QUEERCRIP REBELLIONS Workshop facilitated by Robin Eames Email

QUEERCRIP REBELLIONS Workshop facilitated by Robin Eames Email: robin. m. eames@gmail. com Facebook: Robin Memes Website: robinmeames. org Twitter & Instagram: @robinmarceline Please feel free to contact me about this workshop or about queer/disability advocacy & community organising, !

WHO THE FUCK AM I? • Hi, I’m Robin. I use they/them/their pronouns. I’m a queer writer and artist working on my honours thesis in history (specifically THAT GAY SHIT). I’m also a manual wheelchair user with multiple disabilities, and I contain a core of frustrated disabled rage that burns with the power of a thousand hellish suns. That rage will not be directed at you today, because this is a workshop, but please keep in mind that I am very small and very tired and I’m here because I think this shit’s important and I want to have fabulous intracommunity discussions about the stuff close to my heart, not because my life’s passion is educating oblivious bipeds with my Inspirational Suffering. • I have a whole bunch of other intersectional identities but I won’t list them all here. If I say something that makes you go “hey that’s kind of fucked up” feel free to pitch in & tell me “hey that’s kind of fucked up”. • This workshop is being held on the stolen land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. It was never ceded and no treaty has been met. Violent colonisation is a continuing institution in which I am complicit.

WHAT WILL THIS WORKSHOP COVER? • I could talk for five bajillion years about my many and varied QUEERCRIP FEELINGS but for now I’m planning on running through a few core ideas before opening up the room to discussion. Feel free to pitch in earlier if you have any questions, confusions, or amazingly hilarious related anecdotes. For the most part this workshop will focus on disability intersectionality in the queer community; resisting abled norms & expectations around identity, gender, sexuality, and relationships; the paradox of hypervisibility and invisibility of disabled identities; and celebrating queercrip lives & loves in the face of overwhelming ignorance & stigma surrounding physical disability, intellectual & cognitive disability, chronic illness, mental illness, and terminal illness.

WHAT IS QUEERCRIP? • QUEERCRIP is a term that to the best of my knowledge began with Robert Mcruer and Abby L. Wilkerson’s 2002 novel “Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies” and in Mcruer’s 2006 novel “Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability”.

WHAT IS QUEERCRIP? • Mcruer & Wilkinson’s goal was “mapping the intersections of queer theory and disability studies, moving issues of embodiment and desire to the center of cultural and political analyses. The two fields are premised on the idea that the categories of heterosexual/homosexual and ablebodied/disabled are historically and socially constructed… [exploring] how the frameworks for queer theory and disability studies suggest new possibilities for one another, for other identity-based frameworks of activism and scholarship, and for cultural studies in general. ”

A QUICK NOTE BEFORE WE CONTINUE • It’s important to note that crip is a slur. Cripple is a slur. Queer is a slur. You can’t reclaim a slur unless you are part of that community – otherwise by definition it’s not reclamation, it’s just persistent usage of a harmful word by the group exercising harm. “Crip theory” has become a commonplace way to refer to disability studies in academia, but you need to exercise tact & sensitivity as to whether you think it’s a term appropriate for you to use, depending on your context & experience.

QUEERCRIP & RADICAL VISIBILITY • In 2015 Shy Cubacub wrote the Radical Visibility manifesto for their project Rebirth Garments.

QUEERCRIP & RADICAL VISIBILITY • “Everyday is a performance where I bring my body as a kinetic sculpture into the consciousness of the people I interact with in passing and on a daily basis. I get stared at or stopped on the street and in the CTA everyday… When a part of your physical appearance dominates all others, it becomes you. Your identity is that thing.

QUEERCRIP & RADICAL VISIBILITY • “The current situation for trans* undergarments and for people with disabilities is that we shouldn’t be stylish, because we should “want to blend in” A. K. A. society wants us to be invisible and not draw attention to ourselves. ” You can read the Radical Visibility manifesto here: https: //radicalvisibility. wordpress. com/

I RAN THE HELL OUT OF TIME • I AM SO SORRY O HECK IS ANYBODY SURPRISED PROBABLY NOT