Maria: Please provide details on the Row speech being held in "an
inaccessible venue". That would seem to confirm what he and the
speech's sponsor are all about. I believe you're the only one in this
thread, to mention this? (Once again, spatial barriers fall to the
bottom of the list of what most DS folks in a discussion on the
list-serv, consider worth mentioning. Amazing.)
--
And will someone please give us Low's "ad-libs", as spoken? I take it,
the text we have seen is not a transcript, but the copy one handed out
in advance?
--
seauality and rights
Glenn: If rights is "a start", then you have erased the prior phrase
"the issue is not one of rights,..." I would disagree that the area of
sexuality proves that "the issue is not one of rights, but (only of)
values.."
Example 1: I have presented a slide lecture "Getting Into the Space of
LGBT Community - When You Can't get Into the Room" at the conference on
LGBTQ Popular Culture at New York University, in October 1999. Though
the research behind it is far from complete, I documented an estimate
that half of the spaces in New York City i which LGBT identities are
often discovered, confirmed, formed, maintained, supported, etc. -- are
ones with barriers. Many of these are semi-public commercial spaces
aimed towreds LGBT customers, (most are not gay owned), in which the
patrons have no control over the barriers (other than to avoid the ones
with built barriers, or to boycott).
These quasi-public spaces not only are specifically ones in which sexual
partners are often found, but also part of sex is -- getting information
about sex, sexuality, updated health info, trends (like learning skills
of safer sex), one's peers, etc., and the social context of it. And
sometimes the spaces and milieus in which that info is to be gained, are
the ones a PWD (I think this would apply often to heterosexual PWDs,
too) can NOT get into, due to an environmental or social barrier.
Example 2: Recently it was said that some unnamed US PWD publications
refused to run an ad for a sex aid designed for men with certain
disabilities, because the photo showed a man with a disability and his
partner, in a pose, not at all showing sex, but just hinting at
sexuality. (One wonders if they would have run the ad, minus the photo?
Or if the manufacturer tried to do that; or if they were happy with the
"denial" publicity by itself?) There is also some history of society
even withholding otherwise somewhat "standard" sex ed. from some PWD's,
I used slides in my lecture (verbally described), quickly showing dozens
of physical barriers, because otherwise even sighted people "see but
don't see" these barriers, and would not believe how common they are.
Example 3: A counselor in a residential institution for people with
certain severe cognitive disabilities, told me that when the
conservative Mayor of New York closed down most of the porn theatres,
this had a big impact on the gay men in this institution. They were not
entirely free due to homophobia, to have these relationships in the
institution, so for an alternative space, free of stigma and
consequences, they would go on dates to certain porno theatres, ones in
which the norms were that people could sit in the balcony and discreetly
do it in the dark while watching the movie.
When many of those places closed in the mid-90's due to the new
discriminatory zoning (in which such places had to be big distances away
from churches, schools, residences, etc., so that very few areas were
left on the zoning map where they could be), and due to the
Disney-fication of Times Square for affluent tourists (read Samuel
Delaney's memoir of that area and it's former sexuality, "Times Square
Red, Times Square Blue", and Marshall Berman's upcoming book on it),
suddenly these disabled gay men had no place to go, and these
relationshis wre in difficulty. That is a "rights" aspect of PWD
sexuality.
Example 4: When New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis (a community-based
AIDS service-providing org. - equivalent I guess of Terrence Higgins
Trust in London) held annual parties to thank volunteers and "AIDS Walk"
fundraisers, in the inaccessible and otherwise highly favored dance club
Webster Hall, that IS a rights issue that bears directly on sexuality.
(My activist friend and I apparently influenced them to move it to an
accessible venue; though they're not admitting it.)
Example 5: There is also the issue of discriminatory admissions to
night clubs, highly sexual sites, in which the "Doorman" picks a
minority of people on the line, whom he considers the "best looking",
for admission, and all others are not allowed in. This is a larger
"body image / status" kind of discrimination, but how many people with
visible disabilities do you think fit those favored body images?
Approximately none.
One famous dance club in New York actually carried this to such extremes
-- they forced non-members wanting to get in, to line up on the sidewalk
on a weeknight that the club was closed, like an audition (you had to
dress as you would to go dancing; meaning you rushed home after work,
changed, and then rushed to this outdoor "cattle call") to be subjected
to this demeaning selection process.... and if among the lucky few
selected, they'd give you a slip of paper to bring back on the night
they were open..... because they apparently didn't want the one's they'd
reject, to even be on the street outside of the club, when it was open.
A recent book on this defunct club, the Paradise Garage, actually
briefly defends this club's severe body-image discrimination, and the
highly-developed ways of carrying it out, in favor of those few
euphemistically described in the book as having "personal style" (those
locked out, were not deemed worthy of any description; apparently
perceived as non-persons), as part of what the author calls "a time
honored tradition" in private membership clubs.... (this, amazingly, in
the context of much self-congratulatory discussion claiming the club's
members, who all had to be recommended by existing members via a secret
application process, were relatively diverse in other respects).
--
So, sure, sexuality is an area that shows that values are an important
part of what DL (and DS, tagging along) needs to work on changing.
Including not only access to sexual opportunity itself, but to the
general sexual information flowing around society, that can lead to
sexual development and opportunities.
But if you look into it, and no doubt there are plenty of examples
beyond the 5 above -- sexuality for PWD's is NOT an area that is
entirely outside of rights considerations, and so in no way do sexuality
concerns invalidate the social model as an explanation of much of what
happens in our lives, even within the area of sexuality. No reason to
use "values" problems to deny "rights" problems.
Jim
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