I think a feminist internet would give women the option of posting things that are only visible to other women. One of the more important things for women to maintain their power is the ability to communicate with one another, without men watching over.
Another would be the absence of advertising that deliberately targets women with exaggerated gender difference.
A third would be better tracking of message sending, so that abuse cannot be heaped anonymously. I'm on the fence about this though, because I do truly believe in the power of anonymity to bring about needed social changes. For me personally, when I need to act anonymously I don't reveal my gender - it seems like an invitation to abuse. So I'm really on the fence about whether a lack of anonymity would help or hurt women in the long run (it might be used to monitor and enforce approved opinions in women, which we all have experience with given the trans stuff!)
The first point you made in particular made me think. How would that work in practice? It would need a lot of effort for it to be set up, and as you already state in your third point, the lack of anonymity that would inevitably be caused by this, could prove to have downsides as well.
I'm not trying to disagree or start an argument with you here, to be clear, I'm genuinely interested to hear your ideas around this.
I'm not sure! What it would require is some sort of persistent ID marker that marks users' sex. Because of my anonymity concerns, I'm not sure that would be a good idea, and I'd also be worried about a filter bubble happening in a bad way (women don't get shown the same information).
However, our sex is already known by advertisers, and used for targeted advertising.
I am really not sure how to solve the problem. I think sometimes about the variant of Chinese that was taught only to women.
It seems like the best solution would be that women began to form voluntary networks with one another, not through something programmed but as a cultural change. Like this site :) Having female operated sites is a good first step I guess. But long answer short, I'm not sure of the best way of implementing.
Thank you for the interesting answer! Especially the part about that variant of Chinese, I had never heard of it before. Makes me think I was perhaps too pessimistic in judging how difficult this would be to pull off. I certainly never would have thought an entire language was possible.
One thing I want to add to the last part is something that makes a difference about this site as well is that there isn't as much of a power gap between the ones operating the site and the rest of us, and they have implemented ways that we can suggest things and such. It's a pretty big difference from the Twitters and Facebooks of the world.
I especially like the idea of this growing organically, as a cultural change like you said. Hopefully this site can function as a sort of stepping stone to that, or even grow more into that itself. The latter would depend on what the women who created this place have planned out, of course.
Edit to add: about the variant of Chinese again, I just did a title search and found nothing on this site about it, so maybe you could consider sharing it as a post too? I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's interested in that sort of thing.
I posted it in /o/WomensHistory ! I'm glad you encouraged me to. I learned about that story from /r/gendercritical back in the day, and was always really interested by it.
I totally agree that what makes this site different and special is that there isn't a big difference/power gap between us and the mods. It feels really wonderfully anarchic - the only standards we set are the ones we decide! I appreciate the mods so much.
Finding places online where we can converse freely, and without that power differential between us and the moderators, IS very revolutionary. It's close to the original utopian ideal of the internet - a place where minds could connect and learn from one another without the normal social boundaries. Of course, that ideal was ruined for women by men. It turns out that a lot of men want to use that freedom to talk about how to control and sexually exploit women.
I wonder who that interview was for. I know it's hard to recap research in a 3 minute spot, but that was a whole lot of nothing if you are female and on the internet at all.
yup. Seems like they opened the subject, but then didn't really discuss it.
Well put!