The ADA & Disability Pride Month
Anyway, we recorded this episode in July, but this post and the episode won't publish until August...oh well...we'll just extend Disability Pride into August! So Mote it be!
If you're younger than me, you probably kinda take the ADA for granted. The ADA is the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is a federal civil rights law that was passed in 1990. The ADA protects people with disabilities from discrimination in many areas of public life, including: employment, transportation, public accommodations, communications, access to state and local government programs and services, access to commercial facilities, medical services, voting, parking, and more. Before the passage of this law, which was quite a process...a literal crawl, but we'll get to that in a minute... discrimination toward people with disabilities was rampant. Also in the 90's...in 1996 HIPPA was signed into law, protecting our medical information. It's no coincidence that in the 80's and 90's, the AIDS epidemic was raging and discrimination towards AIDS patients (or even mention of the word!) was wild! Around 1995 or 1996 I myself interviewed with an attorney for some entry level filing job, and when he was scanning my resume he got to the end where I mentioned my involvement in an AIDS organization and the mother fucker (an attorney!!!) asked me "how's your health?" I am still floored by this! I replied "I have allergies" in a very annoyed tone. I wouldn't have worked for that man if he offered me the moon. Yuk. But anyway, back to disabilities...
Significant changes occurred in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as institutional solutions and interventions became common. Disabled individuals were swept into the system's workhouses, asylums, and other "solutions". During the 19th century, differential diagnoses were developed to categorize disabilities and devised treatment interventions. And you might think "oh, that's good. diagnoses...that's good right?". Well...sorta. It just became a way for society to further label disabled people. And that led to a whole other situation...Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement began to influence societal views, leading to the belief that disability degraded the species. This ideology resulted in U.S. laws that segregated people with disabilities and even prohibited marriage and procreation. Forced sterilization laws were considered normal and appropriate. In the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell, the United States Supreme Court ruled that states had a legitimate interest in sterilizing people with intellectual disabilities. (I guess SCOTUS has been fucked up for a long time!)
It's real easy for us to point fingers at the Nazi's and their horrific...everything. But it was California's sterilization law that became a model for Nazi Germany’s eugenics laws in 1933! Uh, whoops. Germany’s eugenics policies initially involved sterilization and later escalated to the euthanasia of approximately 200,000-275,000 people with disabilities.
So, disabled folks have been getting fucked over since mankind began. Laws like the ADA have made big strides in leveling the playing field. But we didn't get there without a lot of fight from the disabled community themselves. "In March 1990, when the ADA seemed destined to be stalled in Congress, ADAPT held a march from the White House to the steps of the Capitol. Sixty disability activists with physical disabilities shed their crutches, wheelchairs, powerchairs and other assistive devices and proceeded to crawl up all 78 west side steps of the Capitol. A “tour” of the Capitol that ADAPT had arranged turned into a meeting in the Capitol Rotunda between ADAPT and the House Speaker and the House Minority Leader. Although the action resulted in the arrests of 104 grassroots demonstrators, the “Capital Crawl” as it would become to be known, pushed the stalled ADA bill out of committee." (A 7 year old was arrested that day, by the way. WTF.) I highly recommend you read this article: https://ability360.org/livability/advocacy-livability/history-disability-rights-ada/
In this week's episode of Bitchstory, we go over a list of the "mothers" of the ADA (The father of the ADA is Justin Dart, but we're just talking about the ladies.). We also talk about the importance of visibility. My social media feed is intentionally filled with bodies of all shapes and sizes and doing that has really helped me shift some of my thinking. So I highly recommend you consider following some of these badass people:
and a podcast for you: Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lyn Sigler both have MS and on their podcast, "Messy", they discuss their thoughts and feelings very candidly and it's helped me a lot! Listen here
As if the judgement from others wasn't enough, there's a lot of internal shame about disability, and I'm working through some of those feelings myself. Change what you look at on social media, and what you listen to, and it might help move you out of shame and into a place of better acceptance. Even if you don't have a disability, acceptance is the key. Treat your fellow humans just as regular people, because they ARE. And I know my readers and listeners are probably not the people who need to hear this the most, but you can certainly be a voice and try to expand some minds in your own little circle.
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Email me: kelly@untamedmoon.com (NEW EMAIL ADDRESS)
LISTEN TO THE DISABILITY PRIDE EPISODE HERE