Marcotte from Pandagon and moderated by Cecily Walker will be on a panel at SXSWi, called "That's Not My Name: Beating Down Online Misogyny." If you are going to be in town please come through and say hello!
Needless to say, online misogyny is a topic we deal with regularly and it is a condition that we face online. Despite our ability to move towards a more free space where we can voice our opinions, we are consistently threated by emails, commenters and on other blogs and videos, with sexualized violence or we are just plain ridiculed for speaking in ways that disrupt sexual imbalances of power.
Our panel is going to focus not only stories of our own experiences with online misogyny but ways we have overcome it and best practices for other political and feminist bloggers on how to maintain your identity and politics in a hostile climate.
I am on this week's RH Reality Check podcast talking extensively about this topic. Check it out!
So this might be a little bit shameless, but hey it is for a good cause. I have submitted a panel to the annual interactive conference in Austin called South by South West. It is where creative tech people, bloggers and other web folk get together and share some of the brightest, newest and innovative ideas in technology and how to apply it to the work we do. I have gone before and it was great, but it was also clear that there needs to be more conversations about the way that women are treated online. So I put a panel together about best practices of beating down online misogyny and you can go vote for it so it is approved. It is pretty competitive so the more votes we get the better. Support women's voices! You know we should be there!
You can vote here!
/shameless promotion
In light of Kathy Sierra having to cancel her speech at ETech because of death threats, I just want to say that I completely agree with her and Lindsay and Zuzu, that death threats towards bloggers is NOT protected speech. They say it all so go read it. But I want to add Feministing has gotten its share of threatening emails and it is very upsetting.
When I was presenting at SXSW, one of the questions discussed was how safe can we make online communities for diverse voices and is it possible? Some people believe that everyone should be able to say what they want, but somethings are just not O.K. Threatening women or people of color for voicing their thoughts, concerns and opinions is NOT O.K. It is an old, tired and paranoid brand of racist misogyny and we are not going to put up with it.
It is so unfortunate that someone would have to cancel a speaking engagement because stupid trolls were so threatened by a women talking tech.
Disgusting.
So it has been a week since I have been back from the great Texas city of Austin, and I can truly say that my first experience at SXSW interactive was not only eye-opening, but extremely enriching. First and foremost, I made several very good friends, including Jason Toney, Laina Dawes, Lynne D Johnson, Erica Mauter, Tiffany Brown, Amanda Marcotte, George Kelly and Lainie Duro (yeah I know a whole lot of blogging amazing-ness), and through the help of twitter have been very effectively keeping in touch.
And finally, things I learned that I will remember if I am asked to go back:
*Although it was awkward being a non-tech person in a sea of technophiles, it was that much more important for me and other people that are utilizing technology in unique ways to represent.
*Race, class, gender and sexuality are indeed legitimate critiques of the ways that technology is distributed, consumed and reproduced.
*Being around people that are making a lot money can be frustrating when you are a poor and struggling writer.
*Don't think veganism is a legitimate diet in Texas.
*Social justice oriented geeks exist, they really do!
*Don't rent a car. You can't party with the bloggerati. (boo!) Stay downtown, not far away where you might get lost and end up in Waco.
Finally, if you want to see video of the panel I was on you can get that here thanks to George! It is shaky, but you get the point.
So of course I had to go to this panel because I LOVE writing about dating and the romantic industrial complex. Although, I was excited at the prospect, I ended up pretty disappointed with the outcome.
The panel consisted of a variety of women writers/bloggers, two of which wrote for Redbook and Glamour. As they began discussion of the realities of being a sex blogger (or as I said to my folks, a "courtship" blogger), I began to twitch. It started out so innocent as they were talking about hate mail and comments and how it makes them feel. You know I can relate because I have certainly battled my share of online hateration. Overall though, I had trouble feeling bad for the paid bloggers, as they get PAID to write and well, I get tons of hate email and comments and I don't. Oh I guess that is because there is a major difference between being a feminist blogger as opposed to a female blogger (like Michele Malkin, hello!).
Either way, this panel could have been really good as our feminist gal pal Rachel Kramer Bussel from the Gothamist and Lusty Lady was on it, but she didn't get to talk as much as I would have liked. And I think she was really an outlier as she is both a very "outside the box" sex columnist and a feminist.
The comments (and I say comments to recognize that I will not obey patriarchy and fight with other women, but I will interrogate concepts and recognize that they are a result of much bigger systemic problems) that pissed me off were the ones that portrayed a culture of online media and dating discourse that completely ignored the contributions of queer and feminist bloggers, as though date/romance/sex blogging was just a place to discuss the downside of your task on how to meet a man in a white, middle class, normal, straight way. Not only are their bloggers battling the misogynist and heterosexist nature of mainstream dating, we have these same people and others blogging about their personal dating lives in very crucial and insightful ways.
Granted this is a panel so it is limited in how many people we can have and we are not going to see a sample from every part of the population of people blogging about sex and relationships, but still, comments like, "let's not ghettoize the sex bloggers" and "women are bitches, that's why comments are so bad" should not be considered acceptable, when compared to the greater sexist and racist context of the internet.
Also, I think a conversation of public and private information and acceptable ways to think, talk and engage with our audiences while talking about our personal lives would have been really helpful. How do we talk about dating without letting all our secrets out or embarrassing somebody?
Women's magazines such as Redbook and Glamour are not ghettoized or marginalized. They get tons of money to endorse their product and image. And perhaps they are pushed into the realm of women-only consumption, but quite frankly, I am not working to push that type of feminine aesthetic. One of the main reasons they get the money they do, and explicitly feminist publications don't is because, the former feed into patriarchal ideas of how women should look, act, think and feel.
I was indeed befuddled that a conference that seems to be showing a very progressive lineage in terms of political-social-cultural commentary could have such a simplistic panel on a very important topic. Now how can we as feminist bloggers and feminist blog readers utilize the resources we have to create transgressive environments where we can talk about both the political climate of dating, sex and romance AND the personal, juicy and naughty tidbits of the actual interactions?
If we only relegate dating conversations to the "girly" part of the internet, then we are not going to reach the people we need to or include the voices that are truly ghettoized.
For another perspective check my new best friend Jason Toney's post.
This was another really interesting panel at SXSW. It discussed the global nature of technology and the ways that tech can be used to give accessibility to marginalized voices, in this case, young women of color. The panel covered a lot of different topics, from global consumption of social networking technologies to the digital divide.
But what really stuck out about this panel was three students from Crosby High School that created an online textbook for their heavy course load. In an effort to work, take honors classes and be a teenager they utilized online technologies to facilitate their learning. Along with this, they were creating online tutoring services and other educational processes to facilitate different learning styles.
It was very impressive. Young people and especially young people of color seem to be the fastest growing segment of folks utilizing mobile technologies. What does this mean for the next 10 years or so? What is the potential in these groups having access to mobile technologies?
I think it is scary and exciting, all at the same time. You can read more about this panel here.
