GimpGirl Community AoIR9 Presentation

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GimpGirl Community AoIR9 Presentation - Presentation Transcript

GimpGirl Grows Up: Women With Disabilities Rethinking, Redefining, and Reclaiming Community
What is GimpGirl?
- GimpGirl Community ( GGC ) started in 1998
- Collaboration of young women with disabilities (WWDs)
- Who did not feel that there was community available
- Inspired the DO-IT program for teens with disabilities at the University of Washington ( http://www.washington.edu/doit/ )
- Started when Jennifer Cole & mentor Len Burns started " The Center for Breaking Away ”
- Non-profit for disabled youth transitioning to adulthood
- Its GGC project soon became sole focus.
- GGC: women supporting women– “girl” first, not about particulars of disabilities.
- Members come together to share their lives, experiences, problems and solutions, in a safe space that respects who they are, including women with disabilities of all shapes, sizes, and colors, ages & sexual orientations.
GimpGirl: A Tech Timeline
- Started on a MOO called Serenity (1995-), then grew…
- GimpGirl.com domain, Girlies mailing list, QueerGirlies & QueerLadies (1998-)
- LiveJournal and BohemiGimps in 2003
- Second Life parcel donated in 2007
- 2008 saw MySpace, Facebook IRC #GimpGirl, Twitter communities created
GimpGirl: Growth
- Who were the users? what were the challenges? what were the successes?
- SerenityMOO
- GimpGirl.com domain
- Girlies mailing, QueerGirlies QueerLadies, BohemiGimps lists
- LiveJournal
- Second Life
- MySpace
- Facebook
- IRC #GimpGirl
- Twitter community
GimpGirl: Governance
- Learning Curve
- Volunteers
- Mentorship
- Learning how to Delegate
- Moving to Second Life forced awareness of continual emergence of social networking: we need to be where people are.
GimpGirl: Future
GimpGirl: Have a look!
GimpGirl: Moodle
GimpGirl: IRC
GimpGirl: Linked in
GimpGirl: MySpace
GimpGirl: Twitter
GimpGirl: Flickr
GimpGirl: Have a look!
GimpGirl: Have a look!
GimpGirl: Have a look!
GimpGirl: Have a look!

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GimpGirl Grows Up:
Women With Disabilities Rethinki more

GimpGirl Grows Up:
Women With Disabilities Rethinking, Redefining, and Reclaiming Community

Alejandra Ospina – GimpGirl Community, GimpGirl.com
Jennifer Cole – GimpGirl Community, GimpGirl.com
Jason Nolan - Ryerson University

“GimpGirl Grows Up” is autoethnographic exploration of the GimpGirl Community that will integrate personal reflective explorations of key members with stories, images, posts and dialogues, issues and debates over the past decade of the GimpGirl Community (Anderson 1989; Author 1999; Baym 1998; Burdell & Swadener 1999; Carr & Kemmis 1986; Clandinin & Connelly 1990; Goldman-Segall 1995; Schön 1983; 1987; Willinsky 1989). The research ideas informing our inquiry are to explore the artifacts of a decade of the GimpGirl Community in light of existing research into community formation and governance, and to chart the path of an online community through the affordances of various technologies from the early web on into Web2.0. Central to this project is situating the exploration within lived experience as a deeply emic exercise where the key members of the GimpGirl Community, supported by a researcher, set the research agenda, conduct their own inquiry, organize and present their findings and conclusions. It is hoped that this model, inspired both by the community’s desire to distance itself from the educational, social and medical institutions that weigh so heavily on their lives, will extend the blurring of the notions of producers and consumers of content on the Internet.

In February 2008, GimpGirl celebrated its new home on 3DE's island in Second Life. This new incarnation, after a decade of transitional homes on listservers, MOOs, webpages, and blogs marks a coming of age for an organization and a community that is always working the fringe of the disability community beyond the reach of institutionalized norms and discourses (Author 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005a; Collins and Berge 1997; Fernback and Thompson 1995; Kendall 1996). This presentation will explore the various strands and social communication spaces that make up the GimpGirl Community constellation (from text-only communications incorporating all Web2.0 innovations in social communications) that serve to enact a system of being that ironically and paradoxically resist dominant discourses as a means to empower participants in the community; create spaces for sharing of ideas and experiences that are at the same time both safe and edgy (Author 2005b, 2005c; Foucault 1991; Illich 1970).

Inspired by Jennifer’s participation in the DO-IT program for teens with disabilities at the University of Washington (http://www.washington.edu/doit/), the road started with "The Center for Breaking Away", a non-profit intended for disabled youth transitioning to adulthood, but it quickly morphed into helping disabled women of all ages, with an initial focus on teens becoming independently-minded adults. GimpGirl was propelled forward in early 1998 as a collaboration of young women with disabilities who did not feel that there was a lot of community available for them. It quickly grew to incorporate many niche communities, such as young queer women with disabilities and women with disabilities of all sexual orientations. It strove to give those without a community a place to be themselves and talk about what was important to them. There was total of four lists in the beginning that were hosted on the servers at the Internet service provider Sasquatch Computer that Jennifer and friends owned. All lists were moderated to ensure that the list environment stayed supportive and guarantee that no one became the focus of a flame war when people were searching for acceptance. Believing that anyone who had struggled with acceptance would actually attack someone else proved hard, but leaving the list on automatic one weekend while Jennifer was on vacation taught her that lesson. She came back to many hurt feelings and many vicious e-mails piling up. She admits dealing with this kind of attitude left her feeling very disheartened about bettering the lives of women with disabilities for quite a while. As individuals who struggle to find a community where they fit in, we were always faced with the question of how to conceptualize and co-construct community that is able to focus on and respect our particular needs while avoiding isolating ourselves or falling to the pressure of institutionalized norms.

GimpGirl is a particular iteration of online community that often falls below the radar for a number of reasons. It started as teen focused, but neither commercial nor political. The issues are individual and experiential, and can be mundane and graphically personal (TMI) at the same time. It is about sharing lives, problems, experiences and solutions. It is a community that has transcended any specific technology and has morphed through listservers, MOOs, webpages, blogs, MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and SecondLife, never giving up and moving on, but incorporating each new opportunity for communication and community into a greater whole (Maxwell 2006; Rheingold 1994).

GimpGirl has never tried to represent, evangelize, or commodify women with disabilities and their experience. "We were desperate for community and tried to create it, not focusing on being advocates or leaders or even enforcing more than a supportive environment." GimpGirl has never been centred towards any particular angle of disability, very inclusive, and wide. It is about women supporting women, not about the particularities of disabilities. Logo and name is mobility based, but it is girl first.

References

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