A feminist critique of cybersecurity: techno feminist imaginaries of vulnerability and care

Abstract

In this collection of five short essays, each authors examine how online spaces produce and reproduce queer marginalisation while also offering opportunities for queer expression, connection, and resistance. Tanvi Kanchan examines Indian queer activists’ connections with Indigenous and Black politics in the U.S. and anti-gender rhetoric that travels between American conservative contexts and Indian Hindutva contexts to highlight how digitally mediated transnational rhetoric is simultaneously progressive and reactionary. Łukasz Szulc, on the other hand, proposes that feminist and queer manifestos can suggest ways to imagine alternative digital futures and navigate the present. Likewise, Yener Bayramoğlu unearths the ambivalence emerging from digital spaces offering connection, visibility, and resistance while also extracting data and regulating subjects. Ahmet Atay considers how the digital mundane presents an opportunity for queer disruption and activism, and, finally, Rohit Dasgupta encourages the tension of concurrent embodiment in digital and offline spaces. From these essays, we see rising tensions between digitally mediated 'transnational' and the local struggles, and queer critical imaginaries and organisational work. Here, we find space for queer presence and activism within both mediated and unmediated public spaces.