Skin, Tooth, and Bone by Elvia

In the reading "Skin, Tooth and Bone" we are given what disability justice really means. Unlike how  most of the time organizers are calling anything disability justice in the article its defined as the text critical to their work, work and thoughts from disability justice activists, and the images they seek out and wrap themselves in. In other words Bones, Teeth, and Skin.

One of the main things the article tries to get across is that disability justice means getting to the root of disability oppression which is ableism. Ableism is the discrimination in favor of able bodied people which in turn creates this "other" group of people who are deemed less smart or capable. Thus putting able body people at the top of the hierarchy and everyone else at the bottom. This hierarchy is further divided into any one who is deemed dangerous, like people of color or any gender non conforming person. It just shows ability, race, and gender are intertwined when it comes to people being oppressed.

Throughout a portion of the article 10 principles of Disability Justice are discussed. Some things really stuck out to me like collective liberation and recognizing wholeness. In order to have disability justice we must come to understand that people with disabilities are whole people. They are humans no matter how society deems them and they are equally entitled to all their rights. The second thing that we must also take into consideration is that no one should get left behind because people with disabilities are multi racial, multi gendered, and mixed class. This all comes down to helping everyone and organizing together to make sure everyone gets their needs meet. This is something very important because as we've seen in other movements, like womens rights, we see women of color not being heard or excluded. That is why this movement is trying to make sure everyone is heard because they know not one solution or one group of people will benefit from change.

An online article I found in the Huff Post titled "6 Instances of Discrimination People with Disabilities Face Every Day" talks about discrimination of disable people that they face everyday in which us able people may not think about or take for granted. One of the big things that the author Tiffiny, talks about who is also disabled is that just because you are physically disabled people automatically assume you are mental disable. So they'll assume that since you are physically disabled you are not fully equipped to do simple things like buy your own groceries as the author described from personal experience. Another thing I never thought about was transportation specifically with taxis. They discriminate against people in wheelchairs by not picking them up since they just see it as a hassle they don't want to deal with instead of looking at these people as another paying customer that needs transportation. Everyday discrimination exists for people with disabilities and they need to heard and taken seriously.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tiffiny-carlson/discrimination-people-disabilities-_b_4509393.html

What can all of us do to help reduce the discrimination against disabled people in our everyday lives?

Nikhaule Martin of Primer

Nikhaule Martin
GWS 390




The violence against black and brown extends far beyond those who are able bodied. However, it is the violence against people of color with disabilities that have ignored for so long.

As mentioned in the reading ableism has a complex, and deep history within our heteropatriarchal, white supremacist, colonialist and capitalistic society. Ableism contributes to the many intersections of one’s identity, however, this intersection often goes unvoiced. Within large movements, conversations geared towards fighting for gender equality, fighting to end state violence, or fighting to end police brutality are always geared towards able-bodied people by other able-bodied people. Within the Black Lives Matter movement as I have experienced them personally, they are often times represented by people from marginalized groups who forget that even they speak from a place of privilege. Which is another criticism of the BLM movement.

Which is something that is both unsettling and intriguing. The BLM movement is a movement where being black is represented as a monolithic experience. When discussing state violence and police brutality the victims that are often times advocated for, are cisgendered, heterosexual, able bodied black men and boys. This narrative consistently, and constantly excludes both trans men and women and all members of the LGBTQ community, women and the disabled. Which always leads me to think how well can we counteract the violence committed against black and brown bodies if we are not discussing the violence that is committed against all black and brown bodies.

I have seen communities across Tumblr that have validated the voices of many that have gone silenced for so long. Tumblr has served as a breeding for the sharing of the voices of those who are disabled, while offering many educational resources to those who may be ignorant on the topic. Those who disabled and apart of other marginalized groups have taken the responsibility of voicing their own experiences, and should be validated by those who they have fought for.

Although, people have done a great job at sharing their stories what are some ways that mainstream movements can work to include the voices and perspectives of those who are disabled?

Skin Tooth and Nail

In Skin, Tooth, and Bone, Patty Bern and and Sins Invalid write about the 10 principles of disability justice. They provide clear guidelines for a motion around the assembly of agency and activism for the disabled justice movement.

One principle that I found to be most important in this section is ... There has been a long-time misunderstanding about what it means to be an ally in movements; it is often forgotten that the mobilization lies within the minority group and not within their more-privileged advocates. In the process of forming an activist platform, able-bodied persons have a habit of taking on the role of center of the movement and looking at it as an advantage for them, rather than a push toward the actual goal. This is what is often called the "White Savior" complex.

Another reason this principle stands out to me as one of the most important is because of what it entails- that disabled persons CAN help themselves- i.e. they aren't as helpless as we often simplify them to be. This is so vital to the movement, as it further encourages allies to step back and understand that their roles as allies is to provide support and back up those on the forefront, not to claim the movement as their own. The point of the movement is not to perpetuate a vision of disabled persons as helpless unmotivated/unable to mobilize. Rather, it is to turn more heads toward the need for resources in order for these groups to mobilize and be active independently AND interdependently.

This is a common theme within many, if not all, minority groups mobilizing around the world. In terms of international feminism, there is an issue around groups of South/Southwest Asian women who are fighting against colonial control and western racism along with intracultural problems and the western "feminists" who try to enforce their still-racist feminism. Rather than creating or encouraging more space for the assembly of Arab women activists.

What are some strategies we can adopt to ensure we are not overstepping our boundaries as allies to various minority groups?

picture:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=qxebWsi9E8Ts_QaJvKCABA&btnG=Search&q=arab+women+activist+organizations#imgrc=i5YbeA8YVEXKsM:

Undivided Rights

While reading selected chapters from Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize For Reproductive Justice the importance of language stands out as a central theme. In this blog post I will focus on the issues with the rhetoric of Pro-Choice and why Reproductive Justice is a more inclusive framing of the movement.

Women of color activists believe that Pro-Choice terminology is too narrow and is really only applicable to middle class white women. It invalidates and disregards women with multiple marginal identities. Choice rhetoric assumes that legality of abortion is all we need. However legality of an option does not make the option accessible especially when systems of oppression based on race and class are set in society serving as barriers. Legality is not enough.

A Reproductive Justice framing includes the fact that women’s reproductive issues do not include just the right to an abortion. Women should also have the human right to have a child. The Pro-Choice movement completely disregards that women of color have been systemically sterilized throughout history. Women of color are also affected by environmental racism, this affects indigenous women at a very high rate. Lack of healthcare information, coverage, and culturally competent providers serve as a barrier to reproductive health services. The mainstream Pro-Choice movement, and specifically white feminists like Margaret Sanger, who is often called the mother of birth control, used eugenic rhetoric to pass the legalization of birth control.

The importance of language and platforms addressed in Undivided Rights makes me think about the white feminist “pink pussy hats” at the women’s march for the passed two years. This is yet another example of cisgender white women dismissing the fact that not all vaginas are pink and not all women have vaginas! Similar to the Pro-Choice movement only focusing on white middle class issues such as legalizing abortion, White Feminists at the women’s march support only their own issues and then go to the extent of putting a pink pussy hat on Harriet Tubman, and then have the audacity to wonder why black women and other women of color do not “work” with white women or do not care about “women’s issues”.

https://www.racked.com/2018/1/22/16920814/harriet-tubman-pink-pussy-hat-women-of-color-intersectional-feminism

What are other examples of white women throughout history and in the present excluding women of color. How can we (other white women) intervene in these situations?

Alex Phistry on Undivided Rights

            Undivided Rights is a marvelously written piece that is bursting with critical information and background history on reproductive health, rights, and wrongdoings in the United States. One of the arguments made by the author is that there was a distinct difference between voluntary birth control for white, upper-class women and population control/forced sterilization for women of color.

            The author(s) argue that while African American women were supportive of birth control while still aware that it was used as a tool to promote and regulate white supremacy. While this makes me think of the saying, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” it also leads me to contemplate on how America has a long history of making things “too good to be true” only to pull the rug out from whomever they are deceiving. In this case, eugenics was the tactic used in order to weed out people deemed “unfit” for reproducing, ultimately leading to forced sterilization of nearly 100,000 people. It is important to note that the majority of people who were forcefully sterilized were people of color. It is no wonder that people of color have a history of opposition to family planning policies; especially due to these policies being used as a way to legally and covertly endorse the genocide of people of color.

            One of the other ways in which the United States deceived and manipulated people into believing population control was morally the right thing to do was by indicating that making birth control more accessible would “eliminate poverty,” (60). In doing so, the United States made people believe that in controlling population growth in areas where poverty was high, that there would be a drastic decrease in the overall poverty level. This tactic was clearly aimed at people, namely women, of color—which also indicated and perpetuated the idea that only people of color were affected by poverty. It also perpetuated the idea that it is women of color who are to blame for the high population and whose reproductive rights need to be regulated or controlled.

These unjust and immoral beliefs were so highly publicized that the same beliefs are still present in today’s society; and I believe it’s this history of a false belief system that continues to fuel racist/classist/sexist attitudes and behavior. In the government as well as upper-class, white people creating a new category of “other” in people (women) of color they have created animosity toward these people (the idea of “welfare queens”) by making them the objects of wrongdoings in society. This idea was beneficial to those belonging to the upper-class, white society in that it shifted public focus of the working and lower classes off the real wrongdoers, those rich people who were stealing or redirecting government funds to keep themselves rich, to those who genuinely needed funds or government assistance. This is just one example of the multitude of unethical actions/behaviors that are common to the American government and white, male, upper-class to shift angry focus from themselves to those more vulnerable subjects; this case being the lower-class and people (women) of color.

BLOG - UNDIVIDED RIGHTS

America’s history is riddled with a combined offense, simultaneity of sexism and racism toward Latinx women. Entrenched in ideology that not only objectifies, but pathologizes their bodies, Latinx women often lose autonomy to their own fertility: forced sterilization. In the multi-authored book Undivided Rights, Elena R. Gutiérrez highlights the organization of Puerto Rican feminists in the 1960s and 70s against forced sterilization within the American context.

There seems to be a similar air in the struggles around addressing reproductive justice from an intersectional standpoint today, as it was in the past. Putting forth this historical lesson of the 60s-70s pro-reproductive justice movement in the Latinx context serves as not only pertinent in understanding the discourse today, but also remembering the struggles of women of color and most particularly within this portion of the text, Latinx. Latinx, pro-reproductive rights activists have and continue to face an important crossroads: supporting legal and safe abortion, while also fighting against the continued nonconsensual sterilization at the hands of a medical system run on racial bias and the state.

The reading points to a Puerto Rican nationalist group called the Young Lords Party (Gutiérrez 2004) . After the death of Carmen Rodriguez, the group took to not only condemning the systems and practices which allowed for the first death post-the New York State abortion law to be that of a Puerto Rican woman, but took action in opening clinics operated by Puerto Rican communities (Gutiérrez 2004 ). The medical world is riddled with the same racism and misogyny that is present in every institution. By creating services for women outside of the dominant medical sphere, the Young Lords are able to in a way, take back the autonomy which was lost from their bodies in some respect and I believe that to be crucial.

The conversation around forced sterilization I see within this piece, most particularly this portion reminds me greatly of similar conversation we are having today not about the past, but the present. Up until recently, the California Prison System had been sterilizing inmates. After a woman had given birth within the system, they were signed to be permanently sterilized (Ohlheiser 2013). Most prison spaces are highly occupied by people of color. In California, there is a particularly high number of occupants who identify as Latinx. The California Prison System’s inherent targeting of Latinx women is apparent. Thus why, now more than ever, we must acknowledge a more inclusive model of pro-reproductive justice. We can’t just let the public conversation revolve around the wants and needs of a certain sector of women adorned in hideous, pink hats. Now more than ever, we need to listen to women of color, particularly Latinx women, as well as other marginalized sectors in their struggle and solutions in fighting against anti-reproductive rights rhetoric.

I choose a photo of one of the prisons, wherein these events have taken place as a reminder that there is still far more that needs to be done. We do not live in an era that is post-race or post-feminism if only a few years earlier, women of color were sought out and targeted in a mass sterilization effort. I also linked the Atlantic article I read with this information. QUESTION: How do we create an all-inclusive model for pro-reproductive rights that is not only anti-racist and anti-sexist, but anti-all systems of power? LINK: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/california-prisons-were-illegally-sterilizing-female-inmates/313591/

Brenda Ramirez on Undivided Rights

In Undivided Rights, an incredible point was made regarding African American women and their struggle in trying to attain reproductive justice. However, in order to do so, it’s imperative that we know the origins of reproductive exploitation and its roots in rape, forced marriages, sterilization abuse, etc.

Reading about the ways in which African American women were exploited made me think about just how common these narratives are among women of color. The text goes on to say that not only were they exploited, but they were seen as breeders and sexually promiscuous. Their sense of humanity was literally stripped from them and they were equated to animals. I think this ideology of black women and other women of color are being depicted as only sexual objects remains relevant to our society today. We know that this objectification of black women’s bodies continues to exist in the way our society actively portrays and treats them.

Although our society continues to sexualize and glorify black women’s bodies, they do nothing for the well-being of black women. Our society has consistently permitted a misogynist and racist rhetoric of black women to avoid being held accountable for their lack of action regarding reproductive rights. In turn, the lack of reproductive justice and overall medical treatment of black women have intersected with factors such as poverty to create a window which puts black women at higher risk of sexually transmitted diseases, heart disease, etc. I think many people who don’t see or understand why this is such an important issue completely grasp the fact that this isn’t just about the amount of black women’s bodies who are disproportionately suffering the consequences of these narratives. This issue is much bigger in a sense that it also directly affects, black women’s entire communities.

As I previously mentioned, the objectification of black women as sexual objects and not human beings is prevalent in our society. Corporations, for instance, have used the bodies of black women to advertise their products as being “exotic”. In this way, companies use black women’s body to make their products more desirable. These kinds of marketing techniques serve as a way to continue to exploit women as sexual objects while also using racist ideals to justify this objectification. However, these same companies profiting from using black women’s bodies as marketing techniques have no involvement in movements to support black women’s struggle for reproductive justice or anything else for that matter.

How you think that racist and misogynist narratives have affected black women today? After all of these years, why do you think this continues to occur?