In response to Tom's claims that a video of the event 'proves' that no
'disrupion' occurred, I submit the following which was sent the other
day to the SexDisability list. I should like to point out furthermore
that what counts as 'disruptive' is to some extent subjective. If
people are genuine in the claims of including people with cognitive
impairments into their conferences, events, etc. they will have to do
some work to expand their notions of "accessbility/inacessibility" to
include their own behaviours, expressions, mannerisms, and so on. These
can be very disabling to many of us. Shelley
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Dominic,
Thank you for your open expression of your feelings. Like you, I have
felt rather upset for the past day, though certainly not as upset as I
was in San Francisco. And like you, I have received support off-list
from various colleagues. I don't intend to address all the points in
your post, but I do want to clarify a number of remarks that have been
made in this thread.
First, much has been made of a film that does not seem to show any sign
of a conflict. I think however that people on this list who were not at
the conference, and do not know how the room was arranged, may be led to
think this is conclusive evidence that such a conflict did not occur.
This should not be assumed. I do not recall where the filmmaker, who is
a good friend of your's, was positioned in the room. However, I do not
recall her being positioned at the front of the room, where I was
seated. If she were not at the front of the room, she would not have
seen the expressions on your face, not heard your remarks since you were
seated in the second row. (In other words, you would have had your back
to her, or at best she would have had a side-view.) Indeed, depending
on the angle the film was shot from, you might *appear* to be absent
from the room. I emphasize "expressions on your face" because, as I
told Mitch Tep (sorry to drag you into this, Mitch) later that evening,
I regarded these as glares, which were very upsetting to me. As I told
Mitch, because of the nature of my impairment, I am very sensitive to my
environment and to the body language and facial cues of other's. I
think that if disability researchers and activists are genuine about
including people with cognitive impairments into conferences and other
events, they will have to do some work on expanding their notions of
access to include their own behaviors, mannerisms, facial expressions,
actions, and so on.
Second, you have said that you left my paper about 2 minutes into it.
This is not what I recall. In fact, I distinctly recall that you got
quite visibly annoyed when I said the following: "An inclusive
disability studies ought to decry these infringements of the civil
rights and sexual freedoms of disabled queers". (This remark comes
toward the latter part of my paper.) You were upset, I suggest, because
since I was implicitly critiquing the conceptual framework of your and
Tom's work, this remark implied that your's and his work wasn't
inclusive. I want to emphasize this point, because I would argue that
your frustration about my paper was not (as you have said) simply due
its "inaccessible" language. You were, I believe, also pissed off
because I was in effect implicitly arguing that TSOPD was grounded in a
heterosexist conceptual framework, despite the fact that it tips the
scales in favour of lesbian, gay and bisexual "voices". Perhaps the
emphasis you placed on the words such as "queer" and "transgender" (not
used in TSOPD) in your presentation in the session after mine arose in
reaction to my own paper, which was entitled "Queering Disabled
Sexuality Studies".
In my paper, I stated that in order to remove the heterosexual bias in
disabled sexuality studies, it would not suffice to recognize the
existence of non-heterosexual erotic practices if the conceptual
framework of our work continues to restrict ‘sex' to "males" and
"females" and ‘gender' to "men" and "women" (used in TSOPD). So, I
talked about intersexed people, cross-dressers, and transgendered
people. I also criticized the causal relation between sex and gender
which previous work in disabled sexuality studies assumes. I argued
that this excludes disabled queer sexualities.
I do not feel that I owe anyone an apology for getting upset about the
events of that afternoon (my version). I am however sorry that I
broached this issue with you in such a public forum. It was an error in
judgement on my part to refer to you at all in my original post. I
apologize for the discomfort, and any feelings of hurt and embarrassment
that this has caused you.
I have gone on too long! I might make remarks in another post about
some other things you have said.
Shelley
Dominic Davies wrote:
>
> I am still very shaken from the savage and and I feel malicious assault
> played out here by Shelley Tremain.
>
> It has been said that:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Shelley Tremain [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: 16 April 2000 18:06
> > To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: [SexDisabilityResearc] Sex, disability research list (long)
> ...
> >For the duration
> > of my presentation, I was subjected to outbursts from Dominic of an "I
> > don't believe this!" "This is unreal!" character.
>
> I have stated that i left in the first couple of minutes of Tremain's paper
> as I found it inaccessible and wanted to do some more work on my own.
> Accesibility of ideas is very important to me and I am indebted to Harris
> for claryfying why.
>
> I was later accused of lying about what happened. Lisa Sampson who was
> documenting the conference on video has stated that she saw no
> unprofessional behaviour or asides, and that in fact the recording shows I
> was not present in the room.
>
> I consider this fabrication by Tremain to be gross professional misconduct,
> it was makes unsubstantiated allegations and I am still deeply shaken by the
> interaction.
>
> I have had some support off-list which has helped me stay focussed here, but
> I would like to suggest that we develop some guidelines governing our
> behaviour towards each other and that we act respectfully. Bad mouthing each
> other at a personal level is not appropriate for this list.
>
> I think Tremain as Sampson has already so eloquently said, does herself a
> disservice by such behaviour, I await, (probably in vain) for an apology,
> and I really do hope this doesn't put other list members off contributing to
> what is a very helpful and important list.
>
> I note there has been interest in seeing tremain and shakespeare's papers as
> presented, in the spirit of sharing ideas rather than protecting
> intellectual 'property', (I am somwhat out of the academic loop), I don't
> need to subscribe to this restrictive view, and have published my own papers
> on this list and I look forward to seeing the Proceedings when they are
> published, so that I can examine Tremain's arguments more closely. I've
> heard it was a good paper.
>
> Perhaps we can go back to our business. If there are legitimate criticisms
> of TSPOD, then I am open to hearing them, we didn't intend it to be the
> definitive work - just a start in the right direction. There are other
> books and papers now and the field has moved on. We were always open about
> TSPOD's limits, and Tremain herself initially wrote a glowing review of it.
> That she has changed her mind about it is perfectly legitimate, I often feel
> differently about things I have written as my own thinking evolves.
> However, it seems to me that there was a more personal attack going on here,
> unrelated to TSPOD. Whislt it was mostly directed to Tom, but it heavily
> implicated me. This sort of behevaviour does no-one any favours. I have
> had a very stressful 24 hours as a result and really could do without it.
>
> I am sorry if I have rambled I am trying to find a place of calm in all
> this.
> Dominic
>
> -
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