cripchick's blog

from wood’s rules:

My clients frequently express hatred of and disgust toward their bodies. Interestingly, however, more of them express shame that they are not able to work than over the perceived inferiority of their bodies. The men aren’t macho enough if they have disabilities, the women not sexy enough. But in a materialist society, apparently, the ultimate failure of the disabled is that we don’t make money.

Never mind that discrimination is responsible for the largest portion of the wage-differential between, say, able-bodied white guys at the top and disabled women of color at the bottom–it still feels to us like some kind of character failing on our parts. Never mind that materialism is a rotten way to value people–we still feel like losers.

From ADAPT, our brave warriors who, on their third day of protest, faced massive storms and accessible restrooms being taken away:

ADAPT activists begin third day of protest at Democratic National Headquarters

Washington, DC – As dawn breaks in the nation’s capitol, approximately 30 disability rights activists, most with disabilities, from ADAPT continue their vigil on the sidewalk surrounding the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

On Tuesday, July 21, 2009, in 25 cities across the nation, ADAPT groups took their message to Democratic Party offices and its leaders. Forty ADAPT members in Washington, DC protested in the DNC headquarters, and were physically removed by law enforcement from the building at approximately 6:00 PM, although no arrests were made.

The protesters were demanding that the Democratic National Committee:

1. Apologize for creating Medicaid’s institutional bias which has forced millions of seniors and individuals with disabilities needlessly into nursing facilities and other institutions;
2. Issue a public statement calling for elimination of the institutional bias in 2009 either as part of healthcare reform or as separate legislation, known as the Community Choice Act (S 683/HR1670); and
3. Facilitate a meeting between ADAPT and Democratic leaders, including Representative Henry Waxman, Senator Max Baucus, and Valerie Jarrett of the White House to develop a plan to pass the Community Choice Act.

In most cities, the Democratic committees agreed to relay ADAPT’s demands to the DNC. In some cities, the staff committed to working with ADAPT to influence the leadership of the DNC to support ADAPT’s goals. “Our state party leaders really worked with us to identify how they could help us influence the national leadership,” said Nadina LaSpina, an ADAPT organizer in New York City.

However, in our nation’s capital, the DNC still refuses to meet any of ADAPT’s demands. During the vigil’s second day, ADAPTers chanted and distributed informational materials. “We even were able to meet with Members of Congress right here on the street who expressed interest in becoming co-sponsors of the Community Choice Act,” said Cassie James, an ADAPT organizer from Philadelphia.

As darkness fell, the vigil continued and many of the protesters went to sleep in reclining lawn chairs and sleeping bags, some in tents and others under a lean-to constructed from PVC pipe and plastic tarps in front of the DNC. Several large banners throughout their sidewalk encampment show the group’s support for the Community Choice Act.

The ADAPT members in Washington, DC are committed to maintaining their presence in front of the DNC offices in an attempt to pressure Democratic leaders to work with ADAPT to discuss plans to pass the Community Choice Act.

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Follow them on twitter or check out more about their action at www.adapt.org/takeaction to stay in the know and support CCA. Free our people!!

i’ve been wanting to talk with others about gender and disability but have been very uncomfortable with writing things as i’m not a gender scholar (damn you academic industrial complex!) BFP’s recent post, what is butch?, is pushing me forward and i’m hoping that this can be a place where we can talk about gender x disability x queerness x everything.

in the comment section of that post, BFP tells another person she reads me as a total femme. i don’t know if other people would be as delighted as i was but my natural reaction was the immense need to take that as a compliment— with disability being understood as such an asexual thing, no one ever affirms me even having gender. the traditional disability narrative puts me in this place of being something else: that if gender was a binary, i’d be in a third gender realm. (my friend mia has the perfect example of this, bathroom symbols that have the man, woman, and then wheelchair*). our bodies are objects that are not supposed to belong to us and by recognizing our genders, it implies that we own our bodies, think about them, take pleasure in them. maybe this is a big jump but to me, affirming our gender also recognizes our personhood: it says we are human and have a right to not have our bodies raped, abused, sterilized, experimented on, harvested, and more… 

it’s only recently that i’ve been thinking about gender presentation. maybe this is because i finally have a PA who knows that part of her job is being patient in helping me try different outfits and that if i don’t like the way something looks, i should take it off. if i want to see if a fedora, vest, dress pants combo looks good, i can.  if i want to stand in a dressing room and try on every piece of lingerie in the store, i can. a lot of disabled people don’t get to do that, especially with so many of us living in institutions, having unpaid caregivers, experiencing days when we are in total pain or lack energy, etc. there needs to be a word for disabled people taking part in intentional, pleasurable gender play in their own way. part of the oppression we face is being asexualized, otherized and denied gender identity so playing with gender and demanding respect for our identities is resistance and a refusal to accept that ableist narrative…

i don’t know that i’m femme, butch, etc, i just know that i like to play with roles and gender. for me, the word to describe this gender play or personal recognition of identity i’ve been having lately is cripchick. cripchicks (or gimpgirls) are fierce, strong disabled women who interact with the world on their terms. when i am cutting up a tshirt everyone is wearing so it looks good on me, that’s my way of being a cripchick. lately i get a lot of pleasure in mixing up disability with a fierce femme show so i am insistent on that tee looking good on me, even if i do it in a way that traditional femmes may not. as cripchicks, we’re dealing with issues that force us to create our own relationships with gender presentation but we do it and feel good about it.

do you know how powerful that is? for disabled women (w/ all disabilities), what does gender look like for you?  am i wrong here?

*sidenote about bathrooms. i think the wheelchair accessibility/bathroom safety connection is totally powerful and love places that have a single stall gender neutral bathroom where people are safe. that’s not what i mean with the example mentioned above about third gender.