Feminist principles of the internet

Preamble

August 26, 2016

A feminist internet works towards empowering more women and queer persons – in all our
diversities – to fully enjoy our rights, engage in pleasure and play, and dismantle patriarchy.
This integrates our different realities, contexts and specificities – including age, disabilities,
sexualities, gender identities and expressions, socioeconomic locations, political and religious
beliefs, ethnic origins, and racial markers. The following key principles are critical towards
realising a feminist internet.

Access •

1 Access to the internet •
A feminist internet starts with enabling more women and queer persons to enjoy universal,
acceptable, affordable, unconditional, open, meaningful and equal access to the internet.

2 Access to information •
We support and protect unrestricted access to information relevant to women and queer
persons, particularly information on sexual and reproductive health and rights, pleasure, safe
abortion, access to justice, and LGBTIQ issues. This includes diversity in languages, abilities,
interests and contexts.

3 Usage of technology •
Women and queer persons have the right to code, design, adapt and critically and sustainably
use ICTs and reclaim technology as a platform for creativity and expression, as well as to
challenge the cultures of sexism and discrimination in all spaces.

Movements & public participation •

4 Resistance •
The internet is a space where social norms are negotiated, performed and imposed, often in an
extension of other spaces shaped by patriarchy and heteronormativity. Our struggle for a
feminist internet is one that forms part of a continuum of our resistance in other spaces, public,
private and in-between.

5 Movement building •
The internet is a transformative political space. It facilitates new forms of citizenship that enable
individuals to claim, construct and express selves, genders and sexualities. This includes
connecting across territories, demanding accountability and transparency, and creating
opportunities for sustained feminist movement building.

6 Internet governance •
We believe in challenging the patriarchal spaces and processes that control internet
governance, as well as putting more feminists and queers at the decision-making tables. We
want to democratise policy making affecting the internet as well as diffuse ownership of and
power in global and local networks.

Economy •

7. Alternative economies •
We are committed to interrogating the capitalist logic that drives technology towards further
privatisation, profit and corporate control. We work to create alternative forms of economic
power that are grounded in principles of cooperation, solidarity, commons, environmental
sustainability, and openness.

8. Free and open source •
We are committed to creating and experimenting with technology, including digital safety and
security, and using free/libre and open source software (FLOSS), tools, and platforms.
Promoting, disseminating, and sharing knowledge about the use of FLOSS is central to our
praxis.

Expression •

9 Amplifying feminist discourse •
We claim the power of the internet to amplify women’s narratives and lived realities. There is a
need to resist the state, the religious right and other extremist forces who monopolise
discourses of morality, while silencing feminist voices and persecuting women’s human rights
defenders.

10 Freedom of expression •
We defend the right to sexual expression as a freedom of expression issue of no less
importance than political or religious expression. We strongly object to the efforts of state and
non-state actors to control, surveil, regulate and restrict feminist and queer expression on the

internet through technology, legislation or violence. We recognise this as part of the larger
political project of moral policing, censorship, and hierarchisation of citizenship and rights.

11 Pornography and “harmful content” •
We recognise that the issue of pornography online has to do with agency, consent, power and
labour. We reject simple causal linkages made between consumption of pornographic content
and violence against women. We also reject the use of the umbrella term “harmful content” to
label expression on female and transgender sexuality. We support reclaiming and creating
alternative erotic content that resists the mainstream patriarchal gaze and locates women and
queer persons’ desires at the centre.

Agency •

12 Consent •
We call on the need to build an ethics and politics of consent into the culture, design, policies
and terms of service of internet platforms. Women’s agency lies in their ability to make informed
decisions on what aspects of their public or private lives to share online.

13 Privacy and data •
We support the right to privacy and to full control over personal data and information online at all
levels. We reject practices by states and private companies to use data for profit and to
manipulate behaviour online. Surveillance is the historical tool of patriarchy, used to control and
restrict women’s bodies, speech and activism. We pay equal attention to surveillance practices
by individuals, the private sector, the state and non-state actors.

14 Memory •
We have the right to exercise and retain control over our personal history and memory on the
internet. This includes being able to access all our personal data and information online, and to
be able to exercise control over this data, including knowing who has access to it and under
what conditions, and the ability to delete it forever.

15 Anonymity •
We defend the right to be anonymous and reject all claims to restrict anonymity online.
Anonymity enables our freedom of expression online, particularly when it comes to breaking
taboos of sexuality and heteronormativity, experimenting with gender identity, and enabling
safety for women and queer persons affected by discrimination.

16 Children and youth •
We call for the inclusion of the voices and experiences of young people in the decisions made
about safety and security online and promote their safety, privacy, and access to information.
We recognise children’s right to healthy emotional and sexual development, which includes the
right to privacy and access to positive information about sex, gender and sexuality at critical
times in their lives.

17 Online violence •
We call on all internet stakeholders, including internet users, policy makers and the private
sector, to address the issue of online harassment and technology-related violence. The attacks,
threats, intimidation and policing experienced by women and queers are real, harmful and
alarming, and are part of the broader issue of gender-based violence. It is our collective
responsibility to address and end this.

