Book review: the straight state: sexuality and citizenship in twentieth-century America

Ashley Mog reviews Margot Candaday‘s new release on gay politics, sexual citizenship and the future of the closet

Visionary Politics and Methods in Feminist Disability Studies

In this introduction we explore the genealogies and methodologies of feminist disability studies (FDS). A feminist methodology is politically situated with a focus on the material conditions and social and cultural structures that marginalized people bear, experience, and resist. Methods, and the theories that underpin and create those methodological tools, can open or foreclose possibilities for praxis. Considering theory and method as mutually informative intellectual projects, we ask, how can our methods influence political investments that open up visionary possibilities and plans? How can we take a coalitional approach to disability politics as a method that is informed by collaboration, rather than appropriation? How can we put both our theories and methods to work in service of a justice-oriented praxis? Furthermore, we take a feminist disability studies lens to the concept of academic rigor. With the academy’s delegitimation of the production of marginalized knowledge by marginalized people, and the ensuing defenses and institutionalization of these knowledges as indeed rigorous, a feminist disability studies method proposes that we no longer defend the rigorousness of marginalized scholarship, but rather discard rigor as a benchmark for valid and valuable research

Embodied Knowledge and Accessible Community: An Oral History of ‘Four Rehearsals and a Performance\u27

In this article we discuss how an oral history project emerged through our involvement in a collaborative, creative project at the University of Kansas called Four Rehearsals and a Performance (FRAP). FRAP utilized improvisation in dance and music, bringing together community members across ability to explore how knowledge and community are created. Our analysis explores themes of embodiment, community, and how participants experienced the space of FRAP. We first describe how FRAP became a project, and then we discuss how our oral history project emerged as part of FRAP. After providing specific examples of themes and experiences shared by our interviewees, we reflect on the successes and failures of creating a fully accessible performance space. We consider this oral history a “queer oral history” following Horacio Roque Ramírez and Nan Alamilla Boyd’s introduction in Bodies of Evidence, as it is a project with an “overtly political function and a liberating quality.” Both FRAP and our oral history project explored the politics of which bodies are valued and which bodies are seen as capable of creative production

Discomforting Power: Bodies in Public

In this work, I draw from oral history interviews with queer and trans disability justice activists in Seattle, WA. I posit a theory of comfort that interrogates how “being comfortable” in certain spaces gets allocated on the basis of social privilege. I argue that comfort is only bestowed on and felt by some bodies, often at the expense of others. Who gets to be comfortable? And how is the feeling of comfort or the feeling of discomfort differently experienced based upon one’s social status and embodied identity? When does comfort get noticed and when does it go unnoticed? When does comfort become coded? I posit that terms like “safety,” “privacy,” and “cleanliness” become code words for comfort in some contexts, especially concerning public bathrooms. I move from broad accounts of discourses around public bathrooms to particular fears, events, and lenses. My interlocutors discuss their experiences of avoiding drinking water, facing possible violence, peeing on themselves and taking extra clothes everywhere as a result of lack of accessible bathrooms, facing illness from chemicals in the bathrooms, and staying out of public because of the problems with public bathrooms. I interrogate the implications of the construction of comfort for activism, organizing, and identity, arguing that comfort becomes an oppressive and defining force that is used as a weapon against marginalized people

The life and times of Stella Browne: feminist and free spirit

Abortion and reproductive rights have been high on the policy agenda recently, with Nadine Dorries’ attempt to reform abortion laws and counselling services. Ashley Mog reviews a book charting the life of an early abortion rights campaigner. The Life and Times of Stella Browne: Feminist and Free Spirit. Lesley Hall. IB Tauris. January 2011

Book review: the life and times of Stella Browne: feminist and free spirit

Abortion and reproductive rights have been high on the policy agenda recently, with Nadine Dorries’ attempt to reform abortion laws and counselling services. Ashley Mog reviews a book charting the life of an early abortion rights campaigner

Book review: the politics of Twitter and how ‘going viral’ can spell the end for any politician

Ashley Mog learns more on the blossoming relationship between politics and new media

Threads of Commonality in Transgender and Disability Studies

This paper draws together two fields of study and activism: disability studies and transgender studies. I analyze disability and transgender identifications and communities through a comparative and intersectional lens. From conceptual terminology, to societal oppression, to discrimination within medical interactions, disability studies and transgender studies share common themes that this article evaluates to facilitate a broader understanding of their complementary and innovative potential for social change