Still Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader

Introduction – Diane Driedger

As I write this, it’s a sunny August day in Winnipeg. Clouds, pieces of cotton, float on the horizon. Just a few weeks ago, everyone was locked down in the COVID-19 vise. Now, we venture out for a walk or just enjoy the beach at a local lake (while social distancing, of course). I have been finalizing this book manuscript. I thought I had the book finished, after working on collecting pieces over the past eighteen months. But COVID brought up new issues and I found authors to address those: how COVID affects disabled people and how now that many work at home, disabled women point to ways to do this, the importance of flexibility in work, the importance of not forgetting all of this when the COVID virus has passed.

We, as women with disabilities, have an important role in sharing our experiences of lives that have been altered by barriers in our environment, just like everyone’s environment has been altered by this virus. All of a sudden, many are experiencing isolation, the lack of feeling part of society, and the inability to support themselves due to unemployment. These are all issues that women with disabilities, indeed, people with disabilities, have dealt with their whole lives. The edges in our society have been thrown into relief.

Recently, the Canadian census pegged the number of disabled women in Canada at 24% of the population, and men at 20% of the population. Women have more disabilities than men and have a higher instance of invisible disabilities, like multiple sclerosis (MS), chronic fatigue, and mental health. Disabled women tend to experience higher rates of unemployment, single parenthood, poverty, and are more likely to live alone than men with disabilities (Morris et. al). Welcome everyone to our world!

I realized two years ago, that my book, Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader needed an update. I had been using it in my Women and Disability course in the Interdisciplinary Disabled Studies Master’s Program at the University of Manitoba since 2013. And of course, disabled women themselves needed to reflect on where we are at in 2020. What are disabled women experiencing and feeling? All the issues are still relevant in that 2010 book, but new developments, issues, and voices have materialized. I sent out a call for submissions. I named the book, “Still” Living the Edges, as we as women with disabilities still experience the edges of discrimination, physical barriers, and marginalization, and also challenge those edges with our writings, art, and actions. Most of the articles in Still Living the Edges are new, and a few are updated or reprinted articles from Living the Edges, which I felt needed to be included in this new book.

Again, the book includes articles, poems, visual art, and photographs by disabled women, but now there are contributions, not only from Canada, but from around the world. This new book includes disabled women’s reflections from the US, UK, and Australia. In addition, Canadian authors highlight the experiences of women in Russia, Poland, Vietnam, South Africa, and Zimbabwe through their research and art. In all, the authors have similar attitudinal, systemic, and physical barriers that arise in their lives. The experience of being a disabled woman is global: we experience barriers to our full participation in society because we are disabled and because we are women—double jeopardy. An ableist society stipulates that nondisabled people’s ways of living and working are the norm, and disabled people don’t fit in, and sexism affects disabled women’s lives because our lives are more marginalized than disabled men’s lives. Disabled women who are Black, Indigenous, or other People of Color (BIPOC) experience a ‘triple jeopardy,’ as they experience barriers on three fronts: ableism, sexism, and racism. Still Living the Edges includes voices from BIOPOC disabled women.

This new volume is divided into the same sections as the first book, except I have excluded the section, “Violence on the Edges.” Disabled women still experience intimate partner, sexual, emotional, and physical violence; however, a recent book, Not a New Problem Violence in the Lives of Disabled Women (Owen et. al) has done a good job of exploring this issue in Canada. One of the articles from this book has been included in the relationship section. In addition, issues of emotional and attitudinal abuse are included throughout the sections as disabled women tell their stories.

In section one, “Who We Are on the Edges,” disabled women discuss identity-related issues that are important to them as women living with disabilities. These issues range from disability as glamour, living with disability on a daily basis, understanding our bodies as women with various disabilities, experiencing violence as Indigenous women, and confronting said violence. Here, women share how they live with disabilities, and also how they live full lives. Society has framed disability as a negative word, a negative state, but here women explore what it means to own their disabled identity.

In section two, “Naming the Edges: Barriers,” the social model of disability is illustrated through the women’s naming of the edgy barriers that stand in their way as they negotiate society. The women discuss the ways in which negative stereotypes of disability become societal mantras they must contend with daily, such as the misconception that disabled women cannot be beautiful, or that women with invisible disabilities don’t “look like” disabled women. Systemic barriers, such as poor income support systems, disable women because they do not have adequate nutritional support for their health. Even organizations of disabled persons leave women with disabilities experiencing sexism as they are often not included in decision-making. Attitudinal and systemic barriers, such as the medical model, wherein the assumption is that medical and social service experts know what is best for a disabled persons, rear their heads. Even the lives of disabled women and their worth is questioned on these edges, as COVID-19 has brought up issues around whose lives are more important to save than others. Finally, physical barriers such as inaccessible buildings and streets continue to be encountered.

In section three, “Relationships on the Edges,” women explore relationships with families, intimate partners, and the community. Sometimes, families don’t understand us, as disabled women, and we need to tell them what we feel, need, want, and who we are. Society has long thought that women with disabilities are not sexual beings who may also want families and relationships. Sometimes, our intimate partners abuse us, or don’t wish to have children with us, because they might be disabled.

Section four, “Challenging the Edges,” focusses on disabled women who are challenging the social edges that say we must be silent, as women and as disabled persons about the barriers that society puts in our way. The women in this section question old ideas about disability, development, and western colonialization, they question our nine-to-five rushed work lives, they build websites to unite people with disabilities around their common experiences. Disabled women make films and take them across Canada to push for deinstitutionalization of persons with intellectual disabilities. Women defy the “body beautiful” definitions of society and proclaim their bodies acceptable as they are. Disabled women depict their lived experiences through art and acting. Disabled women continue to participate in disabled persons’ organizations, such as People First Canada, to enact change along with men. Disabled women also continue their thirty-five-year tradition of challenging the barriers that disabled women encounter, using an intersectional approach, through the Disabled Women’s Network (DAWN) Canada.

Indeed, disabled women will not be silenced. We are still here, despite living on the edges, despite being pushed to the edges, despite being edgy women, and we are on the cutting edge.