Good evening, everybody. My name is Sarah Stevenson.
And to share I the start of disability advancement in the University of Oxford, the Oxford Equality and Diversity Unit.
An absolute pleasure to invite you all to this lecture.
We have a fantastic lecture lined up and fantastic speaker and just just a bit of housekeeping for you, obviously, within the wonderful world of Zoom.
So hopefully most of you are familiar with it by now.
If you have any technical questions, you should be able to enable the Q&A team to answer those questions.
Also, we do have live captioning available throughout the session.
Hopefully you are aware how to access that. If not, if you go on to the captions box on your Zoom panel, you should be able to to access it that way.
My speaker will be sharing slides, but they will talk through their slides and I believe that is everything.
So in a moment, I'll hand over to our vice chancellor, who will just speak out.
And Amy CAVANAUGH to try and come out, will sit and then we'll have Q&A.
So hopefully that's everything. The session is being recorded.
So if you would like access to afterwards, if you see here when you registered, we will be sending emails to people to say where you can access it.
If not, look out for social media and beyond on as well.
So yes, I'll speak to the evening is Dr. Amy CAVANAUGH.
I'm really delighted that we we have Amy with us.
I have been following Amy for quite a while.
She goes on the Twitter plant historian.
She's a campaigner, speaker and advocate.
She does work around, obviously, disability accessibility.
She's also a video gamer. She's won many awards being on the likes of what's it called, Steph's Place on Channel four.
She's done many, many, many great things.
And we're so looking forward to having her speak the evening on the subject that I think is is very important and really vital.
And so I will I will hand over to you now, Amy.
Thank you very much. Sarah, it's a real delight to be here today.
I'm just going to share my screen. Hello, you.
I am a white blonde woman. I have got dark rimmed glasses on and I'm sat in my office at home wearing a rather fabulous pink headset.
And behind me there are lots of books and all sorts of interesting.
All depends on my shows because this is also where I do my video gaming from.
So this lecture today is going to be an exploration of the disabled experience of unwanted touch, forced help and consent.
I'm drawing on my lived experience as a blind activist, but I am also grateful to the hundreds of disabled people who have shared their stories,
reflections and thoughts about their own experiences with me over the years.
This lecture draws on the themes and consistent tropes surrounding unwanted touch and forced help.
In doing so, I hope to draw some parallels between some of the wider challenges of also navigating cultural, social and economic disciple ism.
So a little bit about me. There I am on the left, standing rather proudly with Guide Dog over on my high street.
Guide Dog over is with us today. I've just briefly changed my camera, see if she's in view shape.
She's probably having a lovely sleep right now. She's had a lot of this before.
She's hardly practising it. Says she'll sleep the whole way through, I should imagine.
I hope you change back to me. There I am. So I was born with a condition called ocular albinism.
I am registered severely sight impaired or blind, and I use either a long white cane or guide dog ever to aid my mobility.
I'm an activist, freelance and content creator.
Ana Sarah said, I'm interested in all sorts of different issues from public transport,
disabled women's rights, video game accessibility, the built environment and digital inclusion.
And most of all, for me, it's really important that today is a trauma informed space.
So this lecture will include challenging material.
I will be discussing and sharing examples of disable this violence.
I abolished language discussions around the police and hate crime as well as sexual assault.
If you find yourself activated by any of this content.
Give yourself the space support and time that you need.
And if you need any supports during this lecture, I really encourage you to access them.
Now, whether it's STEM toys, aromatherapy, journaling, snacks,
whatever best supports you to participate and please listen to your body mind that's really important and turning off is a valid choice.
I will not be offended and you can come back in your own time.
There's going to be a podcast. There will be a transcript available to be mindful of what you share in the Q&A slash chat function.
Just make sure that it remains as an empowering space as possible.
And if you need support afterwards. I have made a note of some services that I think will be broadcast now.
I particularly recommend The Survivor's Trust, which has a live chat and a freephone line, which is open until 8 p.m. this evening.
So in my mum's words do I think might be watching?
How did I end up talking about being groped on radio for all the time?
So despite being born with my visual impairment, I rejected my blindness and my disabled identity until about five or six years ago.
Twentysomething. Amy would be absolutely horrified by me.
Generous.
I left what was an extremely toxic academic career, and I started to explore disability activism and found the support of an amazing online community.
And that meant that I built confidence in my disabled identity.
And that included embracing the support of a mobility aids.
My white cane. And as I did that, there was a fundamental disconnect between my joy in my disabled self and the reactions of non-disabled people.
Now someone born disabled. I have always known the structural barriers and inequalities of disabled ism.
But suddenly being visibly disabled brought me a whole new host of experiences and confrontations.
And as I learnt to use my new white cane in 20 1718, I started experiencing what I call cropping.
And this varied from being dragged across roads, pushed into sheet seats, even shoved onto trains.
I didn't want to get on. And I was horrified by the amount of unwanted touch I was experiencing.
And as I started talking about it online, I realised I wasn't alone.
And that this was something that a lot of disabled people experienced.
And therefore the Just Ask Don't Grab campaign was born.
And I have a few examples of people who have shared their experiences here, some using the hashtag.
Others have been linked to the hashtag.
Vicki says she was getting off a bus and a random guy thought he would help by grabbing my crutches, causing me to almost fall.
That was fun. Camp. I think this belongs in hashtag.
Just ask. Don't grab. Some guy tried to help me put my jacket on this, worked away and said, Please don't touch me.
He got red in the face and yells at me. What do you think?
I'm some rapist? Don't flatter yourself. And stormed off.
It's that one that. Waiting for Tokyo.
I was a blind emoji here and then kind of a shocked face emoji.
This morning, walked down a busy road. Someone grabs my rucksack from behind.
I pull away and shout for them to get off my bike.
I am then met with a torrent of abuse from the bag grabber and another passer by.
Whose justification was that? She was trying to help me.
You might note that what happened three days ago?
This is from Gregory. Stranger. Here, let me take over.
Starts pushing my wheelchair. Me? Thanks.
I got it. Stranger. I insist. Keeps pushing.
Me. No, I insist. Please take your hands off my chair.
Stranger. You don't have to be rings. Asking someone to not grab my wheelchair is not rudeness.
And this from Riri. Today my basket was lifted from my lap and tugged out of my hands by a member of staff who insisted they were helping me.
I was at self service and not indicated I needed help.
What they were going to do would have made it harder for me to use the checkouts.
Hashtag just ask. Don't grab simple.
The hash tag functions, both as a space for disabled people to share their stories like the ones here,
but also as guidance for non-disabled people to learn about the impact of unwanted touch.
The hashtag has gone viral multiple times and been covered in national and international media.
On this slides, I have a selection of different headlines, different publications.
Just ask the grab lines. Activist wants to change little spikes harassment.
They just layer on top of each other because this is an issue the disabled people talk about a lot.
Too often when someone shares an incident online, maybe for the first time, perhaps after the first use of a mobility aids,
I've witnessed an often really painful moment where someone in the community says, Actually, this is an everyday part of being disabled.
And it absolutely is limited to those who use mobility AIDS.
It impacts any disabled person who appears to be navigating the world differently.
And it's important that nondisabled people understand that the incidents are unrelenting.
I've experienced. On one occasion I counted, I was like, right, I'm going to count today.
This is pre-pandemic. In an hour.
I went from my home. I got on the bus and went to a shop called The Bus Home.
In the hour I experienced unwanted touch 16 times.
These incidents have a real impact on your confidence, on your willingness to go out and your independence.
And it's some of the headlines I share demonstrates this is an issue which particularly affects disabled women.
In the three years ending March 2018, disabled women were almost twice as likely to have experienced any sexual assault in the last year.
At 5.7%, the non-disabled women at 3%.
And significantly disabled women were over five times more likely to have experienced sexual assault in the last year.
5.7% than disabled men. 1.1%.
These statistics are painful and they are shocking, but they are in portions.
Too often when I talk about just don't grab.
I'm told that the people who push me off a bus or drag me into traffic are trying to be nice.
So they have good intentions. And whilst this lecture seeks to explore the goodness of those intentions,
it is essential to understand that a significant proportion of the unwanted touch that disabled people experience is violent,
is aggressive and is frightening. The campaign has also generated ongoing research into the experiences of non-consensual touching.
Dr. Hannah Bish, a senior lecturer in criminology and sociology at the University of Sussex,
has collated over 70 stories from disabled women and non-binary people as part of the private places.
Public Spaces. Private Places. Public Spaces.
Project. This project ongoing.
We're looking at what more research we can do because it is a woefully under-researched subject.
Even though we have statistics like this,
academic research into experiences of unwanted touch are still overtly limited to care, home settings or medical settings.
There is really insufficient research into the wider experience of this issue.
In the very powerful words of one of the contributors to this project.
I think this really sums up a lot of what I'm going to be talking about today.
I feel like I am public property having such a visible disability and people's reactions,
although well-intentioned at times, are just a perception of what they think having a disability means.
Needing help all the time. I use the phrase unwanted touch because it embraces the spectrum of non-consensual physical interactions.
This includes the ostensibly helpful attempts of physically moving or aiding a disabled person,
as well as touching mobility aids like a wheelchair or assistance stroke, but also intentionally harmful touch like physical or sexual assault.
Unwanted or unexpected physical touch can exacerbate impairments.
Experiences from people who are autistic to those experiencing chronic pain.
The act of unwanted touch, even nonverbal touch, can be distressing, can cause sensory overload,
pain, or at the moment and still concerns about infection for people who are immunocompromised.
In incidents of grabbing and unwanted touch, as we saw in the example shared earlier, there is frequently an absolute disregard of consent.
Even saying, no, this will hurt me. Is ignored in favour of the perceived act of good help by the nondisabled person.
I have found my own consent ignored so much that the word no or stop has no effect.
My technique now. And I mean, feel free to try it out yourself.
I squawk like a bird. I just make a loud weird noise and I find that people are more likely to let go of me if I make a loud,
strange noise than if I say, Please stop touching me.
And this entitlement to touch. And the perceived benefits and Goodness of touch has a complex and painful history for disabled people.
Historically, the states, the church and medical institutions have been entitled to disabled bodies.
Laws were enacted and institutions were created to control, discipline and fix disabled bodies.
The ultimate goal almost always being to treat or fix the impairments.
And in the absence of an appropriate cure, institutionalisation enabled control and regulation of disabled bodies and minds.
Bodies and minds like those of William Norris, who is sketched here in Burslem Hospital in the early 19th century.
William is shown in a cell lying on a cot with straw matting.
They're wearing some kind of long nightdress, and they are changed to the wall by a harness that is attached to both their neck and arms.
And their arms are restricted and pinned to their sides.
The urge to fix and treat the impairments and correct the disabled body is often referred to as the medical model.
And frankly, I couldn't find a more powerful image showing the middle school model than this one.
There is a real urge to fix here. Again, this is a 19th century image.
Later on, it's a photograph and it shows a tripod that has been erected with a winch on it,
and the disabled person is being held up by this winch mechanism as three men around them
affix plaster of Paris to their torso in an effort to correct their spinal curvature.
The medical model. In the words of French and Swine,
is a series of disciplinary practises aiming towards creating docile disabled bodies bodies who are expected to adjust to
their impairments and comply with the prescribed regimen of rehabilitative treatment administered by medical professionals.
And this is something many disabled people still experience today.
People will frequently share experiences of medical embolism.
My consent for procedures is completely, completely ignored by doctors in favour of the alleged good.
The treatment. It's also really important to understand the institutionalisation discipline of disabled bodies is not a thing of the past.
In the UK, there are currently over 2000 people with learning disabilities and autism detained in inpatient hospitals.
On average, the length of stays in these inappropriate and frequently reportedly violent settings is five and a half years.
This includes several hundred children. Furthermore, nondisabled bodies are not just the property of doctors and institutions,
so disabled bodies are not just the property of doctors and institutions.
The nondisabled public is still actively encouraged to consume and interact with disabled bodies.
Here. I have an image of the UN database programme which is still produced,
endorses the idea that disabled people are available for consumption and entertainment.
And unfortunately, this is something we cannot even escape in death.
Here. I have an image of Charles Byrne known as the Irish Giant in the mid to late 18th century by Charles Byrne how the
condition which meant he was seven foot and seven inches in height and was famous during that period of time.
Now, Charles unfortunately has ill health towards the end of his life and knew that he was going to die.
And he also knew that the eminent scientist, John Hunter, wanted his body.
And so Charles worked incredibly hard to plan so that his body would be put in a LED coffin and that he'd be buried at sea just off market.
But Hunter. Foiled the plan.
SeiSed Charles's body and.
Experimented on it, displayed it, and it has sat in the Hunterian Museum from the 19th century until 2006 when the museum was closed.
They are still debating whether or not they will continue to display Charles's skeleton when the Hunterian reopens.
Even though he explicitly and expressly requested that his remains would not be displayed.
And this is the legacy and impact of the medical model of disability,
the steadfast belief that impairments need fixing, that an impairment means something is wrong with the body.
It is a weakness in need of treatment and intervention.
And that therefore non-disabled people are entitled to disabled bodies so that they can be fixed, observed, controlled and examined.
Fundamentally, many of the interactions involving unwanted touch and forced help result from these assumptions of incapacity.
With disability and impairments continually framed as tragic or an individual obstacle to overcome the disabled,
body and mobility aids are frequently reduced to passive participants in society and the physical environment.
There's a fundamental lack of trust that a disabled person can have autonomy or expertise or confidence in their body, mind and capacity.
These are the strangers who yell at me in the streets,
demanding to know if I'm lost because they cannot possibly envisage an independent, blind person.
Our age like a white cane and assistance dog or a wheelchair.
Instead of being recognised as tools of enablement and independence, are instead interpreted as symbols of incapacity.
They become announcements of our alleged need for assistance instead of the support systems and mitigations that they actually provide.
And the conclusion is therefore that instead of requiring non-disabled people to be allies in removing physical,
sensory, cognitive, financial and communication barriers.
But instead nondisabled people must assume a role as the intervention themselves.
We are constantly remonstrated with phrases like I was just trying to help.
When we reject these interventions. And as a result, we're forced not only to navigate inaccessible environments.
But the assumptions of nondisabled people as well.
And although many of the actions of unwanted help do involve physical touch,
there are other important areas to reflect on the classic being opening a door for wheelchair user.
And this is a nice gesture in opening a door.
It's very polite to those people, but it's often actively unhelpful because the non-disabled person assumes,
you know, doors are a great and impassable barrier and they take on the role of the door opener,
usually only to create a barrier themselves or what some of my wheelchair friends using friends call the armpit sniffing dance where the arm is
physically put across the door so that you actually can't get past the person because they're stood in the door trying to get you through the door.
And if they just let you open the door yourself, you could use the flipping door.
Other examples for me include the drivers that try to wave me on at traffic.
You can cross love. It's all right. And I can hear the motorbike coming around the corner.
Or when people take bags or food or items of clothing or other possessions away from disabled people to try and do a task for them.
The example we had earlier of trying to put on your own jacket and someone deciding you can't do that for yourself.
And a key theme amongst these actions of unwanted or forced help.
That they take decisions, independence and autonomy away from disabled people.
They are actions without permission and without consent.
It is frequently a case of a non-disabled person making a decision on behalf of a disabled person.
And the assumption remains that they, as a person without impairments, without disability,
are better equipped to function in the world and should act instead of removing the obstacles or barriers which are currently preventing independence.
This belief that non-disabled people have a duty to help and assist disabled
people is actively encouraged by what is called the charity model of disability.
And the charity model draws on the medical model by framing non-disabled people as saviours of disabled people.
For me, this is best represented by the infamous chip, the clip collection boxes.
And here we have a contemporary photo of a young child putting money in the tin for the Helps
Plastics campaign and the collection boxes in the shape of an infantilized little girl.
And she's holding up the tin that says, Please help spastic.
And she has a leg brace on. These were very popular on British High Streets right up until the 1980s.
Lots of people will remember these. Fundraising initiatives represent disability as a tragedy,
something that can only be remedied by financial interventions and services not from the state and not through the provision of rights,
but through the actions of non-disabled publics.
And the sociologist AJ Withers highlighted that children are often used as imagery for charity model fundraising efforts.
Seriously, go Google the latest campaign from, you know scope I and I be autistic society always using children and with this says that this is
because the underlying message is that fundraising gives hope and hope mostly of a cure or a remedy.
And because if you show children a cure could lead to them becoming productive workers.
And children are innately more pitiable in this framing.
And this message is disability is a tragedy that needs remedying.
Really spurred on the direct action network in the 1990s.
Here we have a photograph of the famous block telephone campaign where many disabled
people and wheelchair users are in protest with brightly coloured banners.
And pissed on pity was a challenge to the trauma porn representations of disability and the failure of society to be accessible for disabled people.
And if you want to learn more, you can very much enjoy the representation of this event by watching Ben.
Barbara met Alan on BBC iPlayer and you might see me in the background doing some angry pointing.
But unfortunately, we're still subjected to mass fundraising events, often using disabled children as pitiful for non-disabled people,
thus resulting in a continued cultural framing of helping a passive, sad,
disabled person being good rather than encouraging people to question the inequalities that cause that disabled ism.
Think about if you want a classic example of it recently, think about something like the children in need big builds where they send Nick Knowles
along to rebuild a house that's completely inaccessible for a family with a disabled child.
And it's lovely. And lots of volunteers build the house, give their time, and make them a loving, accessible home.
But why is no one asking why they cannot have an accessible home in the first place?
And why does that need to be televised? Why do we need the crying disabled child?
They finally have a left and some dignity. It's really troubling.
And this brings me on to kind of that next point, that crying, grateful disabled child's,
because many disabled people will be familiar after rejecting an offer of help or challenging an unwanted touch by say by the for the helper.
GRUFFLY responding. Well, I was only trying to help. Well, you should be grateful.
Because there's the expectation by a helper that the disabled person that will be grateful
or will positively receive the interaction regardless of any consent or any permission.
And this is intimately tied to the assumption that help is automatically required and that
the nondisabled person is the one in the position of authority and expertise as the helper.
And this problem stems from this societal framing of helping and helping a disabled person being an intrinsic good or a compassionate duty.
And this is where we get the really tangled web of kind of good deeds and nice intentions and
really annoys some people because there is a simultaneous perception of a social contract.
So I believe. There's the social contract that there is an obligation to be kind and to be good towards lesser disabled people.
And therefore the reciprocal end of the social contract is the great for the rest of the disabled person must display.
And I'm not saying that helping a disabled person is always bad.
You know, if you do it consensually and if someone genuinely needs some help and they accept an offer, that's fine.
But the problem is that too often when a disabled person refuses help or rejects unwanted touching.
It's like they're rejecting the nondisabled person's self perception of goodness and kindness.
We've made them feel bad about the good deed that they wanted to do.
And then actually you'll find that regardless of any pain or distress or fear caused to a disabled person,
it becomes the injured feelings of the non-disabled person that take priority.
They were trying to be nice. You were rude.
You've hurt their feelings. As the bruises are forming on your arm.
And most importantly. If kind intentions are kind, they should not be conditional.
And they should not be conditional upon compliance.
And demanding compliance of disabled people extends beyond these acts of helpfulness.
Expectations of compliance are frequently expressed in the entitlement to information about disabled people.
And this ranges from the. Oh, what's wrong with you?
Or were you born like that from a taxi driver or an older person who sits down next to you on the train?
It includes demanding evidence of disability, accusations of faking disability and intrusive questions about bodily functions.
And that latter one is very frequently a precursor to the help.
There's an implication that you have to tell me how much you can see before I'll help you,
or you have to prove to me that you can't use your legs before I'll help you.
This questioning or commenting about disability or impairments is also something utilised to refuse services or to deny access.
The classics being demanding proof that you can use an accessible toilet or parking spot.
You don't look disabled. What disability do you have?
You're not allowed that. And this information is seen as a public right, a justification to give us permission to be present.
And most importantly, it is a it is a protection.
It is a protection against the potential deviance of disability.
Because just people will always say, wow, those fakers could be using that parking spot.
In November 2006, a U.N. enquiry found.
That the UK government and specifically its austerity policies had systemically violated disabled people's rights.
And subsequent investigations have found over 17,000 sick and disabled people have died waiting for welfare and benefits support in the UK.
And in the last fortnight alone the Government have announced a new crack team of investigators who,
alongside a controversial algorithm, will be targeting disabled people claiming welfare support.
These harmful government policies. Continue to be worse, supported by a hostile media environment dedicated to outing disabled benefit scroungers.
Here. I have images of a collection of headlines from all different tabloids,
and they constantly feed the public with lines about undeserving disabled fakers, scroungers, benefits, cheats.
75% of incapacity claimants are fit to work mansions described as 4 million scrounging families.
And members of the public have been repeatedly encouraged not just by the media but by the government to report on fake disability benefit claimants.
If you put benefit fraud, the first thing that comes up is how to report somebody.
They've made that really, really easy to do, but they've not made the PIP application easy.
And I guess that says it all, doesn't it? In 2009, Team nine out of ten of these reports were found to be false after the DWP investigated them.
Nine out of ten. And so we have been left with a society and a culture with that belief in the entitlement to the bodies and minds of disabled people.
And this is a hangover from those very institutions of previous and current centuries.
And it enables and supports a social power over disabled people,
giving permission to nondisabled people to question, to act, to examine and to punish.
And this expresses itself in acts of testing, demanding paperwork,
the people that will intentionally walk in front of me in the streets just to check that I'm really blind,
or the person who screams at you if you dare to move your foot in a wheelchair.
But this is an authority over disabled bodies and how we navigate spaces.
And this is especially the case for particular groups of disabled people.
Especially those for whom they have impairments that are seen as socially unacceptable, inappropriate or unpalatable.
For example, of people who experience facial difference or limb difference find themselves
particularly subject to controlling and violent behaviour by members of the public.
Disable ism ultimately expresses itself through hostility and acts of violence, where disabled people find themselves harassed and attacked.
And sometimes this violence is even repackaged as entertainment.
And as many individuals with dwarfism have bravely shared it, frankly,
they have experiences of being thrown and then the incidents, the films and circulated online.
And of course, this is rarely endorsed by wider society, at least on the surface.
There remains a kind of disabling culture, which I call kind of permission to exist.
And it's the assumption that disabled people should be grateful for an accessible society.
We should be thankful for the ramps and the welfare support.
It's the people who say that they're going to pet my guide dog anyway because they donate to the charity.
When you go to use the accessible toilets, somebody will announce, Oh yes, you can go in, you're allowed in.
And the really sinister outcome. If not, gratitude isn't expressed.
Or if this alleged benevolence becomes a burden.
Well, then that permission can be withdrawn. The COVID 19 pandemic brought into sharp focus the inequalities faced by disabled people.
And I have a very painful image here. In May 2021, Dominic Cummings released a photograph of the government plans.
In March 2020, what were they going to do to tackle the virus?
And infamously, this included a whiteboard scribbled on the whiteboard with the words, Who do we not save?
The latest figures still show that disabled people represent six out of ten deaths from COVID 19.
And in their recent release, the Office of National Statistics stated.
The analysis shows a continued elevated risk of COVID 19 mortality in disabled people,
compared with non-disabled people, which remains largely unchanged across the three waves of the pandemic.
And despite this continued risk mask, mandates have been dropped.
Support for the clinically vulnerable has been stoked. And social distancing is its and.
Throughout the pandemic, we have been told that it was only the most vulnerable at risk.
But with deaths, mostly of people with underlying health conditions.
And during this pandemic, disabled people have found themselves on a knife edge between demonstrating that they are
vulnerable enough to receive supports but not too vulnerable to just become a forgotten statistic.
UN. Since 2020, many disabled people have shared stories of members of the public telling them to go home or that they shouldn't be out in public.
For many disabled people that permission to navigate public spaces has been withdrawn,
either by the lack of support to remain safe from the virus or by increased feelings of
hostility from the general public who aren't used to seeing the mountain about so much.
In the extremely powerful words of Francis Ryan.
The truth is disabled and older people were not vulnerable to the virus simply because of their health or age.
They were vulnerable because the government did not bother to keep them safe.
What happened to our most vulnerable during the pandemic was not some terrible tragedy.
It was the all too predictable consequences of a system that decided the lives of disabled older people mattered less than those of the rest.
Because it's always a choice. And who do we not save continues to be a choice every single day.
And as the pandemic has shown,
too often getting the right support is contingent on demonstrating vulnerability and at the same time expressing the right types of behaviour.
And this pressure to disclose all your information about your body and its
conditions and why you need support extends beyond health care and social supports.
Too often, disabled people are demanded to live their trauma publicly in order to educate and raise awareness.
The news articles and social media videos exposing unwanted help are supposed to fill a gap left by education.
And too frequently the demand is that we must educate kindly,
but we must voice your distress with measured words and speak our truth without the sharp edges that express our exhaustion and rage.
In the metro in April of this year. Melissa Parker, an excellent journalist, framed it perfectly.
We are told by broader society and by those around us to educate those who might harm us.
And to exercise understanding towards the people who abuse us to see their humanity even as they flatten our own.
This tone. Policing is another means of demanding civility and compliance from disabled people.
We must ask nicely to be granted consent, bodily autonomy or access, instead of voicing our rights or speaking our anger about the denial.
And for me, most painfully, this is commonly expressed through lateral embolism.
That is disabled people policing other disabled people that they consider to threaten the politeness status quo.
And the most common response I get from the blind community online is that by speaking out about unwanted touching,
I will stop anyone ever helping us again that I am harming the community.
And there is sometimes a really distressing belief from other disabled people that we have to
tolerate the harmful or violent acts on the condition that sometimes we actively need assistance.
The insistence by people within and without the community that we still need to ask nicely and educate kindly is troubling.
Because it perpetuates the idea that disabled people need to behave correctly and seek permission to be free from violence or to access equality.
And most of all, let's face it, asking nicely isn't working.
So instead of asking nicely today, I'm asking nondisabled people to examine their own actions.
And the disabled list culture that has produced. And I'm often asked.
What are the solutions? And something that comes up as a common solution is hate crime and policing.
In 2020 to 2021, there were over 9200 disability hate crimes reported to the police in England and Wales, with half of them classed as violence.
That means they involve assault or a weapon.
I've even been anecdotally told that there are well known repeat offenders who will specifically target disabled women on the transport network.
And yet, just 1% of cases in 2020, 2021 were referred to the Crown Prosecution Service or charged.
9200 reports correlates to around 25 hate crime incidents per day.
And yes, reporting hate crime helps with the statistics.
It demonstrates the scale of the issue.
And whenever I share or disclose an experience of unwanted touching or sexual assault or violence, everyone says, Oh, you should report it.
You must report it. And really, this demonstrates a complete ignorance of the inaccessibility and hostility of the criminal justice system,
especially towards marginalised people. For many people, calling the police isn't safe.
And we need to recognise that as a disabled community.
As a white woman, I am in a relatively privileged position to report crime.
But in the five years I've been reporting crimes, I haven't yet had a single prosecution.
I found CCTV of a 10 minutes of film footage.
I had witnesses. I've had it all. And cases just get dropped again and again and again.
The first time I ever reported a hate crime and a sexual assault is disabled.
Person was 2018 when I was walking home through Kings Cross and I was in the pedestrian tunnel in the train station and a man came up to me.
He kept saying he wanted to guide me and he kept kind of trying to bother me.
And I said, No, no, I'm fine. And eventually he started grabbing me.
He was touching my breasts. He was assaulting me. And I managed to get him off me.
And I called the police and the British Transport Police said, because I'm blind,
I must have been confused that there's a lot of homeless people active in that area and it was probably just somebody wanting some money.
There's CCTV in that tunnel and they didn't even check it.
And it's not just me. Studies have shown that the police are ill equipped to support disabled victims of crime.
That is despite the disproportionate rate at which we experience it.
Reporting is dramatic, time consuming, hostile, inaccessible and ultimately fruitless for many disabled people.
So unless you are prepared to support someone through this complex and often painful process,
don't tell someone they have a duty to report or to just report it.
Instead. One of the most powerful things you can do as an ally is to be an active bystander.
And these techniques with them were developed by marginalised people initially to deal with incidents of racism and xenophobia.
It's really important to understand the bystander intervention doesn't mean riding in on a white horse.
It is about taking steps to empower and support someone experiencing harassment or violence.
And these are the five days of bystander intervention. So first instruction.
This is an opportunity to distract or derail the incident.
It's probably the one I recommend the most. Focus on the person experiencing the harassment.
Drop money, sprinkle change everywhere.
Ask the person experiencing the harassment, the time where the nearest bus stop is,
or if they have a tissue because it shows the person experiencing harassment that you're there, go there for them.
You see, it's also shows the harasser that you see.
It's also a fantastic way to get someone away from a harasser if the situation is appropriate.
And I go like full bumbling blind lady on this, I like dial into those ableist assumptions and I'm like, Oh, know, I'm so lost.
Can I. Oh, could you possibly help me find my way? Get them in a place where you can get them away from experience.
Delegates. This is about involving a third party.
It could be another bystander. This could be a member of staff.
This is about. I don't feel equipped to deal with this on my own.
I want to use these other techniques, but I need someone with me. Don't call the police without the permission of the person being harassed.
Like I said, it's not always safe about person. Really good example of this.
I had someone was following me around the supermarket patting Ira.
They wouldn't leave her alone.
And somebody went and told a member of staff and a member of staff came over, intervened and got the person to leave me alone.
Documents. Make notes about what is happening.
If you feel safe to do so, you can film or you can record audio.
Even just noting the time, the location, a description of the harasser.
All of these can be powerful tools, but filming is a precarious act.
It can make a harasser feel safe and make them stop doing what they're doing.
Or it can help ramp up that aggression. Afterwards, ask the person who was harassed what they want you to do with the film.
Do they want to copy? Do they want you to destroy it?
Do not post it online without permission. And it feels really obvious to say that.
But how many viral racist tirade man on the tube videos have you seen on the internet?
Direct. This is the confrontational approach.
I'm not going to lie. It's one of my favourites, but that's the kind of person I am.
It involves challenging the harasser. Now, it does not have to be aggressive.
It doesn't have to be violent. I actively encourage you not to be violent.
You can simply name the actions that can be very powerful stating out loud that you are witnessing it.
I see you being hateful. You are harassing that person.
Of course, always assess your safety. To do this.
And delay, because you know what? Sometimes we don't feel able to act, and that's okay.
And if you feel unable to act. One of the most supportive things you can do is check in with the person afterwards.
Do they want you to be a witness? Do they want a cup of tea?
Are they okay? This simple act can be transformative for someone who's just experienced violence or harassment because it says,
I saw you, that wasn't okay and I am here for you.
Always take the lead from the person being harassed.
It's about supporting them in the way that they want.
I also recommend taking online bystander intervention techniques on boards.
I recommend Glitch. They have a website. I often link to it online.
They have really great online bystander intervention techniques which draw on
these because often when disabled people will share a story online of harassment,
they then face the trauma of being challenged or doubted or abused,
upholding the behaviour or the actions of the harasser, a.k.a. they were being nice.
You're being rude. You should be grateful. So.
So in conclusion, I wish there was an easy solution.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and say, this is the one thing that will fix all of this.
And today, hopefully, you know, a hundred people will take away a greater understanding of this issue.
And I want you to talk about it, and I want you to uplift the disabled voices who are speaking about it, have conversations about this issue.
Talk about it with your colleagues, with your kids, with people who you are sat next to on the bus.
Tell them about. Just ask, don't grab and model consensual.
Best practise of offering assistance. It's easy.
Introduce yourself. Offer the assistance.
Listen to the answer. Do the helping if they want help and say goodbye.
I hope some of you will become active bystanders and challenge the status quo.
But fundamentally, I believe that we need a radical shift in cultural understandings and representations of people disability.
We need education. We need access. We need disability rights.
We need nothing about us without us. The most of all.
And this is the headline. Help is not helpful if it is not consensual.
Deciding when and how to help a disabled person without their permission or respecting their needs is not helpful or kind for nice.
And now I'm speaking to disabled people. We have a right to decide who touches us and when.
You don't have to tolerate it or accept it when someone violates your boundaries or ignores your bodily autonomy.
This doesn't have to be part of the experience of being disabled.
We do not need permission to exist independently in public places.
And we don't have to accept help that we don't want.
Thank you very much. Lovely.
Thank you so much, Amy, for the audience.
I'm Catherine Walter. I am the chair of the university's disability advisory group and we are just absolutely delighted to have Amy here today.
I will leave more of that to my colleague later.
My job is to try to get as many varied and interesting questions from those that were submitted to Amy to get her responses.
So we may not be able to get them all in, but I'll try to give you a good mix to give you an idea some of the reactions.
So here's one fantastic, thought provoking talk much to go and think about.
Thank you. In my non-university role, I work with children with autism or learning disability.
Their parents are often mortified because their children go up to people and ask them questions such as What's wrong with you?
What happened to your legs? What is your experience of young or disabled children asking personal questions?
What can I say to the mortified parents?
I mean, this is me speaking for myself. But from reactions I've had online,
I think quite a few disabled people feel similarly in that children are going to ask questions and they
are learning about the world and they are often asking from a place of curiosity and desire to learn.
And I personally find it very charming and absolutely happy to do that little bit of education.
And mostly because children are coming from a place where they are not.
They haven't yet absorbed the Amazon. My favourite being there was a young child.
I live in quite a middle class area in London and I live in our primary school,
so I get a lot of young children kind of making comments or asking questions and I
was walking along the street with my white cane and little voice pops up and says,
You know, Mummy, what's that lady have a stick. And I could feel the energy.
Like, this parent is like, ready for this moment. They thought about it.
They were going to answer it in the best way possible. And they went into this really great like age appropriate description of is ladies
always don't work and the stick helps them move around and they were like nailing it.
And then the child just went, Okay, why are there brown leaves on the floor?
And like that question was the same scale for them.
And I think evidently when there is also a cognitive need, I don't think people should be mortified.
I think hopefully disabled people are going to be the most compassionate with other disabled people, especially young people.
And I think it's about if you are a parent like that parent I encountered, it's about trying to prepare for those conversations.
It's about thinking, have I exposed my child to enough representations of disability that they don't feel the urge to ask that question of a stranger?
You know, are there disabled characters in the books that we read together or in the programmes that we watch?
And have we had conversations about this?
And there are lots of good examples of accessible resources about that as well, and creating social stories and sensory stories about disability.
And quite frankly, as a disabled child, I wish I'd met more disabled people because I didn't.
And one of the greatest benefits for disabled children is peer supports,
both from their own age group, but also from people who experience their disability as an adult.
So I would really recommend, if possible, encouraging,
productive and informative and supportive environments where young people can explore those questions together with disabled adults.
Okay. Thank you. Okay. Here's a very different question.
Hi, Amy. This is absolutely superb, and I love that you tell it as it is.
I am so tired of having to be polite and protect other people's feelings.
How do you manage all the anger and how do you stop yourself from collapsing inwards?
How do you stop yourself feeling like you are drowning and alone?
Thank you so much for speaking up. I am just sorry that you have to.
Gosh, that's a powerful question. And you're right, it is really hard.
For me personally, I do this. This helps me.
It's not easy. Talking about it publicly does help.
Dealing with the backlash is not so nice. Dealing with the trolling is not so nice, especially when it comes from other disabled people.
I'm also in the very privileged position of being able to afford an excellent disabled therapist,
and I would recommend, if you can, finding a disabled therapist, because then you don't have to do all the explaining.
I would say it's about finding the right support and community.
I have a WhatsApp group of of the disabled women and honestly we just have a little rant about it
now and then because that is an understanding and welcoming space where we're not going to get.
They were just trying to be nice responses. I think also it's about kindness and this is something I've had to learn,
is to be kinder to myself and to give myself those days where I go, you know what?
That was horrible and it impacted me. And I need to look after my mental health and I need to use the supports that I've developed.
And actually, it's not a failure if I don't go out today because that impacted me.
So it's about finding the ways that you can be kind to yourself as well.
And I'm, you know, I'm always happy to get around to it.
So if I have the free time, you can always send me a message.
Thank you. Okay. We have a couple of questions along these lines.
Oh, I was uncertain as to which one to pick, but I'm going to choose this one.
Hello, Dr. CAVANAUGH. Thank you so much for this excellent keynote.
I am really enjoying it. I recently trained as an intervener for people with multisensory impairment, deaf blindness.
And one of my activities sorry, one of the activities was knee and blindfolds and ear defenders.
And being a deaf blind child whilst my partner was the teacher, I should say this without emotion,
who had to find a way of conveying a message to me about a new activity we were going to do.
My partner chose going for a walk and saw the activity and chose to give me the
message by making me wear a coat that belonged to a third person in the train.
She just brought the coat and put it on me. I found this so uncomfortable and intrusive that to this day I still cringe when I think about it.
My question is what do you think is the best way forward for practise when working with children
and young people for whom touch and physical proximity is crucial for learning and development?
That's a very you might want to unpack that, but that's the question.
Thank you. In advance. So my first response and you probably heard the groan was I find simulation of disability and training repellent.
I've actually had the experience of having to go through a training where other people were simulating blindness.
And I was in the room as a blind person or other people simulated blindness with these spectacles and blindfolds and things that they have.
And I had to listen to everyone in the room saying how terrible it was and how awful it was and how grateful they could take the spectacles off.
And it still makes me really upset to this day thinking about it.
And I wish I had the references to Hans, but there have been multiple comprehensive academic studies to show that simulating
disability in any training environment does not impair not proper learning.
What it does routinely is it furthers misunderstanding of disability and it creates fail.
Like the biggest response people come away with is fear of disablement.
So that's my thought on that. And I think the example given demonstrates exactly why it's not a productive experience.
There are amazing multi-sensory practitioners.
I have had the privilege of working with some multi-sensory practitioners and I personally
in those experiences have favoured what is called a total communication approach,
and that is where you continue to offer every type of communication to somebody to receive information and to respond information.
The big problem with those simulated exercises,
it continues to assume that deaf blind children are totally deaf and totally blind, which is that's quite usual.
Lots of deaf children will have residual vision and or hearing.
And touch when it is the only experience for sensory inputs.
Although like I said, it's rare that you do so sensory inputs.
It is even more important that that touches conceptual.
And from my experience, best practise is about gradually building up connexions between the sensory stimuli and the activity,
and using an object of reference, which is what the exercise is supposed to be.
You do not because it is meaningless. Just shoving a coat on someone is meaningless.
I knew an example where a young person kept being given their shoes and given their shoes as they were going outside.
But there was no connexion ever made between the shoe and the sweetness.
And so someone was just having an object shoved at them with no journey towards that meaning.
And that's what's really important. You all have a thing.
I know that in the UK, Deaf Blind UK has some really good resources.
I know that there's quite a few conferences on multisensory impairment interventions.
And of course the best solution is often talk to a deaf blind adult.
Learn from a deaf blind adults, have a deaf blind adult sleep training who can say,
as a child, people repeatedly shoved the shoe in my face and I have no understanding of why.
So yeah, that would be my my top tip. Go and speak to some excellent deafblind adults advocates who can inform and educate.
Okay. Thank you very much. I'm afraid there's one more question.
And I'm making an arbitrary choice. So arbitrary.
That's your power. I've tried to give you a flavour of the different sorts of questions, and there are questions we won't be able to answer.
And you can decide what to do about that. But. Here's what I want.
Here's one that I think is. A theme that has come up more than once.
I'm wondering if Amy can talk a bit more about how she sees the intersections between disabled activism and other activism,
such as black feminist activism. How can those of us in different marginalised groups be useful allies to disabled people?
Well, first of all, I would say that my introduction to disability activism was through black disabled activists,
because black disabled activists, especially in the US, are doing incredible work and hugely important work.
Disability activism is two white, white, middle class people like myself are grossly overrepresented in,
you know, when that inclusion is there, which it really is. It tends to be white, middle class, disabled people.
And I think it is really important that as an activist, I am committed to an intersectional approach.
I am a big champion of trans rights and I'm a huge supporter of Black Lives Matter movement.
And wherever I possibly can, I believe in passing the mic because actually their experience is that I cannot speak to and I don't pretend to.
And I would say I have learnt huge amounts,
especially from what a lot of disability studies theory and theory and kind of the body and consent comes along from,
from feminism and that idea of the public body and access to the public body
has a lot of academic grounding in feminist studies and feminist literature,
which like I have drawn on some, I would say Rosemary Garland Thompson is excellent reading on those intersections
between feminism and disability studies around the body and access to the body.
To be a good ally. I think we just need to just keep talking and just be in the same room.
And because, you know what? Black disabled people exist, disabled women exists, trans disabled people exists.
You know, there are so many intersections and overlaps and marginalised communities that should and can uplift and support each other.
Now the one thing that really pisses me off and I will swear because it's appropriate and everyone needs to stop doing it,
is something I see so often in the disability community is for example, when there's a guide dog crashes or so that's my lived experience.
I experience it going to crashes business refuses to let me in and says, Your guide dog can't come in here and they break the law.
And so often all the disabled people will respond to comments like If you were this marginalised group, it wouldn't happen.
If you were black, that wouldn't happen if you were Jewish, that wouldn't happen if you had trends, that wouldn't happen.
And it is a lie and it is offensive and it needs to stop because we are not going to play the oppression Olympics.
We are going to recognise that marginalised people experience intersections of different oppressions that are systematic and individual and it is
not an appropriate comparison and I'm sick of it and it needs to stop because black people get turned away from businesses for the sodding time.
Trans people get turned away from businesses constantly. People face multiple marginalisation and discriminations and acting like disabilities.
So and somewhat pedestal worthy discriminatory experience is [INAUDIBLE] and we need to stop them.
Thank you very much. And now I'd like to pass the microphone over to Caroline Kennedy for the vote of thanks.
Caroline is the Administrator of the Harassment Programme at the Harassment Advisory Programme at the University of Oxford.
Caroline. Yes.
I was honoured to be asked to be given the this evening's vote of thanks on behalf of the Disability Advisory Group and the Equity Interest Team,
which I work within. Amy touched on so many things that I hear in my work running the Harassment Advisory
Service and in my role as an advisor in the Sexual Violence Support Service.
Consent. Disempowerment. Control.
Inconvenient truth. And the cost of speaking up and expressing your.
Your boundaries. So firstly, I just want to say thank you to Kathryn Walter and Sarah Stephenson Hunter for making this event happen.
They they worked so hard to bring this to its conclusion.
So thank you to them both. Thank you to the ABC, who did try to open the events and to join us.
But Zoom had other plans. But finally, I'd like to thank you, Amy.
Your talk was personal, powerful.
And you? I think there's enough words to describe how wonderful it was.
But I think also you empowered us as bystanders.
You gave us the tools and the tips and tricks on how we can be better to lessen that emotional labour.
And I think you've created lots of champions tonight.
So I want to thank you so much for giving up your time to talk to us and for sharing your experience, but also how we can be better bystanders.
So thank you, Amy. Thank you so much.
It's been an absolute privilege and I'm always online to carry on these conversations.
And if you want to send me a summary of those questions, I'll answer those that I can.
That's wonderful. Thank you very much, Amy. And that's extremely generous of you to offer to answer the questions.
I will send you I will send you a summary.
And it just remains for all of us to be immensely grateful that we have a sibling like you to help show us the way.
Many, many thanks. And to all of you, a good evening.