Speaker 1 00:00:59 Oh, finally. Hello everybody. That's a little late start for disability and progress. Um, but we are here. This is cafe 90.3, FM, Minneapolis and Kathy i.org. We bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. My name is Sam. I'm the host of this show. Charlene doll is my research team. Hello, Charlene, are you needing everyone? There you are. Oh, here. Finally. We're here. Okay. So we had people scheduled, but they needed to, they needed to reschedule sometimes that happens. So we are going to bring you a hodgepodge of stuff tonight. Hopefully everything will work. I really like when everything works. Um, and you will be hearing the people that will be talking about what are they talking about? Charlene helped me out here, the people who had to reschedule usher syndrome ushers. Thank you. We'll be talking about ushers on September 30th and that is confirmed and we'll have two people on we'll have somebody from Oregon and we'll have also somebody local.
Speaker 1 00:02:14 So that will be great to hear if you have a question or would like to suggest future program topics. As we always love to hear, you can email
[email protected]. I will be taking a little bit of a break come next week until end of August, but we'll be listening to still some new stuff and some older stuff that you probably haven't heard. So please keep tuning in. I will also still be checking email so I will definitely respond. So again, disability on
[email protected], Charlene lists, listeners, something this was done, um, by a couple people, Kate K T F a radio who that has, um, another disability show on, but doesn't have it near. As often as us talks about, you know, they have some lesbian conversation on what it was like to come out and all of them have disabilities. So this is going to be a talk about, you know, what it was like when they had to, um, talk to their friends and, and whatnot about this. So you'll hear a little bit of a, uh, choir thing before that talks about scary chemicals and scary things. Um, and then you'll hear this and then you'll hear like two poems from I'll look up the author and I'll tell you when I come back. All right, Charlene, here we go. Yeah. <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:03:47 NZ
Speaker 2 00:03:47 Still found an old cosmetics perfumes nail Polish remover, lacquers paint spot remover, varnish, stain, and sealants, a confirmed human carcinogen induces my Lloyd leukemia Hodgkin's disease and lymphomas by breathing
Speaker 0 00:04:03 <inaudible> Ethel
Speaker 2 00:04:07 Accolate applications include uses as a flavoring agent and for packaging materials confirmed carcinogen, a substance that migrates to food from packaging materials.
Speaker 2 00:04:22 A product used in baby bath, foot and face powders. A possible carcinogen. A study of women who use talcum powder on sanitary napkins indicated an increased risk of ovarian cancer.
Speaker 0 00:04:35 <inaudible> plural,
Speaker 2 00:04:38 Floral carbons used as coolant for refrigerators and air conditioners also used an aerosol propellant and solvents ozone layer depletion caused by CFCs has resulted in an increase in skin cancers.
Speaker 2 00:04:55 <inaudible> applications included. He sees textiles and permanent press fabrics as a coating and conditioner. Also in soil conditioners suspected human carcinogen, toxic by skin absorption
Speaker 0 00:05:08 <inaudible> methylene
Speaker 2 00:05:12 Chloride used indie caffeinated, coffee, fruits, vegetables, adhesives, glues, cleaners, waxes, oven, cleaners, paint, strippers, and removers shoe Polish, varnishes stains, and sealants, a confirmed carcinogen
Speaker 2 00:05:30 <inaudible> used in skin products for suntan lotion, gels, mousses creams, and ointments, a confirmed carcinogen
Speaker 0 00:05:39 <inaudible> ethylene,
Speaker 2 00:05:42 A dry cleaning agent rug and upholstery cleaner spot remover. The cleaning agent in 85% of us dry cleaning stores, they emitted 92,000 tons of perk into the air this year, a probable carcinogen.
Speaker 3 00:05:59 That's scary folks. I'm Shelley Berman. And I've heard people with disabilities say for years that everyone is only temporarily able-bodied seems it could be coming to me sooner than I thought. We're lucky because with us tonight on outbeat salon is a panel of experts. They're experts because they live with disabilities. Some were disabled before they even knew they were lesbians. I'm proud and excited to have this panel here with me tonight to discuss lesbian health issues. Welcome Adrian. Thank you jelly. Thanks for having me welcome Kamara. Hi, welcome. Thank you. Welcome Karen. Hello and thank you. And Stephanie. Hello, Shelley and welcome Sarah. Hi Shelley. Nice to be here. Thank you all for being here this evening. So I'd like to hear your experiences of being a lesbian with a disability. What's it been like for you? You want to start Adrian?
Speaker 4 00:07:00 I was disabled as a, in my mid thirties and I had been part, very active part of the lesbian community in Oregon. I was went to a lot of meetings. I had a lot of friends. I was kind of like Ms. Popularity. So I ended up in two or three years of crises being, uh, in and out of hospitals a lot and living on general assistance. And I lost, I'd say 95% of the people of my life who just couldn't cope for whatever reason. Some of it was scare and fear. Some of it was, uh, not having the caretaking gene very high in their life. A couple of very strong friends, uh, stuck it out with me, but it was devastating. And now as I become more functional, uh, again, I find that my community is not exclusively in the lesbian community. And to some extent it's a disabled community. My
Speaker 5 00:07:54 Disability has always been with me, whether or not I was aware of it and it didn't necessarily make any difference or not. When I came out into the lesbian community, because I've always been on the outskirts of everything all the time. What is your disability? I have a dissociative disorder, which they used to call multiple personality disorder, which I still prefer to use because did just doesn't cover it. Multiple personality really covers it. Um, and not that I was aware of it as a child, but, um, it, it took years of digging to figure out what the problem was. Um, and actually I have more than one problem to my family. Just being a lesbian was a huge problem. Um, and then having, um, oh, it just goes on forever. Having what my parents considered a high IQ and my family have extremely high expectations of me and having very little skill.
Speaker 5 00:09:03 Um, my family has no social skills, so they didn't teach me any, but I guess even theirs were better than mine because they could carry on conversations with other people. And somehow I was always, um, as my mother says, you were a very withdrawn child. Um, the truth was I was an emotionally disturbed child, her rageful angry shut down miserable child. And, um, they just didn't really look at, um, abuse in those days, especially not in a, a white middle-class community. It just wasn't, um, everything was pushed under the carpet. So, um, entering the lesbian community actually was better because at least I found some something to have in common with other humans. So some kind of family what you're similar. Yeah. And I did find that and I found it in many places. I found it in women's studies. I found it in feminism. I found it in radical politics.
Speaker 3 00:10:05 How about you, Stephanie?
Speaker 5 00:10:07 I have a hidden disability. That's genetic. And I first became ill as an infant. And that has carried over through my whole life. I've had multiple surgeries and multiple cancers. And one of my cancers is breast cancer, which is a very popular cancer right now. Um, so our community is a tricky thing. I came out in 1976 in Sonoma county and it was a different world down. Uh, 27 years later, it looks like a very different place. It's growing a lot. Many of us who formed friendships 27 years ago are still friends. Um, I don't know. We used to have the Moonrise rising woman books, Claire light books, the feminist newspapers, where there, it really was a hotbed of activity for feminists and lesbians. And it's hard for me to know what the community is anymore. I, I don't really see that we have a gathering place, maybe the black cat or Northlight books. It's just not as clear to me. Um,
Speaker 3 00:11:11 But around your disability, do you feel like that you have a community that's grown up out for you?
Speaker 5 00:11:17 Yes. I feel very fortunate. Um, like I said, I have a popular disability, um, and I think I'm fairly personable. And so I have quite a good support group. I have a support group of lesbians that has met twice a month for over seven years to help me through whatever I'm going through. And they've gone to doctor's appointments and surgeries with me. They've helped my partner, they've cleaned. Um, many of them do phone messages. It's pretty amazing that, um, my partner and I have that and have had that for this seven years. How do you do that? Do what? I don't see that happening with everybody. No, I don't think it happens with everybody. And I don't know why I'm so fortunate. Um, because I've been here a long time. Some of the friendships I have are quite old, so, um, and my friends themselves have gone through hard times that I've helped them.
Speaker 5 00:12:17 So there's a reciprocity as we sip coldness there. Um, but I don't know as a community we could turn and say, oh, this person will help in the pantry or that person it's things. It's just not clear to me. I find it's a little bit different with emotional illness because most of my friends do have some sort of emotional problem, but, and that kind of means that they're more or less incapable of showing up sometimes. Um, so he doesn't really work the same way. Although there are certainly are connections, it's more of an emotional connection and telephone help. There's a lot of support. Um, it's a little bit harder to count on nuts to show up, but, um, they do too. And like I said, especially, um, for phone calls or email or, and also I joined eventually the, the recovering community and there is a sense of community there. And there is, um, people will show up on mass. If you put out that you have, um, some kind of crisis that needs to be dealt with, there really is a spirit of family. And I will hear people calling each other saying, what can I do for you? What can this community do for you? And, uh, it's still blows me away, but it certainly does happen. We help each other moving and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 00:13:55 Okay. But what about those of us that are isolated in terms of being single or, um, on not, not financially capable
Speaker 5 00:14:08 Or you're old or you're sick or you can't you're bedridden or you can't leave your home? How do you attract people to come to your home when you're not leaving your home? Yeah, that's a good point. I have a story that's pretty similar to what you're talking about. I had left a relationship. I was just at the point of coming onto disability. Um, my name's Camara by the way, and, and my disability is, um, post-traumatic stress disorder and, um, from childhood abuse that I was, um, kind of just uncovering and I also have bipolar, um, type two. And, um, I was getting to the point where I had always been working part-time cause I couldn't work full-time, but I couldn't even work part-time at this point. And, um, so my partner was leaving. My parents wouldn't help me financially in any way. Um, I wasn't hooked up into the system yet to get any benefits.
Speaker 5 00:15:13 And, um, so there was like no financial resources. And I had just recently moved into the, um, the, up into Sonoma county from San Francisco. So my entire support system was back in, um, San Francisco and I had, I really had nothing to rely upon and because I had no new friends really, um, I w I went to, um, I am also in, um, the recovering 12 step community. And I went to the toast at meetings and asked for help, but they didn't know me. And so they just felt like I was kind of a hanger on asking for help and not bringing anything to the, to the meetings and so forth. And I didn't really receive much, um, much back, but one person said to me that she had a couch I could sleep on and, um, for a little while. And so I ended up sleeping on our couch and trading childcare and dishwashing and stuff like that for, um, the ability to keep a roof over my head while I was receiving like $212 a month while I was waiting to get on as a OSI, it can get really rough out there while you're in between.
Speaker 5 00:16:39 Um, and you don't have other resources.
Speaker 3 00:16:43 So basically you came up here, you were alone and you turn to the, the AA community and they helped you out. They did. Do you feel like they saved your life? That person
Speaker 5 00:16:57 Who, well, I would have been on the streets and the other, and then I basically couch hopped for a couple of months until I got to the point where I could afford a room for $250 a month.
Speaker 3 00:17:12 You're listening to outbeat salon on KRCB radio 91, I'm Shelley Berman. And I'm visiting with a panel of experts in the art of disability.
Speaker 4 00:18:09 What I'm hearing is that they're up to save old lesbians who fall through the cracks. Um, and as the social sort of safety net gets devastated in the current California budgets, good example of another renting wreaking hole. Um, there, what catches those people, if you don't have your family, if you don't have an old friendship network, um, a lot of us are out here. We're not part of churches and we don't have the kind of things that gay men have built up through the aids crisis, where you can go somewhere and get some help, rather it's someone to talk to or a little bit of cash.
Speaker 5 00:18:45 That's true. And I've seen people sitting in the SSI office, absolutely desperate to get on, and I know they're not going to get on. And the system it's, it is a little bit worse right now, but it's been really, really worse before I'm 57 and I've been on social security disability for, oh my God, over 30 years. And there was a time when, um, they threw everyone with mental illness off of disability. So there I was in California with not a huge amount of friends, and then they took away my income. So what happened with me is I actually did find, uh, a lesbian who was sending out other lesbians to sell flowers on the street. And without that $60 a week, I would have had nothing. Um, and I did sell flowers on the street for years, um, and lived in my rambler. I had the rambler was constantly dying.
Speaker 5 00:19:52 It was quite an old car. I did not have the resources to fix it up. So wherever it broke down, I kind of slept in it. Um, and eventually a friend, let me a friend, you know, I don't know what it is that certain people will help you. And usually for me, it's been the most poverty-stricken of people who understand what that's like and help each other. The woman who took me in and put me in a, she put me in an unheated shed, which, you know, you can say, oh great. She puts you in an unheated shed. However, she was living in a, uh, pretty poverty stricken little trailer. And, um, she was only asking me $60 a month, which was one week of selling flowers. So anyway, um, and there are a lot of people.
Speaker 3 00:20:41 So are you saying, are you saying that you were homeless? That that was absolutely
Speaker 5 00:20:46 Homeless and I've been homeless since then? Uh, also however, I had, um, a new van that I slept in. So it didn't really feel as homeless, as sleeping in a rambler,
Speaker 3 00:21:00 Frightening to have to sleep out on the streets wherever you
Speaker 5 00:21:03 Are. It is. And I was chased here and there sometimes by the police, you know, you can't sleep in this parking lot. You have to move on. And I would sneak out to the beach and sleep at different beaches and people would come and bang on my car and told me I had to leave. Um, yeah. And put their flashlights in my car. So, yeah. And I'm not the only one. I'm just not the only one. And I think that's important to say there's a lot more, um, devastation and poverty and mental illness than then can be dealt with. And a lot of people separate themselves. That's the thing. People separate themselves from. I've seen people separate themselves from me. Um, I'm a lot more sane now, so I don't experience that as much. It really is hard when you're acting weird and I'm looking weird and kind of scruffy and angry. Nobody really wants to get close to you and help you. And, you know, I don't either. Now when I see people like that on the street, it's not like I want to walk up to them and say, Hey, can I help you out? Because you could get punched in the eye.
Speaker 4 00:22:08 Do you also don't want people to suffer? No, you don't want your former, your self, as you were formally, don't want anyone who was living that way. There's reasons why you ended up in that situation
Speaker 5 00:22:23 And I will stop and talk to people and, and the money. Cause I know what it's like standing out there and being out there. Well, I'd like to say something about fear because, um, there's a lot of fear. I think that goes with disability, especially ones that are life-threatening, um, fear for yourself, fearful times in hospitals, fear of others around you, that, um, that they might lose you, but fear also what this means to them. Are you going to become more dependent on them? Um, and then fear that this could, this too could happen to me. Um, there's just a lot of fear that happens within us and between us. Um, and for me, um, my disability especially has been a real call to courage because I feel for myself that because I was born with it and because it came on so young that I've really had to find my own way in the world and that I was dealt some, yeah, it was like a deck, a hand of cards that I wouldn't have chosen necessarily, but because I got it, it's up to me to deal with it.
Speaker 5 00:23:41 And so we've been talking sort of about the downside of, but I think what doesn't get seen always, especially by people that don't have the experience themselves of being disabled is the strengths that can grow out of it. Um, the, the personal strength and the, um, ways of making other lives, um, especially when one can't work and doesn't have the income that doesn't have the, uh, social status of having a career or profession. Uh, people still want to make something out of their lives. And I know for myself, it's been a big, uh, challenge for me to, to make good out of what I've been dealt. And I wouldn't say that I have a handle on it, but, um, I think if you met me, you wouldn't find me the most scary person in the world. And that, um, you would find that even if I didn't have a career or a title or a large paycheck, that I do still have some aspects of myself that might help people, or might, might be interesting to relate to.
Speaker 5 00:24:55 And I think as we've narrowed as a society to who is valuable to wage-earners of a certain class and certain income that everybody gets left out, everybody that's not in that group gets left out to the sides. And that includes old people and children, I feel a great affinity toward old people and children, the people that don't count, all the people that don't count are my people in a sense. And so, um, finding the strength from the fear and not just giving into the fear and not thinking that that's the end of the story, because really for many of us, then we take that and we work with it and grow and change with it.
Speaker 3 00:25:41 I think that you're right. Stephanie, what you said is just beautifully said, Sarah, have you got anything you'd like to add? It's in other people that it's, it has seemed to have brought out the very best and the very worst in people I've largely kept out of the lesbian community and every other community. And I couldn't really tell you whether that was my choice or not. So partly, I guess, partly my choice and partly I'm circumstantial, or partly from being feeling shunned and marginalized and not feeling like it was worth it for me to, uh, try and engage.
Speaker 5 00:26:26 Do you have a community or friends?
Speaker 3 00:26:30 Friends? I wouldn't put myself in one particular community and I have disabled and able-bodied and lesbian and non lesbian friends. So
Speaker 6 00:26:41 Yeah,
Speaker 4 00:26:45 When I first got ill and I was, uh, I have asthma and I had it very strong and heart for the first, uh, period of time I had come out of the feminist community. So I looked for a group because that's what I knew how to do. And I went to a disability group with a fair amount of stereotypes that what I was going to hear was a lot of sick people complaining about being sick. And I did hear a lot of stories. It was a therapy group, and I heard a lot of stories about doctors and hospitals and their illnesses. Um, but I think it saved my life. I think that the practical knowledge and the sort of attitude about how to take care of yourself, stand up for yourself, advocate for yourself that you can live independently, that you don't need to go into some kind of institution. Um, some of that I had going into that from the lesbian community, this sort of rugged individual bushy kind of thing. Um, but I didn't know how to apply it when I was weak and dependent and didn't have the financial resources. Uh, and I learned that just by osmosis, by being around these people, I just
Speaker 5 00:27:52 Have to add one more thing, which is, um, it's really humorous to me too, that, um, Stephanie is here because I've known her so long and there's so much creativity and laughter and you know, love. It's not just that I have all these horrible stories of living on the street. I never had so much fun as when I lived in my car and Stephanie and I were like totally yard sale junkies. She was like the best. And I do these like really weird little boxes with religious figures and nails and tacks. And they're really, they're fun and they're beautiful. And they're really heavy. And people cry when they look at them. There's childhood pictures and toys. And half the stuff in my box is Stephanie picked up for me for a quarter at yard sales. She picked up for 25 cents, a solid gold surrounded, enamel, little picture of Jesus Christ, which I still have.
Speaker 5 00:28:46 Um, and you know, when you're poor, um, yard sales are so much fun. So, you know, there's so many, um, sweet, beautiful connections, and there's so much, um, life and love and humor. And we're just all amazing, um, amazing people. It's not disability, just doesn't put you in a horrible place. Um, it connects you to the rest of the human race because you develop compassion, humor, patients, all kinds of stuff, really, really, really neat, great stuff. A spirit. If you can develop a spiritual connection with other beings, there is less and less isolation and more and more connection to everyone on the planet.
Speaker 3 00:29:37 Thank you each for being here and pushing your limits, be with us this evening, it is truly been a privilege to have you on outbeat salon.
Speaker 1 00:29:46 We were listening to output salon with the Charlie Berman and a very interesting thing on, um, lesbian talk about coming out and what that was like.
