Bringing disabled women together, mobilising
and sharing through lived experiences

Sisters of Frida would like to give huge congratulations to Zara Todd for her new post as the incoming director of ENIL.

She will be taking over from Jamie Bolling, who has been a great supporter of Sisters of Frida. We give her our best wishes for her next plans and some of us hope to see her at this years Freedom Dive in Brussels.

We’re happy that Zara will continue as one of the Sisters of Frida’s directors.

Zara (in white rainwear) with Sisters of Frida at the 2013 Freedom Drive in Strasbourg,  Eleanor with banner , Lucia behind Eleanor with black stripey umbrella and Ines (from ECCL) behind Zara. Miro (from ENIL) is also there with his PA and Kate, with black umbrella

Zara with John Evans at Freedom Drive in Brussels 2015

Two Sisters of Frida were at New York city for the ~UN  Committee for Status of Women #CSW60 – here are some of the sessions we took part there.

At Sustainable Development Goals or Sidelining Disabled Girls? Making SDGs Stand for All Women and Girls This side event was sponsored by Women Enabled International, Sisters of Frida & Women with Disabilities India Network

SDG goal 1. poverty transcript

At A Dialogue: Survivors in a disabling environment: what does empowerment of disabled women mean globally?

Questions/comments

Venue CCUN Chapel 12.30-2pm (ground floor) Enter by the far door not the side with elevators. The shape of the room (chapel) might prove a challenge for a formal set up.

This panel will be discussing what would empowerment of disabled women mean locally, nationally and globally. We will try to include voices of disabled women (short video clips) from different parts of the world stating what it means to them if its possible with the venue. We will post the clips online for later viewing if not. We will use the Social Model of Disability; that is to say it is systemic barriers, negative attitudes and exclusion by society (purposely or inadvertently), that disable us. We will also look at the different nuances of violence against disabled women, the different forms of abuse and how disabled women in particular are affected. How they survive inspite of having to face numerous challenges/barriers wherever they are in the world.
Speakers
Alexia Manombe-Ncube (Naimbia)
Alexia is the Deputy Minister of Disability Affairs in the office of Vice President, Namibia. Recently appointed by President Hage Geingob to handle the affairs of physically challenged people, Manombe-Ncube has appealed to stakeholders to highlight the plight of the country’s disabled people in order for her to realise her ministerial declaration of intent. She also urged stakeholders to apply all their energy towards the empowerment and development of the disabled and specifically to close the gender equality gap.
She champions those in the rural areas saying disabled are have less resources and left to crawl because they do not have wheelchairs like people in the cities. Alexia will be speaking on the status of disabled in Naimbia and her own empowerment as a minister.
Lucia Bellini (UK)
Lucia currently works as an advocate for disabled people who are victims of domestic violence. She is also a Disability Rights Advocate where she assists people to access care packages, to be re-housed, to apply for benefits and to appeal against decisions they are not happy with. She has a masters in Global Citizenship, Identity and Human Rights from the University of Nottingham. In 2008 to 2010, she worked with disabled people’s organisations in Guyana where she provided disability equality and project management training to many disabled people throughout the country. She is particularly passionate about ensuring disabled women feel empowered and equipped to make their own choices. Lucia will be speaking about disabled women caught up in domestic violence in the UK.
Michelle Baharier (UK)
Michelle (UK) is a visual artist and disabled activist with lived experience of mental-distress for over three decades. She set up and ran a disabled lead arts organisation changing the way disabled people were perceived in the main stream.
She has worked with women’s organisations and on a telephone help line for women affected by violence, and with women from a variety of cultures including the Poppy Project which supports women who have been trafficked to the UK, the Diane project for Iranian women who need a safe place to be due to violence. Michelle will speak about her work with mental health survivors and their struggle for empowerment.
Suzannah Phillips (USA)
Suzannah is the Legal Advisor for Women Enabled International. Her work focuses on legal advocacy with the United Nations and other international and regional forums to strengthen human rights standards on the rights of women and girls with disabilities. Prior to joining WEI, Suzannah was the International Women’s Human Rights Clinical Fellow at CUNY School of Law, Legal Adviser for International Advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), and a Human Rights Fellow with VIVO POSITIVO in Santiago, Chile. She is currently a member of the International Human Rights Committee at the New York City Bar Association. Suzannah received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her B.A. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University. Suzannah will be speaking on how different legal instruments can be used to support empowerment of disabled women especially with Women Enabled International’s work.
Eleanor Lisney (UK)
Eleanor is born Malaysian Chinese of immigrant parents who moved to UK herself for graduate study. She is a founding member of Sisters of Frida will facilitate the meeting.
We will have time to discuss some action points that could lead us to unite across the world in solidarity and in sisterhood.
https://www.sisofrida.org/ email hello@sisofrida.org @sisofrida

Accsex

Please register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/screening-accsex-disabled-women-sexuality-and-solidarity-tickets-16811051307 Details are on the eventbrite.

Confirmed BSL for discussion!!

Laki Kaur

We ‘ re also very pleased that Laki Kaur will be joining us and co chairing the discussion with Becky.

Laki is a 25 year old disabled woman , she describes herself as ‘outspoken, positive and love to try new things who loves traveling ‘. She works as a receptionist and loves her job.

(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 I’m a member of Sisters of Frida and I’ve been involved in the Disabled People’s movement since early 2000

I think it’s 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 I’m attractive?

I can be err attracted to others

I’m a woman and I’m the same as any other woman

I also think it’s 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 that’s 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 it’s for me to continue that and to say yes I am proud to be a disabled black woman

Thank you!

Zara Todd

So I’m Zara, I’m 28 and a proud disabled young woman um yeah that’s me!

Is that all you’d like to say about today?

Err my brains a bit frazzled!

I think that it’s 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 it’s easy to get caught up in labels

And while we need spaces to explore our identity we don’t necessarily need to come

to the same conclusions

And what I think today’s 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 name’s Lucia Bellini and I’m part of Sisters of Frida

I’m really happy to be able to say that I’m a disabled woman

That I’m very proud to be a disabled woman

I’m independent, I work, I am able to challenge stereotypes

Um and I’m able to fight for equality of opportunity in society for disabled people in

general

I’m 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 I’m a bit fed up of people telling me asking me why I want to wear make-up

Why I’m interested in how I look if I’m blind

Err I also think that it’s time disabled women are seen as women and not different err

you know we heard about the fact that err women don’t 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 we’re no different because we’re disabled

That we just have the extra challenges that we have to overcome

You have to overcome extra discrimination, discrimination because we’re female and

discrimination because we’re 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 name’s Kirsten

Um I wrote a song about the plight of disabled women and I’d like to share the lyrics

with you

“Think of a mag, yes any old mag

What’s 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 it’s supposed to be?

No one with blubber gets on the cover

No one who hasn’t got symmetry

SAS Sisters against Symmetry

SAS Sisters against Body Bigotry

They say that prosthetics don’t make good aesthetics

Our surgical corset should never be seen

With bits of us missing there’s no good us wishing

To grace the front cover of Vogue magazine

Indoctrination, objectification this is the way it has always been

You’ve got to be bold break out of the mould

We shape our image let’s 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 don’t care one bit

Our bodies are ours including our clits!

SAS Sisters against Body Bigotry

SAS Sisters against Symmetry”

Ok right that’s better!

Um the key thing that I need to say about being a disabled woman and my

experience in the world is it’s a joyous thing

It’s an absolutely joyous thing to be a disabled woman

I am different in many ways

I have different ways of appreciating the world

And I’m 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 that’s where I want us to be as disabled women

But I don’t 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 we’re doing today is making that difference

Eleanor Lisney

I’m Eleanor Lisney

I’m a disabled woman and I’m proud of it

It took me a long time err to come out as a disabled woman even though I’ve 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 it’s a sort of relief and a joy and um celebration to be able to talk with other

women about things that I’ve thought of for a long time and have been quiet about

And now it’s no longer time, it’s no longer time to be quiet

It’s time to um have a voice

Ciara Doyle

I’m 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 I’m completely frazzled!

Ok err I think that today was extremely important err

I think that it doesn’t 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 it’s 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 women’s 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!