At the beginning of the semester, I came across an article titled The Deaf Body in Public Space on my Facebook news feed that was posted by one of my deaf friends. As I read through the article, I found myself nodding in agreement with many of the observations that the author, Rachel Kolb, voiced. Continue reading
disability
Bodies in Motion
This is my last semester of college and I am now going to transition from being a body in academia to a body in the workforce. This is a terrifying new concept because I honestly never became comfortable in academia and now I get to go be uncomfortable in a whole new arena. Continue reading
This Sucks
I remember talking to my mom about the book I was reading, “Feminist Queer Crip” by Alison Kafer. When I talked to my mother about disability, she pointed to an experience in her past. She said, she remembered back in her country seeing a man without legs or arms in the streets with a sign that asked others for food. My mom made a point to tell me that the man wasn’t sad, but was singing about the glory of God. Continue reading
Tell me how you really feel UMBC
It’t no secret that UMBC is the worst in terms of accessibility. What follows are my experiences as a disabled student at UMBC throughout the course of my developing disability. Continue reading
Disabled people and pleasure
I had a conversation with people I was close with about nurses who help disabled people find sexual pleasure. Someone brought up a documentary about the nurses who do this and I offered that I heard a little about it in my Unruly Bodies class. I told them briefly about our section on disabled bodies and the things we’ve discussed in class. Continue reading
Disability and Media
To start off, I would like to say… I love Netflix and mostly recently have been watching a series that I think you all should see.
It is called 3%, I do not want to give too much away but think Hunger Games + Portuguese and you got the right idea. In the show, 97% of the population lives in scums and poverty but if you get registered, at the age of 20 years old, you can go through a process called “The Process” (shocking right?) to see if you are the special 3% that gets to live in the island that has everything you can ever dream of, called The Offshore.
All the characters have their own special thing about them but the one that stood out to me was Fernando, would is played by an actor named Michel Gomes (Here is his Instagram, if you are curious).
Want to know why Fernando stood out to me…. I’ll tell you why… Continue reading
Queer Time in Donald Trump’s Amerikka
There have been interesting parallels between our class discussions around queer crip time and my current life. This has only become more obvious post election as I scramble to rework my five-year plan. I am not sure how much to share because while I am a very open person there are some aspects of my life that I prefer to keep private.
Try to understand me
As someone with chronic pain, I feel like I’m always trying to get people to understand me and my life. And most of the time, even after I try explaining it all, they still don’t understand. Continue reading
Is Our Campus Allergic to Accesibility?
I am an able-bodied person. I take advantage of this fact every day of my life as I walk around campus. At times I get winded or my legs hurt, but for the most part, I have no trouble walking to my classes, the dining hall, or common spaces on campus. As such, it is not immediately obvious to me and other able-bodied people around me how inaccessible this campus is. Every single one of my daily routes involves stairs. I hate them, but I can climb them. This is not the case for everyone on campus.
A Freak of (Un)Nature: On “Unnatural” and “Natural” Bodies
There is nothing I dread more than the confused, shocked, horrified look on people’s faces after I open my mouth and say something incomprehensible to their untrained ears. I feel like I am exposed for the freak of nature that I am. Despite my years and years of preparation in the form of weekly speech therapy sessions and high-tech cochlear implant, I still clumsily navigate the hearing world, where sound reigns supreme, constantly tripping over tasks that seem mundane to most people.
My body, and more specifically, my ears and voice, are seen as something out of the ordinary and freakish that must be covered up as efficiently as possible or put somewhere else where there are “people like me”.
Unruly Bodies 