Written by:
Rachel Beebe
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 18#9
As national director of Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility, and as a queer, disabled woman of color, Patricia Berne is a leader in what she calls “the second wave of the disability rights movement.” Sins Invalid is a performance project of spoken word, theater, poetry, dance and music that brings artists together from all over the United States to explore sexuality in the lives of people with disabilities. Now in its third year, Sins Invalid has grown from what Berne admits was a “regrettably novel idea” into one of the most revolutionary artistic expressions of sexuality and disability in the US, showing annually to sold out audiences in San Francisco’s Brava Theater.
The show was born out of Berne and co-founder Leroy Moore’s mutual frustration at the lack of positive representations—or any representations, for that matter—of the sexuality of people with disabilities. The two were equally disappointed that LGBT people and people of color had been routinely under-represented by most disability advocacy groups. They decided to found a project that would fill these gaps and simultaneously spark the second wave Berne refers to—one that would be inclusive, honest and healing.
Sins Invalid embraces the groups Berne and Moore saw being marginalized without resorting to tokenism. Instead, the performances explore the intersections of identity and confront cultural taboos head on, without flinching. This approach yields a show that complicates identity politics by presenting situations that are ambiguous, emotionally charged and at times difficult to watch.
The content is sexually explicit and intentionally provocative. Last year’s production opened with a performance piece that included full nudity, masturbation and a dominatrix. The piece would have been shocking no matter whom the actor was, but because the piece was about an African American with a disability, it blew open so many preconceived notions and provoked debate about such a tangle of issues that I would struggle to pick them all apart here. Needless to say, the relentless probing the artists engage in pushes boundaries and makes for compelling viewing.
The activism that underpins the production is fundamental. It is rooted in politics that cross between rights movements, says Berne. She sees natural alliances here, especially between the disabled community and the genderqueer community because “both experience the body as the site of oppression.” It’s a familiar construction, says Berne. When a body doesn’t fit the traditional definitions for gender, sexuality or ability, the common assumption is that there must be something medically wrong that needs fixing; that it is the body that is the problem rather than the desire to categorize it.
Berne has personal experience with the marginalization that so often results from assumptions like these and with Sins Invalid she aims to debunk them. “To deny a person their sexuality is to deny them who they are,” Berne argues. “[Sins Invalid] comes from the framing of sexual literacy and sexuality as a human right and further as a divine right. That by nature of existence our bodies are sacred and by nature of existence our sexualities are sacred.”
Queer, genderqueer Sins Invalid performer and activist Seeley Quest attests to this denial in a video produced by Sins Invalid: “My experience has been that disabled people don’t have a sexuality, right? This is what I grew up understanding, and when I started being read as disabled I didn’t know how to inhabit my own sexuality. I didn’t know how to conceive of sexuality coexisting with disability, and that is a preconception for too many people in this culture.”
Berne argues that this denial is disabling in and of itself. The problem, she says, goes well beyond disabled culture, “People become problematized by a social construction that says you must conform in this way to this stereotype.” Sins Invalid answers by turning the tables and providing a space for queer artists and artists of color with disabilities to set the terms of engagement and publicly claim their bodies as beautiful.
This year’s show promises to be the most provocative yet. Its objective is to challenge cultural stereotypes about disability that have an overtly religious subtext. Its tagline is: From Sacrificed to Sacred. The concept grew out of discussions amongst the performers who all had stories of negative experiences with a strong religious element. For instance, Berne can remember, as a child, having people stop on the street and offer their prayers for her. She recounts that even though they were intended to be healing and generous, gestures like this fell wide of the mark.
Sins Invalid 2008 will explore concepts like pity, guilt, sacrifice and rebirth. It will follow in the Sins Invalid tradition of tackling ignorance and apathy with art that resonates on physical, emotional and spiritual levels. And, as in past years, it will be a public declaration of the beauty and value of the disabled body. It promises to be a strong brew, steeped in experience and served with disarming sincerity.
Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility is showing at San Francisco’s Brava Theater on September 5 & 6, 2008. Brava Theater is wheelchair accessible and the show will be ASL interpreted. Admission is $10 to $15 on a sliding scale—no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please note: the show contains explicit content.
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