nom-chompsky replied to your quote: The feminist blogosphere is: young, but not too…

Found myself running through that demographic snapshot like a checklist. Very interesting, mostly accurate. I would like to see online femininst demos compared to overall female demos. Are feminists this way or is it women on the internet as a whole?

I do not have a conclusive answer, but I have one theory: it is mostly accurate in English language blogs/sites/organizations. I navigate three internets (why yes, I am speshul). One (the main one, I must add) is in English; the second one is in Spanish and last, but not least, there is the Dutch internet. The “English language internet” (blogs, news outlets, forum commentary, etc.) I would say fits in what is described in the checklist. My “Spanish language internet” is very different, though, because, of course, there are so many countries and different cultures represented by Spanish language. However, it does have one thing in common with its English language counterpart: wealth. Women writing in Spanish on the internet are generally of a certain class, given that internet access in poor areas of Latin America is non existent. In the Dutch side of the internet, the problem I encounter is that there are hardly any mainstream voices siding with immigrant women. White supremacy also runs rampant in media. And even the feminist spaces (like the Women INC festival) sometimes strike me as tokenizing or othering minorities.

Also, the feminist discourse in Spanish language is very different from its Anglo counterpart. The transphobia is even more evident and widespread (yes, I wouldn’t think it was possible, but it is) and gender binary paradigms are THE only paradigm. Also, I noticed some Spanish speaking feminists falling into what I consider is a trap: since some issues have no literature or analysis in Spanish they are importing these paradigms from Anglo discourse. The problem is that this “ideological import business” is not always applicable or culturally relevant. A “word by word” translation doesn’t make the paradigm applicable to local cultures. One such model they are currently discussing quite extensively in mainstream media in Argentina these days is the Hollaback Project (you know, the one about street harassment). The women (who are a relatively small group of English speakers who translated most of the project related materials to Spanish) seem surprised that so many women disagree with the overall proposal of the Hollaback initiative. I contend it’s because many (MANY!) women back in our countries are brought up to measure their self worth in the number of unwanted catcalls they get while walking in the street. The ladies behind Hollaback Argentina seem to have placed the carriage in front of the horse, because they have not addressed this particular problem before addressing the street culture that it represents. So, of course, many women are now appearing to be defenders of street harassers. I know it sounds outrageous, but it is one of the risks of importing models verbatim, instead of creating specific projects that address local issues.

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