My understanding of injustice is always intersectional. I had huge problems with critical approaches that focused on just gender, just race, just class, just postcolonial, etc. None of these felt right on their own…and they shouldn’t. Intersections and contexts matter. Identities and power play out differently in different spaces and both the micropower and macropower matter. Connection is, for the most part, full of social capital and tacit power (dunno if that is what it is called?). The social capital and power play in digital spaces may or may not align with macro power and can challenge them….but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a new power dynamic there. It’s like… I mean I know you know this and you’re saying it… I’m just confirming. Sometimes these new power dynamics reproduce others, sometimes a whole new system of power.

But here’s the thing. For me, democracy is not the ideal I hold digital spaces up to. This may be because I have not experienced political democracy ever and am jaded about the practices of democracy in other countries.

But perhaps you mean participatory spaces where everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in decisionmaking..and if so, digital spaces usually do give more opportunities for this than more hierarchical spaces offline…but we know the opportunities are still not equitably distributed. Some people with little or no power f2f get it online (so many of us, Bonnie Stewart’s research)… and intersectionality and context matter.

I also think being a minority in one space influences how we behave in other spaces, even when we have more power in those other spaces. The identity of being minority influences our worldview. Dunno if this is clear or makes sense. I noticed, for example, people with a history of being bullied reacting very aggressively to things many others don’t consider to be threatening. I imagine women who have been abused might be more sensitive to smaller offenses (I don’t know, just imagining).