"Transforming Misogynoir through a Digital Health Practice"

Black women and Black nonbinary, agender, and gender-variant folks negotiate misogynoir in a myriad of ways, but as I explore in this talk, they are able to achieve liberatory praxis through digital alchemy that can actually transform misogynoir into something useful. I focus on Black trans women’s use of social media as a lifesaving and health-affirming praxis that mitigates transmisogynoir. I argue that these practices extend our definitions of “health” beyond simple biomedical rubrics through the kind of generative digital alchemy enacted.

BIO: Moya Bailey is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and the program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University. Her work focuses on marginalized groups’ use of digital media to promote social justice as acts of self-affirmation and health promotion, and she is interested in how race, gender, and sexuality are represented in media and medicine. Bailey currently curates the #transformDH Tumblr initiative in Digital Humanities. She is also the digital alchemist for the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network. She is an MLK Visiting Scholar at MIT for the 2020–2021 academic year.