Isabel Ordoñez On the SHE* FIX! Feminist Youtube Channel

Anna Ptasinska by Shifted News

YouTube Link here

She*Fix! is Femme & Functioning!

Algorithms, narratives and, representation are more important than ever in the Web 2.0 era but it is important to question how many of these narratives lean towards a specific demographic or type of person? When these types of echo chambers occur, misrepresentation and exclusionary content develop within the digital spaces that we frequently visit. The Shifted news team sat with Industrial designer/feminist/builder of things, Isabel Ordoñez, who will be running the She*Fix Workshop with Janine Korduan and Natalie Pusch at the Makerspace outdoor area at this year’s re:publica.

Counter-acting macho culture in tech sounds like a full-time job. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got involved with feminism?

We don’t pretend to do it alone! I’m an industrial designer and I moved here to Berlin, where I got to meet some fantastic womxn who work in technology and did tutorials for ‘folk-building’ as they call it. This is when we decided to start some projects together and organise some funding. One of these projects was to start a feminist YouTube channel with TINT Filmkollektiv & KanTe* at this year’s re:publica.

So these are your allies to crush the patriarchy?

We decided to meet up for work and get some funding for these projects, especially for the She*Fix! Feminist YouTube Channel. Basically, we want to give an alternative content source for underrepresented people doing Youtube tutorials.

What is the problem with the current tutorial representation online?

If you look online tutorials, you usually find white men explaining, which is fine but it would be nice to see more people from varied cultural backgrounds. I would like to see my Grandma explaining to me how to connect my DVD to the TV, something like that… you know?  
 

How did the She*fix tutorial come to life? Tell us a bit about what inspired this idea for you and your team?

Well we all like teaching and showing people how to do things. We really like the open source tutorials for fixing things and this is really the way in which the world is going, we are more empowered consumers these days. We were in this group for women in tech and we decided to make tutorials. There are tutorials with women already, but there aren’t that many and they aren’t necessarily grouped or arranged that easily.

How has the She*Fix! project evolved over time?

One of the women in this She*Fix! Group knows some people who are involved in the organization of re:publica and we were in good time to send workshop suggestions. Originally we wanted to do a three-day ‘hackerthon’ where we’d invite participants to generate content, directly edit the films in this workshop, but it didn’t fit into the re:publica setting so we decided to change it to a one-hour workshop in hopes of some people getting involved enough for them to want to generate and create content at the location.

How and what would you like to see changed?

Unfortunately, it’s a certain thing that takes its own time. I was personally shocked to hear that the tech industry was so narrow. I have always been involved; I’m an industrial designer, I like the workshops, I’ve been involved in bike-kitchens. I really love to do stuff with my hands and I’ve heard, especially this week, that maybe the bike-kitchen is too manly, or too uncomfortable, and I never understood why. I’ve also been like “I don’t want to have a bike-kitchen that is only there for women” because it is not about living in a bubble but about living together. We were constantly being asked that question, but we’re trying to make it better. I mean, I’m here and together we are all trying to support these kinds of ideas.  

What kind of outcomes could someone expect from the workshop?

I would like to see several new videos running up on the channel. The idea is to get a lot of people interested and a mailing list together, and even having people making tutorials on site, that would be great!