MataSEA

MataSEA invites individuals, collectives and groups to contribute their stories on experiences of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) in Southeast Asia for the first-ever issue of MataZine. We ask for stories focusing on these two broad questions:

• How do the experiences of TFGBV vary across contexts in Southeast Asia, and how do gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and diverse social realities shape our relationship with technology, power and safety?
• How does care and resilience look like within your community? What are some of the everyday practices of care, joy and solidarity that you have seen in the face of TFGBV?

Deadline: 6 July 2026

We welcome stories, reflections and insights that will expand the current discourse of TFGBV and to amplify the diverse voices and realities in Southeast Asia. Dominant definitions and understandings of TFGBV continue to be shaped by a narrow set of experiences from the global North and are then applied universally without sufficient attention to the nuances of how power is negotiated and resisted in the Southeast Asia context.

We cannot fully make sense of our relationship with technology without looking at it as an extension of existing colonial arrangements and interlocking systems of domination, i.e. patriarchy, racism, xenophobia, nationalism, religious fundamentalism and military autocracies. Without a grounded understanding of these diverse lived realities, digital rights interventions or solutions risk being merely cosmetic—and in some instances, they risk reproducing the exact same harms they claim to prevent.

We invite contributors to help us in highlighting how violence is perceived, experienced and resisted by the people on the ground; how power is negotiated through everyday practices; and how care and resilience are enacted for collective survival and move towards everyday thriving.

FORMAT:

We welcome contributions in a variety of formats, including articles, essays, poems, comics, and illustrations :

• Narrative pieces that share the lived experiences of individuals or communities
• Research-driven pieces that incorporate interviews, surveys, or desk research
• Word limits for article – 1,200 – 1,500 words
• We welcome submissions in Thai, Indonesian, Burmese, Malay, English, Vietnamese, Filipino – the selected submissions will be published in their original language and translated into English.

COMPENSATION:

We pay USD 300 for each selected submissions.

HOW TO PITCH:

In less than 300 words, please share:

• TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF – What do you do professionally? Where are you located or rooted in? How is TFGBV relevant to you?
• THE STORY THAT YOU WANT TO TELL – a short paragraph explaining the core idea of your story, the angle or approach for your story, whose stories are these and how it is different from the dominant knowledge around TFGBV, care, resilience or feminist tech.

Send your pitch via email with the subject line “PITCH: MataZine TFGBV”, to hello@matasea.space, no later than 6 July 2026.

Preference will be given to people who are working with marginalised communities – including gender and sexual, religious, ethnic, refugee status and other oppressed identities.