People who inspire me, (in the true
non-patronizing sense of the word), are the sins invalid crew, so I’m going to
share some of what they are about and links to their website and youtube clips.
Where can I find them?
‘’We had to develop the look of a show which was simultaneously erotic and communicating resistant politics.’’''As people with disabilities, we are not oppressed by what we can or cannot do with our bodies or minds. We are oppressed by the systemic prejudice, discrimination, segregation, and violence we face because we do not fall within a perceived “norm.”
What is Sins Invalid?
Info from fb
Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility
Mission
We define disability broadly to include people with physical impairments, people who belong to a sensory minority, people with emotional disabilities, people with cognitive challenges, and those with chronic/severe illness. We understand the experience of disability to occur within any and all walks of life, with deeply felt connections to all communities impacted by the medicalization of their bodies, including trans, gender variant and intersex people, and others whose bodies do not conform to our culture(s)' notions of "normal" or "functional."
Our goals are to:
--Promote leadership opportunities for people with disabilities within our communities and within the broader social justice movement.
--Promote leadership opportunities for people with disabilities within our communities and within the broader social justice movement.
--Provide a supportive and politically engaged space for both emerging
and established artists with disabilities to develop and present
compelling works to a broad audience.
--Develop and present strong artistic work that explores sexuality and the non-normative body, integrating the full and multi-dimensional experiences of disabled artists who are also people of color and LGBTIQ, in order to represent all of our communities and challenge dominant misperceptions about people with disabilities.
WE DO THIS BY:
--Offering political education workshops for community based organizations and other organizations that share our commitment to social justice principles as a means of integrating analysis and action around disability, race, gender, and sexuality.
--Presenting multidisciplinary performances (video, poetry, spoken word, music, drama, and dance) by people with disabilities for broad audiences in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere.
--Organizing performance workshops for community members with and without disabilities.
--Develop and present strong artistic work that explores sexuality and the non-normative body, integrating the full and multi-dimensional experiences of disabled artists who are also people of color and LGBTIQ, in order to represent all of our communities and challenge dominant misperceptions about people with disabilities.
WE DO THIS BY:
--Offering political education workshops for community based organizations and other organizations that share our commitment to social justice principles as a means of integrating analysis and action around disability, race, gender, and sexuality.
--Presenting multidisciplinary performances (video, poetry, spoken word, music, drama, and dance) by people with disabilities for broad audiences in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere.
--Organizing performance workshops for community members with and without disabilities.
General Information
Vision:
Sins Invalid recognizes that we will be liberated as whole beings – as disabled/as queer/as brown/as black/as genderqueer/as female- or male-bodied – as we are far greater whole than partitioned. We recognize that our allies emerge from many communities and that demographic identity alone does not determine one's commitment to liberation.
Sins Invalid is committed to social and economic justice for all people with disabilities – in lockdowns, in shelters, on the streets, visibly disabled, invisibly disabled, sensory minority, environmentally injured, psychiatric survivors – moving beyond individual legal rights to collective human rights.
Our stories, imbedded in analysis, offer paths from identity politics to unity amongst all oppressed people, laying a foundation for a collective claim of liberation and beauty.
A Sexy Crip Manifesto in Six Parts
Extract from Berne, P, 2008, Sins
Invalid: Disability, Dancing, and Claiming Beauty in Solinger Fox, Irani (eds) Telling Stories to Change the World Teaching Learning Social Justice, Routledge, London.
Sins asks the question: “have you ever been to an erotic event featuring people with
disabilities?”, let’s take a look at the context in which we live. We know that our
culture maintains embodied and enforced “norms,” norms that constrict all of us
with unmet expectations and fears of the repercussion of not “measuring up.”
Regardless of where we identify on the spectrum of sexuality, gender, size,
ability, age, class, etc., the boundaries of our normalcy get policed. And when
we transgress boundaries by having different abilities, gender
presentation, etc., we are at risk of social and economic alienation,
hostility, threats to safety/violence, and the deepest acts of dehumanization—we
become ‘they’, othered.
To bring the issue to the body, the definition of the “normal” body is becoming
ever narrower, to the extent that even the natural process of growth and aging
is seen as a problem to overcome. People with disabilities are often seen as
“flawed” beings whose hope of normalcy rests in the “medical model’’.
The disability rights movement articulated another lens of viewing disability—the
social model. With this view, we understand that the “problem” resides in
sociopolitical and economic structures which exclude an array of people and
abilities, and the solution is social and institutional change.
This should resound familiar with folks from a social justice
perspective. But still let’s make sure we’re clear. Let’s say I go to a
building which has stairs; my wheelchair does not climb stairs. Is the problem
that I cannot walk up stairs? Or is the problem that the building owner and
architect did not create a building which allows entrance to people with a
variety of means of mobility?
Is the problem my body? Or is the problem being excluded because my body
is different from the building owner’s?
As people with disabilities, we are not oppressed by what we can or
cannot do with our bodies or minds. We are oppressed by the systemic prejudice,
discrimination, segregation, and violence we face because we do not fall within
a perceived “norm.”
Sins create a
space where the non-normative body is centred and erotic. We challenge dominant
notions of the disabled body and sexuality because we understand it is key to
challenging the oppression of people with disabilities; moreover, our performers
offer stories and visions affirming our strength as people with disabilities,
creating beauty in which we are centred.
