So disappointed and angry about DtJ excluding the voices of women with disabilities from their #beingawoman discussions: Australian feminist forum – Destroy the Joint, blocks and bans all women with disability. It’s especially appalling that DtJ community admins have blocked simple announcements about the upcoming White Flower Memorial gathering to commemorate women, men and children with disabilities who have died as a result of violence, neglect or abuse.
Next week, at the White Flower Memorial in Sydney, we march. We will call the names for dead women and others with disability who have died as a result of violence, neglect and abuse, especially those in institutional settings. We will place white flowers in memory of those who have had their lives taken, whilst elsewhere, the Senate Inquiry into Violence, Neglect and Abuse against People with Disability is tabled.
We call upon all women – not just disabled women – to join us in expressing solidarity for the thousands of women with disability who are abused every day. We call upon you to express anger towards the perpetrators and at the social conditions that disempower us, including exclusion, segregation and apartheid. We call upon you to fight with all your sisters against oppression and violence.
We are disabled women. But we are still women.
h/t to Arcadia on our Open Thread
Categories: crisis, disability, ethics & philosophy, gender & feminism, social justice, violence
Hoyden About Town 
That was some gaslighting bullshit they were engaged in. There’s an apology, but I won’t be holding my breath for real action.
Someone involved with the whole situation maliciously reported Samantha Connor’s FB account as “abusive” a day or two ago. Today, I find myself locked out of my FB account with no explanation. I sure hope that’s a coincidence. Because if someone involved with Destroy the Joint was really vindictively trying to lock crips out of a huge source of disability support, solidarity, and information, that would be escalating this shit to a whole new level. I also can no longer help admin any of my groups, like the Disability Access Wall of Shame.
Meanwhile, if anyone who is able to contact Facebook would consider contacting them to advocate for restoration of my personal account (Laura Dell, ‘lauredhel’), that would be great.
Damnitalltohell, Facebook! Your account comes up as unavailable for me this morning. Contacting them now.
I still have access, but I don’t know how to go about the steps to help, if you can tell me I’m happy to proceed on your behalf.
I wish I knew, I’ve tried to contact support but can’t get a human response. I have no idea why they think I’m a business or public figure – I have like 200 friends, not thousands, and I mostly post pictures of my chickens and my kid and chat with friends and participate in disability support type groups.
The nastiness involved in reporting accounts as abusive because they disagree with you is just astounding. If this is able bodied cis white feminism please stop because I want to get off. Apologies to friends who may have been trying to point this out for some time.
This is all just so atrocious. side eye at Facebook and DtJ, good vibes your way Lauredhel.
Sounds like there is nothing I can do actively at this stage but will keep an eye here in case that changes…
I’ve just read jmg’s comment at Samantha Connor’s article, who reports that DtJ also attested that the rapes of asylum-seeker women in detention centres wasn’t “gendered violence” either. “DTJ wrote: “…….Unfortunately, the violence and mistreatment dealt out to the people in Australian detention centres is not gendered violence …”
This is some nasty crap from DtJ. So now only non-asylum seeker, able bodied women count as women?!
DtJ was doing some interesting work in counting dead women, but the fact that some dead women don’t count and other violence against women is not considered gendered, because it is affected by a bunch of intersectional stuff that still is based in gender is vile.
To go on and attack reasonable critics to block their accounts is very poor behaviour.