The influence of the Gertrude Stein Club is stronger than ever.
For all the hype about hope, Obama is still a
calculating politician.
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KATHI WOLFE
Friday, October 13, 2006
I HAVE RECENTLY re-entered the dating world. Previously a Luddite, now I’m on board with online dating. After exchanging e-mails, I’ve found it’s often fun to meet a woman for coffee.
There was one exception to my pleasant online dating experiences. I met a date recently at a Cosi coffee shop in Bethesda, Md. I stood up, shook her hand and hoped things would go well. But before I could say, “Do you want a skim or full-fat latte,” she ran out the door, saying, “I have something that I have to do!”
Why did my date run away? I’m not sure. I don’t have two heads or breathe fire. But, I’d bet my k.d. lang CDs that my potential Ms. Right fled because of my disability.
Though I’d told her about my vision impairment, I suspect she was dumbfounded by the sight of my white cane. Fortunately, most of my dates haven’t been like this. When there isn’t romance, there is friendship and shared interest. But I never know when I’ll have another nano-second date from hell.
This month is Disability Awareness Month. There are 54 million people in the United States with a disability (one in five Americans), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. I am one of many people in the gay and lesbian community who have a disability. We are of all races, ages, classes, genders and occupations. Reclaiming the pejorative terms “queer” and “cripple,” many of us proudly call ourselves “queer crips.”
Yet, our presence isn’t well known or always welcomed in the gay community. Partly, this stems from the lack of accessibility to disabled people in some bars, bookstores, conferences and other queer gathering places and events.
Hugh Gallagher, a gay friend of mine, used a wheelchair. Hugh, author of “FDR’s Splendid Deception,” studied at Oxford University in England and worked on Capitol Hill. Even so, he told me before he died in 2004, “With my wheelchair, I can only get into one gay bar [in Washington, D.C.]”
Then there’s the perception that queer crips aren’t sexual or competent — that we can’t have sex or don’t like sex. Trust me: We can and we do. One evening in Cleveland, I was with my partner Anne (now deceased) in a Chinese restaurant. Anne went to the restroom, while I paid the check. When she returned, a woman growled at her (referring to me), “You should watch her! She might fall!” Anne whispered under her breath, “I do [watch her] and I enjoy it.”
There are parallels between being disabled and gay. If you’re queer or crip, people will sometimes want to “heal” you. Once, a man called out to me as I walked, “What did you do to be made blind?” I became a lesbian, I told him.
“Wow,” he said, “you’re going to make God work!” For years, laws and societal pressures prohibited people with disabilities from marrying and having children. In 1916, Helen Keller, then 36, was going to marry a journalist named Peter Fagan. Even though Keller was a Radcliffe College graduate, author and lecturer, her family forbade her to marry Fagan.
Just as the modern gay rights movement started in the 1970s after Stonewall, the modern disability rights movement started in the 1970s. In April 1977, disabled people were fed up with years of discrimination. Presidents Ford and Carter failed to sign “section 504,” a section of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability in any institution receiving federal funding.
Disabled protesters staged a month-long sit- in at the (then) U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare building in San Francisco. The Butterfly Brigade, a gay group, joined the protest. Other protesters demonstrated in front of the Washington, D.C., home of then HEW Secretary Joseph Califano, Jr. The protests stopped on April 30 when Califano caved in and signed the “504” regulation. Whether we were there or not, I and many crips came out after the “504” demonstrations. We were no longer poster children — we were men and women with rights.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law that protects disabled people from discrimination, was passed in 1990. Gay and disability rights activists worked together to get the ADA passed. The ADA covers many in the gay community, including people with HIV, cancer survivors and recovering alcoholics.
I hope you will get to know queer crips and celebrate our history, not only during our “special” month, but all year long.
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