By refashioning existing social media platforms like Youtube, Twitter, and Tumblr, gender marginalized folks of color are creating the changes that they want to see in the world. Innovative web series, projects and initiatives proliferate on the web as those of us whose genders and sexualities are labeled deviant within white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy, find more autonomous room online. But even within the “democratized space” of “the interwebs” the same systems of oppression operate, pushing new digital media makers to grow new strategies that fit a rapidly shifting digital ecosystem.
Moya Bailey is a graduate fellow in the Digital Scholarship Commons at Emory University where she explores critical race, feminist, and disability studies. Her current work focuses on constructs of health and normativity within a US context. She is interested in how race, gender, and sexuality are represented in media and medicine. She is a blogger and digital alchemist for the Crunk Feminist Collective. In a co-authored piece for Ms. Magazine, Bailey proclaims “Black Feminism Lives (online)!” and chronicles the digital discourses of race, gender, and politics as articulated by young black women in cyber space.