(Image by Luca Rossato used under CC 2.0 via)
Leaving you this weekend with a link to an excellent personal essay and video published at CNN.com last month by Rebecca Cokley, a civil rights lawyer who worked in the Obama administration. The granddaughter of a segregationist judge, Cokley has achondroplasia and her average-size husband is African-American. She writes about the ramifications of these intersections for her two children who also have achondroplasia. She writes about the doctor who planned to sterilize her without consulting her. And she writes about the mistreatment she experienced at last year’s Women’s March:
People often act as though disabled people don’t have a right to bodily autonomy. When I attended the women’s march in D.C. in January, I was repeatedly grabbed and manhandled by women who wanted to know where was my mommy and why didn’t I know better than to wander away from her. They all looked shocked when I responded, “I am the mommy,” but not a single one apologized to me.
In the video, she also delves in to the many ways in which she and her family are privileged.
Profiles of people with dwarfism are rarely brave enough to venture beyond the comforts of human interest stories and into the very real but hard political realities. (I know. I google them weekly.) And most headline the subject as “small but [insert compliment here].” This piece is definitely worth your time.
Painting On Scars 