Episode 34 - Shayda Kafai: Disability Justice and Liberation
Educator and Disability Justice Advocate Shayda (she/her) joins Josie today to discuss issues related to justice and liberation of our bodyminds, including the intersection of Disability Justice and Reproductive Justice. This episode touches upon accessibility, sustainability, and advocating for our needs for all.
[ID: A beige background and orange semi-circle. Text reads: The Intersectional Fertility Podcast Episode 34: Shayda Kafai @shaydakafai and Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier @intersectionalfertility.]
Follow Shayda on Instagram and check out her Website.
Learn more about Sins Invalid, their Disability Justice Primer, and the Sins Invalid Coloring Book. Also check out the Nap Ministry and Reproductive Justice/Disability Justice.
Episode Transcript:
Disclaimer: This is an automatically generated transcript edited to be more readable. It may not be 100% accurate.
[00:00:00] Josie: I am Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier, and this is the Intersectional Fertility Podcast, where ideas and identities intersect to deepen our understanding of fertility and ultimately our whole selves.
[00:00:17] Shayda Kafai is an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies in the ethnic and women's studies department at California State Polytechnic University Pomona. As a queer, disabled, mad fem of color, she commits to practicing the many ways we reclaim our bodyminds from systems of oppression. To support this work as an educator, scholar, Shayda applies disability justice and collective care practices in the spaces she cultivates.
[00:01:01] Shayda's writing and speaking presentations focus on intersectional body politics, particularly on how bodies are constructed and how they hold the capacity for rebellion.
[00:01:12] Shayda, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:23] Shayda: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:27] Josie: Absolutely. So will you share with us your pronouns and where you're joining us from today?
[00:01:33] Shayda: Absolutely. So my pronouns are she her and I'm calling in today from the unseated territories of the Gabrielino and Kizh communities, colonially known as the Los Angeles Basin and the Pomona area.
[00:01:54] Josie: Okay, great. So will you share with us what led you to do this important work that you're doing as an educator and scholar of disability Justice.
[00:02:04] Shayda: Yeah, it's interesting. This question kind of took me backwards in a good way, in a time travel way, I think what led me to teaching was really playful.
[00:02:17] So if I can start with a really playful example. I was in elementary school, and my desire to teach got sparked when we would have holidays and you know, my elementary school teachers would wear like heart earrings and heart sweaters for Valentine's Day and I was just like, yes, that's exactly how I wanna dress and I guess I have to be a teacher to do this.
[00:02:48] Josie: So cute.
[00:02:49] Shayda: Yeah, so this very playful seedling got planted and I followed it along and I started to teach for the first time in grad school when I was 21, and it was an English composition program. Although I was still searching for my place, being in a classroom that was reciprocal, where conversations were being had in very nourishing and reciprocal ways where the community, class, community was being fed and I was being fed. That became very exciting to me and very motivating. And so I kept going with it.
[00:03:36] Josie: Wow, that's interesting. So is that something that you brought to the experience, the reciprocal classroom, or was that already encouraged at the school where you were teaching?
[00:03:45] Shayda: I think it was something that came later on when I first started teaching at Cal Poly. So when I was finishing my dissertation, I started teaching at Cal Poly Pomona. But when I was younger, my understanding of teaching was very much informed by colonialism and by, cis heteropatriarchy.
[00:04:10] And I thought that if I wore bright colors, or if I made jokes in class that I wouldn't be taken seriously. Which now that I look back, I'm like, ah, these are all like patriarchal extensions, right? Colonial extensions. And so the idea that the classroom can be a place of healing and reciprocity.
[00:04:33] That came later as I got older and realized, no. There are all sorts of ways to educate. And I can craft my own understanding of what that means and what the classroom might mean.
[00:04:48] Josie: Ugh, that's so beautiful. What a cool way.
[00:04:52] Shayda: It took a long time though. I have to be honest. It took a very long time.
[00:04:56] Josie: Wow. That's so incredible. I just, I feel like how different my education would've been if I would've been in a classroom like that.
[00:05:06] Shayda: Yeah, I mean, talking to colleagues now, we all carry the woundings that we might have had as students in classrooms. And so we have this clarity of what maybe we don't want to replicate again.
[00:05:20] Josie: Right. Yeah, I bet. That's awesome. Ugh, that's so cool. And I'm thinking about this word that you, that I've seen you use, that I love both in your book that I read and then just other places that you use it. It's called, the word is bodymind. Will you talk about what that means and where it came from?
[00:05:44] Shayda: Absolutely. So, bodymind, the first two places I read this word brought together was in the work of Petra Kuppers. And I will share all of these links so I can share them with the larger community. So Petra Kuppers is a disability study scholar, performance study scholar and dancer. And so I noticed her usage of that word.
[00:06:12] And then also Margaret Price, who is an educator, math study scholar. And in both of their writings around bodymind together as one word, it was really pushing back against everything we've been taught around how the mind is its own separate entity that experiences and the body is its own separate entity that experiences. And then also this like very inaccurate know knowing that like the mind is more superior to body knowledge, right?
[00:06:49] And body wisdom and so, it felt very like, oh my gosh, I can't believe we hadn't done this before when I saw this combining of these two words.
[00:06:58] Josie: Yeah, totally. That's how I felt. I was like, oh, that makes so much more sense.
[00:07:04] Shayda: Doesn't it? In many ways, and that's why I'm so excited about your work too, it's this conversation between, okay, our body minds are always our minds and our bodies separately are always in conversation with one another. Informing experiences and I've even seen folks now adding on to that combination. So it's bodymindspirit written together.
[00:07:32] Josie: Oh, I love that. Interesting. Yeah, it's so true. I feel like in the work that I do, I'm always talking to people about how connected those things are, and people who are new to that type of work just really do feel like, or especially if they're more comfortable or more immersed in like allopathic medicine or western medicine. They just kind of view their body almost more as like a mechanic would view the body.
[00:08:03] Of just like, well, this part here isn't working, and there's no connection in their minds between how they're doing mentally or emotionally or spiritually, and how their body's doing. It's such a disconnect.
[00:08:19] Shayda: Yeah. I mean, I, I even think about the different ways that I've been taught that they're distinctly separate entities when really like I'm hearing more and more folks celebrating this idea of intuition as being embodied wisdom and embodied knowledge.
[00:08:37] That's why I'm so excited that there's these like conversations that are happening across disciplines and practices in really exciting ways.
[00:08:48] Josie: Totally, totally. Yeah. So I would love to talk about your book, your amazing book, Crip Kinship and how it intersects with Queer Reproductive Justice.
[00:08:59] There's some really interesting threads there. First, will you talk about what Sins Invalid is and why it's so revolutionary?
[00:09:07] Shayda: Absolutely. So, Sins Invalid is a San Francisco Bay area based performance project. They are disability justice led and they began in 2006. The co-founders are Patty Byrne and Leroy F. Moore, Jr.
[00:09:28] They were two dear friends that came together over a lovely meal talking about how there is minimal space for disabled folks around performance, but especially there's minimal space for disabled folks to talk about how they're disabled and they might be queer or trans and they might be of color.
[00:09:52] And what happens when we allow for intersectionality to enter into our conversations? And then what would it mean to center a disabled, queer of color idea of beauty? And sexuality and sensuality and all the diversity that word has.
[00:10:15] I was looking to focus my writing about a group that was very much living in this intersection. I'm a disabled, mad person. I identify as a queer fem, and I'm Iranian. Right. And so, like, I was searching, I was very much searching for community when I found them. Yeah. And their work online.
[00:10:40] Josie: Yeah, I bet. I feel envious of people who are able to experience these performances, because they're not doing them anymore, right?
[00:10:48] Shayda: They did their most recent performance online last year. It was this incredible multi coastal recording of individual performers performing either in the US or Canada, submitting their work and then all of it kind of being put together and offered in a digital way because of Covid.
[00:11:14] So their most recent performance was last year, and I believe it's still accessible online. I'll find a link and I'll share it. But I have to say that my first like interaction with their work was at home watching older recordings and so yeah. I wasn't able to go and see a performance in person for a few years.
[00:11:42] I'll share those links so that folks can maybe have their own like private viewing parties to just experience what a show is like.
[00:11:51] Josie: Yes, that would be incredible. That would be awesome. Yeah. And I, and I wanted to talk to that, you know, we can't really talk about creating intersectional liberatory spaces and reproductive spaces or any space without talking about disability justice.
[00:12:07] Which is one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation with you today. Will you talk about all the ways that disabilities can show up? And what are some conditions that are considered disabilities that non-disabled folks might not realize are disabilities, especially if they're invisible?
[00:12:24] Shayda: Yeah, absolutely. I have to be honest, my brain went into so many different directions with this question. This is a really juicy, generative question. I was thinking for sure about the kinship and the activist alliances between disability justice and reproductive justice.
[00:12:43] Was one place my brain went and I was thinking about how the knowledge that I've gained through disability justice, so whether we're talking about the medical industrial complex and how that's regulated disabled folks, but especially how it's regulated, the ideas of reproduction and who's allowed to reproduce and who is allowed to be pregnant.
[00:13:11] I really kind of settled in that offshoot of this question because I was thinking a lot about eugenics and this coercive sterilization forced sterilization practice that we started in the US in the twenties. And, I'm thinking about, so the first case around eugenics was called Buck Versus Bell, and it was about a white, poor, disabled woman named Carrie Buck.
[00:13:40] And the legacy of coercive sterilization started with her. Where legislatively we decided that certain bodies are not deserving of reproduction. And I was thinking about reproductive justice and disability justice, because Sins invalid has done performances where they bring Carrie, they like evoke carry on stage and she's speaking.
[00:14:10] Yeah. And they extend. in thinking about their body of work. And they discuss and talk about eugenics and how really oppressive colonial white supremacist practices have governed how bodies of color especially are viewed. And I feel like there's so much rhetoric around who is deserving of reproduction and this idea too that eugenics ended in the forties and fifties being this complete fallacy.
[00:14:42] I remember toward the end of this semester, one of my students was sharing with us just the number of immigrants, women who are now in immigration detention facilities in the US. Being forcefully coercively sterilized and how this legacy is very persistent. And so if we want to do the work of disability justice, one of their biggest principles is this idea of collective liberation.
[00:15:13] Where we move forward with no bodymind left behind. And so I saw in this question so many alliances between the work of reproductive justice and disability justice and bringing in, thinking about our bodies in intersectional ways. Or how do all of our intersectional identities impact how we're viewed as reproducing beings?
[00:15:36] Or even having simply choice around reproduction. And who is deserving of reproduction. So, my brain went to those places when I was thinking about this question. The larger structures that impact bodies, before we can even talk about the bodies.
[00:15:55] Josie: Yes, you're absolutely right. Yeah.
[00:15:58] Shayda: But that's why I said this was like a juicy generative question that led me to all these places. And I think the idea of even considering liberatory spaces being present in reproductive spaces, is a radical notion when we think about the different ways disabled folks have been historically and currently incarcerated in nursing homes and all of these different elements that regulate control. Or rather manifest control and regulate autonomy.
[00:16:28] Josie: Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
[00:16:31] Shayda: Yeah. And it's interesting, the other part of your question around what are conditions that non-disabled folks might not realize are disabilities. That made me think about how, like, because of capitalism and fashion certain impairments are, I don't know if it's celebrated, but are like celebrated in the context of aesthetics. Like I have blue light glasses and like a lot of my students wear glasses. And glasses are aesthetic beautiful things.
[00:17:16] Josie: Accessories.
[00:17:17] Shayda: For sure. They're accessories. They're not really stigmatized. Fashion folks create glasses, you know? And those are for our eyes. But, devices for our ears, like I'm thinking of hearing aids or canes, like those are not celebrated.
[00:17:38] Josie: Why aren't the designers making those?
[00:17:40] Shayda: Right? Why aren't we making those? So your question also made me go to that place of like, our larger bodies of power, systems of power are determining what we are celebrating as far as impairments, and what we are not.
[00:17:59] And with conversations around reproduction, I was listening to this phenomenal podcast called Bodies. And they were talking to folks that identify as little people and how there are more and more genetic tests that folks can do before their baby is born, to either discover whether or not somebody has a gene for different things.
[00:18:30] But they were specifically talking about being a little person. I forget the actual gene that they were talking about. But how one community might view that as, oh, this is my kin, this is my community. I look different. But that's it. I just look different. And I don't want somebody that looks like me to be disappeared, eradicated, lost.
[00:18:59] So all of those, I've heard similar conversations too around the Deaf capital D Deaf community. Where Deafness is not considered a disability. It's considered, it's its own language. It's its own culture, all of these things. And so, I went to all these different places and thinking about this question, and how so much of how our bodies are labeled and sorted and valued has to do with systems that are much bigger than us. But that have very tangible effects on our bodies.
[00:19:40] Josie: Yep. And our own perception of self-worth.
[00:19:43] Shayda: Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's important to think about. With this idea of visible and non-visible. So many of us, and I'll just make this super personal. I didn't name or hold my disability with pride. I started out with a lot of internalized sanism and internalized ableism, and I feel like it's important to name that.
[00:20:12] For a lot of disabled folks, we have to move through that journey of unlearning. Before we can even arrive to a place of claiming our identities if that's what we so wish or choose to do.
[00:20:26] Josie: Totally, totally. Yeah. And it's like how you've answered this question makes me realize that it's not even a question of whether a disability is visible or not, it's whether it's been deemed celebratory or not.
[00:20:39] Shayda: That's a really good way of putting good, because I'm thinking about how, what is celebrated and how it holds space in public space. Versus disabilities that aren't celebrated just thinking about my own campus community. And what are the forms of access that are very visible on campus and very celebrated and worked into the architecture.
[00:21:09] For example, thinking of like ramps and things, and then what are the things that are still unspoken of and held in shame.
[00:21:16] Josie: Yeah, totally. And I'm thinking too of like neurodivergence, I guess. Things that someone might not know just by meeting you or looking at you.
[00:21:28] I feel like that's overlooked. In general, I feel like it's overlooked all the time, but everyone is always assumed to have the same amount of mental capacity, or ability, or in the same way. It's like everyone is just assumed to have the same exact way of looking at things and processing things and the capacity to do things.
[00:21:53] And it's just, it seems to me that's hardly ever taken into account that people might have different ways of doing that.
[00:22:01] Shayda: Yeah. If you saw me, you wouldn't know that. I have what the medical industrial complex cause manic depression. Or that I had specific access needs in my everyday life or in my teaching practice, but we're all taught, right? Like I feel like I had to unlearn so many of my ableist or sanist assumptions because we're all taught that we're supposed to show up in space in a specific way.
[00:22:36] Just thinking about teaching and learning, like learn at a specific pace, sits still in our seats, like all of these things. So I, yeah, you're inviting me to be really reflective with these questions, which I appreciate.
[00:22:52] Josie: Cool, yeah. I'm also thinking too, this thought just came to me as of representation in different communities. Whereas like, I'm thinking specifically of how there's a lot of representation of like white men in who are autistic, and we don't really see, how that shows up in other ways, in other people who are not white men.
[00:23:20] Shayda: Yeah. I feel like I had that experience with different, different disabilities when I was in grad school and I looked at my, like bookshelf, my tangible and my digital bookshelves of disability studies, texts, and.
[00:23:41] I realized, wow, like a lot of these books are written by white cis men. And I am missing the stories and the perspectives of folks of color, queer, non-binary, trans folks. I know these stories are out there, but I'm missing them and I'm realizing there's a vacancy, which if anybody else is feeling similarly, that's where disability justice wisdom and activism really kind of held that space for me that gap.
[00:24:12] Josie: Yeah, totally. Yeah. And that leads me really into my next question, which was, why should non-disabled folks care about disability justice? How does disability justice work to liberate all of us?
[00:24:24] Shayda: Okay. I love this question. I think about it in several ways. One, disability and chronic illness and madness, like these are all such fluid categories in the sense that a person can become temporarily disabled. But also in the sense that if you never become disabled as you age, which we all probably will at some point or in some way. You may have friends and family and loved ones who are, slash become disabled.
[00:25:03] So just in thinking about proximity, whether it's yourself or somebody else. There's that element. And then the other element two is so many of the principles of disability justice are nourishing and are required for our collective survival. Whether you are disabled or not, like I feel like that's such an important consideration and thing to know about.
[00:25:31] And so whatever movement building work you are a part of. One of the principles of disability justice is intersectionality. And this acknowledgement that like we have to hold our different identities. We have to bring them to our conversation and movement building spaces. Another principle is sustainability like we must move in sustainable ways for our bodyminds.
[00:25:59] And I mean, I think one of the other like final, big gifts. That's just coming to mind right now. But I will share all 10 of the principles. So folks can explore them on their own is the importance of thinking about wholeness. Which I know we're gonna talk about more later. But in just thinking about these principles on their own, these are gift giving, life-giving to everyone.
[00:26:35] And I'm thinking of being in public spaces where my hands are full with things. Let's say groceries, or my hands are full with books and I'm on campus. And I walk through a door that automatically opens for me. Right, I might not have a mobility impairment.
[00:26:56] But this function benefits me, it benefits somebody who might be a parent or caretaker and is pushing a stroller or a wheelchair. Right, I'm thinking of all the different ways in which sustainable public spaces are useful for all of our bodyminds. And how so much of disability justice, when they say we wanna move forward in a way that leaves no one behind, they're talking about everyone.
[00:27:30] In events and in organizing, how do we organize and consider the elders that might be there, or the parents that might be there with small children? All of it has to be considered. And so in those ways, I think that disability justice absolutely is organizing for everyone. And it's for everyone.
[00:27:51] Josie: Yeah, totally. Totally. And something I'm thinking about, you wrote so beautifully about how it's not always done perfectly, also. And that we will make mistakes, and we can't always think of every single possible scenario or accessibility option. And so I think that, I feel that that's important to address, so that people don't feel that they can't do anything without doing it perfectly.
[00:28:25] Shayda: Yeah. So a Sins Invalid performer, disability justice activist, and like amazing badass writer and poet in her own right, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha talks about how people will come up and say, Hey, like, how do you do disability justice? And she's like disability justice, it's like when the car breaks down and someone is anxious and is vomiting and you're trying to figure out how to make a ramp out of no ramp. And yeah, it's the messy spaces that you might occupy.
[00:29:02] It's acknowledging that we might have conflicting access needs. Now what we do about it? It's messy and I think the myth of perfection is something that disability justice is pushing back against. I mean, just thinking about sustainability as a main orienting principle. And the idea that we need to rest.
[00:29:24] And that we have to acknowledge when we come to meetings that we have needs. And naming what those needs are in meetings. I mean, how radical I was in a meeting with other disabled folks and they were like, do you have access needs today before we start? And that had, everything to do with sustainability and disability justice.
[00:29:49] And I was like, actually I'm super low on energy. My brain is disassociating. I can take notes, but I can't really talk a lot. And they were like, perfect. Great. Yeah so that like performativity that ableism demands of us, or sanism or whatever system of oppression demands of us, is lessened. Or at least problematized for us in new ways.
[00:30:19] Josie: Yeah, I think that in more and more spaces that I'm showing up, I'm noticing that more and more of people saying if you need to have your cameras off, if you need to keep your pajamas on, if you need to be cuddling with your your pet, if you need to be out on a walk, while we're doing this meeting, things like that. It's like, that's new to me. Seeing those kinds of accessibility offerings.
[00:30:40] Shayda: Yeah. And just to amplify, like you did that in your email before we met. Like, Hey, if you have any new needs, let me know. So I felt very held and then it got me excited too. And just thinking about how different movements are working together and learning from each other.
[00:31:01] Which, cross movement solidarity is another one of the big disability justice principles. And I was like, ah, how fabulous, right? That these different knowledges are being shared and practiced.
[00:31:17] Josie: Yes, so true. I've learned so much and am learning so much from the disability justice movement.
[00:31:24] Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, and I would love to talk about something I read in your book was how you went to a Sins Invalid event, and you were able to go into a low stimulation room. Yes. And I was like, what? Why doesn't every event have these, and the term that you used was a crip centric liberated zone, which again, I'm having that same feeling of like everyone could benefit from that. Can you talk about that, like what that is and what that experience was like?
[00:31:58] Shayda: Oh, yes. So the context is I was interviewing Patty Byrne and they were like, yeah, so yeah, Sins Invalid. We create crip centric liberated zones. And I was like, okay, tell me, like that sounds magical. Tell me more. And yeah, the way they described it was, a space in transit, so it could be created for an event for a workshop or for a training, and then it leaves that space with the people who leave it.
[00:32:32] It can take place online, digitally in person, and it's a space where we are made familiar to ourselves outside of the systems of oppression that are always regulating and disciplining us. And so for disabled, queer of color folks, it's like, okay, how do we create a space that is not just being actively oppressed and impacted by ableism and sanism, and audism and all the isms.
[00:33:08] But how do we create a space also that is as free as it can be of cis heteropatriarchy or as free as it can be of white supremacy and colonialism. And so, at this performance and all of the spaces that since invalid holds in person, it's either sliding scale or free to kind of push back against this oppression of capitalism.
[00:33:32] That if you have wealth, you can access certain types of knowledge or experiences, and if you don't, then you are out. There were gender neutral restrooms and thinking about how to respond back to cis heteropatriarchy and it's mandates in pushing back against sizeism.
[00:33:50] There were roomy seats. Like, okay, yes, we deserve to sit without pain,and in comfort. ASL, audio descriptions, and yes, the low stimulation room. Which, the only other time I had experienced anything close to that was when I went to a disability studies conference and with your little name badge, they gave you stickers.
[00:34:19] They were round stickers and they were, it was a sheet of green stickers. yellow stickers and red stickers. If you put a green sticker by your name tag that day or that hour, it meant, Hey, I'm good. Come talk to me. If it was yellow, it was like, if I know you come talk to me, but I'm feeling anxious. So if you don't know me, maybe not today. Right. And if it was red, it was, I'm here, but nobody come up and talk to me.
[00:34:49] Josie: it's like a hard no.
[00:34:52] Shayda: And I was like, okay. Looking back, that was a crip centric liberated zone in the sense that like all different types of neurodiversity were being considered.
[00:35:05] This idea of cryp centric liberated zones, I'm thinking more and more about how they can, even though academia makes it really hard, they can at least exist in our classrooms. Right as this temporal space that is assembled every week and then disassembled. So, yeah, this idea became a really powerful grounding for me to think about.
[00:35:38] Number one, how do we create it?
[00:35:42] Josie: Sorry. I have to cough. I have like a little something that came up in my throat.
[00:35:48] Shayda: No, please.
[00:35:50] Josie: Okay. Sorry about that.
[00:35:52] Shayda: No, not at all. I mean, I guess this is another gift of disability justice. I'm learning not to apologize for what I need.
[00:36:00] Josie: Totally. You're right, you're right.
[00:36:03] Shayda: So I totally like embrace and honor of this coughing and this like air that you're providing yourself right now.
[00:36:09] Josie: Oh, thank you.
[00:36:11] Shayda: Yeah, of course. But yeah, I mean, I guess you're reminding me too, in an embodied way, you're reminding me about one of the biggest yieldings of Crip centric liberated zones for me was realizing that it is possible to enter into a space.
[00:36:30] Where most of your needs are met and where you don't have to feel shame about having needs. That was, I didn't know that was possible. I am constantly forgetting that that's possible.
[00:36:49] Josie: Because everything's telling us it's not.
[00:36:53] Shayda: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And although this is not disability justice connected, I feel like a lot of this my understanding of, you know, we don't need permission to care for ourselves and our communities, or we don't need permission to rest, also comes from the work of Tricia Hersey, and Tricia Hersey is the creator of NAP Ministry.
[00:37:18] Josie: Yes. I love them.
[00:37:20] Shayda: Yes, yes, yes. And so, and they're coming out with a book in November. I'm very excited.
[00:37:29] Josie: Oh, that's exciting.
[00:37:30] Shayda: Yeah. And just this idea that like, okay, rest can be anti-racist, anti-capitalist resistance.
[00:37:39] So yes. If folks don't follow Trisha Hersey or NAP ministry, highly recommend.
[00:37:50] Josie: Yeah. Cool. I love that. So I would love to talk about like, how can we move the disability justice movement forward in the fertility world? As healthcare practitioners, as community workers, as folks who are trying to conceive who are going through the medical system, who hold more privilege and or visibility. What can we do?
[00:38:13] Shayda: Yeah. I think this is a great question because I think you asking the question also suggests that we have power and we have the capacity for change making. Which I think is really necessary and important because the medical system, medical industrial complex, all but you know, they're reminding us or they're trying to urge us to remember that we don't have power when we do.
[00:38:42] I really appreciate this question and a lot of it comes down to right and access were the two main words that I was thinking about and I think reminding healthcare practitioners that just because you're disabled doesn't mean that maybe you don't want to parent or you are not interested in sex or sexuality.
[00:39:13] Cause I think there's been this very persistent desexualizing of disabled folks historically contemporarily. I mean, so much so that it was called asexuality. Like when I look at my older books, disabled folks were labeled asexual, but now we know that's a sexuality. So desexual is, is the more appropriate.
[00:39:38] But yeah, the assumption is, you know, and I've read amazing books by folks like Simi Linton, who as a wheelchair user, getting ready to leave the hospital. She would ask questions or other folks talk about asking questions about, mobility and sex, like, can we talk about that? Or birth control before I leave, can we talk about that?
[00:39:57] And, you know, doctors really crudely responding like, well, you're not gonna have sex anymore, or that's not for you. And so I think just remembering that parenting and sex and sexuality, should that be someone's desire? Is, is a right?
[00:40:20] Sins Invalid in community with lots of other disability justice folks created a disability justice primer and I'll share the link. Because they have a large section at the end of the second edition that is all about reproductive justice and sexuality and sex and autonomy and what people need to know.
[00:40:46] And I think a lot of that can also apply to what do healthcare practitioners need to know. But, but again, like, I love the phrasing of it and this reminder that we have power and autonomy in our ability to communicate our needs.
[00:41:08] Josie: So even someone who doesn't have a disability but is going through the medical system, maybe they could even have that top of mind of advocating for their needs, whatever they are, to normalize that.
[00:41:25] Shayda: Absolutely. I was reading a post, a friend is Queer Co-Parenting, and they had written down on a piece of paper, who are the primary parents? Who are the secondary parents?
[00:41:43] What are their pronouns? Please put this on my, on the door. Please give this to all the nurses that might come into the room during the birth. And so I see a lot of spaces where yes, even if you're not disabled, like you, naming your needs is very, very useful. And I think the first thing you have to do though is realize that your bodymind experience matters.
[00:42:13] Before we can get to that place of storytelling. And I think that's, that's a very, very, very, very rough paraphrase of something that Alice Wong who's an amazing writer, disability justice activist, founder of Disability Visibility. That's a very rough podcast of something. She shared that before we can even tell stories about ourselves or name what we need. We have to know that we have value.
[00:42:39] Josie: Right, right. Absolutely. That's step one. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's super helpful to think about that, just how we can all be in the world differently to help move the, to help this disability justice movement go forward.
[00:43:01] Shayda: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
[00:43:03] Josie: So I would love to talk about wholeness. Specifically decolonizing wholeness. As my listeners know, I talk and teach a lot about wholeness and the importance of the Whole Self. So when I read this concept in your book about decolonizing wholeness, I was really struck, will you talk about what that means from a point of view of disability justice?
[00:43:26] Shayda: Yes. Can I start with the very short, I think it's a two sentence definition of wholeness that disability justice offers? Just as like a container. So this is what they write about wholeness. Each person is full of history and life experience. Each person has an internal experience composed of our own thoughts, sensations, emotions, sexual fantasies.
[00:43:57] Perceptions and quirks. Disabled people are whole people. Which of course, like on the one hand reading this, the response is like, well of course we are. And then on the other hand, it's like, oh, right. Like ableism in conjunction with other systems of oppression have made us forget. Or enter into the cycle of forgetting.
[00:44:26] So my understanding of wholeness was first informed by disability justice, and then I was thinking about, so I got hired in for gender and sexuality studies, and I'm in a department that is called Ethnic and women studies. And so there's a lot of cross-pollinization and conversation amongst disciplines.
[00:44:54] And so I also started thinking about wholeness in terms of what are the colonized imperial and like white supremacist framings of what it means to be whole and who is not whole. And so I started to think about the work of two scholars. I will share their article. They are higher education writers and they were writing about folks of color and education, students of color and education.
[00:45:30] Their names are Tara Yosso and Daniel Solórzano and they were talking about how our lives are governed by these things called majoritarian stories. And I was like, okay, so what's that? And a majoritarian story is an assumption. It's a story that's told over and over that assumes that some identities are good and some identities are bad.
[00:46:00] And so you can see how this thing can get applied to communities of color, we can think of working class folks, low income folks. We can think of disabled, non-disabled, all sorts of things. And queer folks. And so when I was thinking about wholeness, I was thinking about the ways in which wholeness is reserved in the sense of thinking that wholeness has to do with autonomy.
[00:46:36] And wholeness has to do with, you are a person with your own thoughts and your own beliefs and you have autonomy. I was thinking about how that is reserved for the people and the communities that are labeled good and normal. And how they are distanced from the communities that are labeled bad or abnormal.
[00:47:07] And we can think about how, I mean, these are very, very old colonized lessons that followed how, let's say indigenous communities were treated in the US and what their majoritarian stories were, or how black folks from Africa were forcibly taken and what were the stories told about their body
[00:47:27] And who has wholeness and autonomy and who doesn't. And so those were some of the connections that I was thinking about in terms of what it could possibly mean to look at these stories, and decolonize them and really understand that all the communities that have been distanced from wholeness have a right to it.
[00:47:54] And what are the ways that we can gain access to it? And I think that one of the reasons why I appreciate Sins Invalid's work so much is because they remind us of our, not just proximity to wholeness, but that we are whole and deserving of this concept of autonomy through performance art.
[00:48:17] Again, super rough paraphrase, but Patty had shared in an interview somewhere that like, yeah, I could keep doing workshops on like white supremacy and disability justice or colonialism and disability justice, or I could do a three minute performance that'll shift things and help you understand.
[00:48:41] Josie: Right, totally. And that's such a powerful, I feel like that's how humans are wired to receive information and integrate it is through stories.
[00:48:56] Shayda: Oh, I love how you said receive, but also integrate. Because I think that also goes back to the idea that our bodymind is a unit. So you might intellectually understand something or receive something.
[00:49:11] But maybe the integration part is that conversation that'll happen between your bodymind.
[00:49:19] Josie: Totally, yeah. Ugh. So cool. Oh, I'm sorry to keep you over. I realize I'm past our time a little bit. Are you okay with one more question?
[00:49:30] Shayda: Yes i's ok. Feel like whenever I'm in these beautiful spaces with having am amazing conversations time just goes, so I'm totally fine. I'm really enjoying this.
[00:49:43] Josie: Okay, good. So a question I'd like to ask all of my guests. Is about our essence or our Whole Self. So in Chinese medicine, our fertility is referred to as our essence. So the more we're able to get in touch with who we really are, or our essence, the more access we have to our fertile potential and our creative power.
[00:50:05] So I'm wondering if you have any personal practices or rituals in place that allow you to connect with your essence or your wholeness, like we were just talking about.
[00:50:16] Shayda: Oh, beautiful. Because I often disassociate, either from external traumas, we were briefly talking about all the things that are happening around us right now in very embodied ways traumatic ways.
[00:50:38] Or whether I'm disassociating because of some internal anxiety, depression. I really appreciated this question because I was thinking and realizing that a lot of the things I wrote down, are ways of remembering that I am embodied. And so, you know, I was thinking, okay, so some small things are sitting in the sun to feel heat.
[00:51:12] Laying in a bathtub and then standing up from that and realizing I have weight. Gardening without gloves is a very grounding ritual practice for me. Seeing the dirt under your nails and feeling the dirt under your nails and you're looking at roots and touching roots. Yoga practices, things that are making me remember that I have a body, when so often I forget.
[00:51:48] So those were some of the rituals that I was thinking about that distanced me from that forgetting and moved me closer toward an idea of wholeness, and at least these examples, they're embodied forms of wholeness, tangible forms of wholeness.
[00:52:08] Josie: Right, right. Beautiful. I love that.
[00:52:13] Shayda: Thank you for the question. Course. I love thinking about it.
[00:52:17] Josie: Of course. Shayda, this has been such an absolute pleasure to have you on.
[00:52:24] Shayda: Oh my goodness, this has been such a joy. I can't stop moving my fingers and my hands. I am so thrilled. This has been, this has been a true honor Josie.
[00:52:36] Josie: Oh, good. So how can people find you and read your book and get your book and support you and learn more about everything you're doing in the world.
[00:52:45] Shayda: So I have created after a long while, a website where everything can live. So, like previous, book events and talks kind of archived together. It's my first and last name, shaydakafi.com. I will share the link. And then for just small daily musings and shares and events. I'm also on Instagram, my first and last name, Shayda Kafai, which I'll also share with you. So we have a more direct way in.
[00:53:25] Josie: Amazing. Ugh. Thank you again so much for being here.
[00:53:29] Shayda: Thank you so much, Josie.
[00:53:31] Josie: Thanks for listening to the Intersectional Fertility podcast to get customized fertility recommendations based on your Whole Self Fertility Method element. Join my mailing list at intersectionalfertility.com and get immediate access to my two minute quiz. If you like the show and wanna hear more, tap subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and please leave us a review.
[00:53:55] It really truly helps.
[00:53:57] The Intersectional Fertility Podcast is hosted by me, Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier, and produced by Rozarie Productions with original music by Jen Korte.
All content offered through The Intersectional Fertility Podcast is created for informational purposes only, it is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.