The roots of prejudice
by Jennifer Kern
|
|
The roots of prejudice
by Jennifer Kern |
 © WCC
|
Sexuality evokes our deepest human needs and desires in uncountable ways.
We disabled people are capable of close personal relationships and fulfilling sexual experiences, but receive a series of confusing societal messages. These messages, with very little exception, perpetuate myths and stereotypes of disabled people that serve to diminish our full humanity, and therefore, everyone’s full humanity. Commons myths of people with disabilities portray us as inferior to non-disabled people, asexual, childlike, weak, passive, not good partners or parents, in need of sterilisation. The roots of prejudice against people with disabilities are deep. Fear of people with disabilities, whose bodies and minds challenge the stereotype of "normalcy," evoke deep psychic discomfort in people unfamiliar with disability. There is a tendency among the non-disabled, whether through kindness or bigotry, to react to people with disabilities as "other". This reinforces "able-ism" both in spite of and because of the fact that anyone can become disabled at any time. In many industrialised countries, the obsession with independence devalues people with disabilities, who are believed to personify weakness or vulnerability. Materialistic culture is too narrow to embrace the full range of humanity - old/ young, disabled/ non-disabled, and so on, ad infinitum. Myths and fears about people with disabilities have led to persecution and discrimination for as long as there have been people with disabilities. Similarly, efforts to deny or control people’s sexuality also have ancient roots. The same forces that seek to control the wholeness and holiness of our bodies also inevitably deny that people with disabilities are made in God’s image, and are good, whole and sexual beings. One version of social control came in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the form of the eugenics movement, which espoused principles of Social Darwinism popular in Western countries. Darwin’s idea of the "survival of the fittest" of a species was misapplied to individuals, creating a hierarchy in which some people are seen as inherently inferior to others. These theories influenced public policy and health care decisions (and still do), fostering racist and classist ideology and proving highly dangerous for people with disabilities, poor people, and people of colour, all of whom were deemed "inferior beings" by the so-called objective theoreticians. One specific legacy of eugenic thinking occurred in Nazi Germany, where people with disabilities were the subjects of torturous "experiments".1 These atrocities, including the forced sterilisation of approximately 400,000 people with disabilities, were committed in the name of a pseudo-science that would kill to prevent our procreating 2. Although partially outlawed, the populations most affected by such policies, often with parental consent, are girls and women with mental disabilities in institutions.3 Current practices of genetic research, and testing of pregnant women to screen for disability, perpetuate eugenic thinking (in the service of pharmaceutical profits), disguised as a benevolent and altruistic search for knowledge and an "end to human suffering". The vast majority of practitioners of genetic research have yet to question the assumption that eliminating disability is a worthy goal. In other words that the world would be better off without people with disabilities. Another challenging example of the intersection of sexuality and disability is the practice of female circumcision, an ancient but still prevalent practice created to control female sexuality that often causes mental and physical disability. As Nbtiense Ben Edemikpong, a Nigerian woman writes: "The practice, indeed, has affected African women’s view of sex, sexuality and relationships with men. It may be considered as another form of female sexual oppression, which is the manipulation of women’s sexuality in order to ensure control, domination and exploitation."4 Policies and practices, not to mention schools, sheltered workshops, and other institutions, keep people with disabilities hidden, isolated and segregated from non-disabled people. An insidious effect of this has been to diminish our sense of ourselves as full human beings complete with sexual identities, and to reinforce non-disabled peoples’ stereotypes of us as asexual. As people with disabilities enter the public sphere demanding increased social, economic, and political rights, it is ironic and untenable that the most personal privileges of humanity remain out of reach for so many of us. The right to love our bodies without malignant intervention, to choose a partner without social chastisement, to bear children without succumbing to a medical model that devalues disability enough to screen out any potential "imperfections," are fundamental rights and ought not be denied. It is not a question of special rights, but of the human right to love and be loved fully in the bodies and minds with which we are blessed. People with disabilities are and will be sexual beings whether or not medical professionals, religious institutions, or society at large support our full humanity, whether or not they accept our innate sexuality as an instinct and a means for developing life-affirming intimacy. Any bias or institution that inhibits the sexuality of people with disabilities diminishes all of us. Learning to love and respect oneself and one’s body is necessary for ALL beings to develop a healthy sexual self-esteem. To make this possible, we all have a role to play. Fortunately, despite the negative messages we have been fed, all over the world people with disabilities are beginning to emerge and declare: Nothing About Us Without Us! We are a sisterhood and brotherhood of people who deserve to be valued, as we must truly value ourselves. A good place to begin is for all of us, disabled and non-disabled, to examine our own fears about our changing bodies, our sacred sexuality, and people with disabilities in our communities. Jennifer Kern received an A.B. degree from Barnard College in 1988 and a J.D. degree from Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, in 1994. She practised civil rights law with a focus on police misconduct cases in Oakland, California, 1994-96, and currently consults on international disability rights projects. From 1997 through 1999, Ms. Kern was program director of Whirlwind Women (WW), an international women’s wheelchair-building project, and currently serves on its Advisory Committee. After learning metalworking skills and building her own Whirlwind wheelchair, she travelled to Kenya in 1997 to assist with WW’s first intensive wheelchair-building course for women with disabilities. In 1998-99, she directed the WW pilot program with disabled women building wheelchairs in Kampala, Uganda. In November 1999, she led a team of volunteer trainers to San Luis Potosí, Mexico, to work with local women with disabilities in an introductory metalwork-training program as preparation for starting a wheelchair-building business. In January 2001 she was in Uzbekistan for leadership training of women with disabilities.
Notes: |
