Introducing Preserving the Feminist Internet

In addition to its regular work with traditional archival collections, The Feminist Institute is working intently to capture and archive the substantial feminist activism and feminist contributions to popular culture that exist online.

As the internet changes and adapts to new technology, and our society deepens its ambivalent – and at times overtly oppositional – response to feminist voices, much of the online feminist content that shaped recent years of popular culture is at risk of disappearing. This reality threatens to obscure public access to information that was already fighting its way into the mainstream.

Beyond the obvious informative content and popular culture fun to be had with online media resources, feminist online platforms counteract the gender equity retrograde we are experiencing in our current social and political climate. Ultimately, preserving these websites and promoting their messages make it more likely that the rights secured by frontline feminist activism will gain permanence because our visible, intersectional, shared culture supports gender equity.

The digital landscape has provided a powerful platform for feminist voices to be heard, celebrated, and shared. Feminists have been utilizing the Internet to build innovative digital spaces and communities since the mid-1990s. These projects are critical to understanding the evolution of feminist movements and have served as essential documentation of gender and racial injustice worldwide.

The recent trend of born-digital feminist projects shutting down contributes to the long history of trivializing and erasing women’s work. By looking at independent feminist media and critical feminist organizations like the projects included in this campaign, we can start to understand the importance of preserving the feminist web to create a more accurate historical record. 

Capturing projects like these in the TFI Digital Archive, which is dedicated to documenting feminist contributions to culture, ensures that the documentation and, in some cases, sunsetting story of these projects is equally as inclusive as the story they were born out of. However, merely capturing these projects is only part of TFI’s goal. We aim first to capture and, second, contextualize. By contextualizing these stories with the creators, we provide key insights into the feminist materials, acting as ethnographic caretakers. We plan to use these born-digital materials in the same way we use digitized materials to create oral histories, digital exhibitions, and research projects that expand our understanding of the feminist web.

Ultimately, TFI’s Preserving the Feminist Internet is a love letter to feminist culture, acknowledging that the work of those who have come before us is seen and feminist voices endure technological shifts.