Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Bartlett was a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She is the author of Derivative of the Moving Image (UNM Press 2007) and (a) lullaby without any music. Individual poems have appeared in New American Writing, Ratapallax, The Brooklyn Rail, and others. In 2009, she was featured in Michele Beck and Jorge Calvo's documentary film series. Bartlett teaches poetry to people with cognitive and/or physical disabilities at United Cerebral Palsy (NYC). She is also a half-time First-Year Writing Instructor at Montclair State University. Bartlett lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with the writer, Jim Stewart and their son, Jeffrey. (Photo by Emma Bee Bernstein.)


This is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful wife



I see myself as employing feminist ideals practically in my daily life. The most important aspect I take from feminism is the idea of choice. I have chosen my life. My feminist belief -- that girls can do anything derives from both sides of my family. My feeling of oppression comes from being a person with disability - cerebral palsy. People very often react strongly negative to my slightly slurred speech (or "cp accent ") and awkward gait -- which is actually very minor in the disability world. The frustration I feel, both real and imagined, is not gender specific - it comes from the able-bodied community. It is both women and men who have, at times, made me feel less than.

As Denise Levertov points out, "Not to deny the history of women. But women who see exclusively the oppression of women tend to forget other kinds of oppression." In day-to-day life, if you have a "double minority" one inadvertently trumps the other. This is why I have had an easier time relating to the Civil Rights and gay Movements than the Feminism Movement. Like some African-Americans, what has happened to me a disabled person has been so profoundly worse than what has happened to me as a woman. I am sure there is gender disadvantage in my life, but I can't even begin to see it because I'm so busy dealing with the other.

It is embarrassing, yet liberating, to disclose the things that have happened to me as a person with cerebral palsy. There's the time that the teenagers rode their bikes around me yelling "retard, retard." There's the time that a man asked me to dance at a club and, after discovering my voice, told his friend, "She's some kind of retard" and walked off. There's the time that someone in NYC Teaching Fellows, whom I trusted, told me she would never want her young child to have a teacher 'like me.' (By the way, I was 'kicked out' of the elementary school teaching program due to my disability). There are the many, many other jobs I have been passed over. There's the time that some folks with a racist, homophobic, ableist website got a hold of my blog writings and wrote about me: relentlessly, ruthlessly, mocking me. There's the time the woman asked me in the park in disbelief - "Is that your baby!?" People have mistaken me for drunk (that was the police!), Deaf, on drugs, unable to feel physical pain, mentally handicapped, incapable of giving childbirth, and asexual. (Not that any of these are bad, they just aren't me. Well, I have been drunk from time to time, but that's another story).

As I write this, I see more and more the equation - woman and disability. Would there have been the same response if I had been a man? Perhaps, but probably not as aggressively. Perhaps not the same events, in any same order. However, there still exists the paradigm that the things people believe able-bodied women should do (or feel obligated to do) are the same things that people believe women with disabilities shouldn't do. There are still complexities between the disabled and feminist communities: Feminists fight not to be forced into mothering; women with disabilities fight to HAVE children. Feminists want to be looked at as more than sexual objects: women with disabilities are rarely considered sexual.

Sometimes, I feel like the community has forgotten us! Despite wonderful strides toward inclusion in many areas of feminism, disability is often the overlooked element. The issues of women with disabilities are among the most extreme cases of female abuse in the United States. So, it is shocking to that the pages of MS. Magazine are not full of issues such as forced sterilization or the fact that some women with disabilities have their children forcefully taken away at birth. Many people do still do not know about abusive institutions, such as Willowbrook, which were the norm as late as the 1980's. The unemployment rate for women with disabilities remains at a steady 70% or more. While Affirmative Action has become a given for African-Americans and women, for people with disabilities it is still a theory at best; the exceptions being higher education and the government. Many employers fail to note disability in their EOE ads.

On a more mundane note, women with disabilities are consistently absent from women-only poetry conferences, journals, and anthologies that champion diversity. When popular feminist journals do write about people with disabilities, they often use outdated, offensive language; confined to a wheelchair, wheelchair bound, and, my personal favorite, 'the disabled.'

What is the answer? It would be ideal if feminist writers and activists examined the exclusion and could write in an honest way about why this exclusion takes place. Is it a benign oversight? It is because women have as much difficulty dealing with the 'othered' bodies as men? Is it because of the primal fear that the able-bodied have of becoming disabled? Does it have to do with the complexities of the physicality of a woman's body? Fear of aging? What makes the able-bodied community still unwilling to see people with disabilities as merely 'different' rather than 'less than?' I worry that feminists might be hesitant to align with women with disabilities out of fear of the society's concept of bodily weakness. Women do not want to be considered as physically incapable, which is often the stereotype bestowed on women with disabilities. In my experience, the problems of physical disability are largely, if not exclusively, a social construct. For example, there is nothing wrong with using a wheelchair; the problem lies, rather, in non-accessibility. What I would like to convince people is that being disabled can mean a stronger body, not a weaker one. Sure, I can't run as fast as some, but I do everything else people do with more than average bodily limitations--and all the prejudice to go along with it. I am not sure how that could be construed as anything other than strength.

To readers, I would like to pose these questions:
1. Where have you seen mainstream Feminism and disability intersect in positive ways?
2. If you do believe disability has been glossed over in feminist culture? If so, why do you thing this has happened?
3. What can both disabled and non-disabled feminists do to make disability more prominent, resulting in better understanding, job opportunities, and birthing/abortion rights?

I think the problem is not maniacal. I think that people tend to focus what is on their radar. I think people with disabilities (and their problems) are still utterly marginalized in our society -- so that even the most sensitive thinkers aren't aware. I think feminism is the ideal place to begin. For me, at its core, feminism is about becoming enlightened -- and moving forward accordingly.

from Autobiography (Dion Chapter)

takes the ticket out
of the purse

looks at the ticket

puts the song on
takes the song off

returns the ticket to the purse

yells at the social worker

don't you people care about
patients with AIDS

looks toward the cold field
where the geese

startle and lift

like their return,
this will all be over soon

takes the ticket out
of the purse

looks at the ticket

puts the song on
takes the song off

returns the ticket to the purse

looks out on the field, amongst
the geese, this will all be over soon

phones the nurse, phones the friend
phones the clinic, yells at the nurse

people look, look at her,
look at the field,

the geese lifting

yells at the nurse
yells at the field

blames the geese

takes the ticket out
of the purse

looks at the ticket

puts the song on
takes the song off

returns the ticket to the purse

looks out to the field
amongst the geese

this will all be over soon