Why Decoding Stigma? Some background...
Gabriella Garcia reflecting on why we need a thinking group that centers the sex worker voice in tech development
Hi, I’m Gabriella. Decoding Stigma is a collection of voices, but while we are in development I will be the one doing most of the process documentation and writing here on the Decoding Stigma Substack. I’m certain this will change as Decoding Stigma evolves.
There are a few things I want to talk about in this background post—I’ve always found agendas easier for my brainspeak, so let’s start with a little outline of what I’m going to cover today:
What/Why is Decoding Stigma?
Who’s behind it?
Why use Substack for this initiative?
Ok. Let’s do this.
What/Why is Decoding Stigma?
Click here for the basic (evolving) mission of Decoding Stigma
Decoding Stigma is an working group that aims to the gap between sex workers, academics and technologists (and any one who holds multiple of these identities) currently directed by me (Gabriella Garcia, ITP@NYU, 2020) and Livia Foldes (Parsons).
This working group is a manifestation of my thesis (Shift Control, End Delete: Encoded Stigma) for NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, which speculates toward creating a syllabus for technologists who want to design at the sex+tech intersection and build technology that is safe for sex workers as informed by sex workers and their experiences in the digital sphere. Presented as a research paper, my thesis highlights sex/work stigma as a computer ethics design question in that those who labor in sex trades (and by proxy other sexual minorities in the digital space) have been useful for communications technology developers only as far as they invest as early adopters or pose as a problem to be solved.
It’s Big Tech carpetbagging: in development, the input and experience of sex workers is essentially exploited until the developer can find mainstream support or investment. Once that magic hour occurs, the sex worker is tossed back to the curb (or even further exploited) rather than celebrated and platformed for the enormous amount of creative capital they have generated for output consumer-level technology. Bella Thorne’s OnlyFans exploitation is only the most recent example of this long-standing tradition at the intersection of sex work and tech.
I spent *a lot* of energy parsing my arguments, so I’m not going to repeat them here in full. Please refer to my paper and presentation, available here. In following posts here, you will find ongoing learning resources to better understand this important phenomenon.
This is not new thinking for me: I was accepted into ITP with a personal statement that stressed the need for this conversation in tech, and furthermore stressed the violence done if this conversation was ignored by academia at large. The three years since my admittance have only confirmed that this is a necessary, radically intersectional conversation that must be incorporated into the learning structure of those hoping to create tomorrow’s researchers and technologists.
More importantly, this is straight-up not new thinking at all. My research stands on the shoulders of fearless giants who have risked bringing this topic to the public before me. And this current initiative could not exist without the radical network of allies already working in this space. But this work is often shifted onto radical individuals within separate academic spaces.
I want Decoding Stigma to be a link, a node in the network that connects those radical individuals so we no longer have to do the work alone. My hope is that in doing so, we can no longer be ignored by those shaping “valid” meritocratic visions of the future.
Who’s behind it?
Ok so who are we? (at least for now…)
At the time of this post:
The infrastructure is being built by me (https://higabriella.com), and Livia Foldes (https://livia-foldes.com/). We are currently advised by Danielle Blunt of Hacking//Hustling (https://hackinghustling.org/). This is evolving.
Thinkers include a Venn Diagram of sex workers, academics, technologists, and allies from a number of academic institutions, mostly in the New York region for now but trying to extend globally.
We meet twice a month on Friday at 5pm EST.
If you would like to be involved on an ongoing infrastructural level, please email decodingstigma@protonmail.com.
Why Substack?
I chose Substack because I want to create a public archive of process. In building a coalition, I want two things: invitation and transparency. In its current iteration, Decoding Stigma is a thinking group. And I want the communication to reflect that. I don’t propose to present a polished product, because I want the end goal to emerge out of the process of unexpected collaboration.
I also want to exemplify “thinking out loud” in our communication. There will be modalities of threading, weaving, and detangling—it’s important to me that there are witnesses to these processes. I recognize that curation is a type of censorship. I expect that there will be mistakes. I look forward to embarrassing moments, and hope that they become learning opportunities for anyone following this journey by presenting out loud from the beginning.
There will be meeting minutes, reports, ramblings, and connectivities I cannot begin to fathom. I desire this space act as a beacon that lights a path to be defined by those walking it. More than anything, I want anyone reading this today to know that there are humans here. Anyone who contributes to the Decoding Stigma initiative will sit at the dichotomy of vulnerability and power.