feminist blogs

Last month, Renee wrote about the “Black children are an endangered species” billboards. Now the New York Times has picked it up, in a story about how the anti-abortion movement is using race and accusations of genocide as a way to “court” supporters of color to a traditionally white, long-racist movement. The anti-choice strategy has been to hire a handful of women of color to travel around the country telling African-Americans that abortion is part of a decades-old conspiracy to kill off black people.

The tactic seems to be working, at least to a point. And it works in large part because there is a long history of trying to curtail the reproductive capacities of men and women of color. The term “black genocide conspiracy” might be met with a lot of eye-rolling from white people, but there is a legitimate back-story that enables such a theory to take hold and to grow, and there are legitimate concerns about population control and the targeting of families of color. Tuskegee. Puerto Rico. Mississippi appendectomies. Women’s bodies were used as vessels to increase the slave population, and enslaved women had no legal right to their own children. After slavery, the reproductive coercion flipped, and people of color in the United States (or people wanting or forced to come to the United States) faced anti-miscegenation laws, anti-immigrant policies, mandatory sterilization and the wide embrace of eugenics. Through the 20th century and into the 21st, the bodies and reproductive capacities of women of color were used as political warning signs — Reagan’s welfare queen, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” and on and on.

And it’s not all “history,” either. Louisiana, last year. Criminal courts today. Women are paid to be sterilized, or otherwise coerced out of reproducing if they’re the wrong color or the wrong socioeconomic class, or if they’re addicted, or if they’re disabled.

All women face attempted infringements on their reproductive rights. But women of color in the United States have faced those infringements in a very particular way, and that’s in part why the “abortion is genocide” argument resonates.

But of course, the curtailing of reproductive rights and options for women of color (and for all women) is another piece of a long history of not allowing women to make the best reproductive choices for themselves. As Pamela points out in a really great take-down of the abortion-is-genocide argument, women of color in the United States are sorely under-served when it comes to reproductive health care (and health care generally), and it’s literally killing them. From her article:

-Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer at a later stage and are more likely to die of cervical cancer.

-Black people make up 13 percent of the population in the United States yet account for more than 49 percent of AIDS cases. AIDS is the leading cause of death for Black women between the ages 25 to 34, and the second leading cause of death for Black men between the ages 35 to 44.

-Black and Hispanic women have the highest teen pregnancy rates.

-Forty percent of Black Americans report being uninsured at some point from 2007 through 2008.

-Black women continue to die from breast cancer at alarming rates and a recent study found that half of Black teenage women reported having had one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases.

The anti-choice solution is to shut down Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides healthcare to under-served and low-income communities, and to try to outlaw abortion and even birth control. Only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion-related; the vast majority of what the organization provides involves pre-natal care, STI screening, sexual health information, gynecological care, birth control prescriptions, even flu shots. When you shut down Planned Parenthood, you aren’t ending abortion — you’re cutting off access to some of the most in-need women and men. But the anti-choice logic is that no women (and especially no women of color) should be allowed to make their own choices when it comes to their reproductive lives. Oh and also that black women are perpetuating genocide by terminating pregnancies.

That logic doesn’t just apply to abortion. Anti-choicers are also trying to cut off access to contraception, so that women won’t even be able to avoid unintended pregnancy. Programs that pay low-income and drug-addicted women to be sterilized? Funded and run by anti-choice, “pro-family” Republicans. Some of the biggest voices in the anti-choice movement still go around saying that Chinese people eat babies, for Pete’s sake. “Pro-life” Republicans oppose health care reform that would help women and babies; they oppose funding organizations that provide reproductive health care; they regularly oppose funding for pre-natal and well-baby care, for day care, and for aid to families with dependent children. In a nutshell, “pro-life” organizations oppose the things that prevent abortion, and then oppose the things that would make it easier for women to choose to give birth, and then oppose things that improve the lives of mothers, families and children.

But they would like to outlaw abortion and legally compel you to carry pregnancies to term.

Miriam notes that no one needs that kind of condescending “help,” and that the divide-and-conquer strategy to curtail women’s rights is not going to work. Women of color have long worked for reproductive justice — whether that’s securing abortion rights or pushing back against environmentalist population control arguments or fighting against welfare reform. To suggest that abortion rights are genocidal and that women of color are either sitting idly back or killing their own children erases all the work that women have done to secure rights for themselves.

What women — all women — actually need is access to reproductive health care and education (and go read that link, it’s a phenomenal piece). The fact that women of color have significantly higher abortion rates than white women should give us pause; so should the fact that the United States has a much higher abortion rate than countries in Western Europe where the procedure is widely accessible. Abortion isn’t shameful, but it is something that most women would like to avoid. The crucial piece to a low abortion rate, world-wide, is access to contraception. It also doesn’t hurt to have universal health care and family-friendly policies that enable women to bear and raise children without facing poverty, job loss or total life upheaval.

There are long-standing systematic blockades in the way of women in the United States accessing a full range of reproductive rights. Women who fall outside of the white/heterosexual/cisgender/able-bodied/middle-or-upper-class identity face even taller barriers to access. Eliminating those barriers, though, takes work. It takes dedication to women’s health and women’s lives. And dedication to women’s lives? Is not something that anti-choice organizations do.

Well this is a new level of offensive and disgusting. At an anti-choice press conference in Virginia, staged to encourage the state legislature to pull funding from Planned Parenthood, Republican state representative Bob Marshall told the audience that:

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

…I’m unsure of what else to even say.

This is a guest-post by Eva Sweeney.

“Nice shoes!” “Great smile!” “You have pretty eyes!” Those are the kinds of compliments I get on a regular basis and they are wonderful. However, people never comment on my body. You might be thinking- as a woman, wouldn’t you be offended if someone came up to you and commented on your body? “Nice tits!” I would be offended by that. However, one little piece of information you should know is that I’m “severely disabled”. I have Cerebral Palsy (CP) and I use a wheelchair to get around. CP has influenced the way I developed physically. My muscles continually spasm and I have little control over my arm and leg movements. I definitely view myself as sexy and attractive. But other people are either afraid to look or think they shouldn’t comment on my body because it’s “broken”.

I am in no way condoning cat-calling. I definitely think that cat-calling is sexual harassment (and can be the beginning of sexual assault) and is a big reason that women don’t feel safe in their own neighborhood. That being said, my body is never the topic of conversation, eye-gaze, or interest with adults I have just met. My girlfriends have definitely been “interested” in that topic, but that’s after we got to know each other. I don’t want to be cat called. But I don’t mind people asking me questions about my body or flirting with me if we are having a nice conversation. Even something as benign as “I like your shirt, where did you get it?” would show me that they notice my body and aren’t afraid of it. People are conditioned to think that people with disabilities hate their bodies. They think they shouldn’t bring it up because they think it will offend me or remind me that I’m gross. The lack of attractive people with disabilities (and I define attractive as an attitude versus some standard of beauty) on TV, in movies, and in pop culture reinforces that stereotype.

Adults are afraid to ask me questions about my body. Again, they think it will remind me of the “hideousness” or it’s a taboo topic. One example of how uncomfortable my body makes some people is when I go to the sauna. Like every other female in the sauna, I go completely nude. And even though we are all there stark naked together, some of the women keep staring at me and I guarantee its not because they were checking me out. Because my body looks different, they have to look. And I wouldn’t mind them looking, except that their gaze says “Oh my god, what a weirdo. Doesn’t she know what her body looks like?”

Kids, on the other hand, will just come right up to me in public and say “why are your legs like that?” One little girl asked me, “Why are you in an armor chair?” I think that’s great because after I explain, kids are usually like “Cool!” and proceed to talk to me about other things. Their parents on the other hand, usually yell at them for asking such a “rude” question. I honestly wish that more adults would just come up and ask questions because then they might actually see that I’m attractive, intelligent, and disabled too. I know that some people would think that’s intrusive and this is just my opinion, but I’m totally cool with adults just saying “So tell me about your disability.” I am happy to answer any questions, even the “silly”ones. It all helps them understand something significant about me and it’s much more interesting than “Nice weather, eh?” Ignoring my body cuts out a huge section of who I am. And because people don’t want to learn or ask questions, they don’t get to know who the whole Eva is.

____________________________
Eva Sweeney is a 26-year-old college graduate. She majored in gender studies. She recently started The Deal with Disability (http://thedealwithdisability.blogspot.com/) which gives accounts of her daily life as a person with Cerebral Palsy. Her other hobbies are photography, creative writing, and painting.

I find myself thinking a lot about staring and comfort and power, so I figure I might as well bring you along for the ride!

First up – via Hoyden About Town – read this article at Science Blogs by Ed Yong: How objectification silences women – the male glance as a psychological muzzle.

Saguy found that women talked about themselves for less time than men, but only if they thought they were being visually inspected by a man, and particularly if they thought their bodies were being checked out. They used the full two minutes if they were describing themselves to another woman (no matter where the camera was pointing) or if they were speaking to a man who could hear but not see them. But if their partner was a man watching their bodies, they spoke for just under one-and-a-half minutes.
[...]
As Saguy explains, “When a woman believes that a man is focusing on her body, she narrows her presence… by spending less time talking.” There are a few possible reasons for this. Saguy suspects that objectification prompts women to align their behaviour with what’s expected of them – silent things devoid of other interesting traits. Treat someone like an object, and they’ll behave like one. Alternatively, worries about their appearance might simply distract them from the task at hand.

Secondly, via Liz at Dis/Embody, a video! Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s got a book out called Staring: How We Look (Oxford University Press, 2009). I rather want to check out. She of the fabulous name is a Women’s Studies professor at Emory University, which is in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. I can’t wait to see how her work on staring in a disability studies framework might relate to feminist work on the male gaze, given her background. If you’re interested, here’s a PDF of an article of hers called Ways of Staring. Here she is talking about her work, examining unexpected power dynamics and all (transcript under the cut.)

[University name and logo in white sinking back into a blue screen.] Voiceover: This program brought to you by Emory University.

Rosemarie-Garland Thomson [a woman with short white hair, dressed in a black suit]: I’m Rosemarie-Garland Thomson. I’m a professor of women’s studies [these details appear in white at the bottom of the screen, then disappear] and literary studies at Emory University. And I’ve written a book called Staring: How We Look [cover appears]. Staring involves an interesting conflict. [back to her] First of all, it’s an impulse. It’s neurological and it’s acted out in our eyes and through our eyes. Staring is actually a natural response to our own curiosity, to what cognitive psychologists call a novel stimuli. And our brains enjoy novel stimuli, they look for novel stimuli, and so staring is itself a very pleasurable kind of thing [as she's talking, the camera pans across a painting of a starer/staree and then the title 'STARING' and a quote from her book: "... staring [is] a starer’s quest to know and a staree’s opportunity to be known.”]. At the same time, because staring is a bodily impulse, like sex or like eating, it’s very highly regulated by the social world. [An image of people on a bus, not looking at each other, and then a group of young people staring at someone who's presumably talking to them.] So the conflict with staring is between our urge to do it and the social rules that say that we shouldn’t be doing it. Because it doesn’t matter which side of the staring encounter we’re on, people like to stare, but they don’t like to be stared at [back to Garland-Thomson]. Staring is imagined as a breech of ettiquette, a kind of intrusion, and it also reflects badly on the people who are starers. So it’s this conflict between our urge to stare and the rules against it that makes staring such an important and intense and provocative social interchange that makes meaning. [Images of starers/starees take over] Another aspect that staring brings forward is an historical one. The world has changed and has made us come in contact with different kinds of people. When we’re out and about in the public world we see people that are different from us in a way we didn’t a while ago. We’re in contact with people, this is a new, integrated world. And the people that have entered the world are people that were excluded from the world oftentimes before, from the public world. One group of people who were excluded from the public world were people with disabilities. They were largely excluded before the 1960s and the 1970s in the United States by various institutional and architectural barriers that literally kept people with disabilities out of the public world and out of view of the other people who were in the public world [as we move back to Garland-Thomson]. In researching the book I discovered that most of the studies about staring focus on the starers [back to the initial image and then more paintings] and there’s not very much done about the starees. I wanted to bring forward the experience and the perspectives of the starees, which is a word I actually had to invent in order to talk about people who get stared at. I spoke with many expert starees and discovered that they’re much more comfortable, often, with staring exchanges actually than starers might be. And the reason for that of course is that they have so much more experience with the staring relationship. [Back to Garland-Thomson] So that they themselves actually end up directing the staring relationship in many cases and leading it toward a productive end that they want to occur. [Back to the book cover] I wanted the book to make us think about how we appear to each other and what we think about each other and of course then [back to Garland-Thomson] how we treat each other in the world.

[Screen changes to black. Text appears: 'In fall 2009, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson was named by "Utne Reader" as one of the "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World."']

[An image of four smiling people by the exhibition; a semi-transparent blue box appears over them with text in white: 'The images used here are from the book and from an exhibition (based on the book) ad the Van Every Gallery, Davidson College.']

[White on a black screen: 'Photo Credits
'Archer Coe, "The Bus"
'Brigitte Faber, Portrait of Dr. Theresia Degener
'Martin Glueck, Dr. Theresia Degener and Gisela Hermes
'Jay Jafee, "Two Women in Subway"
'John Mardere, Portrait of Harriet McBryde Johnson
'Vince Maggiora (San Francisco Chronicle), David Roche'.
Next screen:
'Ruth Morgan, Portrait of Simi Linton
'Chris Toalson, "Portrait"
'The Washington Post, Children from Sierra Leone arrive at Dulles Airport
'The Washington Post, Army Sgt Brian Doyne
'Steve Wewerka (Life Magazine), Britney and Abby Hensel'
Next screen:
'Oil Paintings by Doug Auld:
'"Brian"
'"Fernando"
'"Hugging Fire"
'"Jelani"
'"Rachael"
'"Shalya"']

[New screen: 'Produced by the Emory College of Arts and Sciences'. 'Camera/Editor Hal Jacobs' appears in the bottom left corner.]

[University name and logo in white sinking back into a blue screen. A copyright notice appears at the bottom of the screen] Voiceover: The preceeding program is copyrighted by Emory University.

Previously:
Invisible Identities, Part 1: Invisible to Whom?
Invisible Identities, Part 2: The Default Human

Note:

I’m told that in the American context, when speaking about race, the term “passing” is most associated with black people due to a pretty loaded history. This is not the case where I live, simply because that’s not the history we have with the term. As such, when I speak of passing race-wise, I am not speaking only of light-skinned people of African descent who can do so. I realise that this post could therefore be a somewhat uncomfortable read for people in that context, and am putting up this note to therefore hopefully address some of that discomfort.

It’d probably be a good idea to read the previous posts in this series if you find anything else in my word use or context confusing, especially as many of the points in this post build on the previous posts.

Comments that say it’s wrong to try and pass, or conversely that someone ought to try and pass, will not be tolerated. Either way attempts to take away something of someone’s choice, experience, decision making. How one negotiates one’s own life, how one chooses to deal with all the oppressions on hir back, is hir business.

Being able to pass is a privilege. Passing privilege means that others don’t grab my body or assistive devices, people I’ve never met don’t look at me with pity or disgust and I am less likely to face intrusive and upsetting questions. Those are amazing privileges that many of my fellows in the disability community don’t share with me. Passing privilege means that I am not watched suspiciously in stores, negative comments are not made about my features, white people feel comfortable to interact with me and strangers do not expect me to act as an example of what all people of my background are like. Those are incredible privileges that many of my background do not share.

First up, we must address the nature of passing. Sometimes it is active (one chooses to pass) and sometimes passive (one is passed). Sometimes it’s an interaction of expectation and experience, habit and circumstance. One cannot untangle one’s own efforts to pass or to not from the point of the idea of passing. That is, whether one passes or not is dependant on the outside observer. The whole idea of passing hinges not on what the (non)passer does, but on the observer’s response to that person. There’s an extent to which one can control it – and people have developed quite some techniques – but it’s not always a matter of choice as to whether to pass or not.

There’s a friction between passing and solidarity with one’s group. Those who can pass as being a member of a dominant group may miss out on many experiences and forms of discrimination that are held to be facets of that group’s commonalities. One of the main problems with passing is that in doing so an inequitable system is being held up (by those who pass others, by those choosing to pass). This is to say that passing supports the idea that equality, better treatment, is gained by melting into the dominant group. This is of course true, as is evident in, for instance, shifting definitions of whiteness; but one shouldn’t have to lose their own identity to the “good,” dominant identity in order to be dealt with well. We should work not until identities disappear but until they’re all okay to have.

That burden should be placed on those making the assumptions of – enforcing – default identities, not on the passers. Passers frequently report hostility from within their own groups, and accusations of not really being a member of their community from all sides. No one is less a member of the group for other people’s perceptions and it’s incredibly offensive to suggest otherwise. Passing is not always a choice; when it is, it’s presumptuous to resent someone for that and just outright wrong where safety is involved. How one deals with one’s own experiences of oppression is one’s own concern.

Being able to pass really messes with my head. I’ve frequent bouts of intense guilt about it, and I feel sick when people in my communities admire me for the features that make me more likely to pass (‘look at her beautiful skin.’ Increasingly I need to get the nearest bathroom and scrub and scrub where they grab my arm). Sometimes I don’t feel quite real or as though I’m cheating, an intruder in someone else’s identity. With regard to being disabled, this has some nasty consequences: in the past I’ve not gotten needs met, either because I can’t bear to out myself or because someone doesn’t quite think I’m truthful. Passing doesn’t mean I’m not struggling to remain standing while we’re talking. I struggle with passing and being passed. Sometimes I try and do it to feel safer (never safe) and lose my integrity. Sometimes I am passed, and it’s a mix of delight and loss and damage. Whatever I do, it’s never enough, I’m never enough.

Now I just mostly let people think what they will. The glowing effects largely disappear once I give off too many cues. Because so much of my identity, experience and expression is tied up with those of my identities that are invisible, the effects are frequently fleeting.

Being invisible doesn’t mean I face no discrimination but that I face less individualised discrimination in many contexts. Looking like I do has not prevented, upon the acknowledgement of my identity, looks of disgust, offensive remarks about my family, having to listen to racial hatred. It has not prevented the fear in me, the way I have not felt safe since I was a little girl. It has not prevented that I modify my dress, my speech, my movements, my stories in order to appear as “normal” as possible, just like anyone else trying to not face the wrath of whiteness. Attempting to invisibilise difference is hardly restricted to those of us who can pass.

The thing is, I’ve done everything. I’ve been loud and proud about my invisible identities. I’ve done my best to make them disappear. I’ve allowed myself to be passed, I’ve actively worked to pass. I’ve just been myself, I’ve made my identities explicit. At the end of all this anxiety and modification and thought and care, one thing remains constant: it’s the perceptions and actions of people in dominant bodies that count. When I pass, there’s still the weight of many manifestations of oppression on my shoulders. And irrespective of whether I pass or not, people outside of my groups still get to determine how I am treated and how I am perceived. There is no way to win.

[Cross-posted at Zero at the Bone and FWD/Forward]

Straight out of my “things I’m embarrassed to have been sitting on since before the New Year” file comes this article about the fact that in the U.S., many people with disabilities are working jobs that pay below the already paltry minimum wage. And when I say “below,” I mean way below. What makes this most shocking to me isn’t the fact that people with disabilities are being exploited by unscrupulous employers — that much, I was aware of — but that it’s entirely legal under federal law.

The minimum wage might have been bumped up to $7.25 an hour in 2009, but that number means little to the over 300 workers with mental disabilities working at state-run homes for the people with disabilities in Iowa. That’s because they were making, on average, $0.60 per hour for their work. One employee was even making an average of a mere $0.11 per hour, a sweatshop-level wage in any country. Yet paying employees with mental disabilities piddling wages is legal in Iowa and the rest of the country. Should it be acceptable for companies and government to pay workers pennies an hour because of a mental disability?

The law under which Woodward and Glenwood, the two homes that are being looked at for providing very low wages, were able to pay so little is a controversial law meant to provide job opportunities for people with mental disabilities. The idea is that employers will have an incentive to hire people who might not be able to perform tasks at the same level as non-disabled employees because they can pay them less. However, this law has always been controversial among disability rights and labor rights advocates, and has been increasingly questioned since a Texas-based Turkey company was found to be exploiting and trafficking disabled workers.

It shoudn’t surprise us at all that those who think it’s totally cool for people to be working for $.11 an hour support their position by arguing that if employers aren’t allowed to pay sweat shop wages, jobs will be lost. Because that is the exact same argument that those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage use every single time topic comes up.

And if those of us who are progressive don’t accept that argument against a livable wage for able-bodied workers, we sure as hell shouldn’t be accepting it for those with disabilities, either. It’s certainly true that the unemployment rate among people with disabilities is significantly higher than among able-bodied people. But it’s also true that many other employment inequities exist. For example, blacks have a much higher unemployment rate than whites — in fact (while there is of course significant overlap between the two groups), black Americans in the workforce have an unemployment rate the same as Americans with disabilities in the workforce — and I think we know that the reason for that is discrimination of various kinds, not the minimum wage. And discrimination is never solved through further methods of discrimination, only compounded.

Which isn’t to say that ending the legal use of sweat shop level wages for people with disabilities would solve the problems of ableism, exploitation of workers, poverty, or unemployment/difficulty in finding work. It wouldn’t. Just like with the conversation about the minimum wage in general, it’s only a small start to a wider solution that involves creating a more equitable society overall, including for those workers (like undocumented workers) who aren’t recognized by the government in the first place. But when people are working for pennies per hour, with the full permission and approval of our government, it strikes me as a step that, while insufficient, is sorely needed.

h/t FWD/Forward

The big news this week is that Sarah Palin is the latest contributor to Fox News. Christina Chew at Care2 asks what this means for people with disabilities – Palin promised in her campaign to be an advocate for special-needs children, but so far her “advocacy” hasn’t gone far beyond insisting that abortion is bad and special-needs children are blessings. While I’m always happy to see parents of children with disabilities speaking out about the fact that having a special-needs child is parenting all the same and that no child is perfect or easy, there is a major disconnect when “advocates” like Palin totally ignore the societal and structural impediments that make parenting more difficult when your child has disabilities, and that make life more difficult for individuals with disabilities. Chew writes:

Will Palin, who has spoken regularly about her “right to life” stance, make abortion and prenatal genetic testing of her Fox News commentary? (Currently some 90% of parents who find out that their fetus has Down Syndrome decide not to have the child.) Will Palin move beyond such politically charged and very hot topics to look at the real, day-to-day issues facing disabled individuals and their families and those who support them over their lifetimes? Issues like the need for appropriate schools and therapies that can range from speech therapy to medical concerns; like the urgent need for housing for adults with disabilities, not to mention jobs and job training, and—for those unable to work—ways to ensure that they live meaningful lives within the community?

As the mother of an adolescent son who is on the moderate to severe end of the autism spectrum, I am hopeful that Palin will use her new role on Fox News to bring national attention to these pressing issues. My son is growing up all too fast. While once people smiled and told me “he’s so cute” and that we were “blessed to have such a special child,” the world is not so kindly towards an older child who is so tall that he is regularly mistaken for an adult, who is minimally verbal, and who—due to his neurology—struggles with severe behavior problems. Group homes, job coaches, and disparities in access to health care for adults with disabilities are just some of the issues that other parents, my son’s teachers and therapists, and my husband and I think about all the time, however much others try to change the topic of conversation when we bring them up.

Improving on those issues would also make it easier for women to choose to continue pregnancies if their fetus is diagnosed with Down syndrome or other condition. As Dana Goldstein explores in the Daily Beast this week, new genetic testing could make it possible to more exactly identify fetuses with Down syndrome; since the vast majority of women terminate their pregnancies when they learn that the fetus has Down syndrome, the new tests could mean that even fewer babies with Down syndrome are ever born, unless women and families feel that having a special needs child is actually do-able.

I’m obviously very pro-choice, and support the right of any individual woman to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason. I understand the feeling — or the knowledge — that you are not equipped to handle a child with special needs, or the fear that when you die you will be leaving behind a child with a disability in a society that offers little support. So I want to make it clear that I’m not casting judgment on any individual woman, or any family, who makes the best choices for themselves and terminates a pregnancy because the fetus has Down syndrome or other pre-natal diagnosis.

But. I do find it troubling, in the aggregate, that so many people believe that having a child with Down syndrome is so impossible, or so undesireable, that 90% of those pregnancies are terminated. Again, to clarify, it’s not the belief itself that troubles me — it’s the social reality underlying that belief. It’s the fact that “advocates” like Palin do little to actually advocate for what people with disabilities and their families actually need — holding up a cute baby and talking about how he’s a blessing is nice, but it doesn’t do much to help the parents who are worried about finding adequate schooling for their children, or the adults who need basic access to work or housing or medical care. It doesn’t do much for the women who receive a pre-natal diagnosis from a doctor who assumes that termination is the next step, in a society that seems to only offer two options for women who have to make this choice: Martyrdom or shame. It doesn’t do much for that cute baby when he or she grows up in a society that ostracizes and fears him, and offers no tangible support or assistance.

I hope Palin uses her position at Fox to give a platform to disability-rights advocates. I hope she does it in a meaningful way, that goes beyond, “Look, cute baby!” and actually addresses the structural impediments that oppress people with disabilities. But I’m not holding my breath.

So, I’ve talked about how the notion of the invisible identity is problematic, particularly through the framework of my personal experiences of being “invisibly” disabled and non-white. Now to the flipside of invisibility.

Certain characteristics exist in the societal consciousness as default traits. That is, a person is a man unless they’re pointed out as a woman (how many times have we all heard ‘woman lawyer’ or similar?) Disabled people are unexpected, out of the norm. The coming out process doesn’t exist for straight people, because everyone’s assumed to be straight until it’s made clear they’re not. While non-white people are described according to their race (‘the Asian man’), white people are described according to specific physical characteristics (‘the blonde man’). These are the default humans, and we are assumed to be so unless we are otherwise. It’s a strange phenomenon, really: these identities are represented so often, in so many contexts, that we don’t even describe them anymore.

It’s also curious because so few of us are that default human, white, cis, abled, middle class and so on. The default human is really quite far from being usual.

What the invisibilisation of privileged characteristics does is to invisibilise the privileges that go along with them. Straight people had to be told that they, like gay and lesbian and bisexual and pansexual (and more!) people, had a sexual orientation too, rather than just being “normal”. Race is so often approached as something only non-white people are concerned with. Abled people are regular people, and disabled people are wrong and bad and tragic. (If you think that disability is some kind of flaw located in an individual, please learn about the social model of disability.) It’s the reason for the assertions that ‘cis’ is an insult rather than simply a neutral term used as a replacement for ‘normal’ in describing non-trans people. There has been a great deal of reluctance and resistance on the part of the privileged to put a name to what they/we are. This is because doing so legitimises the idea that they/we exist in a specifically privileged state rather than just being the default, the norm. You name the thing, you make it real.

Here’s what I guess I’ll have to call a worked example, for lack of a better term. I’m told it’s particularly rude in the US to describe someone in terms of race. I’m sure you’re familiar with why “colourblindness” is a bad approach to anti-racism, but it’s worth recapping. “Not seeing” race – oh, hello, there’s that visuality thing again – does not make us all happy and post-racial. “Not seeing” race just makes sure we’re all launched right back into default white culture, because not mentioning difference erases our histories. And of course white people’s differences aren’t mentioned, because their cultures are assumed as default. When white people acknowledge their cultures, that is: there’s a tendency for white people to say they’re uninteresting, or they don’t really have a culture, because they do not perceive that their cultures are everywhere. All of which is not to mention that using “colourblind” in relation to anti-racism discourse appropriates the experiences of people who are actually colourblind. So erasing difference just reinforces racism, where we could be acknowledging difference as present and right and ours. The default human idea doesn’t work because none of us are. And it tries to make most people not exist.

Again, this has some icky effects on those of us who can be read as having an identity we don’t. Because I can tell you, being read as something you’re not? Can hurt like anything. I have experienced having my background erased as intensely threatening and hurtful. This often takes place in white spaces in which white people feel okay being racist because, hey, it’s only us white people here, right? I have had to listen to people question whether it’s better to be disabled or dead, and have sat through it, terrified, because these people, who previously seemed perfectly charming, are confidently questioning whether my community deserves to exist. And at the same time as I’m being misread, I have guilt, because sometimes I cultivate a white, abled image for safety or comfort.

Knowing how harmful default assumptions have been to me, I am trying to not assume them of other people. This is difficult in the extreme, because we are so trained to make assumptions about people’s identities. Something I’ve heard a bit from people who don’t fit the gender binary is that if you aren’t sure, just ask. I’ve not yet brought myself to do so (and I’m sure far from everyone would be comfortable with that) and rather wait for cues as to someone’s identity. Being uncertain is both frustrating and liberating: boxes aren’t just for sorting, they’re for boxing us in. A little ambiguity makes things more interesting, and less painful for those of us with invisible identities.

But now that I’ve made a good effort to stop assuming default status, I’m trying to stop assuming identity more generally. I’ve taken to describing white people as white, just to point it out and sometimes observe the cogs turning in someone’s head. I’ve mostly overcome trying to fit people into boxes of queer or straight. (Except for the cute ones.) I realised it wasn’t so important that I figure out someone’s identity if I was just having a chat with them in a line or some such. If I don’t need to know, I don’t need to know. Someone else’s comfort is more important that the satisfaction of my curiousity. This is particularly true for the people who don’t fit into boxes so neatly, or for those who wish to keep their identity under wraps. For instance, I myself am regularly nervous about being outed by careless friends about my disability status, because I often can’t afford to lose the credibility and respect passing as abled gives me.

I think it’s an interesting exercise to try and perform. If we’re not so certain anymore, how do we relate to each other? I think a good thing about this lack of certainty is that it requires you to relate directly to a person, discover their identities, rather than you putting assumptions onto them and deciding their identity for them. So while I’m still likely to read that person waiting in line with me as a white, straight, abled woman in her late thirties, sometimes I catch myself, or look back and think, maybe not. Maybe humanity is just more complicated than that.

[Cross-posted at ZatB and FWD/Forward]

Before I begin, I’d like to make a note on policing and culture. I’m going to go ahead and assume many of you are American. Please keep in mind that American experiences of race don’t apply everywhere. (What I’m particularly concerned with for the purposes of this post is that I’ve encountered a lot of sentiment to the effect that it’s more okay to question and deny the identities of lighter coloured non-white people. This is inappropriate in the Australian context, not least because of Indigenous notions of race. (Well, it would be if there was more respect paid to Indigenous notions of race.)) I can’t get more specific than that, simply because I am unaware of all the differences and issues. What I am trying to say is that sometimes I bump up against American notions of race and find myself confused, and doubtless we all feel the same encountering different cultures. So please keep the following in mind when processing this post or commenting on it: Experiences differ. Questioning an individual’s racial identity is not okay, nor their ways of negotiating it. And, you know, the same regarding one’s gender identity, or disability status, or whatever. The comments on posts in this series will be moderated accordingly.

I am a non-white person with light colouring, and I am physically disabled, but people generally can’t tell either by looking at me. My race and my disability status therefore come under the umbrella of what are known as invisible identities. These are not the only parts of me that fit into the category, but they are the ones I’ll be using to explore some of the problems with the idea of the invisible identity.

So, first up, we’ve got to ask what the phrase means. Invisible to whom? Whether an identity is invisible or not depends on who is looking.

My identities are not invisible to me. So who is doing the perceiving here? Not me, clearly. It’s not my ideas about myself that matter here. And it’s far less likely to be members of my communities observing and not realising I am one of them. So to whom are these identities invisible? The people who don’t share them. The privileged people are the ones who don’t notice my identities, who assume I am one of them, who deny me who I am. They are the ones who are noticing, the only ones with agency here. It is their perspective that gives us the term “invisible identity” and is allowed to define my experience and being.

And, of course, the person who “sees” is inevitably sighted. The whole concept of whether identities are visible or not relies on visual cues (not that those are themselves reliable). Once again, disabled people are left out of the equation; once again, privileged people are in charge of identity. As such, with regards to disability in particular, the notion of invisibility to describe the dynamic here is a fair bit problematic.

As such, the issue we’re left with is that a) other people are allowed to police and define someone’s identity and b) those people are the most privileged ones. White people have enforced a racial hierarchy, and abled people have said that these sorts of people are normal and these ones are not. And whiteness and abledness still seek to control who fits and who does not. But not everyone fits into boxes quite so neatly, and not everyone is the figure these oppressive systems imagine. But those parts of us outside the boxes are still parts of us. I think the existence of people like me acts to destabilise these rigid binaries of the okay people and the not okay people, because, between perception and actual self-definition, we are everything at once.

If you’re assuming you’re going to find white, abled people as you go about your day, you’re going to think you’ve found one in me. Being able to assume you can be in company with people like yourself is a function of privilege. I don’t get to assume that, but I do get to deal with privileged people’s ideas of what a non-white, abled person should be like. I may appear white and abled to someone, but that’s not who I am and not how I experience the world. These parts of myself are routinely rendered invisible, and I’m left to either out myself and gain a whole new set of difficulties in interacting with that particular person or group, or to be awkward and pained by being read as something I am not. And the tension between those two possibilities leads to more issues. I so often feel alone or threatened when in entirely white company and I feel embarrassed to look after my needs around abled people in a way I don’t feel around disabled people.

Because I often attempt to avoid outing myself. Being able to often pass gives me a level of privilege, and also some problems. I hope to devote a future post to that very topic; for now I want to talk about what happens when the invisibility lifts (whether because I’ve made my identity explicit, or someone else has). Once people find out about my being disabled, they often do their best to enforce that. (You poor thing! When are you going to get better! My cousin had that and got better with exercise and determination!) But possibly worse is when they don’t believe my identity, because then I get ridicule and shame and more questioning and you don’t need accommodations, darling. I don’t fit someone’s idea about what disabled people should be like, so I’m a faker and deserve suffering and scorn, lazy hopeless whiner. (Not that more obviously disabled people don’t receive similar treatment!) But whether I’m invisible or not, or whichever of these ways my identity is treated, I don’t get to control it for myself.

It is not a reflection on my identity that other people read me in particular ways; that’s their problem. I have been used to saying that I look like a white person, but the truth is that I look like me, and I am not white. So this is what a non-white person looks like, regardless of other people’s perceptions. I don’t know why someone else’s perception should be allowed to erase how other people react to my identity and – far, far more to the point – how I go through the world and what has shaped me. I don’t understand why it’s so important to have control over someone else’s identity. You cannot tell someone’s background merely by looking, and that is where racism falls apart. You cannot tell someone’s disability status merely by looking, because we have our own ideas about what constitutes disability.

Negotiating invisible identities is a strange place to be in. You’re both limited and given choices that other people are not. And, of course, the extent of the invisibility shifts depending on context (not so invisible when I’m performing cultural activities or limping) and the observer. It’s a complex game of passing, being passed, cues, policing and a struggle to be perceived as one is. It has made me less likely to assume identities of other people, and has made me more careful while going about my life. I can’t know whether being visible would be harder or easier, but I wouldn’t change who I am. I live in liminal spaces, and I have my identities, visible or otherwise.

[Cross-posted at Zero at the Bone and FWD/Forward]

A woman who was receiving extended sick leave benefits due to depression has had those benefits revoked by her insurance company. Why? Because they found photographs on her Facebook page in which she appeared to be enjoying herself:

Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Que., for the last year and a half after she was diagnosed with major depression.

The Eastern Townships woman was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from Manulife, her insurance company, but the payments dried up this fall.

When Blanchard called Manulife, the company said that “I’m available to work, because of Facebook,” she told CBC News this week.

She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on the popular social networking site, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday — evidence that she is no longer depressed, Manulife said.

Blanchard said she notified Manulife that she was taking a trip, and she’s shocked the company would investigate her in such a manner and interpret her photos that way.

“In the moment I’m happy, but before and after I have the same problems” as before, she said.

Even better, it would seem that the insurance company didn’t only use Facebook photos as a diagnostic tool, they also may have hacked her account to obtain them:

She also doesn’t understand how Manulife accessed her photos because her Facebook profile is locked and only people she approves can look at what she posts.

Nice work, that is.

Now, Blanchard lives in Canada (and was receiving the benefits in question not through Medicare, but through her employer’s insurance). So while indeed another example of insurance companies being evil, I have no real intent on attempting to tie this into the current U.S. health care debate.

What I’m a lot more interested in at the moment is how stereotypes about disability/mental illness are constantly utilized in attempts to expose the “fakers” — and how the fact that they’re used in this way by people in positions of authority only reinforces the idea that the stereotypes must be true.

When it comes to disability, able-bodied people tend to have an idea of what disability “looks like.” This results in proclamations about who is really disabled and who is really faking it (presumably, for all of the awesome government benefits that are inadequate to live on, and the fun social stigma). And for the person being proclaimed a faker, that frequently means not only the hurt of having their identity and lived experience dismissed, but also the denial of accommodations that they need.

Mental illness is no exception to this rule: people think they know what it looks like, that they can spot a person with a mental illness a mile away, and that if a person doesn’t live up to those expectations, they’re either seeking benefits they “don’t deserve,” or seeking attention. And with regards to depression specifically (as it’s the topic of the original article, and my greatest knowledge base), they tend to think that if someone isn’t spending all of their time crying, frowning, or refusing to get out of bed, they can’t possibly have it.

This makes me exceedingly angry. As someone who has lived with depression to varying, waxing and waning degrees for over 10 years now, I know from firsthand experience that there are a whole lot of ways to be depressed. Logically, I can only assume that there are also many other ways that I have not personally experienced. And yes, the unable to stop crying, unable to smile, unable to get out of bed kind of depression is very, very real. But it’s not the only kind. Most of the times I have been depressed, I have been able to smile, under certain circumstances. I have been able to enjoy myself, laugh, and have fun, when my mental state and the situation are right. I’ve also learned that I can be really, really good at putting on a happy face and pretending that I’m not depressed for the benefit of other people, even if I’m particularly unwell — indeed, I’ve learned that doing as much is expected of me.

And the claim that the type of depression where these things are true is not real depression is denying people — who have significant trouble finding happiness to begin with — whatever happiness they can find, in order to be recognized. It’s saying that people with mental illnesses cannot ever have fun or enjoy life under any circumstances. And it’s also telling people that their options for being believed, acknowledged, and accommodated are to “get better” or to start acting more miserable.

In addition to the emotional costs, which I clearly think are very important in their own right, there can be other major costs, as well — whether they be a loss of financial assistance, as above, or a loss of ability to receive treatment, a loss of familial support, and so on. These can all have serious repercussions on a person’s mental health, on their quality of life, and in some cases can result in physical injury or death.

Financial savings, which are obviously going to be the insurance company’s motivation, are not all this is about, here. As we can see with people defending the insurance company in the article’s comments, it’s also about separating oneself from people with mental illnesses — again, with the belief that you can size up a person’s mental health status just by looking at them — and maintaining a prejudiced worldview. And the insurance company’s decision, made from a position of presumed expertise and authority, has only reinforced the ignorant and bigoted misconceptions that people already held.

Just like the people who claim that the woman using the word rape to describe what violence her boyfriend inflicted on her is “making a mockery of real rape,” people also claim that those like Blanchard are “minimizing the realities of people with real mental health issues.” But no, actually. In both cases, the society that supports those kinds of dismissive statements is doing a fine job of that all on its own.