Creating a FPI presentation

When creating your FPI presentation, ask yourself, what is the key message you want to bring across that is most relevant to the work or experiences of your participants? For example,

• You may want to emphasise in your conversation the role that women, gender-diverse and queer persons have played in shaping technology. Your presentation could therefore focus on the history of the FPIs and the diverse group of activists that created them.

• If your participants are unfamiliar with approaching technology through a feminist lens, you may want to emphasise the usefulness of having a feminist framework for understanding and exploring issues related to the internet.

• Depending on what is happening in your context at the time of your conversation, you may want to give a broad overview of all the FPI clusters, or focus on one cluster specifically in relation to a current political moment.

Sections you may want to include in your presentation can be the following:

https://feministinternet.org/
Access the FPI website for information about the FPIs, including their history, an articulation of the clusters, and examples of their use in different contexts around the world! Below are some important points that you can consider including in your presentation of the FPIs.

Section 1: Overview

What are the FPIs?

When giving an overview of what the principles are, it is important to emphasise that they do not exist in isolation but are grounded in contextual politics that defines the internet we want. As such, they are:

• a set of political commitments that informs our approach to our activism, both locally and globally, and

• a framework to articulate and explore current issues related to technology, helping us to identify connections between what is happening across local contexts, and between what is happening globally, regionally and locally.

History of the FPIs

The FPIs were originally drafted at a global meeting on gender, sexuality and the internet organised by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), held in Port Dickson, Malaysia in 2014 by women’s, sexual rights and digital rights activists from the global South.

The FPIs are feminist not only in their demands, but in how they came to be! The history of the FPIs is therefore intrinsic to the politics of the FPIs themselves. It is important to note that:

• They were formed out of a participative process of Open Space dialogue that sought to explore the question, ‘As feminists, what kind of internet do we want, and what will it take for us to achieve it?’

• The FPIs were created as a resistance to the homogenising and patriarchal way in which key technology-related issues that affect feminist organising were being framed. We wanted a global South feminist framework for exploring and articulating these issues.

Section 2: A feminist approach to the internet

What is a feminist approach to the internet?

A feminist approach to the internet requires the consideration of two key concepts:

• Intersectionality: You’ve heard the phrase, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives” (Audre Lorde). Intersectionality does not only consider the multifaceted nature of human identity, but also how social and political structures make certain identities vehicles for power or for vulnerability.

• Contextual relevance: The lens through which we seek to identify and address internet-related challenges is useless if it does not respond to the needs and priorities of those most impacted. A feminist approach to the internet recognises that we are the experts of our own lives, and that lived experience is a critical repository of knowledge. It ensures that the lived experiences of women, gender-diverse and queer folk remain at the centre of our interrogation and decision-making in relation to the internet.

Why use a feminist approach to the internet?

The FPIs, as a feminist approach to the internet, offer a lens that uncovers the deeply contextual and intersectional nature of issues, while at the same time, allows for common concerns across contexts to be surfaced and inform our responses to those concerns.

A feminist approach to the internet is important, because it:

• Acknowledges that the internet and the spaces within it are not neutral. How the internet is designed enforces and perpetuates our access to power and our vulnerabilities, our inclusion in certain space and our exclusion from others.

• Helps us to understand how our identities, privileges and positionalities influence our ability to access and shape the internet.

• Provides a politics through which we can centre the lived experiences of women, gender-diverse and queer folk in relation to technology in how we approach decision-making about the internet

“From falling in love to demanding accountability from our government, [the internet] is becoming part of the texture of our everyday social, political, economic, and cultural life. It’s not just an inert tool that we wield when we have access to it, but a space where things happen, where identities are constructed, norms reified or disrupted, action and activities undertaken. As such, it cannot help but be a space of intersectionality where many things collide and connect.” – Jac SM Kee

Section 3: Clusters

The FPI clusters – access, expression, embodiment, economy and movements – are tools for articulating a framing of power and its intersections with the creation, use and expansion of the internet.

Clusters’ relation to different manifestations of power

The clusters speak to five manifestations of power related to the internet.

• Access and structural power: The principles of access question who has power over internet infrastructure, challenge attempts to monopolise structural power, and is a lens through which we can think strategically of how structural power can be decentralised.

• Expression and discursive power: The internet gives us the capacity to create and share our truths and our knowledge. The principles of expression condemn attempts to take away discursive power from marginalised communities and reveals the damaging effects of online spaces when they are shaped by dominant narratives.

• Economy and economic power: The principles of economy assert a resistance to corporate control of the internet and creates space for conversations to consider alternative economic models of operation that share and distribute economic power.

• Embodiment and embodied power: The embodiment principles recognise the power that exists in being able to navigate the internet anonymously, privately and without restriction. The cluster therefore pushes back against all attempts to privatise the internet and confronts corporate and government action to increase surveillance online.

• Movements and networked power: The internet allows us to connect with one another, expand our networks, organise and grow social movements across space and time. The movements cluster is therefore invested in opening up online civic space, and ensuring that activists are able to participate in the shaping of policies that govern the internet.

Interrelatedness of clusters

It is important to note that the principles, both within and across the clusters, are interrelated: they can be combined and refer to one another. The FPIs are also a continuously evolving vocabulary, remaining open for transformation and reflection. Take a moment to ask your participants,

• In what ways are the clusters of principles holding resonance with your own experiences of the internet?

• What is missing from the principles? Do you see any gaps?

• Can you think of examples in our local history, activism or political environment for which the FPIs can help inform our perspective on those issues? Which cluster or clusters speak to that example?

Section 4: Examples of the FPI’s relevance to your context

Giving examples using real-life situations of the FPI’s relevance to your context is an important means for ensuring participants understand how the FPIs relate to their lives and their activism. In the next section, we will explore how to select real-life case studies and have a conversation around them.

You can choose to include these case studies as part of your presentation, or integrate them into a follow up activity once you have attended to any questions from your participants about the FPIs. If you would like to integrate them into a follow up activity, check out some fun, feminist methodological processes that have been used by organisers of local conversations in the past as a way of entering into those conversations, available at the end of this chapter!