Mariana Fossatti

Tag: Feminism

  • r/chickflixxx: feminist (de)construction of online porn

    Mariana Fossatti. Creative Commons BY-SA. Two women kissing with an overprinted word cloud that includes terms commonly used in r/chickflixxx forums.

    Versión en español

    Introduction

    Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, online platforms like Pornhub have reported a significant increase in web traffic.1 A revival of a discourse that claims that online porn consumption leads to harmful effects on mental health2 and sexual health3 pokes its head. However, plenty of studies conducted over the years to prove these causal links between pornography and damaging behaviour haven’t achieved conclusive findings.4 Furthermore, there isn’t a clear definition of what is considered “pornography” or “harm” in these very disparate and methodologically limited studies.5

    In contrast with this stigmatised view of porn on the internet, online recommendation lists of “enjoyable” porn sites, which is to say, free of violence and sexism, have begun to emerge.6 These alternatives are sometimes described as porn “for women”, “feminist porn” or even “ethical porn”.7 In these descriptions there tends to be an association between better film quality, ethical practices and a feminist aesthetic with high production standards and costs, which is presented as a justification for paid access.8 On the other hand, free-of-charge mainstream platforms like Pornhub, XVideos and others are perceived as responsible for promoting or disseminating “hard porn” that objectifies women and tends to be increasingly violent.9

    One of these online feminist porn lists I stumbled upon presented a slightly different recommendation: the Reddit forum r/chickflixxx, a place for women to confer about and share porn/erotica. The name of this community, “chickflixxx” is a combination of the slang term “chick flick” (a romantic film genre supposedly “for women”)10 and triple X (generally used to identify adult content). 

    In this community, people share porn videos available on mainstream platforms, as well as video extracts from porn sites “for women” like erikalust.com or bellesa.co. However, what makes this subreddit unique are the comments. Participants describe what they like about the scenes and why they are valuable and worth sharing; not only highlighting what they find hot, but why. A space for personal interpretation and conversation unfolds and that is not at all common in the realm of pornography.

    A space for personal interpretation and conversation unfolds and that is not at all common in the realm of pornography.

    The digital ethnographic analysis11 I conducted for some time in this community led me to ask myself how porn takes shape based on the audience’s perspective, and the practice of sharing and commenting on available online content.

    r/chickflixxx rules

    r/chickflixxx is a Reddit community (subreddit or just “sub”) of more than 200,000 members that appeared for the first time on 29 August 2011. On the front page (Illustration 1), we see an introduction: “A place for women to confer about and share porn/erotica.” To the right, a more detailed description adds: “Men are asked to please refrain from commenting or posting. This is a community about online pornography that was created by and for women (and queer people) where men are not allowed to participate.”

    Illustration 1: Screenshot of r/chickflixxx front page. 12th of August 2020..

    A more clear indication about male participation in this community appears on the “pinned post” (Illustration 2), a post published by the moderators that remains always visible on the top of the page: “This is a space for women. Don’t like it? Find another subreddit.”12

    Illustration 2: Screenshot of the pinned post. 12th of August 2020.

    The front page pinned post is brief and doesn’t expand with further arguments: it only states “that’s it” and the fact that excluding cis men is not up for debate. The post was later edited (explicitly with the tag EDIT) to clarify that genderqueer people are also welcome, along with an apology for not having mentioned them in the original post. 

    The post also refers to shared rules13 in the forum that offer an initial orientation about what content and behaviour are expected within the community. The people that are in the moderation team are community participants and make sure the rules are respected, applying penalties in case of infringement. Along with the r/chickflixxx rules there are content guidelines14 that clarify removal criteria and what types of content are banned.

    These rules and guidelines, and the way they are carefully written, seek to convey with precision the spirit of r/chickflixxx, which is not to censor users’ tastes and preferences but to exclude what the community considers problematic in the porn industry. These elements are, essentially, footage where those involved perform under pressure, situations where there isn’t actual consent, and objectification based on gender, age or race. There is no judgment regarding the nature of the content, which is to say, content is not rejected for being violent, indecent, offensive, or any other judgment of its meaning or connotation. However, specific topics are banned, like incest and “fetishization of youth”. Generally speaking, these rules seem to be designed with a lot of detail yet remain flexible enough to preserve a safe and kind space for participants without excluding the free and diverse expression of feminine sexuality.

    These rules and guidelines, and the way they are carefully written, seek to convey with precision the spirit of r/chickflixxx, which is not to censor users’ tastes and preferences but to exclude what the community considers problematic in the porn industry.

    Another perspective on using and sharing porn

    These rules aren’t just restrictive but also stipulate how content should be presented and organised to ensure usability. You can observe this in the rules regarding presenting information, like the requirement of descriptive titles, tag use (post flairs), and request digests (monthly megathreads).

    Let’s see an example of how users put in practice the clear description requirement. In one thread, a user asks for video recommendations that include a small-sized woman and a very tall man based on her and her husband’s physical attributes. She would like to see content she can identify with. The request includes a clarification: “Not that crazy stuff where they are breaking her.” Here we can observe that the user tries to be very concise about what she wants to see (including approximate measurements of the performers), why she is interested (because she wants to relate her experience with the video), and what should be discarded from the recommendations (no references of abuse and violence).

    In response to this request, some users suggest looking up certain tags in porn sites (like Exxxtrasmall) or finding the names of small-sized performers. Another user claims that it’s not easy to find film scenes with small-sized women that don’t represent them as girls or teens or recreate some type of situation of abuse.15

    Commonly, in the requests, users share how hard it is to find certain types of content on mainstream porn platforms. These requests relate to a feminist perspective on porn, or to certain bodies that tend to be underrepresented and objectified in mainstream porn.

    Another example is a user who asks for content in which the camera frames a “woman’s point of view” (WPOV or FPOV) – as opposed to the mainstream porn sub-genre known as POV, where the camera is aimed from the perspective of a man as the main character. This user is interested in seeing attractive men’s features and gestures of pleasure instead of the typical objectification of women represented in most footage from a male perspective. However, her request doesn’t objectify men as passive objects and/or submissive. Her interest is to observe facial expressions that give her pleasure. In her request for recommendations, she mentions that it’s a shame that it’s so hard to find feminine points of view in mainstream porn site search engines.

    Illustration 3: Photoframe of a video with a “woman’s point of view” that frames the actor’s face.

    The request and a consequent video shared in the community sparks debate (Illustration 3) resulting in a pretty detailed and critical analysis of the video. The community comments on scenes and evaluates how the video satisfies, or not, the request for a woman’s point of view in content. For some users, a woman’s point of view causes more arousal, while for others this is not the case because they find pleasure in a male perspective, a subjective framing that they can’t experience themselves when having sex. Some users that self-identify as men (and express it) are allowed to participate in this thread and some of them add that they find it stimulating to “see” from an heterosexual feminine perspective. People share their personal experience and compare it with the representations in the videos and other members’ experiences. In essence, a conversation about sexuality unravels and not just an exchange about what the videos represent and if it’s a turn on or not.16 In r/chickflixxx, online porn is more than porn. It’s an excuse to talk about sexuality in general and multiple ways of experiencing it “in real life”. 

    In essence, a conversation about sexuality unravels and not just an exchange about what the videos represent and if it’s a turn on or not.

    Other types of recommendation requests are related to certain underrepresented and objectified bodies that r/chickflixxx users often seek to visibilise and deconstruct. An example of this is a request for videos characterised by black FF (female to female) couples. The author of this post makes a wide selection of videos from different sources, offering quite a detailed description. One of these videos is tagged as #big-ass on XVideos. However, the r/chickflixxx post doesn’t mention this tag or classify the performers with this body category. The author highlights in this and other videos the importance of diverse female body representation, beyond white bodies, including bigger bodies and bald women, for example. But she doesn’t classify these bodies with porn genre or body tags that lead to objectification.

    However, the issue of objectification or racial fetish isn’t exempt from controversy on r/chickflixxx. In another thread, we find the following request: “Looking for black and biracial women with White, Hispanic, or Asian men that doesn’t involve any fetishisation or degradation.” One of the responses that includes a Pornhub video recommendation tagged “ebony” (a slang term17 that objectifies dark-skinned women) becomes controversial. Another person states that white women aren’t designated in similar ways. Someone else adds that we shouldn’t have to omit performers’ cultural or racial identity when it’s precisely about giving visibility to underrepresented groups, but we should pay attention to using non-objectifying language. Lastly, there seems to be a certain shared agreement that mainstream porn platforms normalise this commodifying terminology represented in the titles, descriptions and tags used in these spaces. People in the community relate to the difficulty of finding and identifying content in search engines and mainstream porn categories. The r/chickflixxx community makes an effort to build another perspective on using and sharing porn.

    The conversations held in r/chickflixxx are spaces open to speculation, to imagination, to diverse contributions and opinions, even sidetracking and talking about sexuality in general and not just porn. In the requests and recommendations we can appreciate a lot of collaboration and solidarity. In this forum, it’s perfectly okay to admit that you don’t know something without fear of judgment. For example, in one thread, a user asks the name of a certain threesome sex position. Other users answer that they don’t know either but they aren’t shy about inventing new names. Eventually, another user finds the name and shares the link to the group.

    These conversations allow us to envision a craft of shaping a new meaning of feminist porn. Participants exchange ideas and resources to build together genres, topics, aesthetics, practices regarding pornography and sexuality, and a desire that is not completely static and pre-established. Porn “for women” is much more than content produced and tagged by the industry: it is a community searching and evaluating together the porn they want to use and share.

    Porn “for women” is much more than content produced and tagged by the industry: it is a community searching and evaluating together the porn they want to use and share.

    This creation stems from, but is also posed in contrast to, mainstream porn. Most of r/chickflixxx’s sources come from mainstream platforms where you can find a huge array of content, including tags and categories like “women-friendly”. But despite a huge availability, it’s a challenge to identify content that doesn’t follow the conventions of sexist, objectifying porn. However, the r/chickflixxx community doesn’t turn away. They criticise and give new meaning to these conventions, while they try to create other representations through exchange.

    A brief parenthesis for some methodological and ethical internet research considerations

    My observations in r/chickflixxx made me think about Christine Hine’s approach18 on how ethical it is to use publicly available content produced by an online community just because “it’s out there”, visible for anyone that claims to be over 18.

    Markham and Buchanan, in a report about ethics for the Association of Internet Researchers,19 say that people tend to have high expectations on the internet regarding privacy, even in spaces considered public. The thin line that separates what is public and what is private on the internet is complex and we need to consider the context in which certain people are engaging and what expectations they have. Even when participants talk in open spaces, they address highly emotional issues that affect their privacy and involve conflicts, arguments, exposure to violence, and all sorts of vulnerabilities.

    As a feminist, I can’t turn my back on the participants’ concerns just because they accepted the terms and conditions that declare Reddit as a public space. This would imply holding users entirely responsible for their well-being and safety as a result of talking openly and publicly about their sexuality online.

    As a feminist, I can’t turn my back on the participants’ concerns just because they accepted the terms and conditions that declare Reddit as a public space.

    However, following Hine’s recommendation, there isn’t a predefined answer regarding ethical aspects of research on the internet that fits all. Each study should be analysed in terms of ethics in a specific way, because each situation is ethically unique. In this case, although I analysed previously published content without asking for specific consent for this article, I took care in not exposing participants to online or offline re-identification. I avoided usernames, pseudonyms and literal quotes, except for some that were particularly relevant.

    Another concern I have tried to take into account is the risk of overgeneralising based on certain observations of the online community in question. I hold the certainty that these observations don’t universally represent the spectrum of feminine and queer experience regarding porn and sexuality online. The r/chickflixxx community exists on Reddit, a platform in which more than half of the users are men, from the United States and, in consequence, mainly English speakers. This is the reality of many platforms and sites, so we must take special care in not falling into sustaining what is more hegemonic and visible as a representation of the actual diversity of experience online.

    Final thoughts: The different meanings of porn

    What inspired me to take on this work is the dissonance I feel with the debate on mainstream porn and its problematic aspects. On one hand, there are restrictive proposals that seek to “protect” women, children and youth.20 On the other, the porn industry is developing a market “for women” that spans from lukewarm “women-friendly” to initiatives focused on feminine pleasure. However, to the extent that they are commercial offers, defined by industry parameters, in many cases, access is limited by payment gateways.

    But there are also feminist standpoints that, despite not being prohibitive as such, are very critical towards pornography. This position can be summed up by the following fragment written by Laura Milano in “Usina Posporno”: “When people protest against the iteration of porn, they refer to a certain framing that is repeated over and over again: the straight cis white man’s perspective that controls the world and the porn business; that reduces our sexuality to mating, mocks our alternative sexuality and politically stands from inside a capitalist heterosexual system.”21

    The r/chickflixxx community is also an expression of a critical feminist perspective on pornography. Within this community, participants have been crafting for years an alternative way of using porn online; shaping themselves as an audience of women and queer people that transcends the objectified and passive role assigned to them by default in the mainstream porn industry. To observe or participate in conversations is an opportunity to understand the connection between women and porn from a place of agency and appropriation. Because we women are not just porn objects or consumers of a “porn for women” market. As an audience that shares, comments, debates and gives new meaning to porn, we have our own voice and agency.

    Original article published on Genderit.org.

    Footnotes

    1. See https://www.pornhub.com/insights/corona-virus
      ↩︎
    2. See for example https://www.inverse.com/science/is-watching-porn-bad-for-your-health-we-… ↩︎
    3. See for example https://radiolatinamerika.no/noticias/noruega/3240-la-pornografia-en-tie… ↩︎
    4. Brown, J. (2017, 26 September). Is porn harmful? The evidence, the myths, and the unknowns. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170926-is-porn-harmful-the-evidence…
      ↩︎
    5. Wijesiriwardena, S. (2019, 24 June). Private parts: Obscenity and censorship in the digital age. https://genderit.org/feminist-talk/private-parts-obscenity-and-censorshi… ↩︎
    6. See for example https://www.glamour.com/story/5-porn-sites-for-women-that-youll-really-r… and https://mashable.com/article/pornhub-alternatives-free-porn-paid-porn.amp ↩︎
    7. Zilli, B., & de Laai, T. (2019, 24 August). Female porn on the rise? _GenderIT.org_. https://genderit.org/articles/female-porn-rise ↩︎
    8. See for example https://mashable.com/article/pay-for-your-porn-erika-lust ↩︎
    9. See for example https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-porn-has-gotten-so-rough and https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-porn-has-gotten-so-rough ↩︎
    10. See the Wikipedia definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_flick ↩︎
    11. This article is based on a project undertaken in the context of the workshop “Redes sociodigitales e investigación con métodos cualitativos. Bases para la etnografía digital”, facilitated by Paulina Gutiérrez (Colmex), offered by the Social Sciences department of the Universidad de la República (Uruguay) during August and September of 2020. ↩︎
    12. In fact, moderators redirect the cis men who write in the forum to other spaces. Cis men’s messages are deleted and the following notification appears instead (which demonstrates that the rule is being applied): “To keep chickflixxx comfortable for female users we ask that male posters please refrain from posting. If you’d like to have a meta-discussion please go to https://www.reddit.com/r/chickflixxxformen/ and if you’d like to post something please try https://www.reddit.com/r/passionx or https://www.reddit.com/r/chickflixxxformen/” ↩︎
    13. See the wiki: \https://www.reddit.com/r/chickflixxx/wiki/index/ ↩︎
    14. Content guidelines: https://www.reddit.com/r/chickflixxx/wiki/index/contentguidelines#wiki ↩︎
    15. As we have seen, fetishising minors is explicitly forbidden in the r/chickflixxx rules. According to the wiki: “This includes sexualisation of minors, role play in which the performer presents themselves as a minor regardless of their age, and content for which the primary theme is the imbalance of power based on either a portrayed or actual difference in age.” ↩︎
    16. This led me to explore more “conventional” porn forums on Reddit and observe what type of comments appear. I found short comments, mainly expressing arousal (like “she’s so hot”, “hot scene”, “omg”, “lucky man”, etc.). Surely this requires more observation, but tentatively it reaffirms the idea that r/chickflixxx is a different kind of place, where comments are longer; there’s more conversation, exchange, and diverse points of view. ↩︎
    17. Definition in Urban Dictionary: \https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ebony ↩︎
    18. See the video of a presentation by Professor Christine Hine, “Do we still need to talk about online methods now that everything is online?”, post on 11 August 2020: \https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDTn5MOAUOU&t=2477s ↩︎
    19. Markham, A., & Buchanan, E. (2012). _Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee (Version 2.0)_. Association of Internet Researchers. \https://aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf ↩︎
    20. Wijesiriwardena, S. (2019, 24 June). Op. cit. ↩︎
    21. Milano, L. (2014). Usina Posporno. Disidencia sexual, arte y autogestión en la pospornografía. ↩︎

  • Gender, diversity and inclusion in open source communities

    By Marco Palmieri. Creative Commons BY NC ND.

    Versión en español

    In open source communities, the most important thing – apparently – are the contributions: the quantity and quality of work that is shared. This makes these communities, at a first glance, much more horizontal, since they are peer production spaces, where all are equal and have the same opportunities to contribute. By being able to view and study the source code, anyone with the required technical capabilities can make improvements. Those who gain the highest esteem (and power) in the community are those who have contributed the most and most significantly to the collective outcomes. The privileges and status earned are the result of their merits. And their merits are transparent because they can be seen in the amount of contributions made and accepted, in the number of editions done and in the ability to solve tasks. Tracking tools allow accurate monitoring of contributions.

    For all this, open source communities take pride in their transparency and neutrality. Open source is agnostic regarding who is who in each new contribution. Recognition is granted based on the relevance and usefulness of the code or the content created. It seems something totally separate from the bodies that produce the code, and the social conditions that produce those bodies. Since these are mostly online communities, the body and its material conditions of existence seem to be diluted within the context of virtuality.

    But to simply accept these assumptions, without any sort of critical analysis, has two major problems:

    First, open source hides social hierarchies. There is no equal participation for all in reality. Women, people of diverse gender, racialised people and people with disabilities do not have the same opportunities to participate, although there are no formal barriers that explicitly deny them participation. The result is that open source is biased and discriminatory, at least as much as other forms of technology and knowledge production. This disadvantages the participation and equal recognition of women and underrepresented groups.

    Second, open source communities hide a lot of invisible labour. Especially non-code community work: data collection, project management, testing, design, technical writing, user support, and so on. Not counting all the emotional and affective work involved in community participation. As Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein explain in their work-in-progress book Data Feminism: “These forms of labour, both productive and reproductive, are of course essential to the success of the project, but are not currently rendered visible, nor could they ever be easily visualized, by a scheme that considers project contributions to consist of code alone.”

    Of course, open source is not the same as proprietary code. When the code is open and available, and there is no need to request additional permissions, anyone can potentially participate, learn, contribute and benefit from open source. But even though open source participation is not explicitly forbidden for marginalised groups because of these conditions, there are other unperceived barriers that need to be analysed and eradicated.

    In addition, for women and other marginalised groups, the transparency of code and data is essential to know the risks and biases that affect them disproportionately, and to have the opportunity to fix those problems and improve the code according to their specific needs.

    Those are some main reasons why we are talking about gender, diversity and inclusion in open source communities. The code, although open, is not neutral with respect to who contributes and for what. What happens to our contributions when we reveal our gender or sexuality? How can a project in which a significant portion of the work is invisible and not counted really be “free” and open source? How can we introduce these concerns in commons-based peer production in general?

    Next, we propose some tools and practices that can incorporate gender equality and social justice into open source projects. These tools can take the form of principles, policies, specific licences or complementary arrangements.

    Principles

    Before exploring tools for gender equality and inclusion in open source, we need a political framework that allows us to think and act intentionally. A starting point could be the Feminist Principles of the Internet, a set of 17 principles developed at the #ImagineaFeministInternet feminist meetings promoted by the APC Women’s Rights Programme since 2014. Among these 17 principles, the first three, Access, Information and Usage, are closely related to the use of the internet to share open knowledge. The Economy and Open Source principles promote a feminist solidarity economy based on the commons. Additionally, among the principles related to Embodiment, the Consent principle is very relevant, related to the ability to decide how to share information online.

    Another example is the Feminist Data Manifest-No, a feminist manifesto about ethics in personal data collection and use, which rejects the dehumanisation, discrimination and surveillance of harmful data regimes.

    Licensing

    Licences are the legal contracts behind open source projects. They are fundamental tools for collaboration, and are present in both free/libre software and open content projects. Free and open licences eliminate copyright restrictions that prevent collaboration, but they may also apply other restrictions to promote certain types of use and forms of collaboration. Copyleft licences are an example of this, since their “share alike” condition introduces a mandatory requirement: that derivative works must be shared in the same way. In recent years there have been licences called “copyfarleft” that take this tradition of introducing conditions for reuse oriented towards social justice principles. The Peer Production License developed by the P2P Foundation is an example of copyfarleft. Under this licence, commercial use of the licensed works is only allowed for actors in the social and cooperative economy, while actors in the capitalist economy cannot use these works for commercial purposes.

    In 2019, the feminist hacklab la_bekka, from Madrid, created a fanzine that was licensed with a Feminist Peer Production licence. This is a “copyfair” type of licence derived from the Peer Production Licence. The new licence introduces the condition that people who reuse content must be organised under feminist principles. The legal terms of this new licence have not been developed yet, and its use did not extend beyond the aforementioned fanzine. However, it is interesting as an example to trigger the discussion: how do feminist principles and the building of the Commons relate? Could we think, for example, of licences that require recognition of reproductive work or even require compensation for that type of work? How could free and open collaboration be maintained under this assumption?

    These and other interesting challenges could arise in the field of licensing. However, to make open source collaboration more equal and inclusive, not all tools are reduced to copyright issues, as we will see below.

    Terms and conditions

    Online collaboration usually occurs on platforms (think of Wikipedia, GitHub, etc.) whose terms and conditions include aspects that go beyond copyright (and therefore, licensing). For example, the Wikimedia Foundation, as the entity responsible for the operations of Wikipedia and other collaboration platforms, has established terms of use to define how collaborators who want to contribute content on these platforms should behave.

    In addition to the content licence, these terms and conditions include other responsibilities of collaborators, such as avoiding violent and harmful behaviour. They also include the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation, its role in the operation of the online services it hosts, as well as the privacy policy, among other aspects.

    In this and other examples, we can see that open source collaboration is also framed in the terms and conditions of the platforms on which it takes place. These terms and conditions are not always that obscure legal text that we avoid reading, since we know that we are accepting a Faustian pact of personal data extraction and relinquishing our rights. Sometimes, on the contrary, they can contain valuable guidelines that organise the collaborative process, and can be a first step in establishing norms of participation and inclusion.

    However, as the Wikimedia community has learned, terms and conditions are often insufficient. To address abusive behavior that undermines collaboration and diversity, more decisive steps are needed, such as the drafting of a community code of conduct, as we will see below.

    Collaboration “mantras”

    The writing of terms and conditions can be legally complex, and perhaps not feasible for all open source projects, especially those who are community driven and volunteer based. However, rules can be established and enforced by the community without requiring a team of lawyers. It is about establishing some collective norms that, in the manner of “mantras”, shape what culture of collaboration we want to build together.

    In the Mozilla Open Leadership Training Series, we can find guidelines and examples on how to build an inclusive framework for open collaboration. We can start by writing a README file, and then add other documents, such as a Contributor Guidelines and a Code of Conduct, even adopting and adapting others already written. To deepen this type of agreement and give a more precise framework for collaboration, a code of practice can be established, which clarifies work routines, forms of leadership and decision-making methods. A good example can be found in the Information Maintenance initiative.

    These may not be legal texts, but they can help create a positive culture for contribution and collaboration on open source projects. If we warmly welcome all people who want to participate, if we explain the various ways in which they can contribute, define how it will work and clearly state what behaviours are expected and what behaviours are unacceptable in our community, we are establishing the basics for inclusive collaboration. These are key tools to open up the project to a greater diversity of participants and create a comfortable and safe space for everyone.

    Documentation

    In addition to making the source code of a project available, it is essential to provide adequate documentation so that other collaborators and users can see the sources and contribute to the project. Documentation is an aspect of openness and inclusion, because it makes projects replicable and reusable. Otherwise, only a group of initiates can drawn from these sources to create something new.

    Furthermore, documentation is important for those who tend to be left on the sidelines and less recognised in open source projects. In her Survival Tips for Women in Tech guide, programmer Patricia Aas recommends: “Document all your work. It’s hard to steal credit for public work.” This is a way to tackle the invisibility that women and other people from marginalised groups suffer by default. Writing a blog or a wiki, among other ways to make work in progress public and open, is a tool for recognition and visibility.

    Documentation, in short, has a double advantage: it democratises the knowledge necessary for participation in an open source project, and makes those who participate more visible. That’s why it must be carefully practised in projects that are especially concerned with inclusion.

    n summary

    Despite being based on horizontal peer-to-peer collaboration, open source communities often hide social hierarchies and make the work of women and other marginalised groups invisible. Access to the source code and permission to reuse it are potentially inclusive elements, but they do not act by themselves to ensure inclusion and diversity. It is possible and necessary to intervene intentionally, using tools that can be moulded to be gender and diversity sensitive. Under feminist and social justice principles, a more fair and inclusive culture of collaboration can be fostered. There are several tools in which these principles can be embedded: open source licensing, terms and conditions of collaborative platforms, codes of conduct, guidelines for collaboration and documentation, among other aspects that encourage creative, free, open, diverse and socially just collaboration.

    This article is a pre-print version further edited and translated from Fossatti, M. (2020). Gender, Diversity, and Inclusion in Open Source Communities_. XRDS, 26(4), 46-48. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3398454

  • Why I look for missing faces #VisibleWikiWomen

    Versión en español

    When you are looking for information on the web and you find an article in Wikipedia, you probably expect  the article to include some representative illustration of the subject. In fact, often the web browser already displays an image before you enter Wikipedia. If the item is a biography, you expect to find a portrait of the person.

    Screenshot of Wikipedia page for Frida Khalo, showing her portrait and a preview in a search result.
    Frida Kahlo on Wikipedia, 8 March 2018.

    But what happens when there is no image? Could it be that this person is not important enough to be portrayed?

    In traditional dictionaries of biographies, we only saw the faces of the most prominent people according to the judgement of a handful of editors. And most of those faces were male (like the  editors who selected them). Very few women even appeared in those dictionaries, let alone their faces. Try to look at one of those old volumes in a library near you: how many pages do you have to go through until you find a woman’s face?

    Two pages of Britannica where all photos of people are men.
    Encyclopedia Britannica Concise, image from Internet Archive.

    In Wikipedia this problem still exists. Although it is a collaborative encyclopedia that aims to bring together the sum of all human knowledge, there is still a gender gap that makes relevant historical and contemporary women underrepresented. Many biographies of notable women do not exist or are incomplete, and one of the main difficulties is the lack of images that represent them.

    The advantage of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it and help fix this problem. But still, things are not so simple. It’s not just about doing a Google search, taking the first image you find and adding it to Wikipedia. I’ll tell you a story so you understand better what I’m talking about.

    In March 2017 I participated in a Wikipedia in Spanish editathon about Uruguayan women biographies. I decided to create the article on Mariana Mota, a judge who played a very important role in the investigation of crimes against humanity committed by the military dictatorship of the 70s. So I searched online bibliographies and managed to gather enough material to start a reasonably well-documented article. Due to the relevant cases in which this judge worked, condemning a former president of a de facto government, there is enough information about her on the Internet. Mariana Mota has been interviewed and photographed many times. I used the material for the references and quoted some phrases from interviews, but I could not use any of the many press photos I found. All those photos were restricted by copyright, which is most common on the web, since copyright is the “default” status of all the material that is published.

    But Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia and, therefore, we can only include free content in it. The editors agree that our contributions are shared with the world under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. We can quote texts in a reasonable amount, but, beyond this, we can not reproduce content created by other people without authorization. When we add to Wikipedia a photo of which we are not authors, it must be referenced to a source and must have a free license or be in public domain. Thus, all the content of Wikipedia remains free.

    Mariana Mota portrait, speaking with a microphone.
    Mariana Mota. Image CC BY-SA 4.0 by MediaRed on Wikimedia Commons.

    Continuing with my story, during the editathon I could not find a freely licensed photo of Mariana Mota and I began to think about taking the photo myself. In those days, the judge, who had been removed from cases of human rights violations, was not making public appearances, and it was difficult to find an opportunity to take a new picture. A few months passed until, on August 30, 2017, she was present at a public event, a few days after being appointed member of the Board of the National Institute of Human Rights. A group of media activists from Uruguay, called MediaRed, was present making a photographic coverage of the event. I knew that this group had an affinity with free culture, as well as a commitment to human rights and feminist causes. Then I contacted and asked them to release a photo of Mariana Mota to illustrate Wikipedia. So, they create an account on Wikimedia Commons and license the photo. In a few moments we were already illustrating the article, which is now more complete and visible.

    I could not imagine at that time that, months later, I would face the same challenge at a global level, when I joined the Whose Knowledge? team in the project #VisibleWikiWomen. And the challenge is great, because there are many women who, despite their contributions to society, still don’t have their images freely available on the Internet.  Some may not have appeared in public for some time or they have already died and it is necessary to ask their relatives for their pictures. Others might have portraits that are already in the public domain but their images live in archives that are not digitized yet.

    Fortunately we are not alone in this challenge. Other projects such as Art+Feminism, Women in Red, WikiProject Women Scientists, the Editatonas program in Mexico, user groups such as Wikimujeres and Latin American Women in Wikimedia, and many editors of different Wikimedia projects are collaborating to reduce the gender gap. There are also many cultural organizations and media, as well as feminist collectives, that already practice free licensing, or are interested in starting to do so.

    That’s why in March we invite everyone to join the challenge of making visible the faces of women in Wikipedia and the broader Internet, because it helps their contributions being recognized and valued by society. Let’s share photos and illustrations that anyone can use, as free as is Wikipedia itself.

    Our mission is to encourage as many people as possible to participate, provide help, guide whoever has questions and, in general, explain the importance of this challenge. In future posts we will tell you more about how you can get involved!