Unbend you straight

Text of audio:

She places her hands on me

Without asking and pulls at this bent body,

These legs the site of her expertise.

She has studied my affliction well

She knows these bodies

And how to fix me.

‘’Be strong’’ she says,

‘’You are a brave child,

Show me how brave you can be’’.

Breath held.

Teeth clenched.

She begins her work on me.

I am not this body, she cannot find me.

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She lays beside me

Fingers tracing my bends and curves

‘’I love the way you move, your difference, uniqueness, you intrigue me’’

White teeth showing in the candle light

I fall

‘’it’s ok’’ she says

‘’relax, you’re beautiful’’

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‘’You don’t cry like the others’’

She says,

‘’Good girl,

We’ll make you normal,

Make you walk’’.

Her accent, this 5yr old cannot place, is thick, this pain thicker.

I breathe.

She teaches me how to draw

A thin cord away from my body

Holding it like a balloon,

Like a kite out the window

Where my eyes find the sky.

The pain distant now, I float above

Above how it feels

How it feels to really be inside myself

Far from these muscles which fight her unbending.

I am somewhere else.

Uncurl me,

This self so full of wrong and shame.

She finds me each day

And calls me in.

We began again

To try to straighten what belongs bent.

Control and tame this body,

Shame its movements.

There is hope in the fixing

Hope for acceptance,

For a ‘normal life’. 

I will grow into someone else.

A straight unbent woman on her wedding day,

Beautiful,

Normal,

Walking,

Wanted.

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She finds me this night

Unfurls me,

Desire filled fingers

Discover my strings,

Drawing me in.

She asks

‘’Is this is ok,
And this?

And this?’’

Waits…

Waits for eyes to say yes as well as mouth

Then she follows my winding tracks

Where no lover has walked before,

To hidden places,

Shame filled by another woman.

She brings them out slowly,

These tangled cords of self,

Turning them in the glow of soft light,

Small sounds,

 Breath.

‘’Breathe ‘’

She says,

‘’It’s ok’’.

Unraveled me

With your acceptance,

Watch me curl around you.

I think myself in love.

This space.

This body.

This night.

She finds the places that were never straightened

Too bent their natural state

Kisses them.

I am afraid they will hurt her, so strong the pain that hinds there.

She knows not what magic she is working,

With her slow and gentle hands

Her glowing body

Drawing out my light,

Calling it love.

This one my healer.

I can let go.

Be just as I am

Growing, un-normal, bent.

I am privileged to be within this disabled body

This piece explores the ways in which I am privileged in this life, to inhabit this body, it also looks at the oppressions I am subjected to and my methods of resistance to these oppressions. 

It is adapted from the opening of a lecture I presented to first year arts students recently at my university on disability and its social constriction.

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It is a privilege to be speaking here today, to be given this stage, to be invited as someone with academic and insider knowledge of disability and importantly its social construction. I trust as arts students you are all aware of theorists like Foucault, who explores how power shapes us as subjects and how we resist it. 

This morning I am going to examine with you how living within this disabled body is both a privilege and an act of resistance in a society where the disabled body is routinely devalued and pathologised, as wrong.  

But first I want to explore the ways I am privileged in this life.

I am privileged to be at university, where too few women with disabilities find their way and fewer still into the realms of academia. To have found Cultural Studies as discipline and this unit which includes and explores disability from a social constructionist perspective allowing us explore and examine the need for social changes in how we view the non-normative body.

My very ability to speak is a position of privilege. I have a voice I can use and a body whose movements as I grow older I feel increasingly at home within. I am very privileged compared to other women with disabilities; not be living in poverty, to be free of forms violence, and forms of racism, to own my own home and to have no children (yet) which can be removed from my care, as a third of our children routinely still are. 

I am privileged that my body’s requirements and its daily routines are not regulated by service providers whose schedules do not take into account the late-nighters I still want to pull, sometimes with lovers :). I am very privileged to come from a family and have found friends who encourage and find joy in my difference and the perspectives I bring, the knowledge I hold. 

I am privileged. 

But in acknowledging my privilege, owning what power I do carry within me, within this body, I am also routinely disempowered and disabled by a society which views my non-normative body as less than the ideal, the less then the so called normal. And has designed the built environment in ways which structurally exclude me.

 I am stereotyped. As that brave little young thing who brought tears to the eyes of a lady as I reached for the tofu in woolies the other week- yes its hard trying to be vego. To that speed demon who just won’t stay off the roads around campus-I keep finding myself in trouble with uni security-one of the down sides of having the uni on a hill I guess :)

I am stereotyped by the stranger in the street who felt the need to stop and tell me if he was me he’d go home and kill himself right now, by the psychiatrist who told me he’d do the same thing.  

My being here at all is an act of resistance -in a society which filled with the message ''better off dead then disabled''.

I come to you with stories. 

A body full of stories. Stories of this body framed by this society as a personal tragedy, a story which I am asked to repeat over and over again, when asked what’s wrong with you?

I bring you the story of how a part of my mind that turned off, stopped breathing as my tiny lungs gasped for air not long after birth. And this changed me, how my emotions, thoughts and muscles are intertwined, where big feelings run down my legs in tremors. How I am full of feeling, full to the brim, unable to hide it and now unwilling. 

My stories of my body, of how it is to live inside here, to endure experiences of discrimination and oppression as people view me from the outside and see me as less than them in need of pity, in need of help. My stories are rarely given a stage to be heard, drowned out by the narratives of disability as personal tragedy, disability in need of a cure. It is these stories we are see portrayed in media, in films, in magazines so much we may not even be aware we are seeing over and over and over again. 

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Then I go into slides looking at the media and disability representation, eg the super-crip, the search for a cure and looking at the medical model of disability vs the social model. How the social model creates a mind-shift bringing  the new perspective of the social construction of disability, creating the disability rights movement and a need for social change. 

See post for more info on the social model  http://f3ckability.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/disability-politics-101-social-model-of.html

Disability feminism 101

The current situation for women living with disabilities in Australia

The content outlining the disadvantage experienced by women with disabilities in Australia is taken from a paper titled ‘Women With Disabilities Australia: Policy Paper: 'Assessing the situation of women with disabilities in Australia: A human rights approach'-(July 2011)--written with extensive research and documentation by Women With Disabilities Australia--the peak organisation for women with all types of disabilities in Australia (wwda.org.au). http://www.wwda.org.au/snapshot.htm Both men and women with disabilities face discrimination and a-sexualisation however; women with disabilities face particular disadvantages in the areas of education, work and employment, family and reproductive rights, health, violence and abuse. These are just some of the facts:

-Women with disabilities experience violence, particularly family violence and violence in institutions, more often than disabled men;

-Gender-based violence, including domestic/family violence, sexual assault/rape is a cause of disability in women;

-Women and girls with disabilities are often at greater risk than disabled men, both within and outside the home, of violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation;

-Women with disabilities are more vulnerable as victims of crimes from both strangers and people who are known to them, yet crimes against disabled women are often never reported to law enforcement agencies;

-While disabled people are much more likely to live in poverty, women with disabilities are likely to be poorer than men with disabilities;

-Women with disabilities are still subjected to forced sterilizations within Australia

-Women with disabilities are more likely to be sole parents, to be living on their own, or in their parental family than disabled men;

-Women with disabilities who are parents, or who seek to become parents, face barriers in accessing adequate health care and other services for both themselves and their child/ren.

Disability feminism 101

In light of these depressing facts what can we do as feminists, to understand and mobilize around these issues? We can start by ensuring events are assessable! We can understand disability politics and disability feminism and fight the struggles from within these political perspectives. Disability feminism at its core deals with issues of the non-normative body/mind and how our experience of our disabilities are socially mediated and constructed by power. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, a disability feminist scholar and activist, writes about transforming feminist theory through the inclusion of the experience of disability. She proclaims that 

''disability allows for a critique of the intersections between the politics of appearance and the medicalization of subjugated bodies/minds. Feminist disability theory’s radical critique hinges on a broad understanding of disability as a pervasive cultural system that stigmatizes certain kinds of bodily variations. At the same time, this system has the potential to incite a critical politics. The informing premise of feminist disability theory is that disability, like femaleness, is not a natural state of corporeal inferiority, inadequacy, excess, or a stroke of misfortune. Rather, disability is a culturally fabricated narrative of the body, similar to what we understand as the fictions of race and gender. The disability/ability system produces subjects by differentiating and marking bodies. Although this comparison of bodies is ideological rather than biological, it nevertheless penetrates into the formation of culture, legitimating an unequal distribution of resources, status, and power within a biased social and architectural environment. As such, disability has four aspects: first, it is a system for interpreting and disciplining bodily variations; second, it is a relationship between bodies and their environments; third, it is a set of practices that produce both the able-bodied and the disabled; fourth, it is a way of describing the inherent instability of the embodied self. The disability system excludes the kinds of bodily forms, functions, impairments, changes, or ambiguities that call into question our cultural fantasy of the body as a neutral, compliant instrument of some transcendent will. A feminist disability theory denaturalizes disability by unseating the dominant assumption that disability is something that is wrong with someone. By this I mean, of course, that it mobilizes feminism’s highly developed and complex critique of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality as exclusionary and oppressive systems rather than as the natural and appropriate order of things''.

Some of our key struggles as women with disabilities are the opposite of those of mainstream feminism

A-sexualization is one such issue--to be seen as sexual beings, we want to have this choice, to cruise across the dance floor and do the pash, in short to be looked at and desired as a sexual object/being!  Mainstream feminism fights against the objectification of women’s bodies, disability feminism fights to be seen as sexy and desirable. Arising from this a-sexualisation is difficulty in finding partners and having healthy relationships where we are treated as equal and valued, free from emotional and physical abuse. Another key issue is the right to become mothers if we so wish, as we are often prevented through sterilization or being given the pill, (a common experience for women with intellectual disabilities), or actively discouraged from having children at all (Ball, 2004 cited in Newell, 2008, p. 80). If we have children there is a risk they will be taken from us, with recent research showing that over one third of children are removed from our care (Newell, 2008, p. 80).

 Feminist writer Jenny Morris writes:
‘Most people who we are interacting with including our lovers, are not like us--they don’t have a disability. It is therefore very difficult for us to recognise and challenge the values and judgments that are applied to us and our lives. Our ideas about disability and ourselves are generally informed by those who are not disabled’ (Morris, 1991, p.37). It takes courage to go out in public when we repeatedly encounter rejection and revulsion towards our non-normative bodies, are asked questions, such as ‘‘what’s wrong with you?’’ which exemplify an unequal power relationship and embody assumptions about our lives, and when ‘the very physical environment tells us that we don’t belong.

The affects of oppression
‘Once oppression has been internalized, little force is needed to keep us submissive’ as we continually inflict the pain of our oppression back upon ourselves (Campbell, 2009, p.16). The mental health effects of living in a disabling society have been found to place us at ‘double the risk of devolving a substance abuse problem or psychiatric disorder due to increased stress’ compared to the general population (Turner, Lloyd, & Taylor, 2006, p.221). The high rates of domestic violence and abuse women with disabilities are subject to leaves us at a greater risk of developing PTSD, depression, anxiety or other forms of mental illness, subsequent disabilities which further compound our disadvantage.  

 What can we do as feminists?
 ‘One of the reasons the situation for people with disabilities has been so slow to change is precisely because they are positioned as the ‘other’ in our culture. To change such terrain requires all of us to undertake a great deal of listening, talking and communication in so many ways in order to imagine disability differently and to change something that moves often only very imperceptibly-our culture itself. To embark on this journey, and proceed with it when it becomes difficult, we cannot avoid seeking answers to some important questions: why are we so concerned with defining and enforcing normalcy? What is at stake for all of us in confronting the frailties of our bodies, minds and lives? (Goggin & Newell 2005, p.200). How can we as feminists resist normative constructions of bodies/minds and find ways to subvert and challenge them?
 

Extracts from above from:

Thomas, C, 2004, Disability and Impairment in Swain, J, French, S, Barns, C & Thomas, C, (eds), 2004, Disabling Barriers-Enabling Environments, (2^end ed.), Sage Publications, London.

Goggin, G & Newell, C, 2005, Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid, University of New South Wales Press, Kensigton. 

Garland-Thomson, R, 2006, Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory in Davis, L, (ed) 2006, The Disabilities Studies Reader (2^end ed.)

Morris, J, 1991, Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability, The Women’s Press, London.

Disability politics 101- The social model of disability

Extract from  Garland-Thomson, R, 2006, Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory in Davis, L, (ed) 2006, The Disabilities Studies Reader (2^end ed.)  

The disability movement began in the UK in the 1970s. We reclaimed the term ‘disability’ from professionals in medicine and social care who viewed it as a personal affliction, entirely reconstructing its meaning in the light of the social exclusions encountered in our own lived experience (UPIAS, 1976). In a radical move, we severed the presupposed causal link whereby impairment resulted in disability, asserting instead that disability was an entirely socially caused phenomenon. Disability was reformulated to mean the social disadvantages and exclusions that people with impairment faced in all areas of life: employment, housing, education, civil rights, transportation, negotiation of the built environment, sexuality and so forth. Traditional medical and welfarist models of disability, together with their culturally pervasive ‘personal tragedy’ counterpart, were thrown aside in favour of a social definition of disability. Mike Oliver coined the phrase ‘the social model of disability’ to capture this new paradigm, and it became a touchstone in Disability Studies and the disabled people’s movement in the UK. The social model of disability unleashed a powerful drive for social and political change. Disability was exposed as a form of social oppression and exclusion that should not be tolerated, analogous to already recognised oppressions associated with gender, race, class and sexuality. Once this understanding of disability is adopted, the manifestations of ablism can be readily observed: a wheelchair user or a person with visual impairment cannot access public transport systems, or is not able to obtain a quality education that would enable them to compete for well-paid jobs in the labour market, or is represented as a person of lesser value in films and other media. The disabling ‘social barriers’ in the lives of people with impairments can be identified and challenged because socially created barriers can be dismantled. As people with disabilities the social model has enabled a vision of ourselves free from constraints of disability (oppression) and provided a direction for our commitment to social change. It has played a central role in promoting disabled people’s individual self worth, collective identity and political organisation. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that the social model has saved lives (Crow, 1996: 207). 

Now for some of my thoughts...

The built environment is a concrete way the social construction of disability is created and our social exclusion maintained within society. The historical failure to take disability into account when designing buildings has resulted in our ‘structural exclusion’ from many public areas of life (Thomas, 1999, p.18). The inadequate or complete lack of wheelchair access to many buildings as well as an ‘inaccessible public transport’ system exerts a profound impact on our ‘ability to assess spaces and participate fully and equally within society’ (Barnes, Mercer, & Shakespeare, 1999, p.121). Thomas (1999, p.18) adopts the stance that the inadequate access arises from widely held negative perceptions and stereotypes of disability that are ‘systemic and entrenched’ within society. Arising out of this context of exclusion are common cultural stereotypes of disability, such as it being perceived as a ‘personal tragedy where the person is assumed to be helpless and in need of pity’ (Goggin & Newell, 2005, p.19). However, the lived experience of disability is contextual to this society; Thomas (1999, p.113) asserts there is not an essential state of disability or impairment within the individual from which disadvantage arise, she argues it is a complex interplay of ‘socially constructed power relations’ and bodily experiences that form our relationship to the world.

We, as people with disabilities, seek to challenge ableism-prejudicial attitudes that equate devalued bodily conditions with decreased social value- and to reframe terms so that impairment refers to: the actual functional limitation within a person; and disability: the loss or limitation to take part in life on an equal level with others due to physical and social barriers. In this way we have a political framework from which to perceive our bodies/minds and the world from a new and empowered perspective. It gives us the words to describe our experiences of inequality and opens our hearts and minds by offering an alternative conceptualization of “the problem’’ through locating it externally within the environment; creating a collective identity which allows for a sense of purpose, political strength and solidarity to develop between us. 

Social model 

 

The unrelenting system of exclusion and otherness of disability in Australia is internalised by each of us, and indeed constructs us as subjects. In our private moments and in our cherished notions of ourselves, we are shaped and marked by the power relations of disability (Goggin & Newell, 2005, p.200). On a personal political note disability politics enables a political analysis of the dominant discourses to be undertaken leading to forms of resistance and unruly activism to be enjoyed--such as pashing women in woollies--resisting simultaneously the a-sexualisation people with disabilities are subject to as well as homophobia :)