Bringing disabled women together, mobilising
and sharing through lived experiences

Zara, one of our steering group and director, had an article ‘My biggest act of rebellion as a disabled person is living as I wish’. But somehow that fact of being in Sisters of Frida got missed out in her impressive CV!

“What you fundamentally want when you are growing up is to fit in, and when you are constantly being told that you don’t fit, there are two ways you can react,” says Todd. “One is to take it all on board and end up hating yourself, and the other one is to fight it.”

For Todd, who has been a committed activist since the age of 11 when she began “all sorts of campaigning” with a local charity focused on young people, it is quite clear which approach she took. While legal landmarks such as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) and the Equality Act 2010 have undoubtedly heralded improvements in the lives of younger disabled people, numerous obstacles remain to full inclusion, she says.

“There have been massive strides, but one of the things that saddens me most about hearing children and young people’s experiences today is that a lot of the things that I experienced are still happening. I hear stories of young people who aren’t even allowed out [during break times] because there are fears that they might be bullied or that something might happen to them and there aren’t enough staff to facilitate it safely, so the only option is to keep them all in a room together.”

read the rest of the article at the Guardian.

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Zara Todd @toddles23

This article, quoted in part here, is for all those women who have ‘invisible disabilities’ who is surviving with chronigue pain and illnesses. We feel what she wrote here will resonate with many sisters. Thank you Johanna Hedva and Mask magazine

You can read the rest of the article at the Mask Magazine website

With all of these visitors, I started writing Sick Woman Theory as a way to survive in a reality that I find unbearable, and as a way to bear witness to a self that does not feel like it can possibly be “mine.”

The early instigation for the project of “Sick Woman Theory,” and how it inherited its name, came from a few sources. One was in response to Audrey Wollen’s “Sad Girl Theory,” which proposes a way of redefining historically feminized pathologies into modes of political protest for girls: I was mainly concerned with the question of what happens to the sad girl when, if, she grows up. Another was incited by reading Kate Zambreno’s fantastic Heroines, and feeling an itch to fuck with the concept of “heroism” at all, and so I wanted to propose a figure with traditionally anti-heroic qualities – namely illness, idleness, and inaction – as capable of being the symbol of a grand Theory. Another was from the 1973 feminist book Complaints and Disorders, which differentiates between the “sick woman” of the white upper class, and the “sickening women” of the non-white working class.

Sick Woman Theory is for those who are faced with their vulnerability and unbearable fragility, every day, and so have to fight for their experience to be not only honored, but first made visible. For those who, in Audre Lorde’s words, were never meant to survive: because this world was built against their survival. It’s for my fellow spoonies. You know who you are, even if you’ve not been attached to a diagnosis: one of the aims of Sick Woman Theory is to resist the notion that one needs to be legitimated by an institution, so that they can try to fix you. You don’t need to be fixed, my queens – it’s the world that needs the fixing

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photo by Pamila Payne; Styling, hair and makeup: Myrrhia Rodriguez; Art Direction: Johanna Hedva

Johanna Hedva (@bighedva) is an anticapitalist psychonaut sorceress who lives in Los Angeles, where she’s from. She is the writer/director of The Greek Cycle, a series of feminist-ed and queered Ancient Greek plays; and the author of The Crow and the Queen, a novel published in limited-edition handmade hardcovers; Incunabula, a series of 103 fables with each fable published in its own handwritten book; My Cellar Doors, a book of poetry written on Salonpas pain patches; and Permanent Winter, a book made to be buried in the ice of Antarctica. This article is an excerpt from the forthcoming This Earth, Our Hospital (Sick Woman Theory and Other Writings).

last year’s AGM in Coventry

This year’s AGM will be on 6th February at the Blackfriars Settlement, 1 Rushworth Street, London SE10RB at 12.30pm. This is an accessible venue with a kitchen. As the date coincides with chinese New year, Chinese lunch will be provided but please let us know if you re coming so that we can provide sufficiently. (contributions appreciated for covering costs but not obligatory.) There will be gluten free, vegetarian and vegan provisions. Please let us know if you have other dietary or access issues. There will be a palantypist. Email sisofrida@gmail.com

Agenda will be provided nearer the date. Directions are on the website. For those coming from Euston, the buses 68,168 stop nearby at St Georges Circus, and there are buses 63 and 45 from Kings Cross, stop at Pocock Street.

Please let us know if you intend to come and if you have other access needs or dietary requirements.

sisofrida@gmail.com

please register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sisters-of-fridas-agm-tickets-20930725363