Le Reset is a feminist hackerspace that welcomes people who usually do not feel safe or included in many hackerspaces. It takes place once a week, on sundays, in a queer bar in Paris. The place is a relevant aspect of what we do : it is already a welcoming place for women and queers.

Le RESET is a French feminist hackerspace created in 2016 by a small group of queer & feminist hackers and hacktivists. Our goal was to create a space at the intersection of communities that often remain apart. In our current political context, it is important to keep to mind who has access to technology, knowledge and expertise, and to make sure that we do not reproduce oppressive behaviors and structures in our activism. Marginalized people rarely feel like they belong in hackerspace communities, and it can be hard to break this statu quo. Wishing for better spaces is not enough, and we must strive to enforce better behaviors and be more inclusive in our communities through constant efforts on our end.

It is our responsibility to build spaces more accessible, so how do we do better and what tools can hackerspaces have to ensure they actually welcome everyone? As a feminist hackerspace, Le RESET constantly highlights the importance of uniting communities from different background: feminists, queers, geeks… Questions surrounding the feasibility of such reunions, and how minorities can access knowledge and have their voices heard in those communities are one of our major preoccupations.

Because marginalized people are often kept apart, their specific threat models and needs are disregarded and not addressed unless we consciously include them in our processes. Sharing our knowledge and expertise to everyone is important, but so is listening to others. This is why we heavily rely on mutual learning so that we can benefit from a diversity of experiences. Additionally, providing a space where minorities can feel welcomed allows a diversity of approach and therefore new opportunities to create differently. Within our Queer Games workshops for instance, participants were able to build an arcade machine using 3D printed clitoris as controllers with a Space-Invader like video game that address themes of medical violence. To understand why we created Le RESET we will first tackle what prevents marginalized people from accessing our communities and how they are still made invisible even when they make it to our hackerspaces. This will lead us to discuss how to build safe spaces and what it actually means, to explain the highly political stake of selected diversity in activist spaces for minorities and what other tools are available and easy to implement. We will finally go in-depth on how to integrate cyberfeminism in our hackerspaces by detailing the practical cases of our Queer Games workshops and on our “Bodies and sexuality” projects regarding DIY gynecology.

We trust in intersectionality and the transmission of any knowledge, and have developed a unique expertise that we want to share with others. By referring to both conceptual tools and practical examples based on our experience, we will explain how and why we built our project, and what it means to be a feminist hackerspace today.