Empirics prove – speculative fiction avoids genuine engagement with disability. Even when it does acknowledge disability, it is only a passing mention which makes confronting ableism impossible.

(Kathryn – Independent Scholar of Disability Studies, Ria – Professor of Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University, “Science Fiction, Disability, Disability Studies A Conversation,” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 14.4, 2020, pp. 387-401)

In 2014, the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA)—the leading international organization for science fiction research—circulated the call for papers for its 2015 conference, entitled “The SF We Don’t (Usually) See: Suppressed Histories, Liminal Voices, Emerging Media.” The authors of the call rightly highlighted “racial, gendered, classed, and sexual hierarchies” as constituent factors in the development of the science fiction (SF) canon, inviting potential participants to explore the new possibilities offered when we “seek out those liminal voices that have been denied access to privileged outlets.” Suggested paper topics included feminist, queer, and non-Western SF; and women, “LGBTQIA individuals,” and “people of colour” were namechecked as examples of groups who have been, or might still be, marginalized as creators of SF, or in terms of representation within the genre. Nowhere in the call for papers was there any reference to disability. As scholars who had been working at the intersection of disability studies and science fiction studies for some years by 2014—and as scholars who had presented multiple disability-focused papers at SFRA and other major SF-focused conferences—our response to this omission was both frustration and a weary sense of déjà vu. We waited a few days, in the hope that someone in SFRA’s wide distribution list, or within the organization’s hierarchy, would notice the omission of disability and realize it was problematic; when there was no update evident, we raised the issue ourselves. The organization’s leadership acknowledged our concerns, and a later version of the conference call included “SF and ability/disability” on the list of suggested paper topics.1 Although it is easy to say that such exclusion might be an unintentional misstep (and this is certainly the response we consistently receive when we call out omissions), it is merely one in a long history of SF scholarship not seeing disability. There are many oversights and microaggressions we have witnessed or encountered in our workplaces, at conferences, and in the field’s scholarship, but writing about them in any specific detail feels unsafe and “unprofessional.” We recognize that this is ableism at work. In Kathryn’s experience, for example, any participation at conferences comes with her anxious requests for “special” accommodation on presentation times, which are not always respected. Although we certainly appreciate the difficulty of scheduling large, multi-track conferences, when organizers of genre conferences do not know how to effectively include disability studies and disabled presenters, it makes talking about disability in a sustained, critical way (that meaningfully intersects with feminist, queer, labour, and anti-racist conversations) that much more difficult. For readers of the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies (JLCDS), these moments are likely to be scenes in a familiar story: disability, even when it is or should be at its most visible, is either ignored or quickly passed over in favour of other talking points that may be more comfortable for the critic. Over the last three decades, cultural disability studies has transformed from an emergent area of enquiry into a vibrant and thriving interdisciplinary field. Nonetheless, it remains a field engaged in an ongoing struggle for recognition and legitimation. In this context, what David Bolt terms critical avoidance is entirely to be expected: the avoidance of disability, and disability studies, by scholars who are engaging with texts and topics where disability is of manifest significance.2 We do not mean to suggest that the (undoubtedly well-intentioned) authors of conference calls or conference track organizers intentionally marginalize disability or disabled people. Nor do we suggest that that authors of CFPs and articles in SF and genre scholarship should always attempt to exhaustively list and interrogate the many types of persons or texts marginalized in SF creation and representation. Yet there are multiple ironies in the omission of disability in these contexts. In the theme chosen for the SFRA conference, the phrase “The SF We Don’t (Usually) See” is an allusion to the classic SF short story “The Women Men Don’t See” (1973) by James Tiptree Jr., the pen name of Alice Sheldon, a disabled woman. The irony of failing to acknowledge disabled people as one of SF’s marginalized groups while alluding to a story by a disabled writer is only one of a set of ironies in the omission of disability in the CFP, exemplifying a wider tendency to fail to “see” disability where it is undeniably present—in the story itself and in the genre’s wider history.3 While it might be tempting to accuse of us of nit-picking this one example, it is important to keep in mind that the work of recognizing the absence of disability is essential in the process of actually making the varied spaces of scholarship and conferences accessible. As Tanya Titchkosky reminds us, “making absence not-noticeable requires work, ordinary work, and sometimes a lot of it” (87). By pointing out such ordinary instances of exclusion and omission, we seek to encourage our fellow genre scholars to do better in their engagement with disability. Whether in CFPs, conference schedules, or journal articles, which words are used and which words are left out matter as: “[t]he many-sidedness of recognition resides in the complexity of and between every word. Words provide access to worlds. Words are the mediation of the relations between us and are able to remake these worlds” (Titchkosky 148).