Week 12 – “GimpGirl Grows Up” Summary

             This article discusses an organization, GimpGirl, and the surrounding culture, called the GimpGirl Community (GGC). The community was founded by Jennifer Cole in 1998 with the help of her mentor Len Burns. It was built as a place where disabled women could share their difficulties, experiences, and thoughts with other people in similar situations. Jennifer specifically wanted to create this community due to a desire to counteract the abusive situation she herself had encountered. She also wanted to have this community so that other people in similar situations could use it, and didn’t have to create it themselves. Most of the founding members of the website were teens that knew each other from DO-IT, or other similar programs, but the community quickly grew to accommodate more people. The website was particularly popular since it allowed any woman with a disability, medically diagnosed or self-proclaimed, to participate in the GGC. The name of the website itself, GimpGirl, spawns from the fact that many people with disabilities on the West Coast call themselves gimps, somewhat humorously. Jennifer wanted to reclaim the word “gimp” and repurpose it as a statement against ubiquitous demands for “political correctness.”

            In terms of technology, the GGC has been expanding over the years. What started out as just a website has evolved into a network of blogs, discussion boards, and websites, essentially becoming its own social network. The GGC has connected with Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, and other popular social websites to progress the community. It even joined with Second Life, a virtual world platform, to generate a place for GGC members to interact in new ways.

            The GGC still faces many difficulties, despite its success. For instance, the members are considered doubly marginalized since they are both women and people with disabilities. To help counteract this, the GGC helps empower its members by broadening their experiences through interactions with other members in similar situations. The GGC shows members that they are not alone and that they are not the only ones suffering. GimpGirl has also been criticized for its lack of face-to-face communication, and some suggest that limitations of digital communication makes the platform invalid. However, the GGC is working to overcome this limitation by encouraging a good balance between real-life and online interactions. Second Life helps to some extent, especially if avatars resemble the member’s real-life image, but members still need to understand how to manage real-life as well. The GGC helps these women with disabilities find others in similar situations and provide advice to each other, but the task of coping with and handling offline experiences still lies with each member.