I’ve added a new page to the site: Books of Interest.
If you check it out, you’ll notice very quickly that it’s almost all history books at the moment. We’ll fix that over time. I just found that I was procrastinating putting anything up out of fear that it was not the Perfect Ideal Book List Of Awesome.
Now it’s a Work In Progress Book List!
When I’m not being a student, I typically get temp jobs working in a variety of offices. Once things get settled, and folks realise I am married, they often start asking about kids. “Do you have kids? No? When are you having kids? It’s not too late, you know!”
This may seem like an opening for a post about being child-free, but it’s not.
I often put these questions off with flippancy or a shrug or just saying we’re not interested in having kids. In my experience, this will often have people leave the issue be.
Sometimes, though, people will hound and hound and hound.
“Oh, it’s different when they’re yours. But what about Don, what does he think of all of this? What about your parents? What about– what about– what about?” [1. Everything in quotation marks in this post is a paraphrase.]
Do you want to know the secret way of getting people to never again ask why you’re not having children?
At some point, drop into a conversation that your husband’s disability is genetic.
Without fail, that has stopped every single person who has asked and asked and asked about children, even when the “genetic” bomb isn’t dropped in a conversation about having children.
One of the reasons why the focus of abortion! abortion! abortion! whenever talking about reproductive rights really bothers me (and a lot of others) is because of the assumption that people like Don & I shouldn’t have children (because – oh no! – the child likely will have Marfan’s just like Don! And everyone knows people like Don are a burden on the system/have miserable lives/are never happy/can never be married/are all the same/should be stopped/are just an example for the rest of us). When people focus on reproductive rights only involving abortion, they neglect that, for people like us, the pushback is to not have children. Don’t burden the system. Think of the children – and don’t have any.
I’ve seen similar conversations play out around the feminist blogosphere. [1. I have decided not to link to specific examples, because it’s a general attitude I’m talking about here. And also, who wants to start a blog-war? Not I, said the Anna.] When older women have children, there is always a sudden upswing in “BUT THE CHILD MIGHT HAVE A DISABILITY!” (Yes, the child might. And the child might fall out of a tree and land wrong. Or the child might grow up to be the next Stephen Harper and prorogue Canadian government. WHO KNOWS!) “Think of the children!”
The same fears are reflected when discussing women with disabilities having children (with bonus “but how will she care for the child?”), or when parents forcibly sterilize their disabled daughters.
This pains me, perhaps especially as someone who doesn’t want children. It pains many other women who, for a variety of reasons, are discouraged or outright prevented from having children they want. That, in North America, these women are overwhelmingly women of colour, lower class, disabled, queer – that they’re often women who have been institutionalised in some way, be it a “medical” institution or a “criminal” one – is not a coincidence.
In my experience, marginalized voices who speak out about this disparity between on-line feminist discussions of abortion and on-line feminist discussions from a broader reproductive justice framework [1. FREE Halifax: Feminists for Reproductive Justice & Equality. We meet every other Tuesday for teach-ins & movies about Reproductive Justice. Look for us on Facebook.] are often shouted down, or ignored. We’re told our issues are “special circumstances”, or “pet projects” or “in the minority” or “don’t apply to as many people” or … Well, basically everything feminists in general are told when they talk about issues that are “special circumstances” that don’t apply to enough people (read: men) to count.
Frankly, I end up not knowing where to go from here. Do we, who are limited on spoons or forks or energy or time, keep trying to push for more mainstream feminist discussion on these issues? Do we form our own spaces, our own groups, and have our own discussions? Do we write blog posts that seem to dwindle down, rather than lead us all into the future?
I don’t know. I know and respect people who have made each of those choices, and still others that I haven’t mentioned. But I don’t know what the right one is.
Maybe they all are.
Sexuality and Access Project Survey
The Sexuality and Access Project is looking for people who use attendant services as well as attendants to participate in an anonymous survey.
The survey is part of this two-year project, funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation. The goal of the project is to give Ontarians with disabilities greater control over their lives by providing them and their personal service attendants with the skills and knowledge to protect and develop their sexual health and safety.
There are two surveys. One is for persons with disabilities who use attendant services. The other is for attendants.
If you are in either of these categories, or you know someone who is, please complete the survey or pass the information along.
To take a survey online, please follow one of the links below. Each link will take you directly to the survey named:
Sexuality and Access Survey for persons with disabilities
Sexuality and Access Survey for attendants
DEADLINE: January 31, 2010If you need assistance in filling out a survey, or prefer to participate in a phone survey, please contact Fran Odette.
To learn more about the project or to receive a version of the online survey in alternate format, contact:
Fran Odette, Project Coordinator
416-968-3422 Ext. 30
f.odette@gmail.comThis project is done in partnership with the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto, Niagara Centre for Independent Living, and Independent Centre and Network.
Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post.
staticnonsense at I Am Not: You
Telling me that I need to look at the word usage differently, as a given culture or society’s accepted usage or slang, does not erase these experiences. They do not magically disappear. They will always be a part of the person and yes, such usage can trigger them and cause harm. It also does not magically show me your perspective or why I should understand it or change my perspective to match it.
What would be awesome as a magical ability is being able to show you:
* Why the use of such words is a problem for me.
* The experiences that I have gone through that result in this problem.
* The emotional and/or physical turmoil that result from such experiences.
* Why what you’re assuming is bullshit.
abfh at Whose Planet is it Anyway? Autism Speaks Loses UK Affiliate
To briefly sum up the debacle, before releasing the I Am Autism video in September to widespread condemnation from disability rights groups, Autism Speaks had presented its text as a “poem” at a May meeting with British supporters in London, where it was received with about as much enthusiasm as a heap of decomposing Thames flotsam. After that, having apparently concluded that it didn’t matter what the Brits thought and that no propaganda was too extreme for the United States, Autism Speaks went ahead and created the video anyway. Not only did it suffer a major media embarrassment as a result, it also lost an international affiliate, as the UK nonprofit group that had been a branch of Autism Speaks has now formally cut its ties with its former parent organization and has renamed itself Autistica.
Although the newly renamed group seems to be just as interested in genetic research as the old one, it seems to have at least enough sense not to openly advocate eugenics.
cripchick: my five fav tools to dialogue about justice:
below are tools that i use in workshops that have proven to be really helpful. i use these because they shaped the way i view things. most of these deal with how to talk about ableism, access, the kind of activists we want to be, and the importance of making our movements relevant to people on the margins. i am posting this in the spirit of sharing— really hope you will send me stuff (zines, poems, activities, icebreakers, songs) you use either for yourself or others, too. here’s to a new year.
UPI: Mom of 9 sues for unwanted sterilization [More at the Boston Herald.]
Tessa Savicki, 35, whose children range in age from 3 to 21, said she provided an intra-uterine device to healthcare professionals to be installed after her last Caesarean-section, but they instead performed a tubal ligation, which Savicki said she had not authorized, the Boston Herald reported Sunday.
Savicki’s nine children were fathered by several men. She is unemployed and receives public aid for two of the four children who reside with her, receives supplemental security income because she has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, her mother has custody of three of the children, and two of her children are no longer minors, she said. […]
“I take care of my kids. I love my kids. I was not ready to make that kind of decision (for permanent sterilization),” she said.
Sandy Lahmann in the Summit Daily News: Disability 101: Does one voice make a difference?
However, in my experience, the biggest problem for people with disabilities is not a lack of ramps or elevators or whatever. The biggest problem is people’s attitudes. The attitudes of the able-bodied are the biggest barriers of all. Because they don’t get it. They don’t understand. […]
But the consequences can also be just daily, annoying things that happen every time a person with a disability goes out in public. Recently the annoying thing I am dealing with is that, because I use a wheelchair, everyone seems to want to touch me. I am continually patted on the shoulder.
BBC: Mobile breast screening unit has wheelchair access
A new mobile breast screening unit which will allow women wheelchair access is being launched. Breast Test Wales said the £140,000 unit, which has a large covered lift, will allow wheelchair users to enter the mobile unit safely. […]
Dr Rose Fox, deputy director of Screening Services Wales explained: “Until now, many of the women who were unable to climb the steps of our mobile units have had to travel long distances.
BBC: Secret film uncovers ‘disabled hate crime’ in Wales
Some disabled people in Wales are suffering abuse and threats for no other reason than their disability, an investigation by BBC Wales has found.
Secretly recorded footage for the documentary Why Do You Hate Me? shows a wheelchair user being mocked and threatened in a bar. In another incident a mother and daughter film an attacker smashing every window on their mobility car.[…]
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Kier Starmer QC, admitted that the justice system did not always get it right when dealing with so-called disability hate crime. He said: “I think there are lots and lots of incidents of disability hate crime. I think we haven’t collectively picked them up and investigated and prosecuted them in the way we should.”