Bitch Radio: Disability at the Digital Frontier

Audio post by Kjerstin Johnson on February 24, 2012 - 5:15pm;

a black and white comic illustration by Anna Hamilton of a person with long hair sitting with their arms angrily folded in a wheelchair. They are looking resentfully at their computer screen, which has a woman's symbol on it, and signifies feminism online.

In this episode of Bitch Radio, you'll hear from s.e. smith and Anna Hamilton, who you may know from various sites around the internet, including Tiger Beatdown, FWD: Feminists With Disabilities for a Way Forward, The Transcontinental Disability Choir at Bitch, as well as their personal sites, Annaham.net and sesmith.info. They also co-authored a piece (with illustrations by Annaham!) in the new issue of Bitch titled "Access & Praxis: Disability at the Digital Frontier." This week, you'll hear more about disability organizing online and how feminist spaces online can do a better job of being more inclusive.

Mentioned in this podcast:
FWD: Feminists With Disabilities for a Way Forward
Annaham.net
sesmith.info
Guardian coverage of benefits and disability bitchradio2.24transcript.doc (60 KB)

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Comments

3 comments have been made. Post a comment.

Great interview

Posted by lauredhel on February 24, 2012 - 8:20pm

Great interview - thanks! I laughed out loud at "[...] a bunch of commenters who don’t have disabilities sort of sauntering forth to offer their unique opinions [...]"

Looking back to the Forward days was interesting. It would be great if online feminists could especially take note of s.e.'s comments about the way in which FWD has been reduced in many people's minds to the Ableist Word Profiles, which was a tiny minority of the work we did; and the ways in which those Profiles have been misinterpreted and oversimplified in the re-tellings.

The comments about emotional accessibility and PWD being treated as hypothetical are insightful and worthwhile also. I don't know whether we're at the point where "where are all the disabled bloggers/commenters?" exists like "Where are all the women bloggers" does - some people seem to assume somehow that we don't exist, or couldn't speak for ourselves ever; they don't see the evidence in front of them.

(Just one tiny note on the transcript - and thank you, that long a transcript is a lot of work! - "Dreamlist" should be "Dreamwidth".)