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Mia Mingus and disability justice
Oct. 25th, 2015 10:32 pmI'm going to write about seeing Mia Mingus! She is so awesome, has so many great ideas, such great open energy. By culture and personality, I am somewhat conflict averse, and yet also drawn to things that involve cognitive dissonance, which is a problem. Mia has this way of being hungry for the conflict, of digging into with enthusiasm. Like, YES, let's TALK about that uncomfortable thing! And it is just honestly such a relief.
I went to a small group session where we talked about a couple of her essays from her website:
1. Changing the Framework: Disability Justice
https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/changing-the-framework-disability-justice/
2. Access Intimacy: The Missing Link
https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/
3. Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability
https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/moving-toward-the-ugly-a-politic-beyond-desirability/
The third one really blew my mind. LOVED it. Here is another way of resisting respectability politics: embrace magnificence instead of prettiness. Be memorable, own the way you look and are.
We talked a bit about being uncomfortable with "body positivity", and the intersection of disability and fat politics. This is an exciting area to me and I'd like to see more people talking about it. These are both highly stigmatized categories and activists from the two groups seem to want to avoid each other due to this stigma, even though the intersection between the two groups is pretty readily apparent. Think of fat activists emphasizing "health at any size" and talking about how they are healthy and active at their weight--centering health, which is not exactly friendly to those of us who are not in good health. Meds can cause weight gain or loss; weight (high or low) itself can be associated with certain illnesses; etc. Anyways, Dave Hingsburger writes about this a bit (mostly the stigma of being a fat wheelchair user). And I always, always rec The Fat Nutritionist, especially this post: You have no obligation to be healthy.
Mia Mingus talked about how when we are so committed to the social model of disability (or any kind of social model), we can run up against the wall of our bodies. And so we need to talk about embodiment. I think part of loving and caring for our bodies is acknowledging that being embodied can totally suck sometimes. It is ok to feel negative.
During her key note, Mia Mingus talked about transformative justice and her work using it to address child sexual abuse (often adult survivors of same). She works with Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective. One of the themes of her talk was building alternatives to our state institutions, because how can we depend on the state to address violence when the state uses violence and oppression against us?
This event was part of the Gender and Women's Studies 40th anniversary event on campus. I went to some of the events the next day, but they were... much more academic and kind of not my thing.
I went to a small group session where we talked about a couple of her essays from her website:
1. Changing the Framework: Disability Justice
https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/changing-the-framework-disability-justice/
2. Access Intimacy: The Missing Link
https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/
3. Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability
https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/moving-toward-the-ugly-a-politic-beyond-desirability/
The third one really blew my mind. LOVED it. Here is another way of resisting respectability politics: embrace magnificence instead of prettiness. Be memorable, own the way you look and are.
We talked a bit about being uncomfortable with "body positivity", and the intersection of disability and fat politics. This is an exciting area to me and I'd like to see more people talking about it. These are both highly stigmatized categories and activists from the two groups seem to want to avoid each other due to this stigma, even though the intersection between the two groups is pretty readily apparent. Think of fat activists emphasizing "health at any size" and talking about how they are healthy and active at their weight--centering health, which is not exactly friendly to those of us who are not in good health. Meds can cause weight gain or loss; weight (high or low) itself can be associated with certain illnesses; etc. Anyways, Dave Hingsburger writes about this a bit (mostly the stigma of being a fat wheelchair user). And I always, always rec The Fat Nutritionist, especially this post: You have no obligation to be healthy.
Mia Mingus talked about how when we are so committed to the social model of disability (or any kind of social model), we can run up against the wall of our bodies. And so we need to talk about embodiment. I think part of loving and caring for our bodies is acknowledging that being embodied can totally suck sometimes. It is ok to feel negative.
During her key note, Mia Mingus talked about transformative justice and her work using it to address child sexual abuse (often adult survivors of same). She works with Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective. One of the themes of her talk was building alternatives to our state institutions, because how can we depend on the state to address violence when the state uses violence and oppression against us?
This event was part of the Gender and Women's Studies 40th anniversary event on campus. I went to some of the events the next day, but they were... much more academic and kind of not my thing.
