Taller de Comunicación Mujer (TCM) is an Ecuadorian transfeminist organisation that has been working for more than 30 years to defend the rights of women and LGBTQI+ people. Its focus is primarily on the eradication of gender violence through three lines of work: gender violence prevention and response; lesbian andtrans rights; and digital rights.
In 2017 it launched the programme “Navegando libres por la Red” (Navigating the Web Freely) aimed at empowering women, children, adolescents and LGBTQI+ people to exercise their rights in technology-related spaces, towards building a feminist internet. This involves imagining the internet from a feminist perspective as a violence-free space for gathering, connecting and developing technologies through a care-based approach, exercising digital rights and strengthening the collective social fabric. Strong emphasis is placed on preventing and addressing gender violence in digital spaces through collective care and networking and community-centred strategies.
APCNews spoke with Mónica Diego, TCM executive director, to learn more about the organisation’s priorities and its decision to join the APC member network.
Why did you decide to join the APC network?
There were several reasons that led Taller de Comunicación Mujer to make the collective decision of joining APC. These include the opportunity to be part of an organisation working globally on communication and rights issues, learning and finding out about other collectives and individuals and about different issues, and also being able to contribute our perspectives based on our country’s experience.
What do you think you can contribute as a member, and what do you expect from APC?
As a member of APC, we can contribute our knowledge from and of Latin America, and Ecuador in particular, regarding digital rights and gender violence, with a feminist view and feminist trans-hack thinking methodologies.
What we expect to gain from APC is being part of a collective, engaging with other organisations and individuals and incorporating new approaches and issues into our work. We believe that it is critical to strengthen alliances with organisations that are working to build human rights-based technologies and communications. This is particularly important from the perspective of feminisms and the LGBTQI+ community, where care and overcoming social inequalities and political and digital divides should be common concerns.