How We Chose Our Name
by Dapper Ninja
I came up with the name and wrote the blurb that sits on the website. I was, at the time, unaware that at least two other feminist groups on the West Coast had also used it. I was unaware that anyone else had ever used the word.
At that point, a group of 2-6 people were designing a a small grrlilla art group, like the guerilla girls of the New York art scene. Our
membership and actions were supposed to be mysterious. We would appear, humorously apply talkback to mysogynist media posing as “women’s outreach” (such as publicity efforts from such organizations as Birthright, REAL Women of Canada and Rape Relief), then leave. People would know one or two femininjas, but never all of us. If the organization became large enough, it would divide into cells. The intent was to situate the organization in the cultural unconscious in a space next to heroic but elusive outlaw figures.
We picked the name “femininjas” for several reasons:
1 - “Ninjas” had their earliest roots in a means of camoflauging anti-feudal resistance by misdirecting feudal wrath onto boogeymen – is the local lord angry because if a swaggering, frequently violent and sexually aggressive knight was found face down in a a millet field? Don’t tell them we ganged up on the sonofabitch and beat him to death with grain flails – blame it on a ninja! Over time more and more stories grew up around these boogeymen, including that they had magical powers, including invisibility. Their most common image of the ninja, from which our logo is in part derived, actually comes from Japanese puppet theatre in which the “ninja” character was marked as being magically invisible by dressing the same way as the puppet operators – in an all-concealing black suit. I am unsure whether these suits had a rectangular hole over the eyes or whether this was added in later visual culture to better communicate facial expressions.
2 – Our mandate mapped onto both this history and onto the archeptype of the ninja in global geek culture that it clearly communicated our ends without mangling someone else’s culture.
3 – We thought the cutesy ninja icon would piss off uptight people on the receiving end of our actions.
4 – The domain name was free.
At our first potluck, we discussed this choice of name. At the time, the Femininjas had a very different composition and mandate. Compared to the face of the organization as late Summer of 2009 (the last time I was in town for a potluck) it was raw, contained a greater mix of genders and ethnicities, had fewer transsesexual women, and almost all members were between ages 28 and 40. We discussed whether the name was appropriate. If I recall correctly, it was Double Ninja who sought out a friend with a background in ninjitsu and asked her opinion. Her opinion, as a ninja, was that “ninjas” were traditionally quiet radical actors in class resistance. She approved heartily.
As for “Pirate Ally,” a friend of mine wanted to participate but her time was limited. She wondered if she could be a “pirate ally.” I assume this was a reference to internet memes involving ninjas and pirates.
But do please try to avoid common allergens, like peanuts. By the bye, many (but not all) of our members are vegetarian — you may bring whatever you please, but past potlucks suggest that meat-based fare does not disappear very quickly.
