Glitch feminism

The technologies that mediate our lives — our phones and computers, for instance — are not neutral. They reflect, amplify, and crystallize the biases already present in society, particularly those of their creators. These systems, therefore, tend to work best for the identities that designed them: mostly cisgender, white, fit, straight men. When others attempt to participate, they often encounter errors, failures, and glitch.

Glitch Feminism examines the radical potential of the glitch. Legacy Russell originated and expanded this theory in a series of essays and her book, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto.

Russell’s scholarship demonstrates that when othered bodies and identities use technology that wasn’t made to see them, faults or fissures arise, creating spaces where liberation, transformation, and subversive action can take place. An identity without defined, recognized boundaries is hard to categorize and commodify. A nonbinary identity, for example, glitches not just a binary worldview, but the binary economy, confounding the systems used by advertisers seeking to harvest, categorize and monetize our identity.

Glitch forces failures and triggers disorder; but can also create space in which reclamation and liberation can be practiced.

Glitch can also create deliberate fissures, making space for more organized actions.

In 1993, activists switched the voice boxes of gendered kids’ dolls, just in time for the holidays. When kids opened their presents, they heard G.I. Joe say, “Let’s go shopping,” while Teen Barbie growled, “Eat lead, Cobra!” The glitch generated outsized media coverage that stimulated a conversation about “stone-aged” gender stereotypes, patriarchal violence, and treating girls as mindless mini-consumers.

“Antidote,” created by Marguerite Hemmings and LaJuné McMillian, is a liberated space offered for embodiment and healing, entered via website, video, and VR. The framing land acknowledgement identifies their location as a complex history of marginalization, ranging from histories of African and Indigenous ancestors to the actual bodies of the artists and participants, both online and away from keyboard. This complex “location” confounds the maps on our phones, which represent “location” as a fixed blue dot on a swiveling plane, helpfully labeled with the interstate, the closest McDonalds, and perhaps other commodified bodies “connected” to us.

By forcing errors that expose the blindspots of dominant thinking, glitch feminism can deliberately undermine data harvesting itself.

Russell highlights Simone C. Niquille, who used a character named Kritios They to force glitches and expose assumptions made by Fuse, a popular humanoid modeling program. These biased animation technologies have wide implications across society, as Niquille explains, citing the motion-capture animation commissioned by the defence in the trial of George Zimmerman, for the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin. Created using biased evidence and vulnerable technology, the animation still has the sheen of an objective reenactment. It was screened during the trial, though the judge did not allow it as evidence.

Since our social, economic, and academic systems are built on ableist, racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic principles, they are vulnerable to glitch feminist intervention. Russell demonstrates how glitch forces failures and triggers disorder; but also how it can also create space in which reclamation and liberation can be practiced. Her rallying cry: “Let the whole goddamn thing short-circuit.”