Feminists and Computers: The Impact of the Digital Age on Feminism and Religion
By Kate Stoltzfus
When WATER began in the 1980s, according to co-founder Mary E. Hunt, its technological tools for a mission of feminist social justice in religion were equivalent to scratching in the sand with a stick. The Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual did not have computers or smartphones. The newsletter took shape by hand with a light table, a process of projecting words onto paper that took days to complete.
Contrast this with May 2015, when staff gathered for the organization’s monthly WATERtalk with laptops, tablets, and iPhones in hand. Theologians Xochitl Alvizo, Gina Messina-Dysert, and Rosemary Radford Ruether spoke on a fitting topic – the impact of technology on feminism and religion.
Ruether shared her thoughts by phone to a teleconference of 60 listeners, only to be quoted moments later on WATER’s Twitter – preserved in the Internet’s indelible ink. This is the magic of technology: to connect through multiple channels, to share ideas from miles away.
The use of technology is so common that those who engage barely stop to think about how its development has revolutionized the world in the last ten years. Hashtag wasn’t a comprehensible word until 2009; now the pound sign is everywhere. Facebook, Google+, WordPress – hundreds of platforms exist to share information and interact online.
These changes were the inspiration for Feminism and Religion in the 21st Century: Technology, Dialogue, and Expanding Borders(Routledge Press, 2015). Editors Messina-Dysert and Ruether explore the landscape of feminism and religion in relation to technology’s expanded dialogue. The book brought together reflections from more than fifteen feminist theologians, including Alvizo, who is co-founder of the blog Feminism and Religion with Messina-Dysert.
For WATER’s tech talk, the scholars reflected on the expansions technology provides for social justice, feminism, and religion. Here are four key points to take away.
1. Technology can foster community and dialogue.
The goal of Feminism and Religion was to create an online space that included various religious traditions. Within months of its launch in 2011, the site had contributors posting every day. Now the blog has a global audience with readers in 181 countries. Such a large following illustrates the opportunities technology offers for wide conversations.
Technology in the 21st century has given a large population who have been limited by a variety of power structures the chance to engage. Blogging has the ability to eliminate certain hierarchies, such as those created by gender, class, or religious tradition, said Messina-Dysert. Not everyone can afford a classroom or higher education; the Internet creates room for voice outside of a concrete academic space. Women or LGBTIQ people who might otherwise be silenced within their religious communities can speak up for their rights.
Online spaces, said Messina-Dysert, “open up conversation to people in every community. The goal of each project is to expand borders, to create new frontiers, and engage every possible voice in dialogue.”
While the Internet is not a tool of perfect inclusion – a large percentage of the world is still limited by language, economic, and access boundaries – social media can offer connection regardless of geographical location, a definite advantage over phone and older communication methods.
2. Technology has expanded the field of feminism and religion, as well as social justice work.
When Ruether, a renowned scholar, began her work at Howard University School of Divinity in the 1960s, paper books and classrooms were the main mediums through which to communicate ideas. As one of the first people of her generation to combine feminism with theology, Ruether noted that a number of women in religion do not know the history of the field. “I’ve dedicated myself to making available experiences of feminism over the last 200 years, reclaiming the things people don’t know,” she said.
Even in an online age, print articles still carry weight. The next step in print, said Ruether, is to translate resources into different languages for international dialogue. Technology is a fine companion to that effort; for those who might not have access to books, online information is often translatable.
Blogs like Feminism and Religion, The Exponent, and Feminist Studies in Religion, andactivist sites like Ordain Women allow people access to articles with well-respected feminist theologians. There are opportunities for new dialogues between scholars, young activists, and community members.
Social justice campaigns also benefit from web presence. In 2013, a young woman in India died after a gang rape. As people began to protest and post their activism on Twitter, the world came together to create a global Dehli Braveheart campaign. That attention pushed the justice system to persecute those involved in the attacks. It’s a great example, Messina-Dysert said, of “how technology brings many voices into the conversation to push for social change.”
3. Technology brings more people into the conversation – but is still not available to everyone.
While there is much to praise about technology’s community-building, there is also room for critique. The Internet has revolutionized conversations, but it’simportant to recognize the existing gap for those who still don’t have access, limited most often by global economic issues. Blogs perpetuate hierarchy in other ways: a predominately English-speaking mentality on the web, the required ability to read and write, and access to a computer eliminates use for more than 4 billion people around the world, according to the Washington Post.
After traveling to Cuba last spring, Alvizo continued a friendship with a woman she met there through email. Though many people in Cuba don’t have access to email, Hunt pointed out, with an available resource, even one relationship across two countries can sustain an exchange of ideas.
“Each of us has a network of people, and communities of activism and faith,” Alvizo said. “There’s a lot that can be accomplished.”
Access is also limited by age. Ruether mentioned elders in her retirement community, often into their 90s, who don’t know how to use computers. There isn’t enough effort, she said, to help people who haven’t grown up with computers get comfortable, and it’s important to organize efforts to help more elders connect with the web.
4. Technology is only as good as the people who use it.
Our tech tools are liberating but they also cause harm. The web can be a platform for bullying and harassment. Anonymity in online spaces sometimes gives people a sense of disregard for others, said Alvizo. “It’s important for the ways in which we engage in the media to reflect our values, what we want to enact in feminism.”
Intentionality is key. Environments should be collaborative. A person’s participation must focus on moving conversation forward, rather than becoming a personal soapbox. The challenge, Alvizo said, is “how to listen to one another and take the contributions people make seriously, so that our own perspectives and positions are challenged…to new possibilities. [These online sites] become the places where we can think creatively about the ways we can collaborate together to advance justice.”
Scholars Alvizo, Ruether, and Messina-Dysert have found ways to use tools of technology for a global conversation around issues of feminism and religion. Their book and blog illustrate the Internet’s power in the lives of those who use it as a force to spread ideas, an unstoppable change across fields of thought in feminism and religion.
But they also remind us that, as with any tool, technology is not the final answer, the only solution. Long after new technologies are invented inequalities will exist. While the potential for online conversation seems endless, its reach is still limited to those who have access to computers, to those who can speak the expected languages, to those who have privileged resources.
These limits make the ideas driven by books like Feminism and Religion in the 21st Century all the more relevant. Many voices crowd the online world. Many voices remain unheard. The task is to continue to use feminist religious values of inclusion to expand circles of conversation that work toward change – beyond the web, into the world.
Kate Stoltzfus is a staff associate at WATER (Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual) in Washington, DC. She graduated from Goshen College in 2014 with degrees in journalism and creative writing. Her work has also appeared in Feminism and Religion.