feminism

The Recompiler, issue 1, edited by Audrey Eschright

September 5, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Like many experienced women in tech, Audrey had enough of her latest job, and doubted that a better environment was available. So she quit and started a feminist hacker magazine!

Our goal is to help people learn about technology in a fun, playful way, and highlight a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. We’re especially interested in infrastructure: the technical and social systems we depend on. We want to share what it’s like to learn and work with technology, and teach each other to build better systems and tools.

This is the first issue, available in print and online. There are technical articles on the vulnerabilities of DNS and SSL (building blocks of the Internet), a personal article about growing up female in a tech-loving household, a how-to on setting up activist websites, and a bonus article on how to teach git (an unintuitive but popular version-control program).

Recommended!

The Recompiler – featured articles

“Through the Gates” by Susan Windle

May 24, 2015 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: A Practice for Counting the Omer

Recommended to me by: Kol Aleph – Jewish Renewal Omer Offerings Online

I tried Counting the Omer this year, moving through the sephirot of the Kabbalah in all their pairings over 49 days. I quickly found that I needed a woman’s voice to guide me through this historically men-only practice. Susan Windle’s book gave me warm, personal, inclusive guidance.

The book has a sense of movement through the days as she writes poems and letters to a group of people counting with her. She includes her struggles as well as insights. Her interpretations are clear, and resonate with what I sense in my body. At the end, she says counting the omer is about becoming more ourselves, which also makes sense to me.

Recommended to learn about Kabbalah and Counting the Omer from a woman’s perspective.

Available at bookshop.org.

“She Who Dwells Within” by Lynn Gottlieb

May 24, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism

Recommended to me by: Orasimcha Batdina

I loved this book. Lynn Gottlieb talks about exactly what I needed to hear, that other women find Judaism to be hostile ground. I cheered on her battle to make that hostile world hers in a new way, and winced at the ways men fought to suppress her.

“Women need a new situation. In a Jewish context, we need to transform the way we talk Torah, the way we practice ceremony and ritual, the way we tell and pass on stories, the way we codify laws, the way we organize our communities, and the way we envision sacred mysteries.” Yes!

Also it doesn’t hurt that she chooses a dragon (longtime favorite symbol of mine) to represent Shekhinah.

I appreciated the links between Judaism and the pre-existing Goddesses in the Middle East. I’ve worked with the Descent of Innana without realizing the story might be part of my heritage. Yes, we need stories about women that resolve in powerful, healing ways, not just, “And then she got married and had a son.”

I appreciated re-imagining keeping kosher as caring for the environment. I hadn’t viewed that as a directly spiritual act before, although it makes sense now that I think about it.

I also appreciated the section on recovering from violence and abuse, although there was a bit of “help them recover” about it.

Perhaps someday I’ll come back to the book for some of the re-imagined rituals it offers. For now, it’s the company I enjoy.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“On the Wings of Shekhinah” by Rabbi Leah Novick

May 20, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Rediscovering Judaism’s Divine Feminine

Recommended to me by: Orasimcha Batdina

Rabbi Leah Novick weaves the Shekhinah (divine feminine in Judaism) back in to Jewish history. Clearly, a lot of research and thought went into creating this book.

It contains a brief chapter on Kabbalah, which is what led me to read it, and further material on Jewish mysticism. If I wanted to create a feminist Jewish practice for myself, I would re-read this book. Right now, it’s not what I was looking for. I absorbed the information in a general way, but the specifics didn’t stay with me.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit

April 4, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Patricia Anderson

Rebecca Solnit’s title essay is available here. While she didn’t invent the word “mansplaining”, she inspired it with this essay about the trend of men (not all men, she is quick to point out) explaining things to women that women already know. Men treating women as “empty vessels waiting to be filled with their wisdom.” Men deciding whether a woman’s speech is credible or not, even, or perhaps especially, when she says, “He’s trying to kill me.”

The other essays in this book are also about sexism, feminism, and gendered violence. Violence gendered because women are targets in a concerted, ongoing effort to control us and keep us small. Violence also gendered because men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators.

The book is depressing, illuminating, and, in the end, hopeful.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Long Hidden” edited by Rose Fox and Daniel Jose Older

May 3, 2014 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Subtitle: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History

I expected this book to contain speculative stories about marginalized people, creating worlds where they/we are not marginalized. I did not expect it to be about the experience of marginalization, and thus dripping with violence. Maybe I should have expected that, but I didn’t.

There was a single story that didn’t contain at least one violent death. That story was about Nordic (white) people.

Loved the diversity in this collection. However, reading stories imbued with that much violence feels intense, overwhelming, invasive. Not a good fit for me.