This Guy Is Our Feminist of the Day

Tech leader Anil Dash's 2013 resolution was to retweet only women for the whole year (well, except for one retweet from Prince, but hey, we get it). Now, Dash has taken to Medium to write about his experience.

Dash decided to embark on this feminist adventure when he realized that over three quarters of his followers were men, and that he also overwhelmingly retweeted men. Spurred on by his "growing sense of social responsibility about what messages I choose to share and amplify, and whose voices and identities I strive to bring to a broader audience," Dash made the New Year's resolution to retweet only women.

While some critics complained Dash was ignoring meritocracy (which, you know, doesn't even really exist in our society), the tech leader maintains that his resolution didn't lead to much change in his Twitter habits. "I’d always find women saying the same (or better!) things about the moment," he writes, "whose voices I could amplify instead of the usual suspects."

"I’d always find women saying the same (or better!) things about the moment whose voices I could amplify instead of the usual suspects."

While this might seem pretty minor, Dash seems to have effected some real change around him. "I retweeted the @stopandfrisk account daily for weeks," he explains, "and found that people who knew me in the tech world, who hadn’t been familiar with the issue, were suddenly bringing it up unprompted in meetings." While he concedes Stop and Frisk isn't run by women, he still retweeted because of the importance many women (rightly) attach to the account.

Perhaps best of all, Dash really wants to avoid mansplaining. "For me," he writes, "it was giving a platform to women where I wasn’t able to mansplain the things they were already saying, but instead just sharing out their own thoughts in their own words." Dash, you just get it, and we love you for that.

Image: Getty Images