EVERYDAY DISCRIMINATION, EVERYDAY ANTI-ABLEISM:

Fighting Oppression as Providers

Mia Mingus, Creating Change 2009

Introductions

SAFER SPACE GUIDELINES

1. Take care of yourself

2. Ask for what you need

Tell me to be louder or clearer!

1. Speak for yourself No outing people Consent to share

2. Let others speak for themselves

3. No assuming, erasing, minimizing

4. Interrupt oppression …respectfully

RESPECT YOURSELF

RESPECT OTHERS

What do we mean by “disabled” or “disability?”

Disability Civil Rights, Social, and Cultural Models

Disabled = Identity

Oppression

Privilege

Prejudice and discrimination based on disabled status.

“Ableism is the idea that having a difference or disability is bad.”

-Galen Smith

The over-privileging of certain kinds of abilities.

-Parallel to sexism as over-privileging male gender

ABLE ISM Definitions

Disability Justice

Dignity of Risk

Robert Perske

Disability and Workers (Side Note)

Checking assumptions…and labeling versus identity

Isolation

Internal-

ized

Inter-Person

al

Institution-al

Ideas5 Eyes of Oppression

Modified from Mel King,YouthBuild

Ideas

Institution-al

Institutionalization

Inter-Personal

Common Sense As Oppression

Internal-ized

Oppression and TRAUMA

Isolation

Intersecting Oppressions

Intersections of OppressionsThe gawkers never get it right.

They’ve turned away from me, laughed, thrown rocks, pointed their

fingers, quoted Bible verses, called me immoral and depraved, tried to heal

me, swamped me in pity. Their hatred snarls into me, and often I can’t

separate the homophobia from the ableism from the transphobia.

The gawkers never get it right, but what I want to know is

this: will you?-Eli Clare, Gawking, Gaping, Staring, in Queer Crips, p. 214

Ideas about responding…

Responding as an Ally or Supporter…

CONSENT!

Advocacy, or Self-Advocacy?

Power, Privilege, and Response

Is now the time and place?Safety

Oppression

Self-control

*Trauma

Priority

CONSENT!

Other needs

?

Prepared

For Respon

seFor

Support

For Self-Care

Disability Justice and the Other Eyes of Oppression

People in Search of Safe

RestroomsTrans & Queer Students

Disabled

People

Parents & Women

PISSR Becomes PISSAR

& Accessible!

The Autistic Spectrum: What is it?

Sensory

Cognitive

SocialCommunication

Secondary/overlap:PTSD

AllergiesFood sensitivities

Depression/AnxietyPhysical

Attention, Etc.

Emotional

“If you’ve met one person with autism – you’ve met one person with autism."

-Stephen Shore

SENSORY OVERLOAD

Different brain processing of some or all of the following which is defined as or experienced as disabling*:

Ian Ruotsala

Autism and Access

-Sensory preferences for information/communication Sensory reduction

-Food

-Detail-to-whole, metaphors, pop culture

-Don’t be an ass (jokes/sarcasm) -Social interpreters

-Structure! With some flexibility

Make norms explicit!-Stimming allowed!

Use passions & strengths!

-Alone Time

-Earplugs, Hats, etc.

“I prefer to be subtle”

What are you thinking about?

Gender reaches into disability; Disability wraps around class;Class strains against abuse;Abuse snarls into sexuality;Sexuality folds on top of race … Everything finally piling into a single human body. …

Where to start? … with the memory of how my body felt swimming in the river,Chinook fingerlings nibbling at my toes. There are a million ways to start, but how do I reach beneath the skin?

Eli Clare, Exile & Pride, 123, 1999