Gender Across Borders

Sexuality is one of those topics that is simultaneously commonplace and taboo. People love to talk about sex, but only in specific contexts. This often leaves marginalized communities — such as queer people, transgender people, the elderly and people with disabilities — out of the discourse entirely. And when those communities are included, the discussion tends to miss the point by using patronizing language or crude shock value.

Take, for instance, the recent coverage of the ways in which the Putting People First initiative, a government-funded program for people with disabilities and the elderly in the UK, are assisting some people with disabilities with their sexual health. Rather than explore the reasons why government support of the needs — including sexual ones — of people with disabilities might be a good thing, the press has exploited the private cases of specific individuals. The initial attack was launched last week by The Sunday Telegraph, which “investigat[ed]” Putting People First and discovered that the program covers activities such as internet dating, trips to lap dance clubs and visits with sex workers. Naturally, this revelation has lead to a knee-jerk moral panic in the UK, as able-bodied taxpayers are shocked that their money is being spent on programs that support the sexual well-being of people with disabilities.

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"Bound" by Hayley Rose

Although the subject of rape rightfully garnishes much attention, the aftermath of such a trauma, and its long-term psychological effects, are often less discussed.  Being a victim of rape myself, I still relive the terror and shame of being raped even though it occurred ten years ago. To this day, my emotional and mental well-being is still affected.

Although the term “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” typically connotes images of war veterans who live an existence tormented with nightmares and flashbacks from their days in combat, it is not unique to this group of individuals. In fact, 7 – 8% of Americans will develop PTSD in their lifetime. Along with combat veterans, rape victims are common sufferers of PTSD. In fact, one third of all rape victims will develop PTSD in their lifetime, and 11% of all rape victims continue to suffer from it.

Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from PTSD, a relevant statistic considering that 91% of rape victims are female. It’s not hard to imagine that both male and female victims of rape often suffer from PTSD, a disorder that occurs after a person witnesses or experiences severe trauma. There are many types of reactions to traumatic events, such as anxiety, depression, and other troubling emotions. PTSD is different in the sense that it lingers on for many months and sometimes years after the traumatic event occurs.

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This article is cross-posted at AWID.org.

A Pageant for Amputees

In 2007, with funding from the government of Norway, Norwegian theater director Morten Traavik arrived in Cambodia with a goal: staging a beauty pageant for girls and women from all over the country who had lost limbs in landmine explosions. With the assistance of the Cambodian Disabled People’s Organization (CDPO), a local NGO, twenty prospective participants were identified among those already taking part in CDPO’s rehabilitation programs. Contestants were selected from each of Cambodia’s provinces, made over with pageant-style clothing and makeup, photographed and entered in a contest to select ‘Miss Landmine Cambodia.’ The winner would receive a custom-made prosthetic limb and some cash.

Billing the project as a combination of “arts and public service,” in which contestants are “fellow artists in a campaign,” Traavik had already staged a similar pageant in landmine-ridden Angola and wanted to carry over “the need for and joy of being seen, appreciated [and] taken seriously” in the Cambodian context [1].

Supporting People with Disabilities

Estimates of the number of people in Cambodia who have lost limbs in landmine explosions vary, with some sources, including the BBC, reporting that at least 40,000 people are chon pika, or amputees. Making basic life tasks accessible, creating suitable, non-exploitative work opportunities and integrating people with disabilities in Cambodia – much like everywhere else in the world – remains a formidable task. Read the rest of this entry →

Image courtesy of unaidstoday.org

The International AIDS Conference was held last week in Vienna. Among the topics discussed was the intersection of disability and HIV. Specifically, a session led by Health Canada and Global Partnership for Disability and Development investigated the integration of disability issues in HIV support programs. Since organizations that focus on HIV do not frequently cater to the needs of people with disabilities, and organizations that focus on disability do not frequently cater to the needs of people living with HIV, people with disabilities who are also HIV-positive lack a strong community of support. People with disabilities comprise approximately 10% of the world’s population — a staggering number of people to lack adequate accessibility to HIV prevention, testing and treatment resources.

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It’s getting difficult to bust a move these days without accidentally high-fiving a fellow Gleek (that’s a Glee geek for any of you weeks behind the rest of us). The FOX musical television show, which is eighteen episodes into its first season after taking a four-month intermission between episodes thirteen and fourteen, has garnered fans faster than one can say “break a leg.” Not only does its Tuesday night airings gather a respectable 13 million regular viewers, but the show is an online phenomenon, being watched and re-watched by millions at FOX’s site and hulu.com, re-performed and discussed by thousands on social networking sites, and tweeted about like none ever! And honestly, it’s not surprising. The show is about a group of “all-American” teens struggling with the day-to-day pressures of teenagehood in rural Ohio, who find an outlet in their show tunes choir where they can sing out their frustrations and connect across boundaries otherwise bisected. Many of the characters are beyond loveable, the humor of the show is off the wall and the musical numbers—including the singing, costumes, choreography and montages—are stunning. The combination has proved to be a powerful force.

At the same time, however, it has—per usual—raised a series of qualms in the feminist blogosphere. It is far from being the most PC show out there, a characteristic which sites such as Feministing, Bitch Media, this ain’t livin’ and others were quick to pick-up on. From the start, many have worried whether the African-American, Asian, homosexual, and physically disabled characters would simply unfold into token inclusions. Bloggers have continued to claim that characters such as Artie, Kurt, Tina and Mercedes have taken on predictable stereotypes and the show’s depiction of marginalized groups is in fact hurting more so than helping.  These writers have also taken issue with the blatant bigotry of the Sue Sylvester character, who as the ever-competitive power-hungry cheerleading coach humiliates students and coworkers alike by picking at their greatest insecurities, whether it be their plummeting popularity, their seeming lack of overt sexuality, their looks or their weight, and they point out similar utterances of anti-semitism and transphobia from the mouths and pens of her beloved “Cheerios.” s.e. smith at this ain’t livin’ writes:

“[P]eople get that Sue Sylvester is supposed to be a bigot, but the problem is that some people don’t recognize it when she says bigoted things, whether they are racist, transphobic, sexist, ableist, classist…she’s hard to recognize as a satire for some folks because they don’t really understand what she’s saying.”

The argument being that viewers might not get that what she’s saying is awful and will take away from the show that it is in fact okay to speak about certain groups of people in hurtful and demeaning ways. These qualms, while understandable at times, miss the mark on two specific counts: 1. That the show is by and large about the mistreatment of its minority characters and 2. That humor, even when including hyperbolic representation, can be an effective means of critique and cultural commentary. Read the rest of this entry →

Image via Wikipedia

American Apparel sells clothes by selling the sexuality of the “girl next door“. The company has claimed that the models in its ads are regular employees or friends, and while that story has been shown to be false, it still reveals the sort of aesthetic message for which their ads strive. They try to sell a concept of beauty that is at once everyday and hypersexual. You too can be objectified. Just buy our clothes.

As you might imagine, I don’t entirely understand the appeal. But the need to be seen as sexual, even at the price of being hypersexualized, in a society saturated with depictions of sexuality is something I can understand: often, the alternative is invisibility. Women with disabilities are one of the groups typically covered by this invisibility, though it does not protect us from sexual assault and abuse.

And this is the starting point for a powerful project from photographer Holly Norris working with Jes Sachse.

American Able in the TTC (source: http://forestfirecity.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/american-able/)

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Elaine Beale’s Another Life Altogether begins with a lie that, like so many of the other lies the protagonist, Jesse Bennett, tells throughout the novel, is meant to protect but ultimately only makes things worse. Jesse has a lot to hide from her sometimes cruel peers, especially when her family moves to the countryside from Hull and she finds herself at the fringes of the popular, but cruel, crowd at her new school.

Her family moves after her mother, who has a bipolar disorder, returns from the hospital after a suicide attempt. At her first school, Jesse explained her mother’s absence by claiming that she had won an around-the-world cruise from a cereal-box contest. The eventual discovery of the truth by Jesse’s classmates is handled with the sort of heartbreaking humour found throughout the novel:

I soon discovered that there were more euphemisms for madness than there were for sex. I also discovered that being the center of attention was not necessarily all it was cracked up to be.

It isn’t only the truth about her family that Jesse has to hide in order to avoid harassment from classmates, however: it is also the truth about herself which, in some ways, she is only beginning to understand. Read the rest of this entry →

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ho3mD2DA50]

Over the course of the past year and a half the beauty industry, make-up artistry in particular, has undergone an explosion of new creativity and participation via YouTube. The success of these “makeup gurus” has been noted by the mainstream media and has been covered by Allure, Elle, Stylelist, and SFWeekly to name a few. While the increasing commercialization of YouTube beauty channels is potentially problematic, YouTube is also proving itself an essential tool for creating change within the beauty industry. In this article I will discuss how YouTube is providing a platform for activists, advocates, and creative members of the public who were without a global forum before they took their practices to the internet.

This will no means be a comprehensive look at the ways in which beauty is expressed and criticized via YouTube but rather will focus on several small segments that have stood out as being particularly indicative of change within the beauty industry. In some cases the videos are giving voice to segments of the population whose needs are neglected by the mainstream beauty industry and for others the accessibility of YouTube is opening up new creative avenues to aspiring makeup artists who lacked the time, funds, or access to conventional beauty training.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics has expanded its monthly statistics to include more detailed information about women’s unemployment and wage disparity problems. The BLS specifically tracked statistics concerning female veterans, foreign born women, and disabled women to name a few. Here are some important facts: (from The National Council for Research on Women)

• Women with a disability have a higher unemployment rate than women with no disability: 14.3% compared to 8.4%.
• Foreign born women have an unemployment rate of 10.6% compared to 8.2% for native born women.
• Single women with children have an unemployment rate of 12.3% compared to 5.8% for married women.
• Women veterans experience higher unemployment rates than veteran men. In January 2010, the unemployment rate for women veterans was 11.2% compared to 9.4% for veteran men. Furthermore, the unemployment rate for women veterans has risen faster in the past year. From January 2009 to January 2010, veteran men’s unemployment rose from 7.5% to 9.4% while women veteran’s rate rose from 6.6% to 11.2%.
• Women are slightly more likely to hold multiple jobs than men. 5.4% of employed women hold multiple jobs compared to 4.5% of employed men.

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"brain" by natalia & gabriel on Flickr

When I first saw an article on EmpowHER (a website we’ve linked to before as part of GFLL) pointing out that Adults Can Have Asperger’s Syndrome Too, I was glad to see an acknowledgment of the existence of people like me. But when I read the article, I found that the author had not quoted any Aspies or even linked to any sites where the words of Aspies might be found, such as the blog Square 8.

As important as “nothing about us without us” is to the disability rights movement, however, this turned out to be the least of the problems with the text. Read the rest of this entry →