2 On May 25, 2016, Jacob Appelbaum, hacker and activist known in the community, stepped down from... more 2 On May 25, 2016, Jacob Appelbaum, hacker and activist known in the community, stepped down from his position at Tor, a volunteer-operated, non-governmental cyber-security company, after being accused of sexual misconduct, harassment, and abuse. This news made the headlines in the hacking, hacktivist and, on a larger scale, tech communities; as well as in international news, for bringing attention to the prevalent misogyny in these communities. Why did this specific incident initiate a conversation that had been taboo for so long? What is the precedent of misogyny in the hacktivist and tech communities? This paper will discuss hacktivism, and discusses the challenges of being respected and accepted as a woman in these communities. It will then focus on the potentials of exclusive female hacking, and female hackerspaces as possible responses to the concerns of safety, discrimination and misogyny in the tech world, online and offline. Finally, I will engage in a brief case study of Jacob Appelbaum's news story and the debates the situation opened to. My paper will borrow from feminist intersectional theories, using the approach from Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW). I will use these theories to challenge binary thinking such as male/female, privileged/underprivileged, technology/humanity, while revealing how these conceptual limitations are both the outcome of, and how they work to foster, unequal power relations across men and women in hackerspaces and ICT environment .
When Black Mirror first aired in the U.K. in 2011, it was introduced as a cautionary tale of a dy... more When Black Mirror first aired in the U.K. in 2011, it was introduced as a cautionary tale of a dystopian future where humanity lost its control over soul-sucking technological devices.
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Papers by Coralie Zaza