Cartoon version of me in black and white with a yellow highlight.
Moya Bailey is a Black queer feminist scholar, writer, and activist. She is the co-author of #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice and has a new book, Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance, coming out May 2021. In this conversation, we talk about online communities of support and activism, racial inequalities in medicine, the healthcare system, artificial intelligence, and Moya’s term misogynoir, which describes a specific form of discrimination experienced by Black women.
Still from Crip Camp recording of me in one box above an interpreter and my slide about Disability #HashtagActivism is centered.
I was so fortunate to have been invited to participate in Crip Camp by the late Stacey Park Milbern. It was really important to me that my contribution pushed a conversation about disability and Blackness and I think I achieved that. I also got to meet and fan-girl over Alice Wong and her incredible book and collection, Disability Visibility. Here’s the recording in case you missed it!
1. What are you looking forward to at MIT? I’m excited to be connected to feminists who are actively exploring the sciences. My course, “Black Feminist Health Science Studies,” [WGS.S10, offered Spring 2021] is really designed to make some critical connections between feminism, science, technology, and society. I really can’t think of a better group of students with which to explore these topics.
2. Your new book #HashtagActivism came out at a poignant time with Covid-19 keeping us home more. What are the crucial hashtags you are looking out for in the “new civil rights movement?” Unfortunately, I think we will continue to see hashtags that point to the public health crisis that is racism in the form of the names of extrajudicially killed Black people. I am excited about the hashtags that help expand our advocacy to behavior changes like #StayTheFuckHome and #MasksSaveLives.
3. Favorite song? If the class had a theme song it would be “Brujas” by Princess Nokia.
Moya Bailey, co-author of a new book #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, coined “misogynoir” in 2008 after noticing that black women were often depicted as sex workers or unintelligent in the media or jokes.
Join authors Sarah J. Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles to look at how marginalized groups use Twitter to advance counter-narratives, preempt political spin, and build diverse networks of dissent. Learn more about the book: https://bit.ly/35DTLt4
Brooke Foucault Welles and Sarah J. Jackson look on as I talk into the mic at our book tour launch at the Strand Bookstore in New York City. Photo by @MLMillerPhD
I really can’t express my delight in my first (co-authored) book, #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, being out in the world! My amazing co-authors Sarah J. Jackson and Brooke Foucault Welles and I had a wonderful crowd at The Strand Bookstore in New York City, the first stop on our book tour. Folks asked us great questions and my cousin Jonathan came!
We have been very lucky to have excerpts appear in our favorite feminist publications including Ms. Magazine and Bitch Media. We also made it on the Ms. March 2020 Reads for the Rest of Us as well as Autostraddle’s Also Also Also. Our chapter on allyship and the hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite was featured on Engadget. I got to speak with Gracie Staples at the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the book who interviewed me 16+ years earlier about my involvement in the Nelly Protest. I wonder what our actions could have sparked if we had had hashtags to support our organizing?!
The book is just $20 so do take a look to learn more about how folks are using hashtag activism to change the world! Also, come see us in a city near you!
