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Autumn Fisk
Prof. S
HON 100
22 January 2025
Without perspective and identity, you have no voice. It’s the late 90’s, the sun is bright, but you wouldn’t know it— The internet is exploding in popularity and for the first time anyone can have a place to express themselves without the judgement or confines of their societal roles. Onlookers step by as the screen in front of you flickers on. Here you’re a man, confined to be a canvas, fit for being painted when the time is right; there however, you’re understood. Gender norms are imposed by the social spaces we interact in: uniforms at school and appearances on social media. Generally, we’re only able to express ourselves so much as a space allows us, which can be a good thing for facilitating healthy interaction, but also comes with the risk of normalizing violence and discrimination. To break free from misogyny, we need to create representative art in spaces independent of oppressive power structures, normalizing the merit of our voices.
Febos discusses academic writing from a women’s perspective, first calling on Maggie Nelson to discuss the oxymoron of a woman who thinks (4). Generally, Febos and I believe academic writing is assumed to involve leaving your personal experiences at the door, tailored to those who need not speak out against injustice; women’s work then is dismissed as emotional and irrational, silencing their voices. The same cultural mechanisms which maintain healthy spaces by marginalizing harassment can also marginalize those who speak out against it should it become the dominant social norm, which is why writing about and critiquing our spaces is so important— creating art of any kind speaks volumes, holding the danger of a single story at bay (Adichie).
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In my eyes, statistics are like sugar cubes, useless without some context to measure them in. There’s four grams of sugar per cube on average (Action Schools BC), so a bottle of Coca Cola would have 10 of them, not 40. Unfortunately, the most important statistics to communicate with others often require personal context or background to understand, such as those pertaining to climate change, or abuse. Febos shares abuse statics (5), but extends them stating that without someone to speak they have no voice of their own— This is where I believe narrative writing comes in. While academic writing is usually created for a specific audience and place, authors can create new spaces by defining how, when, where, and why a piece is written, giving one power not only to organize their thoughts, but to create an extension of themselves others can connect to, like a flower blooming from ash, we can create spaces where we belong through writing, and what is a website but a digital scrap book?
The screen stutters. BEEEEEPPPP Shhhhhh Bado Bado Bado wawawawwa dooo dooo bado shhhhhhhhh.
The two pillars I’ve covered so far, social spaces and statistics, require art or philosophy to contextualize and experience to understand, the web unifies these by giving you complete freedom of expression, any colors, images, sounds, or words you could ever imagine can materialize on any screen in the world, should you desire it to be so. Sitting in an internet cafe, you began writing about your thoughts on the new Marvel movie, talking about your feelings towards college applications, and documenting your creative process for a recent crafts project. After uploading your .html file to a domain, you look up a few links emailed to you by a friend. You read about other’s experiences with college, venture through a digital garden planted with random thoughts and ideas and eventually sit with someone as they begin processing a recent loss in the family. Because the indie web is truly
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open and anonymous, asking nothing of you as you visit, not even your time, leads to a truly inclusive space where gender is erased and personality shines through above all. Hopping from site to site, link to link, playing games, leaving notes in people’s guestbooks, you might not have talked with anyone, but you know you’re not alone in feeling, dreaming, and being someone in the world. Men, women, gays, bakers, hackers and artists all gather, putting forth who they are, proving they exist. Why is it I got into web development? Well, if I asked you where trans people belong, you may say in society, and this is right, but how do you know you’re not alone if there are so few people like you? Slap a brush on a canvas— with every stroke know you’ve left proof of your soul, and no system or oppressor can ever take that away from you. Creativity exists outside systems of power because it’s a manifestation of you, instead of weaking social spaces and excluding others, it creates room for new spaces to blossom inviting others to join in.
Enter Facebook. With the dawn of social media in the early 2000’s, indie spaces started dying as people increasingly posted their personal lives in central squares tied back to them. While this started out well, as Facebook grew, they increasingly distanced their interests from helping people, and most recently made major amendments to their harassment policies, which to the best of my knowledge legalizes objectifying and degrading speech towards immigrants, women, transgender, and queer individuals (Meta). Among many common platforms violent speech is now free to run rampant, so long as it’s authorized violent speech. We need now more than ever to create our own bubbles, presently seen as relics from a bygone era.
*Click* *Schss*
You power off your phone and set it down.
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Febos leaves an impactful note, stating if someone has a story to write, she’ll read it. She’s not alone either. A few months ago, I stumbled upon a web logger organizing the same initiative (Moreale), a list of people who will visit your website and read your stories, should you write them. Others are out there, ready to read, if only one day you’ll stand up and write with them.
Works Cited
Action Schools BC. Count the Cubes! Province of British Columbia, 2017, healthyschoolsbc.ca/media/resources/asbc-count-the-cubes-activity-gr-4-7.pdf.
Adichie, Chimamanda Nogozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” YouTube, TED, 2024, youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg?si=LoZfXOTCSk_Ah-sV.
Febos, Melissa. “The Heart-Work: Writing about Trauma as a Subversive Act.” Poets & Writers, 14 Dec. 2016, www.pw.org/content/the_heartwork_writing_about_trauma_as_a_subversive_act.
Meta. “Hateful Conduct | Transparency Center.” Meta.com, 8 Jan. 2025, transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/hateful-conduct/.
Moreale, Manuel. “Blogroll – Manu.” Manuelmoreale.com, 2025, manuelmoreale.com/blogroll.
Telis, Fatih. “CSS Background Pattern Generator.” 10015.Io, 2025, 10015.io/tools/css-background-pattern-generator. This site is a simple CSS background maker- It uses normal code and does not employ any use of AI.