illustration: Alix Verity
Tell us a bit about Gadgette…
It’s a technology website written by and for women. A lot of the big tech sites are written mostly by men and their audiences are majority male. We wanted to do something a bit different. We’re aimed at women, but we do have a lot of male readers – I think it’s because we write in a way that’s inclusive and they like our tone of voice. We’re quite irreverent.
Starting something new is such hard work. It takes up all your evenings and weekends and you think about it relentlessly. It takes over your life, and you’re never sure if you’re doing the right thing or if you’ll have a job next year. When someone says that what you’re doing is really good, it means everything. It makes it all so worthwhile.
Gadgette has a pink colour scheme, and doesn’t shy away from talking about beauty and fashion technology. Is it important that the site isn’t gender neutral?
We do some beauty tech, but it is heavily tech-based. The fashion stuff we do is kind of geeky; Marvel characters and Doctor Who. As for the pink, it's deliberate. Women are constantly told what they should and shouldn't like. We're saying it's fine to like tech and pink, or neither. There are no rules, the ethos of the site is to overtly say “women are welcome here”. As a woman, I don’t get that impression from the other sites. I read one the other day that said a certain phone was “slim and sexy like Gisele”, and that makes me think that I’m not the person this is aimed at.
What do you think has been a positive advancement in technology for women?
It’s really good to see smartwatch manufacturers have opened up to the fact that women exist. When they first came out they were absolutely massive, and while it’s a little outdated to talk about masculine and feminine styling, there is a degree to which things will and won’t appeal to women. It’s not about making them rose gold and chucking diamantes on them, it’s about making something stylish, smart and wearable.
What’s been the most negative?
I don’t think advancement in technology itself is negative to women, but booth babes are an issue in the industry. At tech shows, certain brands will turn up with two women in hotpants and bikinis dancing around. It’s frustrating because they’re not part of the company and they can’t answer your questions. It’s disappointing that they can’t come up with a better way to sell their product. It’s getting better, though, and there are women that work on the stands and it’s always a relief to see them.
Tell us about that smartwatch incident...
[Laughs] That was a good one. That was at a trade show, and it was a massive global manufacturer. I went up to their stand, and I knew they had a smartwatch they’d been unofficially showing to people. I asked if they were showing the watch, and a guy who was clearly representing the company said, “No, but I bet if you flash them, they’ll show you”, and he mimed me lifting my top up. It was ridiculous. He knew from my face that he’d messed up.
Were you involved in Gamergate at all?
If you talk about it, they [internet trolls] really go after you.
You can’t comment?
No. I had it recently because I wrote something about an app: I interviewed the creator and pointed out some problems, and he decided that it was unworkable and chose to withdraw it. People who were playing that game are furious with me because they thought I’d had it taken down. Someone put a picture of my Twitter avatar on their screen, ejaculated on it, and sent me a photo. It’s quite a popular way of putting women down, known online as a tribute.
Recently, someone tweeted me, “Here’s hoping that 2016 is the year Holly follows in her father’s footsteps”. My dad committed suicide, and they’d attached a picture of the way he died. What shocked me was that instead of putting the image in the tweet, he put it behind a link so he would know when I’d seen it.
Can you not go to the police?
They don’t care. The first question they ask is if you know who they are in real life. If you don’t, it’s the end. Speaking out doesn’t work, staying quiet doesn’t work. All I can do to shut them up is to stop being a woman or stop having opinions. But I bloody well won’t be silent.
You’re trying to get sterilised, which has led to a backlash online. Why do you think so many people want to comment on what you do with your own body?
It’s part of a very old narrative – some men don’t want women to have autonomy over their bodies. I’ll get told off for saying it’s men, but it is men. All the nasty comments were from men. It suits a certain type of old-fashioned guy – they don’t want us to have our own opinions and be able to change things.
I saw your blog article about the Daily Mail comments…
You haven’t lived until Daily Mail readers comment on the size of your vagina. One of them was, “It’s gonna be massive because she has so much sex” and the other one was, like, “No, it’s gonna be tiny because she’s had no kids”. The level of brain power that went into that…
Do you think the growing presence of technology in our lives is a positive and exciting thing, or something that’s quite scary and intrusive?
Virtual reality is something people are worried about: we’re all gonna disappear into our headsets, not talk to each other and waste away. But they’re totally missing the positive side that you can enter a whole new universe and escape your physical body. Those who are disabled in some way can water ski – that’s amazing. Imagine education – you can put a headset on and go into the Battle of Hastings and actually be there on the battlefield.
There are also advancements in wearables. They started off as wristbands and jewellery, and they’re going more towards integrating with our body. The next step will be that they become part of us. It’s scary in some ways but amazing in others. At the moment we’re slaves to physical biology. If our body or brains fail, there’s not much we can do. Technology is moving forward in a way that soon we’ll be able to do something about it.
Can you tell me a bit about the Drum Woman of the Year Award 2015?
The Drum is a really cool magazine and website for those in the creative industry. I got nominated for their Woman of the Year award, which was out of the blue. I was up against these unbelievably impressive women. I went along, sat with a glass of wine, and then I won – I hadn’t prepared a speech or anything. There’s a brilliant video of me going up to the stage looking baffled. I was a bit tipsy at that point. I don’t even know what I said.
Would you call yourself a feminist?
Absolutely. I don’t think it’s a dirty word. I know it has had a lot of negative connotations added to it over the last few years, but I think that’s a deliberate effort to derail what we’re trying to achieve. There are a lot of people who are deliberately and wilfully trying to misconstrue what we’re trying to say. The meaning of feminism – fighting so women are treated and respected as equals to men – I 100% agree with.
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