Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

Summary, part 6

Capitalism, Suicide, and Femmes

Capitalism and disability justice

The bed is a home for many disabled individuals like Piepzna-Samarasinha who writes in and from the bed. The capitalist model of productivity does not recognize this work. Capitalism pushes disabled people away, making them seem worthless because their bodies are not creating wealth for someone else the way capitalism dictates. It is difficult for Piepzna-Samarasinha to write the pros and cons of her disabled body because it hurts, but being ill creates a space for her to write that she would not have if she had to work a 9 to 5 job.

Suicide and disability justice

In the essay Suicidal Ideation 2.0,  Piepzna-Samarasinha explores why people hurt, how (even when life improves and you feel better) there is still hurt. Why do the feelings of pain and suicidality linger throughout life sparking at times that should be a great joy, like winning an award?

Piepzna-Samarasinha believes there is too much pressure on leaders, especially femme leaders, because we expect them to be perfect and always able to fix a problem. But, if they make a mistake, they are torn apart. This can be traumatizing and produce a lot of anxiety. 

She goes on to say that “[QTBIPOC] bodies [are] already seen as tough, monster, angry, seductive, incompetent. How can we admit weakness, vulnerability, interdependence and still keep our jobs, our perch on the ‘thin edge of [barbed wire]’ we live on?” (p. 184).

Piepzna-Samarasinha says, “I am interested in creating models of happy mostly queer and trans adulthood where we can be leaders and still be vulnerable, where we can be open that it’s not happily ever after” (179).

Femmes and suicide

Femme - A person who has one of a million kinds of queer femme or feminine genders and is part of a multiverse of femme-gendered people. Often complicated remixes that break away from white, able-bodied, upper-middle class, cis feminity, remixing it to harken to fat or working class or Black or brown or trans or nonbinary or disabled or sex worker or other genders of femme to grant strength, vulnerability, and power to the person embodying them (p. 136).

Piepzna-Samarasinha writes a list of things she knows about femmes and suicide. This is not exhaustive of that list but highlights three points made within that list:

1. Being perceived as too much (too loud, too crazy, too needy) can kill someone because they feel they cannot go somewhere for help without being seen as too much of something, without feeling like a burden;

2. Femme worship can kill you if you are not also loved in your mess when we only love femmes when they perform high femme aesthetics, but if you cannot accomplish that then are you completely welcomed … “sad femmes they don’t always know how to love” (p. 197); and

3. Femmes who are in community leadership are targets for huge amounts of rage and abuse, one never knows what they might receive in response to succeeding.

Moving on from femmes and suicide, Piepzna-Samarasinha also has a list of things she knows about femme suicide:

• “I believe in fighting for femmes to stay alive. I believe fighting for us to live is a revolutionary act.

• I believe that when we shift conditions of ableism, femmephobia, sexism, classism, transmisogyny, fatphobia, and whorephobia, everyone gets more free and safe and able to stay.

• I believe in femmes first. I believe in crazy femmes first” (p. 204). 

The italics are those of the author.

Femme emotional safety strategies for survival and beyond

Telling someone to call a hotline if they feel suicidal is not enough. After the loss of multiple femme lives due to suicide, Piepzna-Samarasinha helped establish a space to speak about femme suicidality. In order to change the conditions in the world to allow more femmes, and people in general, to stay alive, there needs to be a focus on shifting conditions that make people want to die. 

A modest proposal for a fair trade emotional labor economy (centered by disabled, femme of color, working-class/poor genius)

Patriarchy, racism, transmisogyny, colonialism, ableism, classism, and whorephobia are used as methods to hurt and cause harm to those who are femme. This is seen in how certain jobs are labeled pink collar. Pink collar careers are highly feminized and sometimes rely on unpaid free labor (like care work), such as cleaning, childcare, waitressing, and service work. Working class or poor BIPOC men/masculine people are often not viewed as performing care work because racism and classism do not see Black and brown masculine bodies as loving or caring.

Piepzna-Samarasinha has ideas on how to make care work “economically” sound, like having consensual fair trade emotional economics, which is where both parties discuss and agree upon what is needed for care and how it will be done. This is a form of disability justice that ensures disabled folks are the experts on their bodies and consent to the care they need and want to receive. Care labor is labor, so asking for a form of compensation (which can be as simple as trading art) is acceptable.