Editors Note: This month I’ll be featuring a number of pieces about sexual assault written by authors with disabilities. If you or someone you know is willing to share their story or their perspective, please use the contact form. Trigger Warning in effect for all posts with this header. This piece comes to us by Lillian Cohen-Moore I was beaten… Read more →
Last night, a new reader shared a statistic with me that did not surprise me, but which scared the living daylights out of me: 80% of disabled women will experience sexual assault. 47% of disabled women who reported sexual abuse were assaulted on 10 or more occasions. Studies have found that anywhere between 40%-97% of sexual assaults against individuals with… Read more →
The first time I presented my research on obscenity law and burlesque, there was an old man sitting at the back of the room listening to my presentation (and the other two in the panel). During the Q&A session he didn’t ask any questions of either the guy who presented on airplane shows, or the woman who presented on sideshow…. Read more →
The Anniversary of Roe v. Wade was this week, and with it my attention turns to the legal issues surrounding the fetus. Except that I’m not doing that in the traditional sense this week, I’m doing it in extra special roundabout ways where I feel that my head is turning like the little kid in the Exorcist. In New Mexico,… Read more →
I opened my regular news reading to find photos of yet another rape victim. Yet another violation of a woman’s rights. In full color. The imagery stark against my retina. I wonder sometimes if the reason why I cannot get the images of my own trauma out of my head is because every day I have to relive something of… Read more →
I read a lot online. I read a lot of news, a lot of information, mostly so when I write on here I don’t come off as an under-informed dilettante. In the last 48 hours I’ve read a number of things which have made me frustrated. So we’ll talk about a couple of them. This is a new segment on… Read more →
The main reason that I won’t be voting for Romney has to do with my gender, my sexuality, and my inability to accept that gender is a binary. I’ve already talked about how important marriage equality is to me, but today I’m going to talk about the politics of pregnancy and a woman’s right to choose. I’ll be blunt –… Read more →
“Do things gradually will bring more tragedy. Why don’t you see it, why don’t you feel it? I don’t know, I don’t know. You don’t have to live next to me, just give me my equality. Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddamn!” – Nina Simone, Mississippi Goddamn. Once a week I’ll be covering a different issue of the election season. This… Read more →
I have done a couple of interviews about my work on a couple different shows, and it always comes down to the same question. Why do I enjoy the burlesque world? Why do I think it has a benefit for me as a disabled performer? The answer is in self selecting casting. In theater, I was always cast as either… Read more →
I’ve just returned from Seattle, WA where I was a part of Whedonesque Burlesque produced by Jo Jo Stiletto Events It was an incredible feeling to work with so many fantastic and talented performers. Our audiences were filled with nerds and we got frequent standing ovations and a lot of love. What was super lovely was that the cast took… Read more →
