Moderators of feminist publics about why they are needed
Following the feminist online discourse, one would even have to write moderator_. Language issues are also the agenda of fempublica: someone is fighting for femininity, someone is implanting new language norms that do not discriminate against transgender people and quirs. In the debate on these and other topics feminist thought develops, and this happens primarily on the Internet. In the same place, the grassroots movement is growing, which actually reproduces the experience of feminist growth groups of self-consciousness: people share experiences of experienced violence, discrimination and learn to defend their rights. We chose ten public tables devoted to different manifestations of feminism, from body positivity to inspiring comics, and asked their creators to tell about their activities.
Body positive
Public dedicated to the simple and at the same time revolutionary idea that all bodies are beautiful. No matter what the ad says and the changing standards of beauty. This idea gives the woman the right to her own body and struggles with objectification, imposing the feeling that you are what you look like, and not who you are. As a worldview, bodipositive aspires to a respectful and non-judgmental perception of any appearance, including a change caused by illness, injury or personal decision. It makes no sense to spend intellectual and emotional resources to fight stretch marks and body hair. It is better to do something really useful and enjoyable.
Bodypositive is called "fashionable direction." I do not like this definition, because everything fashionable is quickly forgotten. I think the emergence of bodipositive sites on the Runet is a legitimate event. After all, the tighter the fashion industry and the mass media are tightening the nuts, the faster it will break the thread. Until then, it was possible to encounter manifestations of body-positive in mass culture except in the work of plus-size-models, but even there it was difficult to find similarities with ordinary women: looking at such models, one still does not feel full-fledged.
Public was created in August last year by Sofia Egorova and existed quietly until January 2014. I came when there were about 2 thousand subscribers, and I really liked the idea, but the organization left much to be desired. By profession I am an HR manager, a craving for reorganization in my blood, I could not allow such a great idea to sink into oblivion. We were not familiar with Sonia, but, intuitively trusting, she gave me all the powers, formal authority and rights to the future fate of the project. A new admin team was recruited, the rules were completely rewritten. The rules were written by compilation, the best was removed and borrowed from already existing communities.
The concept of a safe space and the absence of moderation are incompatible things, so we have a tough ban policy. “My personal opinion” is not an argument when it comes to safety, healthy atmosphere and psychological comfort within the walls of the group. Currently, there are ten people in the administrative staff - diverse people: both with academic degrees and teenagers. A lot of work is being done with the involvement of outside forces: various publications, third-party Internet resources, famous people. I hope that someday the "bodipositive" will not sound like something exotic, but as a matter of course.
Check Your Privilege
Public СYP was one of the first to speak the language of the new Internet generation, while remaining intellectual. Over the year, the audience has grown to 12 thousand subscribers. The main content is rethought translations of current foreign materials, taken from both feminist toggle switches and sites like Everyday Feminism and Feminspire, as well as from publications like The Guardian and The Huffington Post. Own texts of CYP are verified up to a millimeter: according to creator_nits, posts, including even single-line pictures, are discussed for hours in the admin chat.
Our public appeared in August 2013 as an alternative to the second wave of feminism stagnant in the Russian-speaking Internet, which considers any type of discrimination, apart from sexism, unimportant to the movement. At the heart of Check Your Privilege is the concept of privileges - the benefits that a person receives depending on belonging to certain social groups. Sources of privileges are such attributes as gender, orientation, race, class, age, and absence of disabilities. So, if you are a white cis heterosexual man of middle age, a titular nationality, without disabilities and from the middle class, then the opportunity to face discrimination for you tends to zero. But women also have privileges in relation to each other. As a rule, each of us is both privileged and depressed.
Privileges prevent us from realizing that we ourselves can discriminate against someone, and this does not allow feminism to develop, erecting barriers of misunderstanding between us. The only way to deal with this is to spread information. We publish translations of texts about sexism, xenophobia, fetfobias, racism, trans and quirphobia, classicism, ageism, Eymeme and many other things, and thus with subscribers we learn something new about other people's experiences of oppression, as well as talking about ours. We are trying to make our space free from discriminatory statements and triggers. A trigger is information that can cause a person to have unpleasant emotions, anxiety, and fear. The Internet is full of it, even the most innocuous sites sometimes literally dump violence on you, and feminist resources are no exception. We want people to read us calmly, so we accompany all such texts with warnings so that readers can skip them if they wish. Antifeminists, trolls and the like are banned in public immediately.
We are not afraid of unpopular decisions and innovations. For example, this year we began to use in our translations an unusual Russian-speaking audience "gender gap" - the underscore inserted before suffixes or endings of changeable words by gender, meaning the inclusion of non-binary people in the discourse and generally everyone who talks about themselves in kind of non-female: "reader_nitsy". The CYP audience mainly consists of girls aged 18-24, but we are glad that much younger feminists are reading us, because we want feminism to grow and expand, and not to remain elite knowledge. Many of our subscribers join and create new communities, also free from discrimination, and this is good news.
Dark Daria
Formally, this is the usual fan-public of the American animated series "Daria". In fact, there is a community of schoolgirls (and former schoolgirls) who identify themselves with the main character of the series - the independent, phlegmatic and intelligent Daria. Ban-public policy prohibits the devaluation and insult of individuals and social groups, as well as blame the victims of violence and school harassment. In the gallery of pictures with Daria, almost all her epic utterances and dialogues are collected.
Public for almost three years. I created it thanks to my close friend Veta Morozova, who greatly influenced me. Veta in general always always points to the most interesting things in popular culture, well, this is the first of all of us watched the show, and then we discussed and analyzed it, compared it in the Russian context, for example, with the TV show “School”. The most important thing in “Daria” is that the lives of girls are shown there subjectly: they think independently, are sincerely attached to each other and constantly discuss situations of social interactions in which they are located. Such a public should have appeared to popularize not only the series, but also critical and free thinking.
I am a feminist, so I think the public is feminist, and the Bechdel series test passes. Now it has almost 49 thousand subscribers, it is incredibly in demand. They are drawn to the show, and at the same time they are interested in the culture of the 20th century. Educational content turns out to include: the public policy is structured in such a way that a movie about the life of adolescent girls appears here, music, books, and not just screenshots with quotes, some subscribers offer their informative posts. There are several feedback rubrics: a photo contest of the most cluttered home, a fan-art fan contest and amateur cosplay. All this allows participants to exchange information without competition and condemnation, and, well, creates a space that is largely free from gender stereotypes. Periodically, school bullying, loneliness, relationships with teachers and all that stuff are discussed there.
Recently, this public has copies and epigones - this happens with all major projects, but here I am especially pleased, because by copying, people borrow various nested things (it is embarrassing to degrade the weak, to be a botany girl with dignity, to engage in art and thinking life is interesting and useful) - and it turns out that people are waiting for something like this from the public about Daria. At the same time, “Dark Daria” was and will be a massive, not an intellectual project, there are not enough stars from the sky: information should be accessible and not snobbish.
Femics
Cozy feminist comic public. First of all, cute whales, dinosaurs and unicorns of the artist Emm Roy (project positivedoodles) conquer, who say that you are okay, even if you are sad, you can not figure out something or take medicine. In general, pure empowerment. The project also includes various feminist comics, body-positive images, infographics and videos. The creator of the public translates them and places them on the page, indicating authorship (if it is possible to determine it).
Femics is from feminist comics. It all started with comics. My hobby is the translation of so-called graphic novels, and I know that comics can explain complex things much more easily than a long article. At some point, I realized that the Russian-speaking femculture, which is often demonized because of a trivial misunderstanding, is desperately lacking such images. At the same time, in the West, where the women's movement is older, this culture is more developed. I don't draw very well, but I adapt English-language materials quite well. And I decided to contribute to the common cause. At first it was a simple selection of individual strips on the Author's Comics, but it soon became clear that I was able to do much more. For this it was necessary to move to a social network, to a wider platform and to a wider audience. This is how public Femics appeared. It seems surprising, but in three months more than 4,000 people have subscribed to it without any promotion. Approximately half of the audience - girls under 21 years old. There are young people, about 20%.
Comments in public are closed, and they regularly reproach me for this: they say, how is freedom of speech, you're just afraid that someone will give an opinion that does not coincide with yours. But it's not about my fear and not about the rejection of another opinion. People often forget (and especially on the Internet) that the right to freedom of speech does not mean the right to insult those who disagree. Perhaps, there is no need to explain to what extent feminists suffer from this - it suffices to recall the sensational situation with Anita Sargsyan, who was faced with large-scale harassment and threats for her criticism of sexism in the world of video games. I lead a project alone and I can not always waste time and mental strength to clean up after someone. My main goal is to create a place where girls can find not only enlightenment in difficult issues, but also moral support, a sense of nursing unity and care. In general, it seems to me that this is one of the important tasks of feminism — uniting women and giving them strength.
Yes, our grandmothers have achieved for us a certain equation in the rights, but we still live in a world where we face hourly neglect, aggression and violence, and aversion to women. With strict rules: how a woman should behave, how should she look, how should she think. Somehow, it turns out that society, having given women a certain set of freedoms, instead presents them with unattainable standards, and then abandons its victims, brands and isolates them, aggravating the harm done - and only feminism doesn’t care what these victims feel they will live with it.
Give Lyuba a chance!
Public that "no one can be a commodity." The creators cite facts about human trafficking, analyze the discriminatory nature of sexual exploitation, and cite the stories of real women who have managed to break with prostitution. These heroines frankly talk about rape, economic coercion, drug addiction and other aspects of the “oldest profession”. The reason for prostitution is the demand giving birth to supply. It is male demand that is the catalyst and goal of the entire industry. Men are mostly responsible for the traumatic sexual experience of women, as a result of which dissociation with their own bodies occurs among those who “freely” choose sex work.
The idea of "Give Lyuba a chance!" a group of feminists appeared a couple of years ago, when the first advertisements with female names appeared on the streets of St. Petersburg on colored pieces of paper urging men to meet and relax. The volume of advertising and communication with the glue-upers left no doubt that these were not private sex services, but brothels, that is, a well-organized business. The name of the public first of all refers to potential clients of prostituted women, because it is their choice to support the business of sexual exploitation. The name Lyuba was one of the first ones that caught our eye. Then the names characteristic of Central Asia and Africa appeared, which indicates that there are migrant women in brothels. Give Muhabbat a chance? Yes, and she too.
We started to tear down ads, but it quickly became clear that these actions were not enough. In order for the state to pay attention to the problem of involving women in prostitution, it is necessary to work with the general public. Thus, the project switched to information support. Our task is to provide an alternative, rather unpopular in the liberal discourse information about prostitution as a form of violence. It is important to understand that "Give Dube a chance!" - a virtual project without resources sufficient to conduct reintegration programs for those who want to get out of prostitution. In addition to serious economic support, this requires a strong legislative base, which, on the one hand, pursues sex business organizers and clients, and on the other, decriminalizes those who have to sell themselves in order to survive. Political will is also needed to avoid the patriarchal model and maintain the idea of gender equality in society. The most radical means to overcome the prostitution of our fellow citizens and migrant women is the fight against the poverty of women.
It is rather absurd, if you think about it, it looks like a situation when one social group (men) uses others (women, children and marginalized men) for their sexual relaxation and is brought up with the installation that this is their right. Supporters of the legalization of sex business have the idea that some women, because of their particularities, choose prostitution and are very pleased. However, if you ask your friends if they would like to make such a “choice,” they will find a reason to refuse and certainly will not consider it as a career option for their children. The same is true for pornography, various forms of which, even the so-called feminist porn, are used to make money in the first place, and not to "reveal their own sexuality."
Shut your sexist mouth up
The elegant decision to publish short anonymous stories about everyday sexism quickly brought popularity to the community. The second name of the public is "Shut your sexist mouth up". The idea - and the authors do not hide it - is taken from foreign feminists: for example, they were guided by "I once had a guy tell me ..." and "The Everyay Sexism Project". Most stories are a retelling of how relatives, teachers, friends and girlfriends broadcast gender stereotypes. It turns out unobtrusive deconstruction of everyday sexist statements. The texts preserve the tone, speech peculiarities and everyday details that turn the public into a documentary series from which it is impossible to break away.
The idea came after I kind of reworked my own experience of violence. And I realized that it would be cool if people who were not able to share it with someone would suddenly find it. Sometimes you need to speak out, but you don’t want to talk further on the topic. I myself, for example, would not have expressed myself if the posts were published non-anonymously. And besides, there are enough trolls on the Internet who would immediately come running to those who are already uneasy and who came to share their misfortune or problem. Previously, the texts were edited (spelling, punctuation and some grammatical errors were corrected), but now we are publishing as-is because of the large flow of texts. We remove only paragraphs and / or sentences that are not related to the essence of the post. For brevity, I struggled for a long time. Those who sent very long stories, wrote in a personal request to reduce.
Ban happens for several reasons: if someone actively and with mats does not agree with administrators (writes numerous messages with insults, complains that the post was not published). Если кто-то делает репост, приписывая оскорбительные комментарии, - на такие перепосты сами подписчицы часто присылают ссылки, за что им большое спасибо. Мы стараемся публиковать только совершенно конкретные истории, без рассусоливаний на тему и по одной на пост.
Для жертв домашнего насилия у нас есть тема со списками телефонов и адресов поддержки. Во-вторых, есть тема, где желающие могут обратиться к тем, кому они хотят помочь. I personally do not deal with personal assistance, because even without that quite a strong psychological stress, I would not have coped with this either. In the moderator's composition, besides me, there are three now: there is a girl from Moscow, a girl from Belarus and a girl from Kirov. I am from St. Petersburg. Thanks periodically write, yes: for the work, for the support. Very nice in such cases. I understand that it is not for nothing that I am doing something useful. Warms the soul, pushes forward. I still can not believe: the public was created on February 11 of this year - and already more than ten thousand people. When one of the subscribers sent a screenshot about 10,000, I almost screamed (: And, of course, noted (:
FACTS_antisseism_anthyshevism
A kind of anti-sexist library, which contains answers to the most common questions of those who first encounter feminism: military service, coat offerings, mammoth booty, "I am guilty" and so on. In addition, articles on the status of women in the world, psychological studies, pictures, news, and more or less everything related to feminism and interesting facts are published.
Our group appeared in early 2012 as a counterbalance to the widespread sexism and mockery of women. We (this is my relative and I) stumbled upon chauvinistic publics and were horrified, decided to call people for anti-sexism, adequacy, humanism. At first, the group grew slowly, we were threatened and insulted, but gradually the situation began to change, more and more new people began to arrive, and we began to grow, both numerically and in terms of gender theory. Subscribers offer materials to us, do translations, and we ourselves often offer materiel.
By the way, the “Facts” group includes several more public groups and groups that emerged, so to speak, from the main group :) If you do not mind, I would mention them. Particularly acutely, we felt the need for a positive group about the great and emerging women who, despite the patriarchy, achieved a lot, this is the Public of Women’s History, one of our favorite ones. Also stand out the group "In Defense of Women", where we collect information about violence and crisis centers. And one more group has appeared thanks to “Facts” - this is “Gender Equality”.
We have admins from different cities (Voronezh, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, Bryansk, most of the subsidiaries of the public and the main group were created by girls from Norilsk), there are regular favorite subscribers and subscribers. The Facts group was created when there were still few VKontakte groups, and its focus was chosen later: this is more theoretical materials, more information about the past, about the history of feminism, we are trying to spread films and books. We have already come to a certain frequency and frequency of posts for quite a while; the group works as an online publication that publishes at least five posts per day at a specific time.
Public appeared a few months after the creation of the "Facts", since we decided to write about famous and not very famous women in a separate group, and not in the framework of the general. Actually, oh-a-lot, just dig a little deeper - and you will learn about wonderful women whose works are forgotten or stolen. Many names are ignored, although their accomplishments are colossal. We have a separate group, "Women in Science", because we are interested in achievements and discoveries, research and awards, because sexists say that women are stupid and are not capable of anything, but thousands of biographies easily deny it.
The world of hardcore lesbian
Fighting lesbophobia with the help of humor: Soviet and Disney cartoon and film characters speak as if they were lesbians and feminists. The main heroines of the pictures of the public are: the old woman Shapoklyak, Freken Bock, the mouse-pilot Gadget, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, the crow Karkush, the tortoise Tortilla and many others. Information appears in serious form (when another is impossible), for example, the news of the murder of a queer-tango teacher in St. Petersburg.
It is believed that in patriarchal societies the maximum aggression is directed against homosexual men, and lesbians are not taken seriously. This is not true. For example, when I was in school, the suspicion of lesbianism always resulted in harassment, and the jokes about the fact that someone was gay did not entail any consequences.
Misogyny and lesbofobiya are directly linked, and the feminist approach is to see the reality of this connection. Lesbophobia is even in the feminist environment. For example, some time ago in a large feminist community in LJ there was a post, the authoring of which expressed concern that there were lesbians, bisexual, transgender women and women with different gender-queer identity, who openly discussed their problems. This, as stated in the post, will alienate potential supporters from feminism, who, having seen this, will flee in terror. Fortunately, the position of the author has found very little support.
I see another problem in the lack of information on practical lesbian issues, described in a feminist way. For example, almost nothing is known about contraception in different types of lesbian sex in Russia, and many do not even understand why to protect themselves if pregnancy is excluded (as if an STD does not exist). Many of our first works were devoted to controversy with stereotypes that broadcast traditional lesbian Internet resources. In many of them, the norm of communication was a mocking attitude to the idea of the need for the expressed agreement of all the participants of sexual interaction (jokes about how to give a girl a good drink and drag into bed), the partner's perception of an inanimate object ("ooo, fresh meat"), biphobia (" Bishka shameful ").
The motivation for creating a community was something that made us sick of misguidance and sexism in a lesbian environment. But what can you do here, people are not to blame for the fact that this swamp surrounds us. I do not like the accusatory speech aimed at the oppressed groups when they are hammering like a hammer for stereotypical thinking and a low level of awareness. Lesbians in Russia often socialize to the male type and resort to misogyny as protection. They do it not from evil, they simply do not have the strength and understanding how to get out of it.
It turned out that large lesbopbliki generally accept our criticism. And together we make Russian lesbians a visible group. Visible in society, not only in activist circles. For example, the post about the raven Karkushu, who was allegedly fired from Channel One for lesbian, was at the point. He was overpassed and stolen by absolutely everyone, even Lepre. Karkusha is more than a meme, it is an independent single female expert who is no longer needed in Russian TV. She causes sympathy.
sister sister! mutual aid
Separatist mutual aid group: here requests of women for the help and offer of services by women are published. Different things are offered and are found: locksmith work, lawyer assistance, nanny, housing, a psychologist, a shelter for a victim of domestic violence, a hairdresser, support for women who have become targets of Internet harassment. The community is free of all kinds of discrimination, including transphobia: you can write here not only to biological women.
I thought that the girls would need to explain why this was all, but somehow they themselves understood and were very happy. Until recently, a lot of things were sold through the community, but now one of the participants has made a fembarahol and it has become much more convenient. Firstly, the community gives us the opportunity not to help people whom we consider scoundrels and simply bad people, and not to receive help from them, to distance ourselves from them as much as possible. Finding adequate help, if you are a man, is quite simple; if you are a woman, your subtleties begin. A pro-feminist, LGBTK-friendly gynecologist or psychotherapist is another problem that I myself have repeatedly encountered. This is generally a very frequent topic in messages, in small cities with this, apparently, quite difficult.
If you need help with technology or repair, begins a condescending attitude, as to an unreasonable child. Well, all these "help only to those women on whom I have, and the rest are worse than dogs" and "will you pay in kind?". Sometimes we get some offended guys who try to insult and offend us all. Well, you know, when men are going to their company, they are real men and are busy with very important things, you can not here. If women create their own community and do not let men go in there, that’s all, tragedy, terrible reverse sexism. We do not encourage discussion with them. Many of us are already tired of explaining to such people why and where they are wrong, to bring references to studies and so on.
We just want to give people the opportunity to receive help and communicate, without making excuses for their existence, I think it builds strength and self-esteem in people. When girls look at other girls in our community who build houses themselves, program, leave their asshole husbands, they understand that they can do that too. Recently, in one mutual aid community for anarchists, there was a scandal when the girl sent an ad, and the admins without her permission screwed up her photo and began discussing the girl’s appearance and behavior. This is disgusting, and we make efforts by the whole community to prevent this from happening.
Seals Hello
Public dating for people of feminist views. You write a post about yourself, with whom you want to meet and in what city, and then you reply to the commentators you like or those who like the post. It is desirable that the announcement was a detailed justification of the views, three photos and five favorite songs.
"Seals" were invented last summer to unite people adhering to the ideas of intersectional feminism. This is a place to meet, find friends, partner_k, love. We strive for maximum security of the space, while maintaining its openness, we have a strict moderation, but an open public. The main contingent of the community is girls aged 14-18, but there are people older and younger, different gender identities. There is a point in the questionnaire in which you need to describe what meaning feminism has for you, how you came up with these ideas and what your personal experience has been about facing discrimination and xenophobia. The administration adheres to the left-wing views, we try to build a community without hierarchies, ageism, elitism, classism. We have closed groups for contact and mutual assistance to ensure an even higher level of security for the accomplices.