• Virtual Sisterhood
  
• STUDIO XX
• HOT FLASH
  
  
  Part Two
  Part Three

by Barbara Ann O'Leary

Women are sharing their lives and their feminist organizing efforts. That's really what Virtual Sisterhood is about - valuing women's capacity to share their visions for a better world across barriers - so many barriers - time, space, age, culture, language group, race, sexual orientation, economic status, religious identity, etc. - using the incredible potential of electronic communications technology.

Through my earlier work with WEDO, Women's Environment and Development Organization, organizers of the groundbreaking women's caucuses at the major United Nations conferences on environment and development, population, economic justice and women, I had the opportunity to participate in and witness the breadth and depth of the global women's movement.  The WEDO gopher I designed and implemented in collaboration with Susan Mooney of Womensnet@IGC utilized the Internet's capacity for high impact, rapid transmission of information at a relatively low cost to highlight the work of the women's caucus and to encourage greater participation by women unable to personally attend the conferences.  It was a good start, but I was searching for a way to bring the brilliant work women are doing in all areas of feminist activism to a wider community.

In a way Virtual Sisterhood is quite selfish.  Electronic communication networks provide an ideal medium for feminist activism - one more and more women are starting to explore. Inspired by my WEDO work and by my personal experiences in cyberspace, I launched Virtual Sisterhood in January 1995 because I wanted to see a more vibrant exchange of feminist information and ideas online.

Virtual Sisterhood was founded on the premise that electronic communications is a powerful tool for feminists to spread the word about their ideas and work and to join together across time, space and other barriers to further their goals.  Amazing online work was already underway by feminists around the world, but it seemed we needed a connecting point to meet each other, share ideas, focus attention on the work already being done and the work envisioned.  Virtual Sisterhood created a network of feminists working online who had an interest in strategizing with their virtual sisters about effective ways to utilize the technology for feminist activism.

Our mailing list vs-online-strat - is our cyberspace meeting place.  Clearly there's a strong need to increase women's access to and facility with electronic communications, but in some ways it seems that the biggest challenge lies in moving women into a creative, active role in the online world.  Women ARE information creators and we need to see that better reflected in cyberspace.  In the almost year and a half since Virtual Sisterhood started, we've seen the number of women-defined and created information spaces explode, fueled by the exponential growth of the World Wide Web.  That's very exciting!  But it's only the tip of the iceberg.   We need to break down barriers to women's effective use of online technology.  Access, skills development, language barriers and creation of women's cyberspaces are just a few areas we're tackling with our Breaking Down Barriers project just now getting off the ground.  It's being designed to facilitate sharing of information by virtual sisters on electronic communications issues relevant to women's online access and use.

Our Global Directory of Women's Organizations & Electronic Communications, a fully searchable World Wide Web resource helps put people in touch with women's online resources and addresses.  All women's groups, projects and initiatives with online access and/or online information resources are encouraged to add listings to the Global Directory by filling out our easy-to-use interactive form.

We're exploring ways to make Virtual Sisterhood's web resources available in multiple languages.  The high level of interest by virtual sisters in working on this project in many languages - spanish, french, russian, german, japanese, chinese, korean, polish, italian, finnish among others - clearly shows it is critical that we attempt to break down the language barrier. Making that happen in a manageable way on the Virtual Sisterhood site is a challenge we're still struggling with.

Knowing what needs to be done and mobilizing to do the work are two different things.  We hope to develop systems soon that will enable us to keep the site dynamic while coping with the pressures of translating into a number of languages.  We welcome support from anyone interested in seriously engaging in this effort.

Virtual Sisterhood is a completely volunteer organization.  It's been a truly amazing experience.  Basically without funding and primarily using online technology to communicate - email, mailing lists, WWW and gopher - we've reached out to thousands of virtual sisters. And we've had an impact on the way women look at online communications and on how they use the tools.  Virtual Sisterhood is committed to supporting the exciting efforts women are already engaged in online - with an emphasis on women actively working to create feminist electronic information resources and expanding access to more women.  We continually invite new virtual sisters to join us.  Almost daily we hear from women wanting to join the ranks of VS activists. It's a challenge trying to respond to and channel the talents and energy of so many.  But it's evidence that our premise is correct.  Women can make change online!

At it's core sisterhood - and having two ACTUAL sisters I'm something of an expert - is not about agreeing or being nice and it's definitely not about always getting along.  But sisterhood - actual and virtual - IS about continually renewing our commitment to each other.  To ultimately "be there" to learn from, support and be deeply moved by each other's accomplishments.  We've at least stepped off in the right direction.  Join us.

Virtual Sisterhood:  vsister@igc.apc.org

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Celebrating Women Artists in the Age of Technology

by Sheri Zernentsch

At Studio XX our motto remains, Everything in Moderation Except XX! Studio XX is a digital media centre for women located in Montreal, Quebec. We are a women's intervention group offering women access to new technologies. We conduct forums for critical discussion on topics affecting women and technology, workshops that teach basic software, computer and Internet skills, and offer a space where technological knowledge can be shared and applied to various art practices and fields of interest.

Engagement in critical discussion takes place at a number of Studio XX events, including Les Femmes Branchees: Show and Tell Salon, an informal gathering where women working with various technologies can showcase their work to an audience; on our on-line magazine (`zine) entitled Double X, a hot link off of the Studio XX homepage, and on XX Files, a weekly radio show broadcast in Montreal.

Women artists at Studio XX are utilizing tools of technology to express their thoughts on issues, to make policy demands and to gain a place within other artist communities.  We offer an outlet where women art practitioners who just want to know more about the existing technologies and their uses can engage in critical, but non-judgmental conversation about these tools.  All of these women, whether engaging directly with technology or simply honing a knowledge base, are integral to the social and political fabric of who we are at Studio XX. As women we are varied culturally, socially, racially, and linguistically, and as artists, scholars, parents, and citizens we aim to open up opportunities that enable as many women as possible to participate in and contribute to community endeavours.

Kathy Kennedy, Patricia Kearns and Petra Mueller are women artists who are using and exploring various forms of technology, specifically audio, film and the Internet, to advance women's interests and create feminist empowerment. They are just three out of the many women artists who are contributing their time, energy, creativity and brain power to the workings of Studio XX.

PROFILE: Sound Goddess, KATHY KENNEDY

Kathy Kennedy is one of Studio XX's founding members, and as a composer, Kathy's attention to XX centres largely around the need to give women access to audio equipment and Internet facilities. Since 1991, Kathy has been the director, arranger and composer of Choeur Maha, a women's choir based in Montreal. She is a trained vocalist and teaches in the Contemporary Dance Department at Concordia University. Her work as a sound artist in the electroacoustic domain has primarily addressed issues of the voice and its mediation by the interface of technology. Her experience as Executive Producer of Choeur Maha's CD, Different Angels, is a clear example of the ease at which she merges music practice with new technologies.

Evident in Kathy's most recent work is her careful consideration of time and space in the audio realm. She has applied this to her work with both Choeur Maha and Studio XX, creating forms of social protest in our daily lives; the importance of creating music and performance art which reaches out to everyone, not just an elite art audience.

Over the past five years, Kathy has viewed her art practice as being about the creation of social liaisons and social spaces, aiming to facilitate forums for discussion, discovery and community building through music practice. For Kathy, the collective process is as important as the musical piece itself. Studio XX is an obvious extension of her work with groups of women musicians who support, teach and empower each other; XX being an obvious offshoot of this way of thinking. Her work with Choeur Maha, as with Studio XX, is not simply about empowering women, breaking old stereotypical images of the female singer as passive or decorative, but it is also about enhancing women's communal strengths. Rather fittingly, Kathy describes Studio XX as a coming to life of a Matisse painting; the ultimate image of women dancing collectively to celebrate knowledge, mutual strength and access to the world around us.

PROFILE: Film Goddess, PATRICIA KEARNS

For Patricia Kearns, Studio XX began out of a desire to respond in a concrete way to the inclusion of women in the development of new technologies. With a background in anti-violence and community work with women and kids, independent filmmaker Patricia Kearns offers skills to Studio XX that grant women empowerment and agency, and which document our lives using the medium of film. Her current film work includes two documentaries: one about the Montreal all-women choir and performance group, Choeur Maha, and a second film dealing with Canadian activist Maude Barlow. Patricia sits on the Studio XX Steering Committee and is the "Bottom-liner" (How we refer to the woman "in charge") for funding and grant applications.

Patricia appreciates the connection that Studio XX allows when a large group of women come together to share thoughts and information on the uses of new technology in art and in the community. This she prefers over the direct hands-on experience, or more specific Internet use. Les Femmes Branchees: Show and Tell Salons, for example, allow for a look at the bigger picture by exploring art practice and culture in our technologically-driven society. Patricia explains the nature of these forums as a space where there is "rich feeding going on".

These forums for expression at Studio XX allow Patricia to step away from her own practical film work and move into the theoretical realm, a balance which has always been a part of her life. She states that unless one is connected to a university setting, a forum for critical discourse is hard to find. That is, a space where feminist ideologies can grow, where policy reviews, agenda setting and a genuine sharing of information take place, and where concrete action is aimed at change. Knowledge and power, two major issues, and information as power, are driving forces in both Patricia's film and self-defence work, as well as her participation in Studio XX events. And her lack of direct involvement with the Internet is not treated as a problem by XX members. Instead, she states that one doesn't feel that they have to surf the Internet in order to be up to speed with today's technologies. The sharing of information has always been a major womandate of XX, and at XX it seems there are always people to turn to if one needs resources.

PROFILE: New Technologies/Cyber Goddess, PETRA MUELLER

Studio XX website Co-ordinator, Petra Mueller, works to demystify the Internet and related technologies. She relates digital technologies to household appliances, because, she states, that's what they are. The Internet, like a blender, is a tool that was once new and kind of freaky. Now we look back and ask,`what's the big deal?'.

With a Master's in Visual Arts, Petra describes herself as "a poet more than anything else". Her contemporary art practice has expanded to include the Internet, critically investigating various Web sites to find out what's odd about them. She has articulated the Internet as a constant flow, with an understanding that we must be extremely critical of which sources are feeding the information onto the Internet, from which sources Web sites derive, and the subjective nature of information in virtual space.

Her latest project in new technologies, entitled The Love Project, is a site which will explore the relationship between love, money and the weather on the Net: love and money can be sought and lost, but there is never an absence of weather. Apart from having a Montreal weather channel set up, a link will be available for constant viewing of live camera sites at a bus stop on Wiltshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills, cargo trucks at the Russian-Finnish border, and a view of ice and sea in the Antarctica. Petra will use metaphors of weather to understand the physical reality of love and money. Her use of the name The Love Project explores the obscurity of love: people have a handle on money, and can accept the weather, but love is a cloudy topic.

What Petra finds the most fantastic about Studio XX is the blend of concrete and virtual space which is made available to women. She states that there aren't a lot of other places where women can go and talk about technology and not feel stupid; where people don't try to constantly `one-up' you. And for Petra, who says that she "works the best when I'm messing up," her techno-art practice deals with the here and now, physical and virtual space. Her current artistic aims include conflating elements of physical everyday reality with virtual information sites on the Internet.

Please contact us for more information by emailstudioxx@internauts.ca
by fax (514) 848-0267 or by telephone (514) 845-7934

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Menopause Resources on the Internet
by Scarlet Pollock

Guides & Commentaries

MENOPAUSE: IT'S NOT A DISEASE - a summary of social and physical changes associated with menopause, and a guide to using "Natural Approaches To a Change of Life".

MENOPAUSE: ANOTHER CHANGE IN LIFE - a resource from Planned Parenthood, which includes signs and indications, osteoporosis, traditional and alternative therapies.

THE CHALLENGE OF MENOPAUSE: Self-awareness and a whole foods diet can smooth the transition - a summary of menopause symptoms suggesting a nutritional approach.

Mailing Lists

MENOPAUS is a list for discussions of menopause and menopause related issues, experiences, remedies, feelings, and more. To receive the messages which are sent to this list, send an email message to: LISTSERV@PSUHMC.HMC.PSU.EDU  and in the body of the message type: subscribe MENOPAUS firstname lastname

Note the "e" in Menopaus(e) needs to be left off.  There are more than 100 messages per day sent to this list, so it is helpful to collect them as one set of messages each day. To do this, send the message: set menopaus digest to the same listserv, once your subscription is confirmed.

PNL is the 'pausing naturally' mailing list for women who choose to avoid hormone replacement therapy.  This is a women-only list.  It includes discussions on diet, exercise,herbs and other alternatives.  For more information, send an email message to pnl-request@home.ease.lsoft.com

Newsgroup

ALT.SUPPORT.MENOPAUSE is a newsgroup, or usenet group, which includes questions & answers about menopause, sharing resources, and mutual support. You can subscribe to the newsgroup through your newsreader, or use your browser to read those messages you choose, by opening the location: news:alt.support.menopause  There are 8-10 posts per day to this newsgroup.

Menopause Web Sites

MENOPAUSE MATTERS  - "We seek to empower women to make conscious decisions about health, by disseminating state of the art information on the treatment of problems arising at menopause."  This set of web pages combines a discussion forum, commentaries, links to other menopause sites on the Internet and non-Internet resources, and a directory of physicians and pharmacists who are sympathetic to using alternative approaches to menopause.

ATLANTA REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CENTRE - This clinic site offers a set of articles on health concerns associated with menopause, and links other Internet resources on menopause.

DOCTOR'S GUIDE TO THE INTERNET - MENOPAUSE  - A guide to menopause-related information and resources likely to be of interest to medical professionals and/or patients.

Online Newsletters

THE POWER SURGE READING ROOM - `I don't have HOT FLASHES I have POWER SURGES' Power Surge, an online support network for women in menopause, was created by Dearest, aka Alice Lotto Stamm. Power Surge encourages discussion of every treatment option available to women in menopause. "Menopause impacts on every nuance of our lives. Once empowered with knowledge about available options, women become equipped to make more educated decisions which will, hopefully, result in a less difficult passage." The monthly newsletters and/or text files are available for viewing online.

MENOTIMES - This is a quarterly journal dedicated to alternative approaches to Menopause & Osteoporosis. It is only partially online, but offers selected articles, and further information on subscribing.

PeTA Attacks Menopause Drug

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) have put out a statement about Premarin, an estrogen-replacement therapy (ERT) drug. They are concerned about the possible risk of breast cancer associated with taking it, and the fact that Premarin, made by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, is made from the urine of confined horses; "other drug companies produce ERT drugs from plant sources". Mares' urine is used for Premarin: "Women have the right to know the dangers associated with ERT and the cruelty involved in Premarin production", Dr. Jean Rodgers, PeTA.

Birthing the Crone: Menopause and Aging through an Artist's Eyes

Artwork and commentary by Helen Redman - "In 1992, as menopause shook my body, mind and spirit, I began to express this time of life in my paintings..Birthing The Crone is a live process, an ongoing creation of drawings and paintings, as well as a dialogue with others...

...This presentation is about bringing to life my Wise Woman Crone, birthing it, so to speak, through my art. The word CRONE has too long been defined by society's disdain for old women. Today those of us who choose to name ourselves CRONES do so to confront the stereotype and to raise consciousness around issues of aging."

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Part Two Summer 1996, volume 2 no.1
Part Three Summer 1996, volume 2 no.1