cripchick’s weblog

For the last two years, performers and activists have been organizing a show on disability, invisibility, and sexuality in San Francisco, titled Sins Invalid [link isn't work safe]. This past November, I watched the clips on youtube and pretended I was there. Must figure out a way to get there next year. : )

Here is an interview with one performer, Soledad Decosta who describes herself as “an uppity Portuguese woman who isn’t afraid to claim her black latina maternal ancestry”. In her interview, she describes her experience as a disabled intersex person.

“It’s not just like just let’s get it on. It’s like “…no, let’s have a discussion.”
It’s not everybody that always wants to have a discussion—people want to have sex, you know— and it’s not that simple when you’re in a position like mine and that’s true for a lot of pwds if not all all pwds, especially if you’re dealing with something that’s, you know, rendered as somehow visibly otherizing in the context of negotiating sex, having sex, and being a sexual human being. It’s not like there’s some guidebook. It’s not like you go to Barnes and Noble and there’s like a hundred books on hot crip sex with intersex person. There’s just not. It’s like I’m the book— hello, I’m the book— ask me, open me up.” —Soledad (this segment starts at 2:08 part of the clip)

What stood out to me were the two lines below, largely because although Soledad is a queer disabled person, both situations could easily apply to a disabled OR queer person, particularly those with bodies that aren’t considered the norm. The two communities have a lot of commonalities. (distrust for doctors or the medical industrial complex, body issues, defying labels, the list goes on and on…):

“For example, if I get into an accident, what’s going to happen to me? There are people whose bodies are similar to mine, you get in an accident and they don’t know how to categorize you. They may deny you treatment while you’re dying there on the sidewalk.”

“They—that is those doctors— they didn’t get things quite right. Instead of praising my birth, they cut. …They held me down and did things to me that no one should have to go through without their consent.”

You can find more Sins Invalid interviews by clicking here. And it’s HOT!! (oh and again not work safe). : D