Trauma and Disability Meet in the U.S. Senate

I wrote a piece awhile back talking about the connection between Trauma and Disability as it relates to mass shootings. With the goings-ons of the last few weeks and the confirmation hearings for Judge Kavanaugh, I feel the need to revisit.

“The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity. This includes people who have a record of such an impairment, even if they do not currently have a disability.”

The ADA National Network (a network of centers who provide training and technical assistance on the ADA) define activities of daily living as “Major life activities are those functions that are important to most people’s daily lives. Examples of major life activities are breathing, walking, talking, hearing, seeing, sleeping, caring for one’s self, performing manual tasks, and working.”

As a reminder, Trauma can manifest itself both physically AND mentally. It is a Disability. PTSD is a Disability. If you’re a survivor and you ask yourself the following questions

Does it affect how/when/what you eat?

Does it affect how you dress? If you can even get dressed some mornings.

Does it affect how you live?

The paths you take to work?

The places you frequent or the places you avoid?

These are all activities of daily life, and if the trauma you have experienced has affected them, it constitutes a disability, and as a result, activates certain civil rights protections under law. Protections in the workplace, protections in education, protections in provision of healthcare.

My dear friend, colleague, and rockstar activist Imani Barbarin created a hashtag #4outof5 to describe the fact that 4 out of 5 people who identify as women or femmes with disabilities are survivors of sexual assault or violence. It’s important to note that the number is actually higher for Black and Latinx disabled women and for women with intellectual/developmental disabilities.

But the reality is, that while #4outof5 disabled women and femmes are survivors, all survivors (1 in 3 who identify as women or femmes, 1 in 6 who identify as men) are people with disabilities. I do not know a single person who has experienced sexual violence and not been traumatized, not had their activities of daily life not just affected, but completely obliterated.

We, in the rest of the Disability community, see you. We understand the struggle in adjusting to a new normal. We, as a community, often do a shitty job of reaching out to you. Society has done a shitty job of making you feel like acknowledging your trauma as a disability is a shameful thing, makes you lesser than, and in doing so, has separated you from community, information, and resources that could be incredibly supportive.

We remain in solidarity with you, because we are you. Society has done a shitty job of making disabled people feel like we deserve to be victimized, that our experience as survivors is less significant because of our disabilities, that our voices should be silenced because law enforcement see us as “unreliable witnesses” to our own or others experiences, that our bodies or our minds are so unloveable, so undesirable, no one would ever assault us, or that because we are disabled we have no ability to consent or not to consent. We are actively watching this now, as the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have requested Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s mental health records and psychological health and attacks have quickly ramped up on her. On the other side, progressives have been quick to dismiss that there is anything “wrong with her” and that she’s “perfectly sane.” This further serves to denigrate the trauma she has experienced, and continues to stigmatize people with mental health disabilities as less worthy of sympathy and less credible.

We need each other. We are here. #BelieveSurvivors #BelieveChristineBlaseyFord