Engender blog

F-words: Emojis can be feminist too

Amy King is a PhD researcher at Edinburgh Napier University and Digital Officer at YWCA Scotland - The Young Women’s Movement. Her PhD investigation into online violence and the mechanisms of harm in language often take her research to weird and wonderful places, including contemplating the harm - and hope - of the humble emoji.

Do you remember the first time you used an emoji? I have to admit, I don’t. But I do remember the first time my Mum sent me one, about 7 years after they had become a mainstream element in digital communication. Now I’m priming her for the GIF library on WhatsApp. I’m lucky, though - my Mum has never sent me the wrong emoji before, like a crying laughing emoji in a sombre context, or an awkward emoji shoehorned into a sentence to prove she’s ~down with the kids~. And that’s important because emojis carry specific meaning, have acceptable and unacceptable uses, and they often hold crucial extralinguistic detail that we rely on to ensure we’re understood properly.

F-words: The Many Languages of Transfeminism

Harry Josephine Giles is from Orkney and lives in Leith. Their latest book is The Games (Out-Spoken Press), shortlisted for the 2019 Saltire Prize for Best Collection. They have a PhD in Creative Writing from Stirling, co-direct the performance platform Anatomy, and are touring the poetry-music-video show Drone internationally. Here, they write about the history of 'transfeminism' as a word, and as a movement. Find out more about Harry Josephine at www.harryjosephine.com.

Like so many of the best things, there’s no definite answer as to when the term “transfeminism” was first coined, and it’s gone by many names before and since. After all, transness — the experience and politics of deviating from social gender norms — has long been part of feminism, since before either “trans” or “feminism” had a name. Emi Koyama’s Transfeminist Manifesto, which was published in 2001 and did much to popularise the term, argues that transfeminism’s primary principle is bodily autonomy, the idea that each of us has the right to make decisions regarding our own bodies, identities and expressions. Through this, Koyama says, “transfeminism embodies feminist coalition politics in which women from different backgrounds stand up for each other, because if we do not stand for each other, nobody will”.

F-words: Reporting violence against women

Iris Pase is an Italian freelance journalist based in Glasgow. Passionate about feminism, human rights and postcolonialism, she worked on Newsmavens’ feminist debunking and fact-checking project “Femfacts”. She's currently one of the blog editors at YWCA Scotland, where she’s created Femtorial, an Instagram project which aims at making feminist discourse accessible. You can find her work in The Independent, HUCK Magazine, and Culture Trip, among others.

According to the World Health Organisation, about 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. This means that one in every three women will experience violence at least once in her life and just on the basis of gender. As a consequence, she might have mental and physical health problems afterwards.

F-words: Gendered language - the Maker movement and its technology narrative

Dr Elisabeth Loose has just finished her PhD thesis on the amateur technology Maker movement, its gender balance and connection to environmental sustainability at the University of Glasgow’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies. She has recently become self-employed to support charities and social causes with their communications. Follow Elli on Instagram at @elli.ellixir where she advocates for inclusive social impact marketing.