#bitchimback

A year ago, I took the first steps to lay the path for what I hope can someday grow into something much bigger: the creation of an archive and lending library housing materials that chronicle the lives, words, and stories of historically minoritized groups. Ancient and recent, inspiring and unflattering, the current conservative backlash against social progression has been rooted in a key message: your visibility highlights your existence, and that we cannot abide by. 

It is interesting what has been defined as “normal”, and how this idea has managed to permeate seemingly every corner of the globe. While political, economic, and overall societal control has long rested in the hands of cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied white men, estimated demographics of the world do not align with this viewpoint. Cumulatively, sex ratios are roughly equal globally (it should be noted that some of the countries with higher male populations are those with higher populations in general). Ethnically, the most populous countries in the world are composed of people of color. There likely is not a firm count of the number of people with disabilities as the definition of what constitutes a chronic illness may vary from culture to culture, however, we can assume even mental illnesses that severely impact the quality of life are vastly underreported. 

The simple fact of this long-winded explanation: we exist. Throughout the annals of history, our visibility has been limited at best and erased at worst. It was due to the thoughtful gift of N.K. Jemison's The Fifth Season several years ago that I fully came to appreciate what it means to feel visible as someone who typically does not see depictions of themself often in media (or at least outside the realm of stereotypes). When people lament the insertion of characters of color into series like HBO’s House of the Dragon or Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla it is due to the idealized notion of a world absent of color, in which white bodies are a norm, and blacks, browns, off-colored queers represent a deviation depicted as aberrations that evoke curiosity at best; discomfort and rage at worst. When we dare to make our presence known in a world that tells us we are abnormal despite our undulating existence, that discomfort grows. 

I began this archive while attending graduate school part-time, juggling a full-time job, multiple disabilities, the impending doom of the COVID-19 pandemic, and devotion to hobbies and crafting born of attempting to circumvent the anxiety of doom. Regrettably, the blog fell by the wayside as I discovered the hard truth: 24 hours is not enough, but it is all we are given. I am not a girl boss, relentlessly dedicated to giving more of myself than I have to do it all, so I pressed pause on the blog, and eventually stepped away from the program after realizing the profession itself wasn’t for me and deciding to seek out opportunities better suited to my lifestyle.