Abortion Story Sites as Transfeminist Online Distance Learning Modes of Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 39
  In Roundtable Session: Experiencing Difference: Constructing Identities in Educational Spaces

Abstract

In the context of most schools where “abortion” seems like an impossible utterance—an experience usually excluded from classroom conversations unless presented as a depersonalized subject for debate—the question of how abortion connects to online distance learning remains largely unexamined. This paper analyzes three abortion story sites that present a diverse multiplicity of personal stories and theorizes these sites as trans-feminist “online distance learning” (ODL) modes of education. Through various trans theories, the paper argues that such sites do pedagogical work, have educative purposes, and depend on distance learning for survival while opening up intimacies between reader and story. Furthermore, by presenting multiple, contradictory stories, the sites, like many trans theories, disrupt how a body usually gets imagined.

Author

• Maya R. Pindyck, Teachers College, Columbia University