Ep.100 - A Conversation with Caz Killjoy

With Love And Justice For All

Our featured guest for Disability Pride Month is Caz Killjoy. Caz is a Disability and Sexuality Freelance Educator and Consultant. Caz (pronouns: they/them/theirs) is currently on medical sabbatical. Prior to that sabbatical, they spent their life focusing on the things that make most people uncomfortable: accessibility; sex and kink; pain, disability, and illness; death and poverty; advocacy; and digital harm reduction. Caz is a white, genderqueer, queer person who practices non-monogamy as a relationship anarchist. Caz is also an abolitionist, an anarchist, an atheist, and an anti-Zionist; a lumpen-precariat; a formerly unhoused person; a former sex worker; a proud GED recipient; a writer and storyteller and blogger; and they are multiply disabled; Caz’s disabilities are the least interesting thing about them. In Slavic, “Caz” means “the famous destroyer of peace,” but “Caz” is also an abbreviation of their first name, hence the name “Caz Killjoy” – which started out as a joke and now they’re stuck with it. To learn more or get in touch, find Caz at http://ConnectWithCaz.com .

Episode Transcript - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ILqV07ej2zF4iGKdl_NdGFjJ_1em4A6f/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117188677819474678160&rtpof=true&sd=true

Links

How many disabled people are there? by Peter Torres Fremlin at Disability Debrief

Resources on Ableism

How do these representations of disability in music make you feel?

• Wheelchair Sports Camp: “Yess I’m A Mess”

• Ellie Goldstein (lip syncing): “The Disability Serviceland Song”

• Delta Spirit: “What’s Done is Done”

Book

• Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People (2019) by Sins Invalid. Not only did they write the book about disability justice, they birthed the concept.

Articles

• No Roles for BIPOC Disabled Actors in Hollywood: I’m A Black, Disabled Actor. This Is How I’m Making My Place In Hollywood. by Regina F. Graham at refinery29. This article interviews three disabled women of color who are actors about their struggle to find roles in Hollywood due to ableism and racism.

• Violence in Language: Circling Back to Linguistic Ableism by Lydia X.Z. Brown. This blog post covers ableism in our language and includes a link to a glossary of ableist phrases.

Short Film (streaming for free)

• Jeremy the Dud, available in full for free on YouTube (2017): A great cast of several actually disabled actors, including Chloé Hayden who went on to play Quinni in Heartbreak High. The short film is a comedy set in a world where everyone has a disability, and those that don’t are treated with the same prejudice, stigma, and condescending attitudes people with disabilities face in our own society.

Social Media

• Imani Barbarin is a Black cis woman who has cerebral palsy – and has the internet’s hottest takes on ableism and other disability-related issues. Check her out on TikTok as @crutches_and_spice.

TV Show (subscription required)

• Queer as Folk, available on Peacock (2022): Stars actor Ryan O'Connell as Julian Beaumont. Ryan is a white gay cis man who has cerebral palsy. Also features biracial actor and dancer Eric Graise in a recurring role as Marvin. Eric is a bilateral amputee who uses a wheelchair in the show (he does not use a wheelchair outside of the show). Guest stars actor, model, and activist Nyle DiMarco, who is a white Deaf cis gay man, as Leo. Amazing portrayals of ableism, including internalized ableism, particularly as they relate to sex and relationships.

Resources on Archiving

• Awkward Archives: Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum (2020) by Margareta von Oswold and Jonas Tinus. (free PDF book.)

• Gracen Brilmyer’s Disability Archives Lab.

• Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession (expected late Fall 2023; book) published by Litwin Books.

• Society of American Archivists AMRT/RMRT Working Group on Accessibility’s Guidelines for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities.