Feminist Hackerspaces: A New Breed.pdf

The emergence of intersectional feminist, queer, and trans inclusive hackerspaces in the United States is a significant development in the hacker community. These new spaces, which have appeared on the west coast since 2012-2013, redefine hackerspaces according to intersectional feminist and social justice principles. They are a physical manifestation of a vibrant intersectional feminist hacker-maker-geek culture, attracting people who share an intersectional feminist ethos and refining what intersectional feminist hacker-maker-geek culture means.

The creation of these spaces is a synthesis of two traditions: feminist culture and hacker-maker-geek culture. Discussions are happening in various cities throughout the USA to build more of these new hackerspaces attuned to intersectional feminist and social justice principles, highlighting the necessity and excitement around such spaces.

This case study aims to better understand the ways in which intersectionality and feminism translate in those spaces of hacking. It will delve into the material manifestation of intersectional feminist "hacker-geek-maker" culture through the creation of intersectional feminist hackerspaces.

The research focuses on Flux, Double Union, and Seattle Attic, which combine intersectional feminist principles with the popular hackerspaces model. Other hacker- and maker-spaces, such as Liberating Ourselves Locally or LOL (Oakland), Hackermoms (Berkeley), Miss Despoinas (Tasmania), or Mz Baltazar's Laboratory (Vienna), also fit into this new breed of hackerspaces.

The study aims to give a voice to those who have started these initiatives and highlight the reasons why they have decided it was necessary for them and their community to have such spaces. It is their perspectives that are of interest, rather than the reactions of non-feminist or "outsiders" to these initiatives.

The article is a contribution to the emerging movement of intersectional feminist hackerspaces, which the author sees as contributing to social change and the opening up of the hacker culture. The author has been involved in the creation of a feminist hackerspace in Montreal, called FouFem (a.k.a FemHack), and has participated in Ada Camp 2012.

The research involved conducting twelve semi-structured interviews with women, queer, and self-identified women involved in intersectional feminist hackerspaces. The in-depth interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, and the author used encrypted means of communication to ensure safety and confidentiality.

The focus of the study is on the subjectivities of women, queer, and trans people whose experiences have often been misunderstood, discredited, or not taken into account in traditional hackerspaces. Using a feminist methodology to write this article demonstrates that intersectional feminist issues (gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, class, etc.) are crucial to understand the experiences of those who do not identify and/or fit in the larger hacker/hackerspace community.

The intersectional feminist approach used in this article should be understood against the backdrop of the author's own positionality: a white heterosexual québécoise woman from a middle-class background.