Suki Valentine

Holding the potential for both light and darkness: humanity is drawn together by the commonality of these traits and our propensity for both. But that’s not all, for it’s not just the fact that we all have shadow and light in us as a species that unites us, but also, more intimately, that we seek connection with each other precisely in the hope that we are seen and not just valued but accepted for all we hold. A friend once warned me, “People are always on their best behavior when you first meet them”. We are all of us presenting our “best selves” initially, but things don’t get interesting or real, until we start to show in ourselves and see in others, what lies under the pleasant façade. It’s only in the mingled realness that our actual value is revealed.

  Disability activist Johanna Hedva, who conceptualized Sick Woman Theory, said THE tenant of said Theory is asking the question,

“How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank when you can’t get out of bed?”

  Those who are marginalized are expected to constantly be showing up for themselves all while doing their best just to survive. To add insult to (chronic) injury, they are also frequently chided for “not doing enough”  by those with far more privilege in activist circles, as Hedva points out when mentioning how blithely able-bodied activists will accuse those with disabilities (including chronic illness sufferers) of being “slacktavists” because they aren’t able or willing to be out in the streets at protests. These ableists inevitably will be the same to expect unpaid and unacknowledged emotional labor while organizing in the form of witnessing, caretaking, support, acknowledgment and empathy for *their* contributions to The Cause. This is part of what Hedva terms,

“The trauma of not being seen”.

  There are numerous spaces to be held for those that are erased regularly, from still-frequent practices of sterilizing poor and disabled people without consent to transpeople being targeted for violence and social control to Black women’s maternal mortality rates, to the staggering majority of sexual assaults in the US that go unreported, to name but a scant few.

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You are seen. You are seen. You are seen.