Keywords for Disability

‘Crip Camp’ Could Be a Class Success!

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(Author’s Note: None of the 62 chapters from Keywords are titled “Law”, so I chose Chapter 52, “Rights”, by Maya Sabatello, because I’m guessing that’s what the professor meant. It’s the closest, anyway.)

Hey You, Teacher,

If it were implemented in your Social Studies II class curriculum this semester, I think Crip Camp (2020)—yes, that Oscar-nominated, Sundance premiere documentary that was produced by the Obamas—would be of substantial educational value in teaching the full history of the American civil rights movement to your classroom. 

First, let me offer that the disabled position in America remains largely unacknowledged in our humanities classrooms. The significant piece of American history covered in Crip Camp is retold colorfully by the leading rights activists for Disabled in Action, including Jim LeBrecht, Judith Heumann, Corbett O’Toole, Ann Cupolo Freeman, and Denise Sherer-Jacobsen, ALL of whom are accomplished authors in the field of disability studies as well—which is something to provide extra material for your potential unit on disability rights. It’s a fast-paced documentary about the fight for American civil rights, filmed from the ground floor of the sit-ins and the sidewalks of the protests.

The documentary follows the above cast during their youth at the disability-centered “Woodstock” (Ann Freeman) which brought them together and shaped their confidence—straight on through their fight to get Act 504 signed, a critical piece of civil rights legislation which was first vetoed by Nixon (quote: “it would be just impossible in terms of cost”), but later weakened and delayed under Secretary Joseph Califano, with all attempts to enforce the act abandoned by Reagan in a horrendously bigotted effort to deprive the largest minority group in the country of their rights to protection from discrimination in federally funded public spaces (and in organizations and businesses nationwide). Because the fight still continues, your classrooms, were they to include Crip Camp in their curriculums, might notice one term continually appearing—rights. But the fight for disability justice does not only include these adoptions into law, like Act 504. Rights is more complicated than that; which is almost exactly the message of Crip Camp going into today’s world. Perhaps it would allow your students to expand their perspectives on discrimination, society’s attitudes, and law.

Maya Sabatello’s chapter “Rights” from Keywords for Disability Studies offers that “basing disability claims for justice merely in terms of legal rights, without a concept of moral rights, is inadequate”, because if the legal rights were boiled down to their core, it would be exposed how “Traditional Western liberal theory assumes that rights are private, individualized, and autonomous”. Contrary to this, the interest of disability activists, including those in Crip Camp, has always been on “group rights”, which “focus on collectives that have shared interests and aim at protecting cultures, ways of life and practices that are presumably not sufficiently protected by the assertion of individual interests” (page 159). So, as Crip Camp’s core activists (along with machinist unions, Black Panthers and supporters) persist through three weeks of hunger striking, months of government sit-ins, and a generation of “really serious, radical action” (Jimmy LeBrecht), they fight for their rights in the law, but also for their rights to exist together as an identity without friction or hardship. Sometimes this can be as plain as the right to not be “sidelined” (Judy Heumann) in a public space with your presence, but other times these rights are less obvious to the nondisabled, like the right to privacy. As one Camp Jened camper, Nick, put it: “I think what Nancy is talking about is that everyone in their life sometimes wants to be alone. I think that’s one of the major rights.” The story really only begins with Act 504, but Crip Camp teaches students to fight for the full extent of their rights, the way Sabatello describes.

 So, Sabatello’s understanding of legal rights and group rights, together, helps encapsulate Disability in Action’s goals and expectations for the implementation of Act 504. And although the world has come a long way from the incomprehensible atrocity of the institution-era, you may still be tempted to avoid showcasing this film to your classroom because of its graphic depictions of abuse in institutions like Willowbrook—I urge you not to. Though uncomfortable for students, that scene provides additional understanding of the stakes of this fight for civil rights by the disabled in America. It was not very long ago.

Of the above reasoning, might I add—aren’t these EXACTLY the kinds of topics you’d want to use to stimulate class discussion? What does Social Studies in American classrooms concern at its heart, if not the rights and freedoms of the country? As the famous clause “all men are created equal” has taken nearly 250 years to prove effected, much of that catch-up is contained already in your Social Studies curricula—and here is one more opportunity for learning. The relevance in humanities classrooms is abundant, across the board, but this is magnified by the under-evaluation of the disabled position in history as a minority group. As Corbett O’Toole said in Crip Camp, “There are moments when history shifts”. This film is an artful reliving of one of the most important ones of the last century. I hope that your Social Studies curriculum this year does not overlook a highly educational piece of American literature which could be supplemental to your classroom’s emergent concept of rights and freedoms.

Sincerely, 

Clover

A Future High-School Teacher

Sexuality and Defiance: A Review of Sins Invalid

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Summary:

The short film “Sins Invalid” showcases a performance project by the same name, created by disabled artists Patty Berne and Leroy Moore. This collection of performances by a collection of artists of all disabilities, races, ethnicities, genders, and sexualities focuses on the nuances of navigating sex, desire, and relationships while existing in a world that is incredibly hostile to any displays of sexuality in disabled people. The first performance by ET Russian shows them removing their prosthetic legs for the night and rubbing lotion on their legs while a narration plays over the scene describing a past sexual experience with another disabled person who was injured in a car crash. Next, Maria Palacios explains her relationship with sexuality as a wheelchair user and how she was taught that she would never have sex, get married, have children or even grow up. Palacios also describes the horrible medical treatment she experienced in her youth that dehumanized her. After these introductory performance, Sins Invalid co-founder Patty Berne comes onto the screen and explains why she wanted to create this performance troupe with Leroy Moore, highlighting the way she was paraded around her elementary school naked for doctors to analyze. This performance project is a way for these disabled performers to own their bodies and display them for an audience in a way that is empowering for themselves and others.

Next, the film explores the United States’ past of eugenics, beginning by listing the “5 D’s of types of people who should not reproduce”: Degenerate, Dependent, Deficient, Delinquent, and Defective. Performer Seeley Quest takes on the story of a woman named Carey whose mother was in colony of people that fell under the 5 D’s. When she was young she was assaulted and became pregnant, but was forcibly sterilized on the basis of her family history of disability. One of the most difficult performances to watch came next, with the co-founder Leroy Moore on his knee in the nude while another performer pulls a long list of insults from his mouth, symbolizing how the words of the world are easily internalized. After that, deaf dancer Antoine Hunter explains the experience of non-deaf people telling him he shouldn’t dance because he can’t hear music. We see Hunter dance without any soundtrack, exploring an internal rhythm he seeks to share with the audience. Next, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explains how poets and writers like her too are able to join Sins Invalid and shares a poem she wrote about the love between herself and another disabled individual and how pure and strong their devotion to taking care of each other is.

Later, Leroy Moore performs a scene of going to the doctor in sexual bondage attire and then performs a scene with Juba Kalamka where they play dominos and joke with each other until it turns to hugging and kissing. Then, performer Matt Fraser conducts a sensual bath scene where he shows the audience how he cleans himself, making use of his legs to reach areas his arms are unable to, and invites the audience to see his beauty in the way shower scenes in movies and television often sexualize the love interests of the protagonists. Right afterwards we watch Fraser in a new scene being beat up and eventually killed by an invisible assailant which we find out is an embodiment of the microaggressions he faces in day to day life. The most moving performance for me came next, where artist Nomy Lamm dressed in feathers and wings sings an eerie wordless song atop a nest of limbs. Nearing the end of the showcase, Piepzna-Samarasinha orates another of her pieces, which is a story about the experience of flirting with another disabled individual online and dreaming about their possible life together. Finally, the last performance Sins Invalid gives us is a dramatic chain of events between performer Rodney Bell and Seeley Quest where at first they are in an intimate and tender moment that turns violent when Quest attacks Bell, trying to use his vulnerabilities as a wheelchair user against him. In the last few minutes of this scene, Bell rises up into the air with his wheelchair, twisting and turning and is displayed in front of a red cross, reminiscent of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Quotations and Observations:

From “Disability and Sex” in Keywords for Disabilities, Margrit Shildrick writes, “…disabled people, like everyone else, understand their sexualities in multiple different ways, which do not fit easily with the convenient models of social management” (Shildrick pg. 164). I thought this quote is depicted very nicely in Sins Invalid because inherent to the production is the fact that each of these disabled performers have different experiences and stories based on their lives as people of color, queer people, and each of them utilizes different mediums in which they choose to perform their stories. I think one of the reasons why Sins Invalid is so good, is because one of their goals as a production is to essentially scrap the “convenient models of social management” in favor of showing the world who they truly are, safe within their community of people who support and cherish their art.

Another quote from Keywords for Disabilities from the chapter “Sexuality” by Robert McRuer says, “Disabled people often have been discursively constructed as incapable of having sexual desires or a sexual identity, due to their supposed “innocence” ” (McRuer, 168). I connected this quote to Sins Invalid in particular to a section where a performer is expressing her frustration with societies inability to allow disabled people the experience of seeing people like themselves on the screen getting to experience sex just like non-disabled people are allowed to. Sins Invalid is a way for people to show off “An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of invisibility” as stated on their website.

Review:

I found the short film Sins Invalid to be incredibly moving in the way the performers were able to get down to the nitty-gritty feelings of pain, weakness, love, and strength that have experienced and continue experience in their lives. Before I wrote this post, I watched it one more time in order to catch the detail I may have missed in our class viewing, and each performance so aptly contends with the oppressive power structures they face, wrought with symbolism and humor. I really would like to see a live performance of Sins Invalid if I ever get the opportunity because only seeing snippets of many different performances, I would assume, pale in comparison to the real experience of getting to see it live. I rate Sins Invalid a 5 out of 5, because of the masterful attention to detail of the camera work, as well as the finely chosen scenes that moved me in such a short amount of time.

Reflective Annotated Bibliography Two: O’Toole and Lewis (Chapter 14, “Crip”)

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Summary:

 In Chapter 14 of O’Toole’s Keywords for Disability, Victoria Ann Lewis describes the loaded history of the word “crip”, and the way that crip genres of identity have been expanded upon since the 1980s. Once a slur used as a diminutive of difficulty (i.e. “crip course” (46)), the term “crip” has adopted an ironic affection, and is now most recognized by academics among other terms that reclaim the stigma of disability. 

Since then, the term has exploded throughout disability discourse: from “crip it” (47), to “crip zen” (46). “Cripping”, like “queering”, is now considered an effective means of demonstrating “dominant assumptions and exclusionary effects” (47) when applied to media. The two are repeatedly referred to in tandem throughout Chapter 14.

In conclusion, “crip”, sometimes written as “krip” to distinguish from the infamous gang, is showing no signs of slowing down, and goes to show how the allowance for self-definition can be generative of new forms of expression within, and beyond, the community.

Quotations: 

1) “With the emergence of the disability civil rights movement in the 1970 s, ‘crip’ gained wide usage as an informal, affectionately ironic, and provocative identification among people with disabilities.” (46)

2) “While there are examples of ‘crip’ converted into a verb as far back as the fourteenth century, where we read of ‘a beeste that was broken and Cripped ,’ our contemporary usage seems to have originated in academic discourse as a critical strategy borrowed from queer studies.” (47)

3) Sandahl also notes the two positions [queerness and cripness] share ‘a radical stance towards concepts of normalcy’, a position that McRuer describes as a shared ‘resistance to cultural homogenization’”. (47)

Reflections:

Lewis’ text, though brief, paints a bright future for the use of “crip” as a type of strategic language. I will say, in case my personal experience is not sufficient, that I think it’s wonderful that verbiage can inspire such feelings of community, ownership, and empowerment when they once inflicted pain. Affectionate terms are a great way to increase comfort, and promote self-confidence. Lewis’ paper also underscores the intersectional lines between queer and crip theory, which is equally fascinating, and I think exploring that shared history would make for a great essay. However, I would not personally advocate for the use of this term, because in my own experience I’ve seen it used mainly as a pejorative.