Rejecting Disability
Oct. 8th, 2025 08:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI pitched my In Praise of Moss: An Argument for Sustainable Disability Positivity zine to Microcosm Press.
The rejection feedback I got back from the press is that they don't understand the guiding metaphor. "There would be a lot of moss fans who would be disappointed to learn that this is also a zine about disability," they wrote.
They also wrote that they don't understand why the zine has pictures.
I'm not hating on people on the autism spectrum, of course, but "everything has to be 100% literal" is definitely an editorial position with Microcosm Press that's always been a point of friction for me. As someone with ADHD, I find unbroken information dumps difficult to parse, so Microcosm Press publications have always been borderline inaccessible to me, especially with the tiny font and the "wall of text" style page layout.
If I had to guess, I'd also say that "it's actually normal to be disabled, and your existence as a disabled person benefits society" isn't a popular message right now. There's the ingrained "I worked hard, so why shouldn't you" ableism of people in positions to make decisions, of course, but the current tenor of discourse on disability right now is... How do I put this. Very confrontational.
It's not considered appropriately "radical" to comfort people who are suffering, or to suggest that exhaustion shouldn't be a baseline condition. And of course that's the ableism again, the assumption that a person has no political voice or value if they're not constantly "working." I'm not saying that there's no value in anger; rather, I just wanted to offer a different perspective that might be useful for people with a different lived experience. It's a shame.
Ah well. I knew it was a long shot. I pitched to Microcosm Press because multiple people asked me to do so, and now I guess I have something to say in reply.
The rejection feedback I got back from the press is that they don't understand the guiding metaphor. "There would be a lot of moss fans who would be disappointed to learn that this is also a zine about disability," they wrote.
They also wrote that they don't understand why the zine has pictures.
I'm not hating on people on the autism spectrum, of course, but "everything has to be 100% literal" is definitely an editorial position with Microcosm Press that's always been a point of friction for me. As someone with ADHD, I find unbroken information dumps difficult to parse, so Microcosm Press publications have always been borderline inaccessible to me, especially with the tiny font and the "wall of text" style page layout.
If I had to guess, I'd also say that "it's actually normal to be disabled, and your existence as a disabled person benefits society" isn't a popular message right now. There's the ingrained "I worked hard, so why shouldn't you" ableism of people in positions to make decisions, of course, but the current tenor of discourse on disability right now is... How do I put this. Very confrontational.
It's not considered appropriately "radical" to comfort people who are suffering, or to suggest that exhaustion shouldn't be a baseline condition. And of course that's the ableism again, the assumption that a person has no political voice or value if they're not constantly "working." I'm not saying that there's no value in anger; rather, I just wanted to offer a different perspective that might be useful for people with a different lived experience. It's a shame.
Ah well. I knew it was a long shot. I pitched to Microcosm Press because multiple people asked me to do so, and now I guess I have something to say in reply.
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Date: 2025-10-08 05:33 pm (UTC)What a shame indeed.
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Date: 2025-10-08 06:02 pm (UTC)Man, I’ve said this before, but there really needs to be more space for different voices and perspectives to exist. There was a lovely boom in indie publishing in the 2010s, but now it feels like everyone is fighting over scraps. I recently saw the news that Ireland granted (a very modest) universal basic income to artists, and it made me tear up a little. Good for them. I hope Canada is next. Who knows, maybe I can learn to love the cold.
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Date: 2025-10-17 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-10 07:48 am (UTC)WOW, that is just bizarre.
Pictures, in your magazine? Disability positivity, in our era of constant overload??? Smh how could you /s.
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Date: 2025-10-10 12:25 pm (UTC)I'm currently trying to publish an original 5k-word piece of fantasy fiction, and part of that process is making a list of magazines to submit to. There are plenty of pre-existing lists (posted online and shared between writers on Discord servers) to consult, but what I'm finding is that most genre magazines have closed in the past 3-4 years, even the really big ones that used to have print versions in mainstream bookstores.
Apparently, everyone is tired - tired of working for no money, and just tired in general.
"Our era of constant overload" is such an apt way to express the zeitgeist. Everyone is tired all the time, and the Gen-X attitude of "work hard and good things will happen" just doesn't apply anymore, even when it comes to the most good-intentioned people doing what they love. If you can't talk about disability in terms of the current social climate, what's the point of talking about it at all?
Which is to say: thanks for supporting me in being a petty little hater about this rejection. I knew it was coming, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me want to set things on fire.