By Therí A. Pickens
A few vignettes:
1) I watched the live tweets when Tamar Braxton and Vincent Herbert interviewed surrogates. The twitterverse was ablaze with consternation as to why Tamar would be so “selfish” and not “have the baby herself” since “she knows she could.”
2) I'm aware that in some cases pregnant women qualify for maternity leave because it falls under the parameters for short-term disability.
3) I got onto a train recently and had to sit in the aisle with my scooter since the disabled persons’ seating was taken up by a couple with a baby. (See full blog post here.)
4) I noticed that there is only one handicapped stall in the women’s bathroom at my church. In that stall is the only diaper changing station.
It occurred to me that these vignettes have one particular thread in common. They pit disabled women against abled women. They pit women in general against the disabled in general. Each scenario seems to position the needs and desires of one group as incompatible with the needs and desires of the other. Is it a zero-sum game with regard to surrogates? Only those who are incapable can use surrogates? Is it absolutely necessary to have only one place to fill the needs of parents and the disabled? Why might one privilege his/her/zie’s parenting needs above another’s mobility needs? Why do we conflate disability and pregnancy or define the latter according to the logics of the former?
The assumed incompatibility facilitates ableism and misogyny becoming mutually constitutive and fortifying each other. To mandate that Tamar Braxton carry her child, despite the fact that her body and image are her product, falsely positions motherhood as a pinnacle achievement. Given the fraught history of black motherhood, expecting Tamar to even want motherhood asks her to reinscribe herself into a paradigm our foremothers fought like hell to get us out of. Hello rock! It also unfairly characterizes her as selfish for wanting to protect the body and the voice that make her lifestyle possible. It assumes that the ability to carry a child equals necessity of having one. Conversely, disability gets figured as selfish in this paradigm as well. As the opposite of ability, it would correlate to a lack of necessity in having one – rendering the phrase “disabled mother” oxymoronic. Hello hard place!
As I think about when and where we enter and who enters with us, I find it important to examine how the logics of privilege and –isms work. Because they tend to be based on the same logics, they function well together. Their logical compatibility constructs and perpetuates the seeming incompatibility between oppressed groups. The end result is a set of discourses that ensnare and entangle everyone fighting against them. Divided and conquered?
What these vignettes show me is that the thought of incompatibility is ingrained in our infrastructure. From the institution of the twitterverse (yeah I said it) to maternity leave, we have promulgated the idea that womanhood and disability are fundamentally opposed and only reliant upon each other when necessary for continuing ableist and misogynist ideology. We have to take the diaper changing station out of the disability stall. Obey train personnel and posted signs. Get actual maternity leave rather than short-term disability leave. And, yes, protect Tamar Braxton’s uterus if need be.
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Therí A. Pickens is an assistant professor of English at Bates College and a contributing writer for Black Studies @ SIUE.
4 comments:
So, I have a couple of comments on your post. First, awesome, really well done. Second, I think you bring up a point that people do not ever talk about because in America we're so used to it - the COMBINATION of disability and motherhood/pregnancy. In Europe and other places, pregnancy is not a disability, or a pre-existing condition, or anything like that. Pregnancy and motherhood is protected as its own special "class," if you will. Disability and medical leave is treated separately. Here, we have the Family AND Medical Leave Act. By not separating pregnancy from disability or medical issues, we have created a culture that allows pregnancy to be considered an illness, a disability. When it clearly is not. If America were to treat pregnancy as a completely separate "thing," align policy with Europe more, we would not have to think about pregnancy as disability and there would be more respect for both. Third, you're right - there is a disrespect for disability in America that goes beyond womanhood/motherhood vs. disability. We think that disability means something PHYSICAL and VISIBLE. When the truth is, disability comes in many forms. Finally, again, great post.
Thanks Danielle! One of the things that I have been tossing around is exactly what you raise here. There are some ill-gotten gains afoot when we think of maternity leave as a disability. It attributes disability to what is natural and forces competition between groups for rights. I'm not sure why there isn't a separate category for maternity leave under health insurance or HR policies (some).
I would add that the emphasis on physicality is SUCH an issue. People with invisible disabilities face a coming out imperative as Ellen Samuels describes it where they have to consistently identify to people who they would rather not disclose. They also are forced to confess as though everyone else is clergy and they are supplicants.... the privilege to not remember. Oi.
oved this article. While I'm not pregnant, I enjoyed you touching on the fact that it still seems so ingrained that I, as a black woman, has to have a child. I honestly don't know, and I don't like the fact that that seems to be an unaccep
table answer.
As much as overall I don't think Tamar is ready for a child period, I'm not mad with the fact that she wants a surrogate. I'm also not mad with the fact that she is apprehensive because she wants to be a performer and do other things before she has said child.
I know an article like this won't stop my family from nagging, but it was well done. I enjoyed reading it.
Jess, you're right. It seems that black women still have to deal with this socio cultural imperative that assumes facts not in evidence about our biology. I'm not sure Tay-tay is ready for a child either but I don't appreciate anyone taking her choice away from her.
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