Yay, Curve! Three articles about lesbians with disabilities!!!

It is my profound pleasure to report that US lesbian mag Curve has just published three articles in a row about lesbians with disabilities, in its June 2009 issue (probably now on the newstands in North America, goddess and Canadian border control willing). In the first article, "Common Ground", writer Joanna Solkoff talks about life for lesbians with a range of disabilities. She notes that there's a difference between national US LGBT lobby organisations and their inclusion of people with disabilities. The Human Rights Campaign doesn't have one for lesbians with disabilities, but the National Campaign for Lesbian Rights took on the case of a disabled lesbian coparent trying to obtain benefits for her nonbiological son, which they were entitled to, under Californian state law, and won.

The piece also deals with developmental disabilities, quoting one woman with autism, and talks about the identity fragmentation bind we experience. For example, we can fit in in our LGBT communities, but our communities of disability affiliation are toxic. One of the women interviewed discussed assumptions that people with disabilities are asexual or heterosexual, which needs challenging. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter, and there should be more images of women with disabilities acknowledging and exercising their sexual rights, whatever their orientation.

Unfortunately, though, as the US Gay and Lesbian Medical Association tells us, forty five percent of US bisexual and lesbian women don't disclose their sexual orientation to their healthcare provider, and although disability rights are said to experience greater recognition in the United States, there's still stigma and shame attached to having a disability compared to pride and identity assertion in LGBTI communities. The piece also talks about Sharon Kowalski and Karen Thompson's epic struggle for Karen's power of attorney over her brain-damaged lover after being shut out of her partner's life by her antigay family.

Elise Roy's short piece "Baby Can You Hear Me?" is about the author's experience as a Deaf lesbian, who experienced her hearing loss in early life, before she came out as a lesbian. She was mainstreamed, which doesn't always work out- especially if one is deprived of one's right to learn and communicate in Sign, which is, after all, the Deaf community's original language, created by themselves for themselves. Happily, despite this audist crap, Elise thrived, survived, and realised that she was interested in women in late high school.

Stephanie Schroeder deals with a blind Native American artist, Sacheen Smith, in "A Different Kind of Visionary." Because where one comes from is important to indigenous people, I'll note that Sacheen is Navajo/Dine, Tsenjikiki and Asihihi (clan and kin group affiliations). Sacheen had problems with keratocenus, optic atrophy and finally a brain tumour, which caused her to lose her sight after radiation therapy and chemotherapy disposed of the latter three years ago. Happily, she met a mentor, renowned Ojibwe artist Sam English (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), and is still out there painting and selling her stuff, as well as acting as an advocate for Native Americans with disabilities within reservation communities and outside them.

Recommended:

Joanna Solkoff: "Common Ground" (p.60-61), Stephanie Schroeder, "Different Kind of Visionary" (p. 63), Elise Roy: "Baby Can You Hear Me?" (p.62), Curve Magazine: 19:5: June 2009: http://www.curvemag.com/

[Sorry, articles not up online at moment. However, check out the magazine itself...]

Sacheen Smith webpage: http://www.sheenie008.multiply.com/

And here's another one of hers: http://www.artbeyondsight.org/change/e-gallery.shtml