about this project
Feminism, to me, is labour. It is making labour visible, and it is a dialogue. It is having conversations that are uncomfortable, and it is making space for change. This project is about the conversations I have about my migraines and how that in itself is labour. I do not owe it to anyone to explain my migraines, but it is expected of me. From explaining to friends why I can’t see them to requiring documents from 3 countries to prove I have an invisible condition, it is expected of me in society, and it is labour.
This project is a way to shift labour and shift power. As the chatbot is scripted and the user cannot ask questions that I do not want to answer, the chatbot cannot receive abuse, and I control what is shared in the conversation. However, I do not always have this power. Sometimes my access to support and healthcare depends on how I answer specific questions, and in these cases, I have no power.
In this project, I am the community that is being represented. I am the expert, and I am the designer. My values are being shared, and my experiences are being prioritized. I am benefiting from the design, and this project was fully co-created to address the problem I am hoping to solve. I do not want to have these conversations anymore, and I do not have to. Feminism, to me, prioritizes is inclusion and diversity. It means making a website that is accessible, and it means making a website that can represent me. As Fritsch and Hamraie state in the Crip Technoscience Manifesto (2019), “disabled people are experts and designers of everyday life.” This is my everyday life, and these are my migraines.
acknowledgements
(alphabetical orders) This project has been developed with the guidance and support of Florence, Jo, Olu, and Yasmine. Thank you for sharing your practice and expertise with me, and thank you for your encouragement and patience. Another thank you to Kes, Mathilda and Yifan for your kindness and community throughout the term. Thank you Peaks, شكرًا, for organizing the lectures and providing food for thought (including endless snacks) throughout the term. Thank you to everyone who has ever asked me a question about my migraines; you inspired this project. "We aren't meant to know everything; that is why we have each other."This project is about conversations. "We need to have a conversation about ableism. Every single community, everywhere, because everything this year has been informed by it." -Imani Barbarin. Black disabled lives matter.
The base for this website the Blogophonic by Formspree is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on a work at https://github.com/formspree/blogophonic-hugo. This site is a static site, uses darker colors, and has minimal photos to reduce the energy usage and carbon emission per site visit. This site may inaccessible to some due to the challenging contrasts used, because of this, there is a file with the questions and answers included above the chatbot. The colours and fonts were chosen with my accessibility prioritized.
The chatbot was developed with the npm package "chat-bubble", a simple chatbot UI for the Web with JSON scripting, and the source code can be found here. This project would not be possible without the work and contributions others have made to open source, open data, and open licenses with the Creative Commons. Thank you to the open source community and these developers. The code for this project is publicly available at https://github.com/lexahl/migraine.
I am not collecting your data through this website. However, this website is hosted on Github pages and "GitHub may collect User Personal Information from visitors." Their full privacy statement is here. (adapted from the Abolitionist Library Association) Furthermore, the parent company of GitHub is Microsoft, which holds a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States of America. The ICE enacts harmful and deeply racist acts of violence, including deportation and incarceration. My values are antithetical to this partnership and other perpetuations of violence and erasure committed against BIPOC communities. "No human is illegal. Abolish the border." -Harsha Walia
reference list
Barbarin, I. [@Imani_Barbarin](2021) I’ll leave y’all with this and then I’m logging off: We need to have a conversation about ableism. Every single community, everywhere, because everything this year has been informed by it. Everything.[Twitter] 28 August. Available at: https://twitter.com/imani_barbarin/status/1299549882915659776 (Accessed: December 13, 2021).
Cincinnato, C. (2015) Migraine with aura symptoms, Migrainepal.com. Available at: https://migrainepal.com/migraine-with-aura/ (Accessed: December 13, 2021).
dmitrizzle (2021) npm: chat-bubble. Available at: https://www.npmjs.com/package/chat-bubble (Accessed: December 13, 2021).
van Dongen, R. M. and Haan, J. (2019) “Symptoms related to the visual system in migraine,” F1000Research, 8, p. 1219. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.18768.1.
Formspree (2021) blogophonic-hugo: Blogophonic – a Hugo blog theme by Formspree. Available at: https://github.com/formspree/blogophonic-hugo (Accessed: December 13, 2021).
Hamraie, A. and Fritsch, K. (2019) “Crip Technoscience Manifesto,” Catalyst Feminism Theory Technoscience, 5(1), pp. 1–33. doi: 10.28968/cftt.v5i1.29607.
The Mayo Clinic (2011) Migraine Visual Aura. Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVFIcF9lyk8 (Accessed: December 13, 2021).
Reflex Spinal Health (2017) Migraine awareness week 2017, Reflexspinalhealth.com. Available at: https://www.reflexspinalhealth.com/2017/09/03/migraine-awareness-week-2017/ (Accessed: December 13, 2021).
Smale, S. (2016) Pathophysiology & Symptomology of Migraine Headaches — Rayner & Smale, Raynersmale.com. Rayner & Smale. Available at: https://www.raynersmale.com/blog/2016/11/4/pathophysiology-symptomology-of-migraine-headaches (Accessed: December 13, 2021).
The A11Y Project (2021) Checklist, A11yproject.com. Available at: https://www.a11yproject.com/checklist/ (Accessed: December 13, 2021).
Walia, H. [@HarshaWalia](2021) No human is illegal. Abolish the border.[Twitter] 24 March. Available at: https://twitter.com/harshawalia/status/1374746107633278983 (Accessed: December 13, 2021).