transcript coming soon
Many thanks to for funding this event
Photos from the Disabled Women’s Voices from the Frontline event taken by Wasi Daniju are now available for viewing. See the full set at her Flickr album.
Here are some of them. Videos coming soon.
Many thanks to Rosa UK for enabling this event
A Sisters of Frida Event
Please register at Eventbrite
ĀĀĀVenue: Blackfriars Settlement
1 Rushworth Street London, SE1 0RB
Date: Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Saturday 9 July 2016
Time:Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā 11.00am to 4.30pm
Lunch provided! BSL interpreters provided but please let us know your Access and dietary requirements by 20th June, please!
Disabled women spoke of the barriers in participating in events where organisers seem to think inclusion means that we get access to the event/ if we get access to the event. We need to increase skills, provide capacity so that disabled women will be credible to challenge intersectional inequality.
So come to hear disabled women who are great public speakers/performers
Ā
SPEAKERS
KIRSTEN HEARN is a long time blind lesbian feminist activist. Snarling at the patriarchy and agitating for Ā Ā inclusion since 1980,; she is founder member of Sisters Against Disablement; Womenās tape over; Feminist audio Books, and an active member of Ā a raft of other disability, womenās and LGBT rights campaigns.
She seeks to cast all she does in a feminist light, believing that womenās struggle speaks to the experiences of all other marginalised groups.Ā Liberation for one group must not come at the sacrifice of another discriminated against groupās rights,. As best she can, she has applied these principles through singing, songs, writing and performance.
She has been a board member of Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police Authority; EHRC Disability Committee; the chair of Inclusion London and the vice chair of the Consortium of LGBT CVOs. Currently she bends her energies for change as a Haringey Labour Councillor; An Independent Member of the Parole Board; and as a member of the board of Stay Safe East, a pioneering disabled peopleās organisation dedicated to campaigning against DV and hate crimes experienced by disabled people. She also speaks a lot.
SIMONE ASPIS is a disabled woman with over 20 years experience of successful campaigning for disabled peoplesā rights.Ā Ā Her first taste of campaigning was leading People Firstās campaign to secure civil rights and direct payments for people with learning difficulties in the Disability Discrimination and Direct Payments legislation.Ā Ā Thereafter she has taken up campaigns roles with Disabled Peoples Direct Action NetworkI Decide Coalition, Disabled Peoples Equal Rights To Life, United Kingdomās Disabled Peopleās Council and Alliance for Inclusive Education working on many issues covering inclusive education, independent living and supported decision making, welfare reform and bioethics. She is a former Green Partyās Disabled Peoples Spokesperson and have stood as Parliamentary Perspective Candidate and Greater LondonĀ Authorityās elections
BECKY OLANIYI isĀ interested in acting, writing, psychology and neuroscience, but her main goal in doing this is to try to help young disabled women acknowledge and understand themselves as individuals, rather than simply being āthat disabled girlā, as well as helping people in general to understand that disabled people are whole individuals whose limitations exist on a spectrum and are very different from one another because despite sharing one characteristic, we are all unique, with our own lives, perspectives and experiences.
PERFORMERS
MISS JACQUI came from a extremely creative family; She is fascinated by many different types of artforms. Theatre and music has always been a huge part of Miss Jacqui’s life.
Miss Jacquiās love for theatre started a little later than most, and it was only when her mother signed Jacqui up to an inclusive drama group when she was 13 to get her out of her introverted shell; and she never looked back. Miss Jacquiās love for music developed from recording the radio onto cassettes when she was really young, to wanting to know everything about how it all worked.
Miss Jacqui’s love for Spoken Word/Poetry only came to light in October 2011, when she joined ‘Poets Platform’ led by Kat Francois.Miss Jacqui honestly believe that creativity is a universal language.
Miss Jacqui is a Spoken Word Artist, Mix Engineer, Facilitator, and An Artist Manager.
SOPHIE PARTRIDGEĀ is a creative practitioner living in London, who trained with Graeae Theatre Co. She has worked extensively since her training, including her performance as Coral in the award winning Graeae play Peeling. Other stage performance includes work with the David Glass Ensemble, TIE in Nottingham, Theatre Resource in Essex and Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh. Her Media work also includes photo modelling, corporate video and radio. Ā She is also a campaigner for the right of all Disabled People to live truly independently!
and –
PENNY PEPPERĀ wrote the taboo-breaking book Desires Reborn in 2012 and in 2013 she won a Creative Futures Literary Award. InĀ September 2014 her one-woman spoken word show, Lost in Spaces, premiered to strong reviews at Soho Theatre, andĀ toured the Midlands in 2015. Recently she launched the Quality Writing for All Campaign for The Literary Consultancy at The Free Word Centre to great reviews. As a performance poet, she has performed across the UK,including London, Edinburgh and further afield in New York.
ANNABEL CROWLEY will chair the day. Annabel grew up as a young carer, and started working in the field of disability at the age of 17. She has supported disabled students in FE and HE, and is currently employed by the Disability Service at University of the Arts London. Annabel has also worked in the charity sector, including several years coordinating a user-led, community-based social activities programme at Hammersmith and Fulham Mencap. With experience in designing and delivering training, advocacy work, project management and youth participation.
PAULINE LATCHAM is a practicing Counsellor and relationship therapist. Pauline’s background is in community volunteering, particularly youth and mental health work, domestic violence and disability advocacy and activism. She was great speaking at the Wow Festival Chore Wars session as a Deaf woman for Sisters of Frida.
Funded by
We were asked to organise a disabled women’s panel at this year’sĀ Feminism in London ConferenceĀ in October.
A big thank you to Lisa-Marie Taylor, FIL’s organiser, for inviting us!
We did some publicity by having a stall and we ‘re grateful to Annabel, Zara, Jacqueline and Sophie for helping us with the stall!
(Click on photos to get a bigger photo)
Real Media came to do do a short video feature on it – many thanks!
transcript FIL SOF panel (Word doc)
Frances Ryan also wrote a piece for the Guardian on the event A Disabled Woman’s struggle is any woman’s struggle
Obi was kind enough to video the whole event – if you wish to follow it in its entirety
great additions from Nidhi Goyal and Asha Hans Part 1
http://bambuser.com/v/5878073
with Q&A from audience
Asha Hans video
TRANSCRIPT Asha Hans (Word doc)
Nidhi Goyal’s video
TRANSCRIPT Nidhi Goyal (Word doc)
Frances Ryan’s video
TRANSCRIPT Frances RyanĀ (Word doc)
Becky Olaniyi s video
TRANSCRIPT Becky OlaniyiĀ (Word doc)
Rebecca Bunce’s video
TRANSCRIPT Rebecca Bunce (Word doc)
Kirsten Hearn’s video
TRANSCRIPT Kirsten Hearn (Word doc)
Thank you all for having taken part in the event!
Kirsten Hearn will be at Feminism in London Sunday 25th 12 30 -2pm
Disabled women’s rights are human rights! Disability can be physical, mental, neurological; hidden or visible. This panel will look at activism through the prism of disability and feminism and seek to explore further the intersection and challenges of being between the two and the capacity of the two movements to work together for change.
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Iām sick and tired of having to challenge inaccessible practices within the Labour Party (an in the rest of life too). Iāve got better things to do than be tied up bashing down the doors, so I and others can participate. The discrimination spans all access issues, so all disabled people are targets.
Again, and again, and again, we give guidance on how to make docs accessible. āWhat part of the words āPDFs are inaccessible for people using text to speech assistive technology, so give us a word doc insteadā, isnāt clear? Itās hardly any different in impact from āwhat part of the words, I havenāt got wings you know so how am I going to get into that riddled-with-steps venue you insist on having your meetings in?ā; or āWhat did you say?ā (when a sign language interpreter or an induction loop, isnāt present.
Iāve just opened an email from the Labour Party re the womenās conference tomorrow. Granted, it arrived yesterday evening, but I was chairing a scrutiny evidence session at that time and chose to go to bed afterwards, rather than download my emails. I chose also to do my day job today rather than read my home emails. As a consequence of this, I am only now dealing with yesterdayās backlog. Oh and I have checked, thereās nothing in todayās bunch which provides the accessible document.
Arguing for inclusion within the Labour Party is definitely one of those part time unpaid jobs that I am forced to do if I want to participate in the party. I could use that time instead building a stronger party and working to deliver a Labour Government headed by Jeremy Corbin, in 2020. I donāt care that because of the leadership election and the shadow appointments process, itās been hard to confirm speakers etc. How difficult is it to produce a word version of a conference agenda, which was initially created in word, anyway? I mean ā¦. !
Providing inaccessible documents is at the very least laziness, but it could hardly be argued that the Labour Party is ignorant, since they have been told. Yes, if poked,, they will deal with access requests, but we shouldnāt have to keep reminding them. Itās not like disabled people have only just been invented; or that we havnāt been campaigning for inclusion since the dawn of time. My question is, why are these mistakes still happening? I donāt know how disabled people can effectively influence party policy, raise the issues of concern to disabled people out there, in the party, if we canāt even get in the door, metaphorically or actually without kicking up a stink. So, not having enjoyed womenās conference last year in Manchester, I thought I wouldnāt go to the womenās conference this year; then when Jeremy was elected, I thought I would, in anticipation that the leader is going to address the womenās conference. Now, thanks to not getting accessible info about the womenās conference, Iāve decided Iām not going. So there will be one less stroppy disabled woman there tomorrow ā¦. and I am sure that lack of clarity about access, belief that things wonāt be accessible, feelings that disabled women are not important, are also reasons why less disabled women than perhaps who want to be there, will go to womenās conference tomorrow. And Iāve no doubt that other members of disability labour will have to spent time and energy battling away at conference, trying to fire-fight on access when we could be doing something much more important, like effecting policy, talking about why the austerity agenda, whether heavy or light is the greatest attack on disabled people in our living memory and why labour must not only defend disabled peopleās rights but actively promote a disability rights based agenda. Not that Iām repeating myself, but I and others have been saying the above since exclusion first politicised us, in my case for 40 years. When will non-disabled people get it that they can remove disabling barriers if they want to.
Read the rest at Kirsten’s blog
(from right) Rahel Gaffen, Michelle Daley, Zara Todd, Lucia Bellini, Kirsten Hearn, Eleanor Lisney and Ciara Doyle.
Filmed with thanks to Disability Action in Islington by Felix Gonzalez for the WOW party installation at the Southbank, London
speakers : Michelle Daley, Zara Todd, Lucia Bellini, Kirsten Hearn, Eleanor Lisney and Ciara Doyle.
Filmed with thanks to Disability Action in Islington by Felix Gonzalez for the WOW party installation at the Southbank, London
Transcript
Michelle Daley
Ok my names Michelle Daley and Iām a member of Sisters of Frida and Iāve been involved in the Disabled Peopleās movement since early 2000
I think itās important for us to kind of think about why is it as disabled women we have to keep justifying our existence
Why do we have to justify who we are?
Why do we have to say make a statement about yes Iām attractive?
I can be err attracted to others
Iām a woman and Iām the same as any other woman
I also think itās important that we recognise the people that came before us err who fought for women rights
But also there are many important disabled women who fought for our rights as well
and I think thatās what makes me proud of who I am as a disabled woman knowing that there was someone before me who started that journey
And I think itās for me to continue that and to say yes I am proud to be a disabled black woman
Thank you!
Zara Todd
So Iām Zara, Iām 28 and a proud disabled young woman um yeah thatās me!
Is that all youād like to say about today?
Err my brains a bit frazzled!
I think that itās really interesting bringing together a group of disabled women
because yes we have a lot of shared experiences but we also have a lot of things
that are very unique to us
And I think often itās easy to get caught up in labels
And while we need spaces to explore our identity we donāt necessarily need to come
to the same conclusions
And what I think todayās been quite good at
What I think the event will be quite good at is getting a space where we can
acknowledge who we are
All of who we are and just go yeah fine
Thanks!
Lucia Bellini
My nameās Lucia Bellini and Iām part of Sisters of Frida
Iām really happy to be able to say that Iām a disabled woman
That Iām very proud to be a disabled woman
Iām independent, I work, I am able to challenge stereotypes
Um and Iām able to fight for equality of opportunity in society for disabled people in
general
Iām um I think that there needs to be a lot more publicity or disabled women need to be portrayed in a much more positive light in the media
Um we were talking earlier about disabled women doing the catwalk but made to look non disabled
And I think we should be proud of our identities, we should be proud to look different if we choose to
Err if we want to conform and wear make-up and err and we should also be allowed to choose to do that too
Err err Iām a bit fed up of people telling me asking me why I want to wear make-up
Why Iām interested in how I look if Iām blind
Err I also think that itās time disabled women are seen as women and not different err
you know we heard about the fact that err women donāt understand that we want to go out on dates just like everybody else
That we can also have children if we choose to
That we can be in a relationship if we choose to
That weāre no different because weāre disabled
That we just have the extra challenges that we have to overcome
You have to overcome extra discrimination, discrimination because weāre female and
discrimination because weāre disabled as well as all the additional barriers we have and in physical access
So I think that um more that it would be really good if more women, disabled women, would be proud of being who they are
Of coming out as a disabled woman and um being angry enough to challenge the discrimination that they receive in our society
Kirsten Hearn
My nameās Kirsten
Um I wrote a song about the plight of disabled women and Iād like to share the lyrics
with you
āThink of a mag, yes any old mag
Whatās on the cover?
What do you see?
Pretty young women posing and grinning
Slender and sexy but nothing like me
Indoctrination, objectification
Is this the way itās supposed to be?
No one with blubber gets on the cover
No one who hasnāt got symmetry
SAS Sisters against Symmetry
SAS Sisters against Body Bigotry
They say that prosthetics donāt make good aesthetics
Our surgical corset should never be seen
With bits of us missing thereās no good us wishing
To grace the front cover of Vogue magazine
Indoctrination, objectification this is the way it has always been
Youāve got to be bold break out of the mould
We shape our image letās learn to be mean
SAS Sisters against Symmetry
SAS Sisters against Body Bigotry
Cherish those humps, those nodules and bumps
Those wrinkles and bulges and bubbly bits
Nurture your spots, your baggy old bots, your stretch marks and scars and saggy old
Indoctrination, objectification
Symmetricality is the pits
Take it or leave it we donāt care one bit
Our bodies are ours including our clits!
SAS Sisters against Body Bigotry
SAS Sisters against Symmetryā
Ok right thatās better!
Um the key thing that I need to say about being a disabled woman and my
experience in the world is itās a joyous thing
Itās an absolutely joyous thing to be a disabled woman
I am different in many ways
I have different ways of appreciating the world
And Iām not being Polyandrous about it
It actually is true that we live in a world that assumes that everybody is non-disabled
That everybody can hear, see, speak, walk, talk all the whole lot
And our world is designed in such a way just to allow those to be members of that
privileged club
And I feel really strongly that if we want a diverse community we have to embrace
and celebrate, support and glorify all those people who are different in that kind of
way
And so I do a lot of writing, a lot of speaking about the difference that is me as a disabled woman
And by celebrating those things that other people might find ugly or frightening and at the end of the day thatās where I want us to be as disabled women
But I donāt want us to lose the feeling of anger
We can embrace our pride
We can embrace our anger
And send it outwards to make changes in the world and at the end of the day
I believe that sanity comes to us in terms of being able to cope with the world if we
can also hope that what we do makes a difference
And I really hope that what weāre doing today is making that difference
Eleanor Lisney
Iām Eleanor Lisney
Iām a disabled woman and Iām proud of it
It took me a long time err to come out as a disabled woman even though Iāve had my impairment for a long time
I think for most of my youth I was in denial err about it and I wanted to be a normal person just like everybody else
However I am very happy to be with other women who
I find joy in having found other disabled women
Err itās a sort of relief and a joy and um celebration to be able to talk with other
women about things that Iāve thought of for a long time and have been quiet about
And now itās no longer time, itās no longer time to be quiet
Itās time to um have a voice
Ciara Doyle
Iām Ciara, I am an academic and err a mother, a career woman and a disabled woman
Err I think today was really really powerful and important
Err the err the reason sorry Iām completely frazzled!
Ok err I think that today was extremely important err
I think that it doesnāt happen nearly enough
And needs to happen much more
That the feminist agenda comes to disability politics
And that disability politics is brought to the feminist agenda
Because I really think they need to work far more closely together
And I think that there are areas within feminism or disability where disabled women need to be in the lead
I think that we as women in particular in this society
We are judged very very much within our bodies and how our bodies function
Err within quite strictly set gender norms
And I think that disabled women in particular are living on the knife edge of this
because itās not just men the Patriarchal system in general
But the Patriarchal system through the medical profession as its Police Force
That chooses to pathologies or identify when womenās bodies, emotions or minds
are working within what are perceived to be acceptable levels of normality
Or outside of those acceptable levels of normality which are then pathologised
Which then creates disability because women are told that they are abnormal
And must either accept a victimhood status
Or work hard to normalise themselves
Instead of being able to celebrate who we are and what we are
And so this why I believe these are very much gender issues as well as being very very much disabled issues
And it is of no surprise that the majority of people who develop disabilities are women
Err and that it is two issues that need to come together and spend far more time and
dialogue with each other
Which is exactly what we were doing today
Making a start on that
Thank you!