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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

When inclusion excludes.

40 replies

WarriorN · 05/07/2022 08:20

A shocking example of how diversity and inclusive policies completely forget people with disabilities.

Disabled and LGBT: 'Dad had to carry me up the stairs to the LGBT party' www.bbc.co.uk/news/disability-62011918

I really can't believe that universities are so very inclusive re lgbt and yet still can't get it right with disability.

OP posts:
StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind1 · 07/07/2022 15:43

I was in Leeds Uni student Union the other week.
The disabled toilet, was also the designated "gender neutral", toilet.
I know that disabled is mixed see anyway, but surely this just adds to the qyeses fir it?
As an aside, Harvey Nicks loos are clearly marked male and female, in writing.

5zeds · 07/07/2022 17:13

There seems to be a concerted effort to shut down the fact that there’s a whole class of people who, due to cognitive/developmental/intellectual disability, can’t ’just’ say the pronouns and be courteous. They can say what they see. just a fyi, as it’s a bit more complex than this. There are of course many people who struggle to say things that are not factually correct, but there are also many autistic language disordered individuals who struggle specifically with pronouns. It isn’t just a case that they don’t feel comfortable saying (for example) he instead of she, it’s ANY pronouns. Many have spent years learning how they work and struggle to hold on to the sense of some sentences if there are too many pronouns.

The best way to describe it is if I said from now on we are going to use Mandarin or Arabic numbers (assuming you don’t know these languages) whenever we us numbers in conversation. As you can imagine after a while you would get used to it. The level of concentration needed for day to day life would decrease, and the anxious unpredictable primary aged child might become a more confident, more involved secondary schooler. (Yay!). Now imagine if you are now asked to swap the word for two with three and five with eight….but not always!!!…oh no sometimes it’s going to stay the same as it was.🤯. Can you imagine how hard it is NOW to join? Can you imagine how many times you will totally misunderstand or get it wrong? How your disability will grow again and become blindingly obvious? It’s not a small ask, and I object to being asked this for my child because I know how hard it is and how hard he has worked.

Joolsin · 07/07/2022 17:29

That BBC article refers to people "identifying" as disabled, which sits wrongly with me. It's not like a person with a disability can just identify as being able-bodied/neurotypical and "bing", it happens. To me, you either are disabled or you're not, it's not an identification thing.

ThickCutSteakChips · 07/07/2022 17:33

Because its all virtual signalling shite which, let's face it, is primarily designed to benefit men.

In fact I find the whole LGBTQIA rainbow stuff some of the least 'inclusive' stuff our there.

Covidagainandagain · 07/07/2022 17:39

TastefulRainbowUnicorn · 05/07/2022 08:30

I don’t think I understand Conor’s story. Was there no one who could sit down and help him with the PDF form? How would that take months to resolve?

Lucy’s story is shocking. It’s annoying how much performative “inclusion” seems to push out actual inclusion.

Connor shouldn't have to ask for someone to read the form and explain it to him. The information should be available in a format he can access. A university shouldn't be willing to take thousands of pounds a year of a blind pupil and then be unable to provide him with forms in the format he needs.

ControversialOpening · 07/07/2022 18:28

That BBC article refers to people "identifying" as disabled, which sits wrongly with me. It's not like a person with a disability can just identify as being able-bodied/neurotypical and "bing", it happens. To me, you either are disabled or you're not, it's not an identification thing.

There are some people who do not identify as being disabled, even though they have what others might consider to be disabilities. I know people who are deaf, for example, who do not think of themselves as disabled.

nepeta · 07/07/2022 18:31

I much preferred the earlier language in contexts like these which was about not discriminating against groups.

'Inclusion' is a much fuzzier term. It can be used by individuals who are not discriminated against at all to demand entry into some group which is not meant to be about their rights, wants, or interests. Also, it's much more difficult to see if proper levels of inclusion have, in fact, been achieved than it would be to see of discriminatory outcomes have been prevented or mitigated.

When 'identifying as' is added to the soup, everything becomes a mess. A person with a medical disability is disabled whether they identify as that or not, and a person without a medical disability shouldn't be allowed to identify as having one.

Artichokeleaves · 07/07/2022 18:34

Joolsin · 07/07/2022 17:29

That BBC article refers to people "identifying" as disabled, which sits wrongly with me. It's not like a person with a disability can just identify as being able-bodied/neurotypical and "bing", it happens. To me, you either are disabled or you're not, it's not an identification thing.

And this is where 'identify' causes a lot of problems.

You can 'identify' as being disabled or 'identify' as not being disabled.

However to have the legal protections you absolutely have to produce hard, qualifying evidence to set criteria. And no matter how hard I identify, I will not stop needing a wheelchair. And people with disabilities they did not identify into and cannot identify out of are increasingly having difficulties caused by very vocal, social media savvy groups taking over the voice of the 'community' and speaking for them, who often have a very limited view and narrative of the realities of living with that disability as opposed to a wide ranging representation, and some of them are self diagnosed and would not pass the objective, replicatable, consistent medical/tested requirements for that condition. Which is objected to as gatekeeping etc, but gates have a purpose. Boundaries have a purpose.

Identity politics and reality aren't good friends or neighbours.

DonnieDark · 10/07/2022 02:08

Joolsin · 07/07/2022 17:29

That BBC article refers to people "identifying" as disabled, which sits wrongly with me. It's not like a person with a disability can just identify as being able-bodied/neurotypical and "bing", it happens. To me, you either are disabled or you're not, it's not an identification thing.

Yes that's what I meant - whether or not someone identifies as disabled is completely irrelevant here. The BBC makes it sound like disability is some woolly feeling the same way gender is.

MangyInseam · 10/07/2022 03:30

I think the identification language appeared in disability related contexts before it appeared in a lot of others.

WarriorN · 10/07/2022 06:58

Yes it did, mainly as a many disabilities are invisible.

There's a big history in disability studies around differences of having a disability or "being" etc and how you're seen and treated as a result.

So they've appropriated that.

OP posts:
Wimblepeep · 10/07/2022 08:41

I have epilepsy. Technically that makes me disabled. It doesn’t disable me. I do not consider myself disabled. But I don’t see this as an ‘identity’ thing as much as I do a practical and/or logical thing. I have never had a day off work for my epilepsy, and as I was diagnosed in my teens I have had a long time learning how to adapt. I think invisible ‘disabilities’ are a bit of a minefield, tbh. I appreciate awareness of my condition generally speaking, but I don’t need employers or organisations falling over themselves to utilise me to tick a box to make them feel inclusive.

WarriorN · 10/07/2022 08:56

I agree wimple. I also have a condition that means I'm classed as disabled under employment law.

It has caused me issues when not well managed or flared and I have had time off work (hence oc health telling me the above). Yet I almost find it offensive to say I have a disability or 'identify as.'

Conditions and disabilities are all so complex and different and individual and have different social stereotypes and barriers that it's hard to have a consensus. I teach some children whose epilepsy has sadly affected their cognitive and motor development.

OP posts:
TheWheeledAvenger · 10/07/2022 15:02

Disabled person and disability activist here-

If you aren't disabled yourself, please, please don't tell disabled people what we are and are not allowed to call ourselves.

"Identity as disabled" is wording created and fought for by actual disabled people. It has nothing at all to do with "identity politics" and nothing to do with gender ID.

First, no one can identify as disabled unless they have an actual medical condition or impairment. Period. "Identify as disabled" does not mean "I am able-bodied but I feel closely emotionally akin to disabled people on the inside." People without any knowledge or understanding of disability rights are projecting gender ID onto us disabled people without any thought or concern about us and without any willingness to actually listen to us.

There is not a disabled person alive who thinks "identify as disabled" includes able-bodied people who "feel disabled on the inside" or whatever. That simply is not what the term means.

The reason disabled people fought for the language of identity is two-fold.

First, it's to be inclusive of disabled, neurodiverse and chronically ill people who have struggled to get an actual medical diagnosis, as a way of telling people who are on waiting lists, or been fobbed off by doctors, that they are still considered valid and valued members of the disabled community even if they don't yet have a diagnosis from a doctor. This is mainly a problem that affects autistic adult women (getting an autism diagnosis as an adult is very hard and can take years, and women and girls really struggle to get diagnosed because women mask autism so much and it presents differently to boys). Second, women with chronic illnesses such as ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and similar. There's a long history of women with chronic illness being fobbed off by doctors and told it's all in their head.

Traditionally disability politics have not always been welcoming to chronically ill people due to the SMoD and the politics behind it (which was explicitly spelled out in some of the early literature from SMoD), and there's been a push in recent years to say that chronic illness is a form of disability, and that people with chronic illness are welcome within the disabled community should they choose to ID as disabled.

The second reason is because lots of people with impairments choose not to ID as disabled, and actively reject the label of disabled, and reject the fact society pushes that label on them against their consent. This is especially an issue within the Deaf community and the autistic community. Lots of d/Deaf people do not consider deafness to be a disability but simply an alternate form of communication (since the SMoD holds that they are disabled by access barriers in abeist society) and plenty of autistic people think that being autistic is just having a brain that works differently and not a disability. Of course plenty of D/deaf and autistic people do consider themselves disabled - that's why "identify as disabled" is important, to give people a choice as to whether they consider their condition or impairment to be one that disables them or not.

Having said all that, the original point of the thread, that disabled people are often horrendously ignored by DEI work, is absolutely true and I thank the OP for starting a thread about it.

TheWheeledAvenger · 10/07/2022 15:12

Sorry to add to that, one of my friends who's very active in disability activism was born with a birth defect where part of her left hand was missing. It doesn't affect her in any way and she doesn't even notice it. She is not "dis-abled" by it. But society labels her as being disabled and she gets treated as disabled every single day, because it's so visible, and people make bigoted assumptions about all different areas of her life just because her hand doesn't look the way ableist society thinks a hand should look. She made a conscious choice to identify as disabled (after years of saying "I'm not disabled, my hand doesn't affect me at all") in order to get involved in activism and to promote activism based on SMoD, because she's the prime example of someone who is 100% disabled by society and not by her own medical condition.

On the flipside, until recently my condition was an invisible disability. The language of identify as disabled is important to me since for a long time I didn't know that people with chronic illnesses 'counted' as disabled, and being able to say I consider my chronic illness a form of disability is really important considering how frequently my access needs are ignored because I didn't look disabled.

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