This is the article we read.
Glitch Feminism #2 (p. 61-120) by Legacy Russell.
The idea that encryption is something that also happens outside of technology, specifically in terms of gender, is an interesting concept.
“Glitched bodies pose a very real threat to social order: encrypted and unreadable within a strictly gendered worldview, they resist normative programming,” (64). Russell notes the vulnerability that comes with being a hypervisible and invisible person—someone who lives as a glitched body. This contradiction stuck out to me, and reminded me of a previous section of reading from Glitch Feminism — the juxtaposed analysis of oneself and multiple selves.
Glitches have to do with contradictions. This must be part of the reason that so many individuals are thrown off by glitches that they encounter. They are not used to wrestling with contradictions in their own mind, how might they even begin to process contradictions beyond themselves.
Glitch is skin. “As skin wraps, covers, protects, it paradoxically wounds, occupies, and builds worlds [...] Skin is both open and closed,” (76). How a person chooses to clothe their skin can convey much about how a person wishes to be perceived. In that way it is open it is also open in the way that it can allow for an individual to feel. Traditionally, skin is closed in that it creates a sort of line or ‘border not meant to be crossed.’
It was interesting to learn a bit more about how the idea that we are Alone Together is used carelessly and negatively impacts peoples’ perception of the internet and/or its capabilities. I never knew that Sherry Turkle wrote a book by that name. It conveyed the importance of connection and equated the internet to alienation and isolation. Russell finds that this not recognizing the fact that the internet feels much like home to many marginalized communities as it allows for “collective congregation of marginalized voices and bodies when all else fails,” (93).
One of my favorite songs is called Alone Together by The Strokes. I have thought a lot about its message and wonder how I might be able to connect it or apply it to the internet. Russell finds the internet to be intimate and necessary for some to survive. I think that the character in the song may have benefitted from the community that Russell suggests the internet provides.