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This week I went to the Sex::Tech conference in San Francisco hosted by ISIS. The Access Sex panel was on sex education, sexual health, and people with disabilities. I thought the BlogHeristas might like to see my detailed notes on the panel - it was largely about women's sexual health and sex education, and it also might intersect with our parenting community, since BlogHer has a strong group of mom bloggers who are parents of kids with special needs.
The panelists were: Cory Silverberg (http://sexuality.about.com/mbiopage.htm), Bethany Stevens (Morehouse School of Medicine), Liz Henry (BlogHer), Jen Cole (GimpGirl)
Cory Silverberg opened by asking some questions about who was in the audience. Our audience was full of public health workers and health/sex educators and providers.
Then Cory asked what people want from the panel. What do they need to know?
Audience: How to deal with school, staff, parents. They don't think the kids are at risk. How to get education across? Special ed classes also have to educate to multiple levels at once.
We didn't get a lot of other answers, but I felt like this was a great trick of moderation, a good way to start the panel; it helped me feel connected with the people we were speaking to.
Bethany, Jen, and I each talked for about 10 minutes each. Bethany spoke on models of disability, medical vs. sociopolitical. I spoke about disability and sex. Jen then talked about GimpGirl, a successful, long-running online community for women with disabilities. We spent the rest of the hour and a half on audience questions and discussions. It was a very lively discussion!
We mentioned the guide for health care providers for disabled women a lot, and here is the link to it: Table Manners and Beyond: The Gynecological Exam for Women with Developmental Disabilities and Other Functional Limitations. Please read it! Even if you are not disabled and not a health care worker, you can help, by being aware of these issues. You can print it out and bring it to your own OB/GYN, or call a clinic or two and ask them if they're accessible. But even more than that, consider that during your lifetime, as you age, you are likely to spend 8 years as a person with a disability. You may someday need these services yourself.
Bethany's lightning talk on disability politics
Bethany introduced herself. "My CV is big and throbbing. I released myself from the shackles of Power Point and recommend it to you." Going to talk about different models of disability. Also, with some personal narrative, personal examples of what I mean about different theories. Speaking on an embodied level.
There are two models I want to outline. First, the medical model of disability. I recommend you move away from that. Don't use it in your work. It posits that the problem of disability is on the individual rather than on society. Rather than addressing structural issues of oppression, architectural or social, look at as a social issue with social and political solutions. Medical model puts an onus on individual to normalize their bodies. It puts us in a constricting box of normalcy. The medical model leads us away from civil rights ideology. By pushing the idea of normalcy we create more problems than solutions.
Second, the social model - I want to create a model of the world I want to live in. Michael Oliver in Britain. The idea of impairment is separate from the idea of disability. Separating a functional issue or condition from the social ramifications of that imapirment. For example I have osteogenesis imperfecta or brittle bones. The embodiment of that is being deemed subhuman. That may seem like a dramatic statement, but it is true. We are treated inhumanely. Cory suggests we are the most under-served population for sexual health, education and rights.
Think about the social meanings of disability.
I encourage you in your work to denounce and deconstruct these concepts. It is the first step in creating this revolution of embodiment. By doing this in your work it is liberatory not just for people with disabilities but for all other people. 80% of people in the U.S. will deal with disability in their lives. We have increasing elderly populations. Create that revolution of
