6WordsSunday: Don’t Forget, Women Are Veterans, Too

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Danine

Image via American Women Veterans on Facebook. Caption reads:

Sgt. Lynn Kinney, Maj. Megan McClung and Staff Sgt. Amy Forsythe stand together on Camp Fallujah, Iraq, April 2006. All worked together at the Public Affairs Office for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force serving in Al Anbar Provice. McClung was killed in action Dec 6, 2006 by an IED while escorting media in Ramadi, Iraq. Kinney, still in the Marines, works as a marketing and public affairs representative for the recruiting district in Pittsburgh, PA. Forsythe is in the US Marine reserves and works for a local TV station in Oceanside, CA.

Happy Memorial Day to all our veterans!

Best of BADD (Blogging Against Disablism)

Posted on May 5, 2010 by danineAdmin

Last Saturday, May 1, was Blogging Against Disablism Day. (Disablism is also known as ableism in the U.S., where I live.) This international event was hosted by Diary of a Goldfish, with hundreds of bloggers participating. Here are a few of my favorite posts:

Red Vinyl Shoes: Full Disclosure

I regularly have to take off work to go to doctor’s appointments. Most employers aren’t too keen on that; luckily my current employer is very willing to accommodate my schedule. Working on writing at home, it’s easy to fit a nap in without affecting productivity. When going on job interviews I keep these things to myself. It’s hard enough getting hired as a fat black woman, much less adding my disability to the pot of stew they’d rather not eat.

Disability: Active Academics: Looking For Parallel Themes

Although as far as the polices, documents and acts are concerned, equality in women’s education has been successfully programmed over the years, no such development has taken place in the case of disabled persons,whose education continues to be haunted by the modern-day segregationists’instrument of special schools.”

Even Grounds: Rosa Parks Is Not Done Teaching Us

We are discriminating against people with disabilities…. You could say that it is incorrect, because of the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act that requires to make information accessible to people with disabilities. It only applies to the Federal Government, and to those states which adopted an accessibility legislation. In the private sector, which creates most of the web sites we use on a daily basis, there is no such regulation. Nobody is required to make a private web site accessible to people with disabilities by law.”

Normal is Overrated: Of Privilege and Auditory Processing

The Normal Auditory Processing Privilege Checklist

I can watch first-run movies in any theater and still understand a majority of the dialogue without having to attend a specially scheduled screening with subtitles.

I can watch movies on streaming services and comprehend the dialogue with the same ease that I could with a DVD rental.

TV shows are equally accessible to me whether I record from TV or watch them online. I could drop my cable TV subscription without losing access to those shows. continued….”

Wheelchair Dancer: Movement is Radical

Movement — no, moving as a disabled person — is the most radical thing I/you can possibly do. Let me say this again. Moving your body is possibly the most radical thing you, I, and we can do. I have often danced around this topic, saying things like “Mobility is at the core of the movement.” Now, I want to pop a wheelie, spin around, turn a cartwheel and say loud and clear: “Movement is the movement.

Women’s History Network Blog: Blogging Against Disablism

How much more problematic then was the disabled female body? And perhaps this is the question that historians have yet to answer. There is a growing body of work on mental illness and on the impact of institutionalisation on both care of people with certain types of disabilities and how this impacted on their civil and human rights- yet, there is a lot less work on what it meant to be disabled- and particularly what it meant to be female and disabled.

There are many more BADD posts listed at Diary of a Goldfish so please, go check them out!

Hello and Goodbye, Dorothy Height

Posted on April 20, 2010 by danineAdmin

I am embarrassed to admit that, before this morning, I had never heard of Dorothy Height. Ms. Height, who died this morning at the beautiful age of 98, was apparently one of the most important civil rights leaders of our time. In a statement, President Obama called Ms. Height “the godmother of the civil rights movement and a hero to so many Americans.”

According to the New York Times, Ms. Height was a part of Martin Luther King’s inner circle and was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial when Dr. King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech in 1963. Ms. Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women and helped to found the National Women’s Political Caucus, along with women like Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisholm. More from The Times:

Ms. Height is widely credited as the first person in modern civil rights era to treat the problems of equality for women and equality for African-Americans as a seamless whole, merging concerns that had historically been largely separate.

In other words, Ms. Height was an important leader in the fight for civil rights and women’s rights. Why haven’t I ever heard of her before? Why isn’t Dorothy Height a household name like Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks?

I had two U.S. history classes in high school, one of which was Advanced Placement. Why didn’t I learn about Ms. Height in one of those classes? I graduated from college and even took some women’s studies and gender theory courses. Ms. Height’s name was not uttered there.

At this moment, I have two books on U.S. Women’s history in my possession. The first is American Women’s History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues and Events by Doris Weatherford. Ms. Height is not mentioned in this so-called encyclopedia. The second book is Gail Collins’ When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, which, if you haven’t yet, you really must. A quick glance at the index reveals that Ms. Height is referred to four times in the book. Now I feel doubly sheepish because I hadn’t done all of my research before starting to write this post.

But whatever.

Even though I had read about Dorothy Height in one book once, I still really didn’t know who she was. As a society, we need to do a better job recording and re-telling the histories of all Americans, not just white men.

In the meantime, I can say “thank you”.

Thank you, Dorothy Height. Your life and work will not be forgotten.

UPDATE 6:04 PM: After thinking, and honestly, worrying about how this post could interpreted, I want to clarify something. As an adult, progressive and feminist, I don’t expect to be educated about African-American/American history. What infuriates me is that, to a great degree, Dorothy Height has been written out of American/U.S. history. We need to write her back in and others like her.

Women's (Disability) History Month: Barbara Jordan

Posted on March 18, 2010 by danineAdmin

Barbara Jordan, the former congresswoman from Texas, was born and raised in Houston, Texas. After graduating from Texas Southern University, she attended law school at Boston University before returning to Houston. In 1966, she became the first African-American woman to serve in the Texas state senate, where she did until her election to the U.S. House Representatives in 1972. At the time, Jordan was the first African-American woman from a southern state to serve in Congress. She quickly made a name for herself on the national stage by securing a seat on the Judiciary Committee and is most famous for her impassioned defense of the Constitution during Richard Nixon’s impeachment.

In the 1973, Jordan was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She began walking with a cane and eventually progressed to a wheelchair. She left Congress in January 1979 and returned to Texas as a full professor at the University of Texas. Jordan continued to be involved in politics and among other things, she spoke at the 1988 and 1992 Democratic National Conventions. Many people found it shocking that:

Her 1992 keynote address was delivered from a wheelchair while she was in the midst of a lengthy battle with multiple sclerosis.

While her congressional biographies say, “She never married and carefully guarded her private life”, she supposedlyhad “a longtime companion”, Nancy Earl. Barbara Jordan died from complications of pneumonia and leukemia on January 17, 1996.

About.com: Women’s History-Barbara Jordan

U.S. Congress: Barbara Jordan

Black Americans in Congress: Barbara Jordan

Photo credit: Library of Congress

Women's (Disability) History Month: Helene Melanie Lebel

Posted on March 12, 2010 by danineAdmin

In addition to Jews, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals and transsexuals, the Nazis also persecuted people with disabilities. In 1933, Adolf Hitler enacted the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, which was intended to eliminate “the unfit” from the German race. This law called for the sterilization of all persons with possibly hereditary conditions including mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. Within a few years, the Third Reich decided that forced sterilization was not enough to get rid of their “biological enemies”. Hence, the T-4 Euthanasia Program was enacted, in which people with disabilities and mental illness were systematically murdered.

Helene Melanie Lebel was one of those people.

Helene was born on September 15, 1911, in Vienna, Austria, to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, who later died in World War I. At 19 years old, Helene began showing signs of schizophrenia. By 1935, her symptoms worsened and she was admitted to Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna.

In 1938, the Germans annexed Austria to Germany. Two years later, Helene was still being held at Steinhof even though her condition had improved. Although her family was led to believe she would soon be released, the Nazis had lied:

In fact, Helene was transferred to a converted prison in Brandenburg, Germany, where she was undressed, subjected to a physical examination, and then led into a shower room.

Helene was one of 9,772 persons gassed that year in the Brandenburg “Euthanasia” center. She was officially listed as dying in her room of “acute schizophrenic excitement.

It is estimated that 270,000 people with disabilities died during the 1930s and 1940s at the hands of the Nazi regime. (1)

Read more about Helene Melanie Lebel’s life and death or click on the links above.

Additional Works Cited (But Not Linked To Above)
Barnes, C. and Mercer, G. 2003: Disability. Cambridge: Polity Press. 32-33

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

National Women's (Disability) History Month: Alicia Alonso

Posted on March 10, 2010 by danineAdmin

Alicia Alonso is a Cuban prima ballerina and choreographer, best known for her portrayals of Gisele and Carmen. She was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1921 and began dancing at an early age, first in Havana at the Ballet School of the Pro-Art Musical Society in 1931. After marrying Fernando Alonso, they moved to New York City where Alicia studied with Anatole Vilzak and Ludmilla Shollar at the School of American Ballet. During this time, she also studied with Vera Volkova in London.

In 1938, Alonso made her Broadway debut in the musicals Great Lady in 1938 and Stars in Your Eyes in 1939. Early in her career, probably about the time, Alonso began experiencing problems with her vision and became partially blind. She continued to dance, by adapting to her impairment:

Her partners always had to be in the exact place she expected them to be, and she used lights in different parts of the stage to guide her. Her handicap was totally unnoticed by the audiences.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Alonso danced in New York, London, Paris, Havana, Russia and Monte Carlo. She is most famous for her iconic portrayal of Giselle in 1943.

Alonso founded the Alicia Alonso Ballet in 1948 in Havana which later became the Cuban National Ballet. After Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, Alonso returned to Cuba permanently and became director of the Cuban National Ballet, a position she holds to this day.

Watch Alicia Alonso performing Giselle with Vladimir Vasiliev and Ballet Nacional de Cuba (1981?)

Learn more about Alicia Alonso::

Photo credit: Library of Congress

Women's (Disability) History Month: Harriet Tubman

Posted on March 8, 2010 by danineAdmin

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in 1819 in Dorchester County, Maryland. When she was six years old, she was sent to work; first as a weaver, then as a house slave. Seven years later, Tubman was sent to work in the fields.

Tubman had always subjected to whippings and beatings, but at age 12, she suffered an injury that would affect her for the rest of her life. Tubman was defending another slave who was attempting to escape when a white overseer struck her in the head with a 2 pound weight. Most biographical accounts mention the attack, saying something similar to this:

She never fully recovered from the blow, which subjected her to spells in which she would fall into a deep sleep

In other words, Tubman had epilepsy, an extremely stigmatizing and potentially disabling condition.

Harriet Tubman grew up to be one of famous “conductors” of the Underground Railroad. She escaped from slavery in 1849 and made her way to Philadelphia. From 1850 to 1860, she made 19 trips into the South and helped over 300 slaves reach freedom in the North.

Learn more about Harriet Tubman:

Harriet Tubman: African American History of Western New York
Harriet Tubman: Women in History

Photo credit: Library of Congress

Women's (Disability) History Month: Rosemary Kennedy

Posted on March 3, 2010 by danineAdmin

Since today, March 3, is “Spread the Word to End the ‘r’ Word Day”, it is appropriate to honor Rosemary Kennedy, the third child and eldest daughter of Rose and Joseph Kennedy, who lived with intellectual disabilities (mental retardation). Most people credit Rosemary with having inspired her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver to start the Special Olympics, which has impacted the lives of millions of people with disabilities.

Rather than attempt to write my own mini-biography of Rosemary Kennedy, I’ll use the words the Kennedy family has chosen to remember her by:

Rosemary Kennedy, born Rose Marie Kennedy on September 13, 1918, was the third child and eldest daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. She was slower to crawl, slower to walk and to speak than her brothers, and she experienced learning difficulties when she reached school age. Despite her apparent intellectual disabilities, Rosemary participated in most family activities. In the diary she kept as a teenager she described people she met, dances and concerts she attended, and a visit to the Roosevelt White House. When her father was appointed US Ambassador to Britain in 1938, Rosemary went to live in London and was presented at court along with her mother and sister Kathleen.

But when the family returned to the United States in 1940, “Rosemary was not making progress but seemed instead to be going backward,” as her sister Eunice later wrote. “At 22, she was becoming increasingly irritable and difficult.” The following year, after being persuaded that a lobotomy would help to calm his daughter and prevent her sometimes violent mood swings, Joseph Kennedy authorized the operation. The relatively new procedure, which at the time seemed to hold great promise, left Rosemary permanently incapacitated and unable to care for herself. On the recommendation of Archbishop Cushing, Rosemary was sent to St. Coletta’s School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where she would live for the rest of her life.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver had a particularly close relationship with her older sister, and great empathy for Rosemary and others who faced similar challenges. In 1962 Mrs. Shriver started a summer day camp in her own back yard for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, a camp which evolved into Special Olympics, now a global competition that involves 1.4 million athletes from 150 countries.

Rosemary Kennedy died on January 7, 2005 at age 86. Eunice Shriver said in her eulogy that Rosemary had left a legacy that was long and deep. Along with inspiring Mrs. Shriver’s own work with Special Olympics, Rosemary had inspired her brother, President John F. Kennedy, to initiate sweeping legislation designed to improve the quality of life for Americans with disabilities. She had inspired her sister Jean Kennedy Smith to start Very Special Arts and her nephew, Anthony Shriver, to start Best Buddies. Hospitals, schools and other such facilities around the world have been named in honor of Rosemary Kennedy.

Rosemary Kennedy may have spent the majority of her life tucked away in a small town in rural Wisconsin and hard to imagine a world without her having been in it. Would the Kennedy family have had the same sense of social justice? Would Ted Kennedy have dedicated his career to health care, children, women, people with disabilities and other marginalized groups? Would we have the Americans with Disabilities Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Fair Housing Act Amendments of 1988?

Would we fighting for health care reform right now?

It’s impossible to know.

Learn more about Rosemary Kennedy:

Rosemary Kennedy biography from the JFK Presidential Library
Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s eulogy at Rosemary Kennedy’s memorial service in January 2005
MSNBC: Rosemary Kennedy, JFK’s sister, dies at 86

Image via Special Olympics

Women's (Disability) History Month: Dorothea Lange

Posted on March 2, 2010 by danineAdmin

Dorothea Lange was a photographer and photojournalist best known for her portraits of migrant workers during the Great Depression, such as her legendary Migrant Mother series.

While Lange’s work is famous, not much is known about her personal life. She had a difficult childhood. She contracted polio when she was seven, leaving her with an obvious limp. The neighborhood children shunned her and even her mother acted embarrassed by her “crippled” child. Lange’s father left the family when she was 12 years old.

As a teenager, Lange discovered photography and later made it her career:

The pain of her childhood, however, gave her a fuller sense of what suffering meant, and later on, when the government hired her to document the effects of the depression, it deepened her compassion for the destitution and despair that she saw all around her.

Lange embraced her disability, saying:

It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, humiliated me, all those things at once. I’ve never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.

Lange spent her career photographing others who had been marginalized by society: migrant workers in the Great Depression, sharecroppers in the deep South, and Japanese-Americans being evacuated to internment camps in World War II.

Learn more about Dorothea Lange:

Women's (Disability) History Month: Juliette Gordon Low

Posted on March 1, 2010 by danineAdmin

As women, we rarely hear about the integral role women have played in history. We know even less about the lives of women with disabilities in history. Throughout the month of March, which is Women’s History Month, I plan to feature women in history, both recent and not-so-recent, who have lived with disability. Some of these women might be famous while others you might never have heard of. First up, Juliette Gordon Low.

Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts

Juliette Gordon Low was born on October 31, 1860, in Savannah, Georgia. As a child, Juliette, known as “Daisy” to her friends and family, developed a lifelong love of the arts. She wrote poetry, sketched, painted, acted in plays and later became an accomplished sculptor.

After attending boarding school in Virginia and New Jersey, Daisy traveled extensively in the United States and Europe. Daisy suffered from chronic ear infections as a young adult. By the time she married William Mackay Low on December 21, 1886, she had lost most of her hearing in one ear due to improper treatment. Unfortunately, Daisy’s wedding day brought an unwelcome gift:

At her wedding, when she was 26, she lost hearing in her other ear after a grain of good-luck rice thrown at the event lodged in her ear. When trying to remove the rice, the doctor punctured the eardrum and damaged the nerve-endings resulting in a total loss of hearing in that ear.

Daisy and William moved to England after the wedding. Daisy temporarily returned to the United States during the Spanish-American war to help her mother organize a convalescent hospital. William Low died in 1905 and in 1911, Daisy met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, who inspired her to found the Girl Scouts in the United States the following year.

As Daisy encouraged girls to learn about homemaking, arts, science and the outdoors, she also included girls with disabilities, at a time when many organizations excluded them:

“Juliette Low was very open-minded,” says Jami Brantley, historian at Girl Scout First Headquarters, which today showcases vintage uniforms, badges and handbooks, and chronicles the history of the group. “She wanted the organization to not just be for the more elite girls.”

Juliette Gordon Low died of breast cancer on January 17, 1927, in Savannah, Georgia. From the original troop of 18 girls, there are now more than 3.7 million Girl Scouts.

Learn more about the life and work of Juliette Gordon Low:

Danine N. Spencer

Tag Archives: feministory