Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Tomorrow I will blog all about sex

Well, looks like Blogging Against Disablism day may have been a mistake. I almost wrote Blogging Against Shakespeare Day which I suspect might prove more popular (I have been listening to The Reduced Shakespeare Company Radio Show which can be listened to via the BBC Radio Player). Is there any reason why you haven’t signed up yet? Do you think it is a bad idea? Do I need to spell out what the thinking was here? Okay.

Thing is that there are an awful lot of people reading blogs on a regular basis; many more people than leave comments. Naturally discourse about disablism and disability issues are never going to gain the popularity of, for example, people writing about sexism. Blogs like I Blame The Patriarchy (radical feminism) and Bitch PhD (sex positive feminism) are huge. Disability just isn’t that sexy, we are a minority and indeed, disablism does not impact even on the lives of disabled people quite as much as sexism.

So we humble little blogs talk about these issues from time to time in our quiet corners of the Internet. Usually it is written about from a personal, individual perspective and those folks who didn’t know much about it may pass through and think, “Oh, life isn’t so fair for disabled people,” but actually they don’t think twice about it. And we don’t blog to change the world, so it doesn’t matter.

However, it occurred to me, following these other highly successful Blogging Against days and Carnivals and so on, that if enough people did this on one day, and effectively linked to one another through a central point, then anybody passing through any of our sites, any of them, would (a) get to read something about disablism, perhaps from someone who had never written about such things and (b) find themselves at a gateway to several other people doing the same thing. The collective effort, we thought, could reach potentially hundreds of people in the blogosphere and show that this matters. To more than three of us, which is where it stands just now and I’m
the only crip among them. Come on, there are more than two people reading this. I can see you. Yes, you.

I do of course realise this is not everyone's cup of tea, not by a long shot. So now I'll shut up about it and tomorrow we'll forget all this happened, k?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can lead a crip to t'internet but you can't make him blog!

Surely you are not entirely alone though. After all you did say "We" have decided, so I presume you had a concensus amongst the usual suspects - at least the "Crip Hip" as I see they are now known.

Or is this really just a case of UDI (using the "royal" "we"?)

Anonymous said...

You can lead a crip to t'internet but you can't make him blog!

Surely you are not entirely alone though. After all you did say "We" have decided, so I presume you had a concensus amongst the usual suspects - at least the "Crip Hip" as I see they are now known.

Or is this really just a case of UDI (using the "royal" "we"?)

Anonymous said...

Well, I have two crip hips (in reality) so does that mean I get to write two blogs?

And Goldfish, there is little point in enabling anonymous comments on your blog. Some people will always waste space by abusing the privilege.

charlesdawson.blogspot.com

(I don't know how to turn that into an instant link.)

Anonymous said...

Good to see your blog in today's Guardain Society pages

midwesterntransport said...

Oh...wait...I think it's a great idea! Don't go away!

I haven't signed up because I honestly haven't seriously thought about disablism and I don't want to write something horrible. But screw that...maybe I'll just write about how fucked-up it is that I haven't thought about it, and how privilege and power work there, and...ok, ok, you've convinced me. Sign me up, goldfish!

pete said...

Hi Goldfish,
You have this lunartiks vote and I will certainly put up the rather brilliant logo type thingie up on me blog.

pete

Marcelle Proust said...

I'm in--I'm advertising--don't decide against it! I think it's a great idea.

-marcelle

Anonymous said...

People seem to be "getting away with" disablism these days whether it be Tiger Woods

http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/blogs/edgecentric/archives/2006/04/spaz.html#more

or participants in those wretched reality shows:

http://audacitymagazine.com/audacity.php?op=article&y=grfx&v=&i=36&a=494

Let's hope blogging can indeed have an impact.

BEG said...

Oh, I think you should do it. I don't know if I'll write anything - I've written small bits from time to time on my blog - but I'll definitely link in...