A magenta-filtered monochrome photo of a Black person smiling while sitting in a living room is the backdrop for the text announcement: “Ramp Your Voice! Illuminating the Richness of Black Disabled People: Our Joys & Truths Join Us Friday, June 7 11:30 AM EST"

Ramp Your Voice! Conference — Friday, June 7 | FREE

Vilissa Thompson is one of those people who makes the world better by existing in it.

She’s run her website, Ramp Your Voice!, since 2013. And, she specifically started it to highlight Black disabled women and femme folks.

Now, she’s putting on a FREE conference — and, yes, you’re invited!

While the conference is focused on providing an affirming space for Black disabled people, it’s opened to anyone to come listen & learn.

And we all know that the disability community especially needs a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment about racism and colorism.

If you’re not already registered, you can learn more about the conference and do so here: https://bit.ly/RYVConf2024

Disabled & Deaf Trans People’s Survey (DTPS)

Disabled & Deaf Trans People’s Survey (DTPS)

The following is from the Transgender Law Center’s Disability Justice Project:

The Disability Project with floral decorations

Ableism is woven into our everyday systems yet the knowledge of disabled and Deaf trans people has often been overlooked in research, leadership development, and philanthropy. Collecting stories and data will create opportunities for our leadership and momentum to tell our collective story and fight for our rights and needs.

The DTPS is a survey created by and for disabled and Deaf trans people. This survey gives disabled and Deaf trans people a tool to advocate for ourselves, to organize, and to transform movement spaces.

Please participate in the survey by visiting the survey website!

Take Action Now on Section 1557 of the ACA

I’m passing this along from NCIL (which I know has been problematic as of late) because this is incredibly important to every community I work with. Please consider reaching out and speaking up.

On June 14, 2019, the Trump Administration published a proposed regulation that would roll back the nondiscrimination protections under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Section 1557 is the provision of the ACA that prohibits discrimination in healthcare programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability. The Administration’s proposal is extremely dangerous and discriminatory, and we need to do everything we can to stop this proposal from being finalized!

Specifically, the proposal would limit the number of health programs subject to Section 1557, and it would narrow the scope of the protections under Section 1557 in the following ways:

• Gender identity and sex stereotyping would be completely eliminated from the definition of sex discrimination, the definition of gender identity would be eliminated, and all references to sexual orientation in HHS regulations would be erased. This could allow healthcare providers to deny transgender people gender-affirming care, and would result in queer and trans people being significantly less likely to get quality healthcare and more likely to face discrimination, abuse, or refusals of care.

• Requirements for notices and taglines that let people with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) know about language access services, including services for disabled people, would no longer be required.

• Healthcare providers would be able to refuse care and justify it under Title IX’s religious exemption. This would allow healthcare providers to discriminate against or deny abortions, reproductive health services, or other health services that a provider says violates their religious beliefs.

• The ban on insurance plan discrimination on the basis of disability, age, and other factors would be removed, which would disproportionately impact people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. The removal of protections around benefit design would disproportionately impact people with HIV/AIDS and other disabilities and chronic illnesses that may be treated or managed with more expensive medications or other treatments.

• The requirement for healthcare providers to share notices that inform people of their nondiscrimination policy, their rights, how to file complaints if they are discriminated against, and other information would be completely eliminated.

All the above proposed changes will impact disabled people. In addition, the Administration is specifically seeking comments on questions related to disability access.

Specifically, they have asked for feedback regarding:

• Effective Communication: Whether to remove the requirement for covered providers with less than 15 employees to provide auxiliary aids and services.

• Accessibility Standards: Whether to continue to apply the 2010 ADA Standards to all entities under Section 1557, specifically in regard to benefits to disabled people versus burdens on private entities (see 45 CFR 92.103).

• Reasonable Modifications: Whether to keep current language regarding accommodations that is derived from Title II of the ADA, or to substitute with language conforming to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Current language (based on the ADA) states that covered entities must make reasonable modifications to policies, practices, or procedures when necessary to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability, except if the modification would fundamentally alter the nature of the health program or activity. Proposed new language (based on the Rehabilitation Act) states that covered entities shall make reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability. In this section, they also seek comment on whether to include an exemption for “undue hardship” (see 45 CFR 92.105).

It is clear that if this attempted rollback is finalized, disabled people and many others will be significantly less likely to receive quality healthcare or to file grievances when discriminated against. Disabled people would also not be provided with the resources they need to know about those things in the first place.

Take Action!

The comment period closes on August 13, 2019 at 11:59 Eastern, so please submit comments as soon as possible! Your comments should explain why you oppose this proposed change, and you should address as many of the specific proposed changes and questions as possible. This is a cruel attack on people who already experience discrimination in healthcare settings, and this proposal will only make things worse. We must ensure the Administration hears from as many of us as possible!

Comments can be submitted online through the Federal eRulemaking Portal (preferred) or by mail.

• Federal eRulemaking Portal: You may submit electronic comments at regulations.gov/comment?D=HHS-OCR-2019-0007-0001 or by going to regulations.gov and searching for the Docket ID number HHS-OCR-2019-0007. Click on “Comment Now” and you can type your comments into the comment box or upload a document.

• Regular, Express, or Overnight Mail: Your comments must be postmarked by the comment submission deadline (August 13, 2019). You may mail comments to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights / Attention: Section 1557 NPRM, RIN 0945-AA11 / Hubert H. Humphrey Building, Room 509F / 200 Independence Avenue SW / Washington, DC 20201.

Crip Bits – Gettin’ Some & Givin’ Some: Disability, Sex & Access!

Check out the upcoming Crip Bits FB live:

Vanessa Rochelle Lewis and Patty Berne will discuss questions like: What do we mean by Cripping Sex? How have we accessed our sexualities as people with disabilities? What limits our access to sex? What supports our access to sex? What does intimacy look like if you need access support? What does the experience of kink allow us to learn as people with disabilities? How has white supremacy, enforced gender and cis heteronormativity restricted our access to sex? How does limited social currency affect our access to sex and our own sexualities?

 

The event will take place on Facebook Live – if you are logged into FB when the event begins and follow the Sins Invalid page, you should receive a notification when we go live. Otherwise, you can find the event by clicking the “video” tab on the Sins Invalid page at the time of the event and after. CART transcription will be provided!

 

Click here for more information about the event and the presenters.
Follow Sins Invalid on Facebook to get alerts when they go live!

The Power Of A Single Photograph

Content warning for mentions of ableism and sexual violence (no details).

colored graphics with text: "The Power of a Single Photograph | Canadian Sex Therapist | Chronic Sex"

There are three things you need to know about me:
I am 29 years old.
I identify as a cis queer woman.
And I have Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a psychiatric disorder characterised by disruption of identity in which there are two or more distinct identity states (dissociative identities [personalities]) associated with marked discontinuities in the sense of self and agency. Each personality state includes its own pattern of experiencing, perceiving, conceiving, and relating to self, the body, and the environment. At least two distinct personality states recurrently take executive control of the individual’s consciousness and functioning in interacting with others or with the environment, such as in the performance of specific aspects of daily life such as parenting, or work, or in response to specific situations (e.g., those that are perceived as threatening). Changes in personality state are accompanied by related alterations in sensation, perception, affect, cognition, memory, motor control, and behaviour. There are typically episodes of amnesia, which may be severe. The symptoms are not better explained by another mental, behavioural or neurodevelopmental disorder and are not due to the direct effects of a substance or medication on the central nervous system, including withdrawal effects, and are not due to a disease of the nervous system or a sleep-wake disorder. The symptoms result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other critical areas of functioning.

I struggled with DID my entire life, but wasn’t diagnosed until my mid-20s and soon I will celebrate my 6th year of diagnosis. I had gone through essentially the first quarter of my life completely oblivious that the life I thought and believed was mine was shared with, at the time, 3 alternative identities (alters). My life is still a struggle, but the diagnosis is earth-shattering. Finally, I had a label that helped me get access to specific treatment paths that had previously been denied to me. But it also labelled me as “insane,” “crazy,” and incapable.

My continued struggle further cemented these adverse labels to medical personnel who categorically ignored the continuing trauma and violence I experienced as a mentally ill queer woman who after diagnosis experience heinous sexual violence. Instead, I became “uncooperative,” and “untreatable” a label used with great prejudice after I fought for my social work education and eventual licensure.

Because of these stigmas and reoccurring ableism, I was forced to take the treatment of my DID into my own hands. Many DID systems face two separate possibilities of cohesion: integrate or co-consciousness. Integration is the process of the all or some alters to become one unique identity either with the host or core (the original personality) or another alter. Co-conscious is a process where both the alters and the host work together, and there are more flexibility and choice. To put it simply; the analogy of driving a car can be used to describe co-consciousness. Right now as I write this, I am in charge, driving the car, and the goal is in the passenger seat with a full view of what is happening. Or be in the back seat, not a full view but still have an idea of what is happening. As it is right now when one of my alters starts ‘driving’; I’m in the trunk. No memory, no idea what has transpired. Zero context available to me.

My goal is co-conscious. I want to be in the passenger seat or the back seat. The trunk is dark and somewhat traumatising. To achieve this has required countless hours in therapy, passive-aggressive comments that treatment is not ‘working’ by ‘well-meaning’ family members who have no clue. For co-conscious to be possible means that everyone has to want it.

Continue reading “The Power Of A Single Photograph”

Have You Heard of the Sick Theories Conference?

pale pink poster with black and white square floral design on top half, bottom half: “Sick Theories” in script, with additional text - ‘A trans-disciplinary conference on sickness and sexuality - WHEN November 8-9, 2018 / WHERE Jackman Humanities Building 170 St. George st. - University of Toronto / KEYNOTE Johanna Hedva / FIND US sicktheories.com // sicktheories@gmail.com - poster illustration by Sabrina Scott, poster design by Hannah Browne

Sick Theories is a two-day trans-disciplinary conference by and for those who identify as sick, disabled, and mad happening at the University of Toronto on November 8th and 9th, 2018. Organizers Margeaux Feldman and Lauren Fournier have put together forty activists, academics, writers, artists, and educators who will discuss the relationship between sickness and sexuality through panels, workshops, a keynote, an art exhibition, and artist roundtable.

Feldman, a writer, educator, activist, and English Literature and Sexual Diversity Studies PhD student at the University of Toronto, conceptualized Sick Theories after her fibromyalgia diagnosis and subsequent focus on books about chronic illness. Seeking community beyond the written word, she found a collaborator in Fournier, a writer, curator, and artist.

With focuses on performance and embodied art practices, sick representations, matters of care, and sick pleasures/sick futures, the conference covers a wide array of presentations and discussions. The conference’s keynote is a discussion with contemporary artist and author of Sick Woman Theory Johanna Hedva on their new book On Hell. Panel and workshop topics include: Renee Dumaresque’s “Queering Chronic Vulvar Pain: Erotic Potentialities Cited in Suffering”,  “Calling in Sick” with Taraneh Fazeli, and Clementine Morrigan’s “Fucking Crazy: On Complex Trauma, Surviving Sexual Violence, and Living My Best Slut Life”. In addition to two days of panels and workshops, there will be an artist roundtable, screenings, performances, including works such as Gloria Swain’s Madness & Black Lives Matter, Kristel Jax’s Drone Therapy, and Lynx Sainte-Marie’s Children of O. There will also be a closing reception at historic queer book store and community event venue Glad Day Bookshop.

postcard with 'I don't feel good" written in blue, purple, and red watercolour style against a beige cloth backdrop - photo credit: Yuli Scheidt

Sick Theories is unlike many other conferences not only in its content, but also in its approaches. As finances are often a barrier to access, admission is free. With all tickets sold out and eighty people (and counting) on the waiting list, conference organizers are seeking a larger space. The cost of a larger venue, as well as the costs of other important accessibility considerations, require additional funds which are outside of the scope of a free event. Margeaux Feldman explains: “Unfortunately, the world we live in is deeply inaccessible. As a student-led initiative, Sick Theories has been dependent on grants from the University of Toronto. But the grants that we’ve successfully applied for do not begin to cover the costs of providing adequate ASL [American Sign Language] interpretation or the costs of CART (Communications Access Realtime Translation) — well exceeding what we’d budgeted for.”

To raise the necessary funds, Feldman and Fournier have put together a GoFundMe. With a flexible goal of $5000, the page offers gifts to donors, including Sick Theories tote bags with illustrations by Sabrina Scott, a “Sick Babe” necklace made especially for Sick Theories by Fierce Deer (made with a 14k gold-filled chain), and book bundles, which includes a signed copy of Johanna Hedva’s On Hell, Hana Shafi’s poetry collection It Begins With the Body, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s book of essays, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice.

stack of blue, white, and pink books on white brick structure - photo credit: Yuli Scheidt

Feldman adds: “With this GoFundMe, we want to ensure that everyone in the disabled and sick community can be present and comfortable throughout Sick Theories.”

Find out more information about Sick Theories

Support Sick Theories’ Accessibility Fund on GoFundMe

Reach Margeaux Feldman

S2E12: The Problem with Woodhull and Tantus

TW discussion of sterilization, and mentions of rape and incest.

photo of a person sitting on a dimly lit street with their back turned against a white background - the background has black text - Season 2, Episode 12 - The Problem with Woodhull & Tantus

Today, I’m rambling about the Woodhull Foundation and Tantus – and how they’ve messed up big time.

And, finally, on a happy note: Kate over at Girly Juice wrote a great post about the 25 Sex Educators/Writers of Color You Should Follow Right Now.

PS my sound gets crappy. I’m not sure why, but I’m going to look at a new mic today.

Transcript

Welcome, so the chronic sex podcast, chronic sex talks about how self love relationships, sex and sexuality are all affected by chronic illness and disability. That’s not all though. We’ll also touch on intersectionality, social justice, empathy, current events, and much, much more. Given the range of subject matter. This podcast is not suitable for those under the age of 18 and unless you have headphones You probably shouldn’t be listening to us at work. My name’s Kirsten Schultz and I’m your host.

Continue reading “S2E12: The Problem with Woodhull and Tantus”

Review: Gaelynn Lea’s ‘Learning How to Stay’

As fun as it can be to review sex toys, I love reviewing all kinds of things. I’m incredibly lucky to have fallen into an interesting space where I get to review sexuality-focused gear. I’ve loved reviewing a wide range of other things. I will say, though, that it’s been a few years since I reviewed an album.

Yikes… okay, it’s been a decade. This is what happens when you start getting close to middle age, kids.

Thankfully, my friend Gaelynn Lea offered her new album – Learning How to Stay – in exchange for my thoughts about it.

First off, if you don’t know who Gaelynn is – or why we’ve connected – this video is mandatory viewing.

I apologize for the lack of subtitles. TedX is notorious for that, even when they’ve had D/deaf and hard of hearing speakers.

Simply put, Gaelynn is amazing. Her music brings in the coolest mix of celtic notes, folksy melodies, and amazing harmonies.

Continue reading “Review: Gaelynn Lea’s ‘Learning How to Stay’”

Sexuality Conferences and the Myths of Accessibility

photo of a white male in a business suit leaving a wheelchair and walking up a set of stairs; blue text - "Sexuality Conferences and the Myths of Accessibility"; black text - "Avery Heimann, Chronic Sex"

I’ve been having an intense amount of anxiety writing this guest post for Chronic Sex. Partly because I think it’s impossible for to keep the flow of topics coherent… partly because, while I idealize having a more constructive and tangible approach to accessibility, I also find myself grappling with useful application versus itemized fetishization of accessibility. The anxiety also stems from feeling overwhelmed by what is going on in social media lately regarding accountability, call-outs, call-ins, privilege, and marginalization. I started writing this post at work last week during a double shift after just meeting my newborn nibling. I was optimistic, energized, and ready to write. I want to continue this post from the position I am in now: confused, jaded, anxious, and exhausted…

The following exercise requires flexible and consensual execution. Take what you want from it, throw away what you don’t:

Exist for a moment. Try to be present in your body if you can. If you can’t, try to take some time and think about what is keeping you from being present. If this amplifies stressors to an unmanageable level, I take responsibility and am prepared to be called-out for that at some point. I’m writing this post to a rhetorical “everyone and no one” through a medium which doesn’t allow for immediate communication. It puts me in a position of power I am not comfortable with, yet I continue to press on with the risks of making harmful mistakes. I am ready to learn, and it is sometimes unfair that a stationary “one-sided” blog post is how that process catalyzes.

If you are not present in your body, if you do not want to be present in this post, try to find an awareness of what that feels like, how it is named, how it manifests through sensation. If you have become so unbearably frustrated with this exercise and my ramblings that you’re ready to click off this post altogether, confront that very real possibility. I believe it can be infuriatingly difficult to pay attention to ourselves at varying levels, especially in unknown environments.

Continue reading “Sexuality Conferences and the Myths of Accessibility”

Masturbation, Chronic Illness, and Queerness video!

Y’all, I’ve got a story to tell. It starts with me nerding over Eva from What Is My Body Doing? at the University of Guelph Sexuality Conference in 2017. The latest chapter ends with Eva releasing this pretty cool video of a recent convo.

She is the cutest! I am so incredibly happy to know Eva and to watch her come into her queerness.

Make sure to check out her other amazing videos on YouTube. If you like her stuff, support her on Patreon! Want to cruise her social? Follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr (where you can ask her anonymous questions!).