I think I could write a lot more blog posts about APIA history and how that intersects with my identity. And in general it has been fun to write about what I am learning and how that is impacting my life. I have wanted to carry on a blog for awhile now and this has been a low stakes on ramp for that. So I am thankful for that!

Spending the weekend at Camp Stand By Me which is a camp for people (mostly adults, people usually assume the campers are kids) in Vaughn, WA (which is about an hour from Olympia). The camp is a beautiful place with the Puget Sound at the bottom of the hill and a nature trail, dining hall, nature yurt, pool, arts and crafts, recreation lodge, and cabins. There is a grand view of the Olympia Mountains and orca whales pass by on occasion.

At camp, people are free to be whoever they are and are provided with lots of opportunities they don’t usually have access to. Like canoeing, horse back riding in summer camps, going on a walk through the woods, archery, etc. Anyway, camp is a really special place and I am happy I got to pop back in for the last weekend camp of the 2017 year.

But that got me thinking of the intersection of (dis)ability and sex as we have gotten to talk about the intersection of race and sex during this class. Through getting to be a cabin leader at this camp I have gotten to see the lived realities of the campers and gain a super deep lens into some of the issues. (I have also been apart of volunteering at L’Arche Farms in Tacoma where I got more experience with how some of these issues play out). (Dis)ability and sex is so complicated. There are so many layers that add complexity into what it means to date or have intimacy in relationships. One is finding a match, then in most cases what perimeters the parents or caregivers have for the relationship, physical contact, hanging out time, will the people be able to live on their own or will they live with their families or in a group home. There are so many questions.

There were some people that I met that acted like sisters to each other but later the older female told me that she was the younger females mom and that after she gave birth to her (at the time she was living on her own or with a partner) the doctors sterilized her without her consent. Another persons mom who was getting older (it seemed like the mom had the beginning stages of Alzheimers/Dementia) told me that her older daughter was going to put the daughter with disabilities in a group home. The mom did not want that and shared with me that the daughter had been sexually abused in those settings before, more than once. The statistics for violence against women with disabilities is staggering. This community has a staggering account of sexual abuse, violence, forced sterilization, forced abortion, and medical abuse that happens to them.

This conversation continues to get layered with complexity the more intersections get added in with race, socioeconomic class, region in the U.S., part in the world. The world would benefit from (dis)ability discussed more in academia as well as people making relationships with people in the community.

 

These are just some collected thoughts. I have a lot more forming in my noggin.