Author Archives: Jennifer Cole

About Jennifer Cole

Jennifer Cole is a founding member and director of the GimpGirl Community. Jennifer is also an undergraduate studying cultural anthropology at Oregon State University and a research associate in the Experiential Design and Gaming Environments (EDGE) Lab at Ryerson University. She has worked with Oregon Public Health to create state policy recommendations around women with disabilities and sexual health. She is an invited speaker and author on topics such as disability, social media technology and sexuality.

GimpGirl Turns 14

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Today marks the 14th anniversary of GimpGirl Community! We have taken many forms in the last 14 years, but our mission has always remained the same: to bring together women with disabilities in the spirit of mutual support and positivity. That single mission brings together individuals with many different disabilities from a variety of countries and backgrounds to share our commonalities.

Our community’s administrators and facilitators have always been women with disabilities who volunteer their time because they believe that our community should be strengthened from within by people who understand the lived experience of being a woman with a disability.

We have also grown through the support of many others. Indeed, it is through volunteerism, in-kind donations of services, creative management of available resources and the use of open source and free to use online tools that we have survived and flourished.

Do you have any stories, anecdotes or favorite memories of your time with GimpGirl? We would love to hear from you on your experience of the last 14 years!

Spotlight: Sins Invalid

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Every now and then we like to spotlight organizations other than our own that in some way support the voices of women with disabilities. Check out Sins Invalid!

What is Sins Invalid?

Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility (aka “Sins”) is a San Francisco/Bay Area based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. For the last five years, our performance work has explored themes of sexuality, embodiment, and the disabled body to sold-out audiences.

What people say…

The world of enforced and embodied norms constricts all of us, regardless of where we identify on the spectrums of sexuality, gender, or ability. In this project, people with disabilities are engaging in the wholeness of our bodies and our sexualities. When people experience our shows they are deeply impacted:

“I am moved beyond words, moved to an emotional state that I can’t quite explain. Thank you for making this space possible!” – audience member 2011

“You are brilliant and beautiful and help me remember that so am I.  Thank you.” - audience member 2011

“What makes Sins Invalid so powerful is that it thoroughly succeeds artistically and erotically, separate from the impact of its political message. Sins Invalid challenges its audience to think about sexuality, beauty, and disability in new and expanded ways. But Sins Invalid is also, quite simply, a hot, arousing, sexually charged evening of thought-provoking, imaginative sexual entertainment that only happens to be entirely by and about people with disabilities.” - David Steinberg, SFGate

Want to support Sins Invalid and their upcoming movie project? Visit their Kickstarter page and help them reach their goal by February 14th! Can’t donate? Just help by spreading the word to friends!

Featured Work: Margie Suarez

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One of the focuses of GimpGirl Community is to spotlight the work and voice of women with disabilities. Below is three amazing poems from Margie Suarez. Want your work featured? Contact us and let us know!

My name is Margie Suarez. I am working towards a Masters in creative writing.  My favorite poet is Maya Angelou. I would like to thank my family and friends for encouraging me to continue writing.

Continue reading →

Balancing Relationships

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In our previous article, Caregivers and Relationships, we gave a very broad overview of managing paid caregivers1 and various other relationships. Relationships are more than just managing caregivers and other people in your life. In long-term romantic relationships, particularly, there are many factors involved in creating a healthy and safe emotional space to help the relationship to continue. People with disabilities have long been unfairly characterized as being a burden to society, and this characterization carries over into any relationship where there is an expectation of equality. Even individuals themselves struggle to find their own worth and sense of equality within this relationship dynamic.

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Read the entire article on Yahoo! Accessibility.

Engaging with the Community

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Since the launch of our new website earlier this month, many of you might be wondering how to engage with our awesome community of women with disabilities outside of this website. Take a moment to look to the right of this post (on our website), where you will find a collection of icons (under “Follow Us!”) for various social media and online tools that GimpGirl uses. Each of these icons link to our specific group or page. They are a great way to find us around the Internet!

On Facebook, we have an amazing, active forum for posting links, sharing stories and ideas, and discussing various relevant topics. Outside of our weekly meetings on Second Life and our Chat Room (IRC), our Facebook group is probably the best way to connect with other women with disabilities.

What if you just want to keep track of blog posts or events? Twitter is our largest group, and is a great way to keep track of links to relevant news topics and GimpGirl’s events. You can view our Google calendar to see upcoming events, as well as subscribe to the calendar to see the event times in your time zone and sign up for notifications when events are getting close. If you use an RSS blog reader, you can add our RSS feed. If not, you can also follow our various groups and communities on FriendFeed or our blog posts on LiveJournal.

Our Flickr community is a must-see, with member pictures, event snapshots, and various works of art. On LinkedIn, you can network with other women with disabilities on employment and other professional matters. If you would like to buy various items with our logo on them, visit our Zazzle store (hosted by NoPityCity).

So, what are you waiting for? Connect with us and join the conversation!

Stop SOPA/PIPA

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We here at GimpGirl have a 14 year history of showcasing compelling, original stories that are the direct personal experiences of women with disabilities, as well as curating the best material to support our members in leading their kickass lives.  We get to tell innovative, creative stories that no-one else is telling.

If SOPA/PIPA passes, it could genuinely become too expensive and too much of a potential legal problem for us to be able to continue our curation practices, or even to tell stories where women say things like “I saw a movie and it inspired me to change my life.”  Or worse, it could mean that Google considers this too much of a risk to index our site, so we won’t be able to be found by women looking for information.  Under SOPA/PIPA, ANYWHERE that people express themselves – our site, our LiveJournal, our Facebook group, our Twitter, our Second Life – could become too much of a legal risk or get shut down.

Please support SOPA/PIPA actions today to keep the Internet free and safe for everyone – especially rarely heard voices like women with disabilities.

Here are some links on PIPA/SOPA:

Clay Shirky gives a 10 minute speech on the topic (video, not
subtitled) – http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html

Fight for the Future
http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa
(Subtitled version of video here:
http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/5A31ep7v6HFd/)

Google’s Take Action Page
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

Huffington Post on the blackout:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/01/18/sopa-blackout-internet-censorship_n_1211905.html

Mashable on the blackout:
http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/sopa-dark-ages/

The New Year

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When most people think of New Year’s resolutions, they picture easily made and easily broken promises. I like to think of the New Year as a time for reflection and self-guidance — a time to look back on the year behind us and what we have learned from those experiences, and a time to look forward into the new year to see how we can use those lessons to get closer to our goals.

Most of the GimpGirl regulars know that, for me, the last year has been one filled with a great deal of difficulty. The summer saw a sudden end to my long-term relationship, which sparked an interstate move and an endless cascade of problems with arranging social services and dealing with various other issues, on top of continuing school and my work here at GimpGirl. It has not been easy, to say the least. At times it looked as if I would end up in a group or nursing home on a long-term basis, something I fight very hard to avoid. It has been soul crushing, heartbreaking, and has tested every ounce of my somewhat renown tenacity.

As a disabled disability advocate, I feel it is important to share this experience. Sharing experience is a big part of how our community learns from each other. I often encounter assumptions that advocates don’t experience the same kinds of struggles and barriers that many other people do. We do, and it is just as difficult for us. We also know that what we do for ourselves affects those that come after us.

I have learned so much in the last six months. More than I ever thought possible. I have learned even more about navigating the system, what housing options are available to people with disabilities, what specific terminology to use when being assessed for caregiver funding, federal laws and statutes, and a multitude of other things. What I was reminded of more than anything was to stick by who I am as an individual. I am worthy, and the goals I set for myself are worthy. It was a reminder to not let anyone change me, because who I am is pretty awesome even if not everyone thinks so. It was also a reminder of how vitally important having a community is. Without my GimpGirl family – all of you amazing women who understand what facing these struggles is like – all of this would have been unbearable. When I was tired, these reminders would echo through my mind, keeping me from giving up when everything was telling me to.

As I go forward into the new year, I will take those lessons with me into my own life and in my work with GimpGirl. I am already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but I know that in order to fully realize what I want from my own life I will face many obstacles in the months to come. However, having looked back at the previous year, I know that I can face it. I know that the struggle is worth it. I know that I am worth every bit of energy I put into myself and my dreams. I believe in myself, probably more than I ever have after facing all of this.

I look forward to the year ahead. I look forward to working with other volunteers to make GimpGirl an even better community, with more community-created content and outreach. As we begin our 14th year together, I look forward to getting to know all of you even more. I am grateful for every one of you.

– in solidarity… Jennifer Cole

Social vs Medical Model Evolved

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Disability activists and advocates have been trying to frame disability and surrounding issues using a social model of disability since at least the 1980s in an effort to distance discourse from the (still) predominant medical model that rules many of our lives. This switch in models was to frame disability in a way that made it clear where many people face barriers and how those barriers can be addressed. However, the vast majority of people have still never heard these terms or understand the implications of these thought frameworks. Of those who have, even within the disability community, there is a sense of division between those who embrace the social model and those who don’t feel it is an accurate description of their reality. So, what are these models and how can we bridge the gap?

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Read the entire article on Yahoo! Accessibility.

Caregivers and Relationships

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The most common question we hear from younger women with disabilities is how to manage paid caregivers (also called personal care attendants or carers) in the context of some type of relationship. Often this working relationship happens in the same home that family, housemates and romantic partners also live in. How do you maintain your close, personal relationships while managing a paid caregiver full or part time? Keep in mind the following observations are not from professionals, but collective perspective of a group of women with disabilities who have had a lot of personal experience balancing caregivers and relationships.

There have been several books written on this subject, but often the key to finding the answer is simple: You, the adult receiving caregiving services, are the boss that must manage your working relationship with your caregiver in a professional manner. We are not advocating you treat your caregiver poorly — far from it! A clear, pleasant, professional relationship will benefit you both in the long run.

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Read the entire article on Yahoo! Accessibility.

Women and Virtual Spaces

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What kind of virtual world do women inhabit, and what are the implications of their increasingly diverse online activities? This is a difficult question to answer, because there is no singular “virtual world.” The Internet is a tool for people to create communities of their own, not one unitary community. While there are a lot of very big and open common spaces, it is also entirely possible to create a fairly insular community online where the participants work together to create whatever kind of virtual space they want to (Youngs). This is particularly beneficial for marginalized groups, such as women and people with disabilities (Herring et al.), who can create spaces in which a shared experience can lead to building identity and a sense of empowerment from being able to work through barriers with others who understand.

In many (maybe even most) virtual spaces, there is still quite a bit of hostility towards women and women’s issues. Discussion of women’s issues seems to draw trolling behavior (Herring et al.). When gender equality is discussed in many online spaces, it is met with disbelief and resistance, particularly in the context of developed, industrialized nations. There seems to be a general response of, “What are you whining about? You ‘feminist types’ have ruined everything.” Doubly so when you consider disability issues on top of that, as our whole group is often judged by people who don’t know us to be a leech on society, rather than considered as valuable individuals who are full members of society. This hostility, often termed ableism, is never easy to see, let alone overcome, particularly for those who are not entirely sure where they stand.

However, many women have managed to carve out relatively safe spaces in which to build community and discuss issues that are important to them, using a combination of traditional community-building practices learned from offline spaces and thoughtful use of new online opportunities and moderation tools. …

Read the entire article on Yahoo! Accessibility.