Technology

This piece is written to capture the shifting norms, language, and anxieties surrounding relationship visibility and privacy boundaries. This autobiographical blog is designed to read as a casual social media post guided by memories of identity crises, bullying, homophobia, and doxxing. The piece also captures how power dynamics in the virtual space create very real consequences in life offline. 

It all started with the ‘fire emojis’ on Instagram.

I would post a selfie or a somewhat intimate story, and a couple of minutes or hours later, I would get the fire emojis. In other words: Hottie. Cutie. Babe.

And I mean, isn’t it amazing to get attention and a digitally mediated dopamine shot? To be desired? Well actually not so, I realized. Not always, at least. The particular  situation/context matters. The who, the what, the how. You know?

I am a lecturer in Disability studies. I am also a woman with dwarfism, who since childhood has been called ‘midget’ by strangers who find my dwarfism funny and unacceptable within society. Here, I explore the online harassment I received as a disabled, female academic after successfully campaigning to remove the word midget from a popular brand of sweets.

The following resource helps victims of online bullying, harassment, or hate speech connect with resources to document, report, and heal from cyber-related harm.

The first movie I saw in a movie theater was Star Wars. I was five and couldn’t hold the seat down. My favorite book series as a pre-teen was Madeleine L'Engle’s Time Quintet. I took extra science classes in high school and I might have been the only person in my Science, Technology, and Ethics class in college that actually enjoyed the required readings. I dressed up as Trinity from The Matrix more than once.