The Intersections of Disability
Building Stronger Social Movements
Economic & Work Justice
Labor Inequality
Our considerations of equal pay often get centered in racial and gendered divides, and while there is certainly significant disparities, it's important to understand the other ways labor goes undervalued and under-compensated, especially within care labor, carceral labor, and disabled labor; the latter two being where subminimum wage is both legal and commonplace.
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When looking at the economic divides between demographics, the disparities between abled and disabled people are stark, especially since there are added expenses often associated with having a disability.
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In addition to work environments and norms that can be limiting to a disabled person's needs, the typical inflexibility results in many having to leave the traditional workforce in search of something else.
Body Autonomy
In our late-stage capitalistic society, it often takes access to resources like financial stability, decent healthcare, and a job where you are supported and safe to be able to take full autonomy of the self.
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From needing financial resources to be able to transition, have an abortion, or to have a medical procedure of any kind, there is a class component to being able to feel the sense of full authority of self.
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For some in the disabled community, it's this access to resources, whether personally funded or through supplemental aid, that can truly impact one's quality of life, especially if you are young and in need of consistent support.
Surrogate sex work is an area that allows disabled clients to receive a doctor's referral to see a surrogate to develop their sexual education and personal wellbeing.
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This model allows for more work opportunities for these sex entrepreneurs while simultaneously opening the door for sexual liberation and full-body autonomy for their disabled clients.
By The Numbers:
Disability and Poverty
Percent of non-institutionalized adults living under the poverty line
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Disabled: 26.6%
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NonDisabled: 12.7%
Disability & Socioeconomic Status,
American Psychological Associaltion, via U.S. Census Bureau, 2015
Non-criminalized jobs are often inaccessible to disabled people. Many disabilities, including chronic illnesses and mental health disabilities, involve periods of flares and remissions, making it difficult for disabled people to hold down a traditional job...
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If you are disabled in a way that the government recognizes, and are able to jump through specific hoops, some disabled people can collect (government aide)...
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Individuals on SSI are only allowed to earn $65 per month before the government begins to reduce their benefits.
This means that many disabled people are forced to turn to criminalized work in order to make ends meet because disability payments are not enough.
- Katie Tastrom
Sex Work is a Disability Issue.
So Why Doesn’t the Disability Community Recognize That?, 2019
Violence and Control
Several studies have thoroughly linked poverty and disability, and a recent poll conducted by NPR found:
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A substantial number (40%) of rural Americans struggle with routine medical bills, food, and housing. And about half (49%) say they could not afford to pay an unexpected $1,000 expense of any type. - Poll: Many Rural Americans Struggle With Financial Insecurity, Access To Health Care, NPR 2019
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Poverty and disability are linked for a variety of reasons, including low trust from able-bodied people on our work capabilities - leading to low hiring rates, the higher cost of health insurance and medical costs generally being an added expense others don't experience, and if you are on SSI the monthly payments are hardly enough to survive on.
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Additionally, there are correlations between the quality of the living environment with the quality of health.
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Communities that experience high levels of pollution have historically been those where communities of color, the working class, and LGBTQ people have been able to afford to house themselves; as we progress into the 21st century more neighborhoods that have both affordable housing and overall healthy environments are being gentrified, pushing people to less stable environments.
A child should never have to hold onto the trauma of sexual assault or domestic abuse, two markers of my earlier childhood.
By the time I was 13, I lost my father died suddenly from Alcoholism and drunk driving;
and then the severe bullying for my first visible disability began.
I switched schools three times from 6th to 8th grade, I was deeply suicidal. The trauma would only add up as I got older. I was in my own domestically abusive relationship, I was violently raped, I became homeless, and survived on a single slice of $2 pizza every day for a month. None of that could have been good for me, none of that contributed to healing, it just drove me closer to awakening an illness that was always in me.
Why Americans with Disabilities Struggle to Vote;
2016ish, Vox
Voter Disenfranchisment
Being able to register, learn about the candidates, and then actually cast a ballot takes an often unaccounted for cost through needing transportation, time, potentially childcare to be able to fit voting into their lives, which makes these issues also economically and class-based as well.
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Further the overall cost of being able to have the proper identification for voter registration in some states can be incredibly restrictive.
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This also impacts previously incarcerated people who struggle to find employment, stable housing and having their day to day needs be met. Many states that return the right to vote require them to first repay any fees associated with their crime, which essentially operates as a poll tax for this community.
I sometimes question how much my environment helped contribute to my disabilities development. While my single mom did her best in trying to help me have the best possible, there's no negating that poverty and health are correlated.
While some will want to jump to diet for me because I'm fat -the cure must be to lose weight; in reality, when I think about the environment and disability, I think about the toll stress was taking on my body.
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Those experiences were to be stored away in me and in having so many traumas throughout childhood and young adult life
my body hit capacity by my early 20s when the chronic illness and pain kicked in.
The repressed memories stored away were all fighting to be recognized through various aches and sores. It's thought this that I've learned even if the mind can forget, the body always remembers.
A Doctor Battles Health Inequality
Harvard University, 2016