In this module, a selection of different artists and storytellers share personal narratives that reflect their own complex understandings and approaches to aging:
- Indigenous storytellers share understandings of aging that are inherently disruptive, as growing old for Indigenous peoples is significant and marks an achievement of resistance, resilience, and ceremony against ableist, ageist, and racist colonial logics, as well as affirmation of Indigenous knowledge.
- Queer storytellers share understandings of aging that expose and critique normative heterosexist expectations for aging and older women, and, in turn, imagine and celebrate resistant and proud ways to age.
- Disabled storytellers “crip” aging to reclaim both aging and disability together as prideful and enacting agency, affording new possibilities of representing aging and disability to emerge.
Disability Justice and Activism
In Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People: A Disability Justice Primer, the disability justice performance collective Sins Invalid challenges the idea that the framework should have a concise definition. Instead, as queer disabled people of colour activists, they describe disability justice as having developed from their activist work toward being recognized as “an essential part of humanity.” Reflecting their intersectional perspective, they highlight the inseparability of the multiple dimensions of their activism: As they “challenge settler colonialism, gender normativity and violence that targets trans people” they simultaneously “challenge able-bodied normativity” (Sins Invalid, 2019, pp. 5–6).
As Mia Mingus (2011) points out, unlike rights-based approaches emphasizing closeness to normalcy and validating existing social and political hierarchies, disability justice “embraces difference, confronts privilege and challenges what is considered ‘normal’ on every front.” Mingus explains that to seek disability justice is not to seek to “join the ranks of the privileged,” but to “dismantle those ranks and the systems that maintain them” (para. 5).
An example heading
In Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People: A Disability Justice Primer, the disability justice performance collective Sins Invalid challenges the idea that the framework should have a concise definition. Instead, as queer disabled people of colour activists, they describe disability justice as having developed from their activist work toward being recognized as “an essential part of humanity.” Reflecting their intersectional perspective, they highlight the inseparability of the multiple dimensions of their activism: As they “challenge settler colonialism, gender normativity and violence that targets trans people” they simultaneously “challenge able-bodied normativity” (Sins Invalid, 2019, pp. 5–6).
As Mia Mingus (2011) points out, unlike rights-based approaches emphasizing closeness to normalcy and validating existing social and political hierarchies, disability justice “embraces difference, confronts privilege and challenges what is considered ‘normal’ on every front.” Mingus explains that to seek disability justice is not to seek to “join the ranks of the privileged,” but to “dismantle those ranks and the systems that maintain them” (para. 5).
Disability Justice and Activism
- Indigenous storytellers share understandings of aging that are inherently disruptive, as growing old for Indigenous peoples is significant and marks an achievement of resistance, resilience, and ceremony against ableist, ageist, and racist colonial logics, as well as affirmation of Indigenous knowledge.
- Queer storytellers share understandings of aging that expose and critique normative heterosexist expectations for aging and older women, and, in turn, imagine and celebrate resistant and proud ways to age.
- Disabled storytellers “crip” aging to reclaim both aging and disability together as prideful and enacting agency, affording new possibilities of representing aging and disability to emerge.
An example heading
In Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People: A Disability Justice Primer, the disability justice performance collective Sins Invalid challenges the idea that the framework should have a concise definition. Instead, as queer disabled people of colour activists, they describe disability justice as having developed from their activist work toward being recognized as “an essential part of humanity.” Reflecting their intersectional perspective, they highlight the inseparability of the multiple dimensions of their activism: As they “challenge settler colonialism, gender normativity and violence that targets trans people” they simultaneously “challenge able-bodied normativity” (Sins Invalid, 2019, pp. 5–6).
As Mia Mingus (2011) points out, unlike rights-based approaches emphasizing closeness to normalcy and validating existing social and political hierarchies, disability justice “embraces difference, confronts privilege and challenges what is considered ‘normal’ on every front.” Mingus explains that to seek disability justice is not to seek to “join the ranks of the privileged,” but to “dismantle those ranks and the systems that maintain them” (para. 5).
In disability studies, we have the saying that nobody is able-bodied – everyone is temporarily able-bodied, because if you live long enough, you’ll become disabled.
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10 Principles of Disability Justice
- Intersectionality
- Leadership of those most impacted
- Anti-capitalist politics
- Cross-movement solidarity
- Recognizing the wholeness of each person
- Sustainability
- Commitment to cross-disability solidarity
- Interdependence
- Collective access
- Collective liberation
