The readings I ended up with all focus on collecting and revealing the sexism and other forms of discrimination that seem to form the fabric of some developer communities’ culture, and that are being broadcast (often anonymously) through apps and websites.

Moya Z. Bailey explores how the very semantics of “geek” and “nerd” that we use to describe those working in web development are gendered male and white (though Steve Urkel does come to mind as a notable exception) She challenges us to move beyond an “‘“add and stir’ model of diversity, a practice of sprinkling in more women, people of color, disabled folks and assuming that is enough to change current paradigms.”Her solution is for DH scholars to be “brave” enough to expand the definition of the field to include projects created by and for people of color, and to push for structural change in how sites and apps are designed in order to include within them the needs of the disabled, women, etc.

Greek Feminism Timeline of Sexist Events is a wiki where folks compile sexist actions/statements coming out of the tech world. These include anything from rape at conferences; to the sharing of an app like Titstare, which lets you “stare at tits,” presented in September, 2013 at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 conference, to private incidents made public such as when Biologist Dr. Danielle N. Lee was asked,”Are you an urban whore?” by an editor at the Scientific American after she declined an offer to write for free. She wrote a snarky post in response which was originally taken down, but has been returned.

Reply All reports a story of racial minorities at Colgate College who felt uncomfortable in an all white environment. After creating a support group and demonstrating, they became targets of hateful speech and threats of violence on the anonymous YikYak app. The college was powerless to prevent the hate speech as YikYak would and could not block their access.

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These readings convinced me beyond a doubt that there are real structural problems in the evolving society we’re creating online.Further, I see real value in collecting evidence from around the web and bringing to light discrimination and the deeply troubling possibilities for bullying in an anonymous cyber world. In fact, one point these readings (and especially Reply All) drove home to me is that the web has great power to force conversations about issues that might otherwise fly under the radar. Because the internet with its possibilities for anonymity encourage people to say what they really mean, many deep-felt prejudices can be exposed and (maybe, hopefully!) addressed. It’s this “maybe, hopefully” part that stuck a bit in my craw in these readings. They are full of problems and severely lacking in solutions. (Beyond exposing and collecting this evidence which, again, is extremely important.)

How do we make a “structural change? in the cyberworld?” If just telling women to code isn’t going to fix the inequity, then what will? Is a better model the “separate” (and hopefully equal?!) model of HOTGirls, the Atlanta-based non-profit that works with young women of color to train young women in media literacy? (GoldieBlox, the engineering kit for girls, comes to mind here, especially when seeing the pink website.) This whole approach smacks to me of the “American Woman Novelists” problem Filpachi describes.

The only other solution I saw presented was the Colgate professors who try to “take back the YikYak” (my term, not theirs) through posting positive messages and attaching their signatures. The podcast hosts poo-pooed this idea though it did seem to make students feel less isolated and generated many more “likes” than the hate messages. Call me naieve, but I was shocked that students didn’t self-police and it came to the point of needing professors to step in at all. How could so great a proportion of the student body be so complacent/unaware of what was going on on campus? Is this indicative of larger trends in apathy/prejudice? Or about expectations of certain cyber spaces in which folks expect to see hate, and therefore those spaces don’t require policing? Does this mimic any other arena Americans have had for broadcasting hate in the past? And if so, how is this climate any different? And does it require different types of responses?

In short, I’m asking a pretty basic question: Is the cyberworld a reflection of our Analog society? And do the tactics we develop to address structural change in reality also work online? Or is the cyberworld a whole new society? If the latter is true, then there are huge possibilities about how etiquette, social relations, labor relations, gender roles, etc. will develop. If the table (to use one of Bailey’s metaphors) is still in the process of being set, then what tools might historically marginalized groups use to create a very different power dynamic in this new society?