By Aubrey Gordon — 2020
Often, body positivity and fat activism exclude disabled people. It’s past time to change that.
Read on www.self.com
CLEAR ALL
We’ve been taught to refer to people with disabilities using person-first language, but that might be doing more harm than good.
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Although body positivity urges acceptance of all kinds of bodies, the movement still has room for improvement. Notably, people with disabilities, who through inaccessibility and lack of representation are often made to feel “other” by non-disabled folks.
“Body positivity is all about having a good relationship with your body.” Well that’s what everyone keeps telling me. The only problem is, if I told anyone about the way my body treats me, they would tell me it’s a relationship I need to get the hell out of.
Body positivity has begun to leave behind some of the people who spoke it into existence — among them is the disabled community.
The ongoing dialogue I have with my own perspective and emotions is the biggest job I’ve ever undertaken. Exploring this internal give-and-take forces me to grow in surprising ways.
Often, disabled people have their disability treated, but they don’t have their emotional or spiritual needs addressed.
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Depression and suicidal ideation are more likely among people with disabilities due to factors like abuse, isolation, and stressors related to poverty, among others.
Adults with disabilities report experiencing frequent mental distress almost 5 times as often as adults without disabilities.
A grassroots civil-dialogue movement creates a new kind of safe space: one that invites students from across the political spectrum to discuss controversial issues, including policing, gender identity, and free speech itself.
At Documenta 14, the 2017 edition of the touted art festival that takes place once every five years in Kassel, it was an artist heretofore unknown to much of the art world who stole the show: Lorenza Böttner, a German painter, dancer, and performance artist who, in the ’80s and ’90s, began...