After being a week into the program, I see many things that are apparent about the classic race/class/gender spectrum at my job. There are interesting intersections too with sexuality, ability, and fat (to be fare reaching and as inclusive as possible). This blog will be part of an ongoing theme of autoethnography investigating the inclusion of Developmental Disablility (DD) into disability, queer, feminist, etc. theories emerging canon. As a subculture that makes up 10% of the overall population in the US, the institutionalization of DD creates a unique phenomenological experience to build an embodied subjectivity within people with these types of disabilities, ones often forgotten even by the scholarship advocating for effective empowerment of those with disabilities.
The first to note about the 'Individuals' (those with developmental and intellectual disabilities, as they are referred to by other medical health officials in the field) is that their lives are almost completely enveloped by the medical industrial complex, the church, and the state. Where one falls short, serendipity has replaced their function with another, each institution working together to provide perfect safe haven for these people with special needs. The movement away from 'mere care' to something like teaching independence and integration has been a great stride made in the realm of advocacy for those with 'MR'/ID (intellectual disability) and DD; this is not to be taken lightly. The seriousness now that abuse has in the field (including a gender right with is protection against sexual abuse/harassment) is also important to note.
Two things they do not have, as I can see from a 'perfect blueprint' meticulously planned by the state, church and medical field, are access to 'serious' political ideology (or rather an alternative to their institutionalized context's inherent ideology) and access to adult sexual freedom, except for the rare few deemed 'having the ability to consent' by psychiatry. I am sure that once I start on site with my individuals (ages ranging from 11-21) I will see that they have a knowledge of the 'sinful earth' (as their nuns would probably call... hell, queer nightlife, regular nightlife, socially non-normative/criminal activity) in their music, exposure to radio, possible cable TV and even the rare internet user. By analyzing from this position, both within the power structure of surveillance that the state has empowered me with (I would say unfortunately, since it creates a power differential potentially as invasive as the panopticon) and as a person engaging in critical resistance (by taking a critical approach in the interest of the Individual's human rights, to give voice to their nonverbal subjectivity, ergo resisting dominant culture's subjugating and blighting ability to make DD/ID invisible/speechless), 'I' will mediate my response to the system.
The rare exposure people with DD/ID would have with 'overt' political ideology would be possible commercials on the media they encounter in society, which is fairly regulated by the church/medical context, where psychology has deemed the majority of 'adult' issues too complex for people with DD/ID. While I agree it would be difficult and arduous to actually 'bring them up to speed' with our current context, and simplifying history to a point comprehendible will be reductive, I believe it their right to engage in whatever conversation they can about their multiple intersections with power in the world. Remember, difference isn't gender, color, class or sexuality blind. Though I have not seen represented, encountered personally, or been told a second hand story of any queer Individuals, I would not be surprised to eventually meet one. What politics do you get form pop music? Television without news? Commercials? These are the most deliberately apolitical entities in our capitalist structure, and apolitical because capitalism requires its contradictions hidden so we are less likely to seek solidarity in shared power differentials. Therefore, people with DD and ID totallized by this institutional setting, having limited access to 'overtly' political media, are less likely to improve their own empowerment in the realms of race, class, gender and sexuality rights on top of their unique ID/DD rights as a group.
Secondly, the only Individuals with full sexual freedom (having the ability to actually have sexual contact with someone other than themselves, in any way more than kissing) are those deemed psychologically able to consent to everything in their lives (i.e. giving out medically sensitive information, consenting to medical procedures, right to vote, etc.). Does a person need to know what the best approach in psychotropic drug therapy for them is in order to have sex? I don't mean literally, that the two realms of knowledge and understanding inform one another, just that the degrees of safety in each somewhat incommensurable. Granted, it is important to give education (which it is their legal right to be educated in) in sexual health, and as we teach our individuals to cook and clean themselves, how hard would it be to incorporate proper condom usage or even birth control and (arguably difficult for them to grasp the full weight, physically and politically, of abortion) an understanding of the options one has in 'family planning'. i.e. abortion, adoption or raising children by one's self. These are issues that we all deal with, negotiating how either one of these options will effect our lives is our right to decide, and they should be considered and discussed with people one has sexual encounters with. Yet, as we can easily see, these concerns don't stop anyone (at least anyone my age that I know) from having sex. We are just safe. And informed. Just as we're informed about what fashion is acceptable, and what the news might be, we're informed about our sexual health. And even so, those who are 'nuerotypical' don't (most often) have explicit, expanded, or even satisfactory sexual education or access to sexual health facilities.
I will continue in another entry on the workers in the industry of DD, being a field employing a large number of women and people of color it is interesting to see where there is a 'consumer/corporation' binary breaks down and power operates around care, or under the guise of care in instances of abuse as Foucault expresses in the History of Madness. Enjoy the second oil spill, the fucked wildlife (400 species) and the fucked economy of Nawlins seafood; thanks BP!
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