Monday, May 31, 2010

"My Gender Is..."

Submitted by Genderqueer Hackers

"My Gender Is" is an automated tool that culls public Tweets, Facebook Status Updates and recently added search results for the prompt "my gender is" and presents some of the many responses. The scale of the text is used to represent recency, and the colors, pink and blue, randomly assigned, are those traditionally associated with gender.




Social media provides a vast medium for us to stream our lives and publicly hash out our internal deliberations. When taken in aggregate these broadcasts often become overwhelming, details lost in noise. The aim of this project is much like a photograph, a static snapshot of a moment in time --- a cross-section of the myriad emotions surrounding gender for a split-second. Anonymized and presented out of their original context, the floating words leave a viewer to distill and connect through their own lens and experience of gender.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Hack Gender: Call for Digital Works

**The call for submissions is now closed! Watch this space and the Hackgender Twitter account for our next project!**

A week ago, some people would have told you it was impossible to write a book in a week—or, if such a thing were possible, it wouldn’t be a book worth reading. But this last week, May 21-28, Hacking the Academy happened and with it rose exciting possibilities for urgent and collaborative online discourse. Hack Gender is a response to that potential but with a different framework: while a few submissions to Hacking the Academy touched on the questions of gender in academia, they didn't address the topic head-on. With questions of gender and sexuality a "hot topic" and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy on the political forefront this week, it seems to be a perfect time to have a discussion. How do we reconsider gender in a digital age, where identities of all kinds are moving into open space--and, at times, being pushed back into the closet? In a age of new media with so many forums for expression, what is the state of gender identity and where are we transitioning to? Possible topics include but are certainly not limited to: gender identity, gender in the workplace, transgender, cisgender, pangender, bigender, gender and art, gender and the body (virtual, physical, race), and gender in the classroom.



Here's how to contribute:




To submit, either:

Post your work and then put the title and link up on Twitter with the hash tag #hackgender by June 5th at midnight.

OR

Send your work to hackgender (at) gmail.com and we'll add it to this blog space with your name and announce your work from the hackgender Twitter account.

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We'll link all submissions from hackgender.org and build the site throughout the week. When the first version of the site goes live, it will be posted to Twitter.


This project is co-moderated by J.J. Pionke and Anastasia Salter. We are in no way affiliated with Hacking the Academy. We do not at this time have any print publishers for this project: however, we hope it will emerge into a valuable conversation and online resource.