RMJ: Disability and birth control, part 1 Widespread (rather than individual) centralization of birth control in feminism alienates and marginalizes their already problematized bodies: trans women, intersex women, older women, women with disabilities that affect their reproductive system, asexual women, women who want to get pregnant. Not to mention the loaded history of otherwise non-privileged bodies ...

(This was originally posted as a BADD contribution at my tumblr.) I spend a lot of time blogging about and against ableism, about being a person with a mental illness, about the way policies and cultural attitudes and assumptions act to disadvantage people with disabilities. But for some reason, I was having ...

“My Deaf Family” (And My Hearing Life) Once I started kindergarten, I stopped signing, like I had been in the hearing impaired program and I started living completely in the hearing world. The choice was mine. It was instinctual. With all due respect to the Deaf community, my six year-old self knew I had to learn ...

Alida Brill first landed on the “other planet” of chronic illness at age 12. In those years of the early 1960s, when her symptoms were not easily diagnosed and second-wave feminism was barely on the proverbial map, Alida became a feminist. Doctors ignored her and her mother because Brill’s symptoms were inconsistent and ...

One ...

More for Blogging Against Disablism Day. I just poked around the entry for “Ableism” on Wikipedia. On the Talk page, I found a box placing the Ableism article within WikiProject Sociology: “This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project’s importance scale.” Ableism of low importance within Sociology? Erm, ooookay. Let’s have a closer look ...

(Cross-posted at three rivers fog. See more BADD 2010 at Goldfish’s blog.) I’m pretty open about my health issues. To be honest, I don’t know any other way to be. I know how to strategically hide my disabilities from strangers in passing interactions, but from the people with whom I interact on a daily basis? Given ...

This is our weekly Chatterday! open thread. Use this open thread to talk amongst yourselves: feel free to share a link, have a vent, or spread some joy. What have you been reading or watching lately (remembering spoiler warnings)? What are you proud of this week? What’s made your teeth itch? What’s going on in ...

Every year since I started participating in BADD, I’ve had many people ask me how they – both as currently non-disabled people, and as people with disabilities – can best participate in BADD if they don’t want to, or can’t, write a post, put up a photo, or create a video or podcast. ...

You may have noticed that I’ve been on hiatus. School holidays kicked my arse, and I crashed after, and I’ve been in the crash ever since. Hopefully I’ll climb out soon and rustle up some silverware, but meanwhile, my Blogging Against Disablism Day post is just an image from a doctor’s office, taken by me ...