12:18pm March 5, 2012

“

To put it bluntly — because this is as blunt as it gets — we must have our asses cleaned after we shit and pee. Or we have others’ fingers inserted into our rectums to assist shitting. Or we have tubes of plastic inserted inside us to assist peeing or we have re-routed anuses and pissers so we do it all into bags attached to our bodies.

These blunt, crude realities. Our daily lives. Yeah, I know it ain’t exactly sexy. Not the images we’re trying to get across these days.

The difference between those of us who need attendants and those who don’t is the difference between those who know privacy and those who don’t. We rarely talk about these things, and when we do the realities are usually disguised in generic language and gimp humor. Because, let’s face it: we have great shame about this need. This need that only babies and the “broken” have.

And because this shame is so deep, and because it is perpetuated even by our movement when we emphasize only the able-ness of our beings, we buy into that language that lies about us and becomes part of our movement, and our movement dances over the surface of our real lives by spending all its precious energy on bus access while millions of us don’t get out of bed or get by with inadequate personal care. Because we don’t want to say this need that shames us out loud in front of people who have no understanding of the unprivate universe we live in, even if that person is a disabled sister or brother. We don’t want to say out loud a basic truth: that we have no place in our bodies (other than our imaginations) that is private.

And yes, this makes us different than you who have privacy of body. Yes, this is a profound difference. And as long as we allow our shame to silence us, it will remain a profound difference.

”

Cheryl Marie Wade, “It Ain’t Exactly Sexy”. Disability Rag, November/December 1991.

This is so completely true.

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