Chomp

As the past two entries might cause you to surmise, last week I had more than my fair share of crap landing on me because I'm blind. I knew it was getting to me, but truly didn't understand how much until I bit someone's head off.
I went to a discussion group on transgendered women's issues that, from my previous experience, is essentially a fascinating discussion of gender with lovely servings of race, class, and sexual orientation politics added to the stew. The facilitator has always been extremely open to disability issues going so far as to send me an article ahead of time so I could read it and fully participate in the conversation.
Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe my frustration level was at the boil over threshold. Maybe I'm just human and like any member of a marginalized group sometimes want to not have to educate or explain, rather having everything simply be done the "right" way. Whatever the case, I lost it.
First, in trying to make a point about something being both intellectual and emotional, a person must have tapped their head and chest. It wasn't clear initially, but through context I sorted it out. Then someone made reference to how they look. I didn't understand her point because I had no way of knowing she has masculine traits. When the same person started telling a story using facial expressions that conveyed crucial information, I put up my hand and stopped her. The conversation then went something like this:
"Hang on a second. Could you please, please stop assuming everyone in this room is sighted. It's pissing me off."
She replied, "I didn't know."
"The dog under the table didn't tell you?" I asked.
"I didn't know what the dog was for."
I said, "I know I don't look blind, but still. You can't just assume everyone here can see."
She said, "My bad."
It was awkward, I was intense in how I presented my point, and the entire room was silent for that moment afterwards that tells you everyone is uncomfortable with how someone behaved. And by someone, in this case I mean me.
I'm not even going to explain why I was justified in being upset because clearly I had good reason. I did not, however, have reason to be rude. I simply lost my cool after a week of being hemmed in by a world that assumes sight and cannot manage to think outside that particular box. I wish my ire had been directed at those who truly deserved it. Then again, when it's an entire social structure to blame, how do you vent at the appropriate entity?

Not Female. disabled.

Last June, I started a co-ed discussion group on bisexuality in part because the only venue of that type was male-dominated in a way that made women uncomfortable and had proven to be unfixable. Unfortunately, the new group is not attracting women, so I finally took three deep breaths and began organizing a female-only version.
Women-only spaces make me ill at ease in the same way I feel slightly weird when I realize everyone in a room is white or heterosexual or LGBT or from a middle class background or whatever. Forming a group that is explicitly homogeneous on a particular dimension has forced me to examine my discomfort and shockingly the explanation involves disability.
When women speak about the importance of gender specific spaces, they reference times in their lives when they felt limited by a patriarchal system, silenced by men, or stripped of their personhood reduced to an object. Women-only groups allow females to express themselves freely without the constraints male-dominated society imposes. It is about breathing a sigh of relief because all the "crap" is suddenly able to be set aside and the business of being oneself embarked upon without the usual fetters.
All my life, disability has been the single factor most likely to shape my experiences. It is the thing people react to, the trait by which others define me, and by necessity mentioned often. My female gender, on the other hand, is not something people discern nor is it a regular topic of conversation. Its significance is limited to the bathroom I am directed to or the gender specific moniker used.
I have experienced a myriad of limitations placed upon me by others, from expectations of achievement to opportunities offered. At every turn, the judgments of others have been barriers between me and what I want. They have almost entirely been a factor of my disability not my gender. It's been "Blind people can't do physics" not "Women can't do physics."
People do not attempt to silence me. Instead, there seems to be this assumption that I lack a voice as if I have no thoughts or words to be expressed. Rather than devaluing my perspective, I am presumed without opinion.
My very personhood has been stripped away not because I am female and therefore an object of sexual desire but because I am perceived as my disability. I am blindness with legs and feet.
The bottom line is that I don't experience the world as a woman, which means I have trouble identifying with the reasons women want spaces to themselves. It would seem reasonable that I could at least identify with the desire to have a space free of oppressive forces, but even the idea of a disabled-only space makes me twitch.
I believe this inability to even empathize comes from the fact that I have assimilated into able-bodied culture to such an extreme that I taken it on as my own. It might be flawed, oppressive, and negatively impact my life, but for better or worse, it is the world I inhabit. Instead of creating spaces where I can escape its oppressive forces, I want to transform the bigotry.
Furthermore, I have found a way to construct a life that rejects the limitations, denial of personhood, and lack of a voice able bodied culture would impose upon me. For example, while strangers may assume I do not engage in independent thought, this blog allows me to use my words to articulate my experiences in the hopes of redefining how people perceive disability.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." I guess the totality of my life experiences have brought me to a place where oppressive forces can do their worst truly impacting my life in negative ways, but I refuse to give them the power to limit anything within my control such as my self-image and ability to express myself.

Living with Lines

In the last entry, I wrote of my frustration with people who want to tear down arbitrary borders yet have some very arbitrary definitions of what constitutes a differentiation worth eradicating. Today I want to talk about life with all those boundaries.
Whether it be about sexual orientation, disability, gender, chronic illness, or class, my life has a plethora of delineations. Trying to find my place within that complexity is difficult. Can I stand in both the disability and bisexuality areas simultaneously? Do I need to abandon my gender to stand in the area set aside for my sexual orientation? Can I balance on the toes of one foot to be in the place delineated by all my boundaries? At best, it is a complicated prospect and at worst a failing endeavor.
More and more, I find myself faced with the question of what identity is most important at that moment in time. While working to create a new discussion group on bisexuality at my local LGBT Center, I kept encountering disablist attitudes ranging from people not thinking alternative formats were important to constant underestimation of my abilities. Each time I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that my current goal had nothing to do with disability and that pushing such an agenda in the midst of trying to gain cooperation on another project would not achieve my goal.
Then there are the times when adding together two identities has an exponential result. Disabled people are helpless. Women, especially those of us who look small, are fragile. This makes me a fragile, helpless being.
There are also cases when one identity overpowers the other. Bisexual people are promiscuous, but disabled people aren't sexual. If you've been reading this blog for any period of time, you know the misconception of hypersexuality cannot overpower the desexuality disability status imparts.
Years ago, when disability was the sole focus of my existence, it was easier to negotiate all this. I simply went around being disabled and that was that. Now, as I have somehow managed to amerce myself in the bisexual community, I have far more complexity. Not only do I feel the conflict between the two, but it also highlights my other memberships. For example, I have become aware that being a woman does matter if someone hasn't figured out I'm disabled.
My mind contains a map of all these memberships delineated by a network of lines and I have instinctively learned to negotiate it. Some days it is about deciding what space I wish to inhabit that particular day. Some days it is about stretching myself between two spaces so a foot can be planted in both. Some days I attempt to balance on the very lines that define all the areas.
Alone I can often ignore this map. When others are around I am forever aware of where I place my feet and the consequences of a misstep. If I had been the cartographer, I would have no objections, nut I did not decide that my disability made me asexual, that bisexuals were hypersexualized, women are fragile, or chronic illness is a fate worse than death. Society as a whole has imposed these ideas upon me.
I am, however, responsible for bowing to them without question. The choice, between treading carefully or ignoring the consequences of walking wherever I wish, is a choice even if the options aren't particularly good.
This is where courage comes into play. Moving forward knowing you are going to encounter unpleasantness and doing it anyway takes serious ovarian fortitude (female balls).