I Don't Think This is Home: Privilege, Isolation, and Resistance

This past weekend I was at an anti-racism workshop at the college I go to. This blogpost comes from a weekend of reflecting on whiteness and disability; struggling to figure out and name the ways that intertwining systems of privilege and oppression function in my life.

I realized that I have internalized the notion that the straight white non-disabled (cis)male-bodied experience is comfort and safety within their own bodies. Sometimes that is how some people (esp. white, able-bodied people) treat me, when they either don't recognize or choose not to recognize the fact that I am hard of hearing/deaf. I feel like I've internalized from white supremacy and patriarchy and heterosexism and ableism the idea that if my deafness/hard of hearing-ness could be eliminated, I'd be "normal", and finding "home" would be no problem. Within that context, that ideology, the solution seems to be to fight for access for me, and every other oppressed person, to live in the same ways that those with multiple privileges do; and I feel like that is how I've generally imagined what "home" would look and feel like.


But there's something that is nagging at me; that says no, it wouldn't feel like that at all. Because when I am treated as if I am a hearing person; I feel isolated. I have never felt like that space is a home; just that it is what I've been told that it should be. And when I engage that isolation, I feel lost, like I'm stumbling around trying to figure out where I am and where I'm going. Because the compass I've been given points towards the spaces where I and my friends who experience similar and/or different oppressions have been denied access and experience violence, isolation and invisibility. But I know and feel that going isn't the direction where "home" is; for me, and I'm not sure it is for any of us.

Because when I tap into what feels like home within my body, the spaces I inhabit, and the relationships I have-what feels like home is within active resistance to oppression and isolation. Home and liberation begin to feel like possibilities when I don't follow the compass pointing towards a life of living within bodies and spaces of privilege and domination alone, moving instead with my friends and communities toward a shared destinations that shift and change as we need them to.

In order to inhabit those spaces, resisting white and male-bodied supremacy is just as important as resisting internalized ableist oppression. Re-imagining what home and liberation means involves reinventing the ways I relate to people and spaces that I inhabit that reinforce isolation and oppression. Because if I don't do that, I begin to recreate the space that isolates me. In creating the spaces where I become vulnerable, I feel that a tension creates space for growth and movement towards a world where liberation and home becomes possible; imaginable, and maybe even real, even for just a moment.

Third World women, lesbians, feminists, and feminist-oriented men of all colors are banding and bonding together to right that balance. Only together can we be a force. I see us as a network of kindred spirits, a kind of family. We are the queer groups, the people that don't belong anywhere, not in the dominant world nor completely within our own respective cultures. Combined we cover so many oppressions. But the overwhelming oppression is the collective fact that we do not fit, and because we do not fit we are a threat. - Gloria Anzaldúa "La Prieta"

Resisting Isolation, Building Home.

For most of my life it has been easier to perform a survival able-bodied-friendly version of myself, rather than nurturing the harder to live disabled-self-loving version of who I ache, desire and need to be. Because it has often meant the difference between a-little-bit-more-connection and a-little-less-isolation. But what is the point of connection, if you still feel isolated and alienated from your self? And what is that connection built upon and from? How do I want to be connected? - Mia Mingus, "Wherever You Are Is Where I Want to Be: Crip Solidarity"

Ever since I read these words written my friend Mia on her blog, Leaving Evidence, a few months ago; I found that these words make me wrestle with myself, wrestle with internalized ableism. Way too often, I brush away the the part of my body, my being hard-of-hearing that demands my friends and family change their ways for me to be fully present with them. When I do this, the connection I have with them feels like it is built and contingent upon my internalized ableism and their able-bodied privilege. And I hate that. Because I want to be able to be whole with my friends, disabled and able-bodied, while at the same time being whole and connected to myself.


And I felt like I couldn't: that if I wanted to control the space so it was accessible to me, I had to be alone; and if I wanted to be with friends, then I had to just deal with the fact that the space is inaccessible. I felt like I would just have to hold all the ableism, internal and external, inside until I was forced to leave. And I would rarely mention a word about ableism; only say that there were too many people. Saying ableism or lack of access, or not being able to be whole or fully present was too hard. And it still is so fucking hard.



Keeping my lack of access in apolitical terms that don't imply power or privilege has been a way of mentioning there's an issue, but not telling the full truth. Because telling the full truth would mean telling them the ways that I struggle when I'm with them and the truth that I need them to help create access with me. So I tell them that it's too loud or that I need to take a walk or that I'm not feeling like being there and leaving without telling them why. Because I've told my parents what my needs are, repeatedly, and nothing has changed, so by the time I'm dealing with this with friends, I leave, feeling defeated before we begin struggling to create access together.



Last night, I was chatting with my friend Ryan Alley, and we were talking about the idea of creating our bodies and hearts as a home. He said:

"home happens in moments. there are moments when my body is home, moments when i feel home/belonging with other people. but it is a constant struggle, impossible to maintain that feeling of home. it is always moving, shifting."

So I need you to join me in struggling to find ways of interacting and connection that help us resist isolation, to find ways that dismantle the notion that any of our bodies are wrong, inferior, or broken. It is creating the space in which we can talk about what it feels like to be isolated, the pain of not having our access needs met, and defining what our access needs are in the situations we are in. It is holding each other and ourselves accountable for participating in systems of oppression. It is allowing each other to be the complex people we are and giving all of us space for self-care. It is dancing, story-telling, laughing, cooking and traveling with each other. It is being with each other in these ways that can help us create our bodies as home, even if only for a moment. In these moments, we can create relationships that begin to feel like home, like family, like liberation. And recapture it again and again as it shifts.

Check out Mia's blog, Leaving Evidence: www.leavingevidence.wordpress.com