As a women with a disability, bias and unconscious bias is a heavy load to carry.
Women with disabilities are often stereotyped as being childlike and subjected to paternalism, we are seen as object of pity. 90% of us have experienced sexual assault and are twice as likely than women without disabilities to experience sexual violence (Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disabilities, 2021).
These statistics are damning and by far the most horrific but it is only one area in which women with disabilities are abused and discriminated against.
Women with disabilities are under-represented in the workforce, in educational attainment and over represented in housing insecurity and poor health outcomes (outside their main disability). We have a lower life expectancy and are subjected to poverty at a much higher rate than the rest of our community.
So when writing this and trying not to make it into epic tale of woes and injustices suffered by women with disabilities, I turn your attention to how I have strived to wedge the voices of disabled women in between all the other voices striving for attention.
Never let it be said that the work is easy. When you are coming from a position of oppression lead about by unconscious bias and subtle discrimination, being calm and considerate often is NOT going to work.
I found my own voice to be tenacious, dogged, persistent and down right annoying trying to right the injustices suffered by people with disability.
I feel I’ve have had many ‘Grace Tame moments’ shouting down the oppressor, calling out the abusers, but there is a price to pay and the price is not easily borne.
It is the price of divisiveness, of being labelled: ‘that woman’, ‘whinger’ or ‘fruit tingle’.
It is being scored and hated, belittled and undermined.
‘Get back in your box’ they have said, but I can’t and I won’t. The work is too important. Equity is something worth fighting for at all costs.
As a society we can strive to make it a better place but only if the voices of the most marginalised are heard. We need a seat at the table and we need to be able to speak with out impunity.
Sometimes the message we speak is hard to hear, unpalatable to ears but it must be spoken because if we don’t nothing will change.
So all you shouty, brash, tactless and irreverent women out there keep up the good work. Without you things would never change. We challenge the status quo.
What keeps me going? What cushions the effects of negativity and allow the sun to still shine? What pushes the blackness away?
For me, friends and my ever supportive Phil, now gone but ever present in my heart, telling me he is proud and that I am doing good. “Stick it to ‘um Tam!” he would say!
My daughter, who takes on this family tradition of activism and is shining in her own right.
There is light as well in the support from those that know the fight and always have your back; there is always a circle of love that surrounds you, to protect you from the most harmful of attacks on your integrity. A smile from a stranger, a message of thanks or a chat with someone in the street refuels my tank and keeps me going.
The wider community has much to learn about the about disability and so by continuing to speak up and out change must surely happen.
I’ll close with a quote from disability activist, because in the words of Stella Young:
“‘The only disability in life is a bad attitude’…the reason that’s bullshit is that no amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshelf and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into Braille.”
Tammy Milne is a deaf interpreter, a community activist in various fields and a person living with Arthrogrophosis Multipex congenita.
