Online Communal Spaces and their Potential for Activism

In the two chapters that we read for this week, we see how the authors create/contribute to online communities centered on autism and how those spaces come to be used for advocacy. In Tisoncik's case, she talks about her experience being autistic and her advocacy prior to joining the IRC channels and Autistics.org. She documents her struggles with parents and other neurotypical people in physical and online mediums as well as the work that she is able to do with other autistic people and activists on those sites.

In contrast, Seidel writes from the perspective of a neurotypical person educating herself on autism in an effort to better understand her child after she discovered he is autistic. She created Neurodiversity.com and joined other online spaces for autistic people, making connections and doing substantial amounts of advocacy and aid work in communities near and far. The sites often struggled with internal and external pressures, with factors like infighting, heavy web traffic and fatigue from moderation leading sites to be shut down or moderators to leave.

It's important, in any case, for online spaces that are hosted to house a marginalized group of people to be moderated by people that have some experience with the topics and struggles at hand. Thinking about it in the case of the fight for trans rights, a creator/moderator of an online community for trans people should be trans or be trusted by trans people and have basic knowledge of how to be respectful of trans identities and issues. Users should maintain a respectful space as well, which means keeping it safe to talk about issues and activism goals in a positive manner while also keeping bad faith arguments and disingenuous people out of said space. This comes down to community over-watch and moderation from the admins of the site, which creates that much more of a need for mutual respect between the two.