Learning about KripLove from Krip Hop: Part 3 – KripLove is THE Revolution

Krip Hop Nation in ATL and other events like it (such as the DaDa Fest in England next month) subvert the traditional model of disability awareness by encouraging people in the crowd to acknowledge and even *gasp* celebrate disability culture. Part of the beauty of Krip Hop is that interweaves exposing the truth about negotiating the disability experience – stigma, love, desire… really everything  – with kick ass art and beats. Throughout the day the artists and panelists revealed raw emotions and a spectrum of analyses about disability.  Some of the comments expressed by the panelists and artists were not in line with my philosophy of disability, but I am working on seeing the value in the diversity of our voices. It is more honest to have variability of voices and understandings of disability rather than having a monolithic representation of disability – even if that monolith is reflective of my sexy understanding of disability.

Much of the content was emotionally and spiritually intense. I shared many of the feelings expressed about struggling to figure out ways to love my disabled body in a culture that devalues us.  I loved hearing stories of journeying to self love. Our community so rarely takes up this conversation. We speak of disability pride and political resistance– but we don’t talk about how we have to figure out ways to embrace our krip beauty and really come to a state of love. That missing dialog around love is so needed. I challenge all of us in the disability realm – disabled folks, our families, friends, etc. – to examine whether we are following dominant disability discourse by trying to “look beyond disability” to love the person or if we can have, even just brief moments, love of the whole package. Can YOU say I love disability? Maybe we need to practice together or privately in the mirror – saying I love THIS (my/your) krippy body, mind, sensory system, etc. I try to do this and certainly does not work every day. Sometimes the weathering of ableism and other isms that mandate perfection, just make it too difficult to look in the mirror and like what I see. I’ve said it before that is also difficult to hear from my partner that she sees me as beautiful and loves all of me – when I don’t. Clearly, this is an area to work on – for me and I bet for you. Let’s try to talk about this more.

The idea of loving disability and celebrating our culture causes cognitive dissonance in most people, including many disabled folks. Many seem quite hostile to the idea that disabled people can come to a place of self-love. In fact, the idea that a disabled person could love themselves is framed as delusional too many; which is in line with a guiding disability principle in our culture – we should all want to be able-bodied or assimilate into normalcy as much as possible (i.e. compulsory able-bodiedness).

This is why moments where we can have honest expressions and celebrations of disability culture – in its many forms – are so valuable to disabled people and society generally. I know many of the disabled people there really valued the moment to just breathe in KripLove and to celebrate us. The profound feeling of commonality in our experiences of difference really helped crystallize the growing feeling I have of love for my community. The after party only added to my growing KripLove, as it was a small collective of the artists and a few friends who get disability. The space we had is much like what bell hooks describes in “Loving Blackness as a Form of Political Resistance” in Killing Rage: Ending Racism – a place of emotional refuge where no one had to ask for access, hide attempts at making space easier for our navigation or explain disability basics. We could be ourselves. It was not perfect because we human and still managed to say some offensive things – but it felt really nice and cozy to curl up in a pile of KripLove! It was a perfect way to ring my 30^th birthday. It’s so refreshing and recharging to be in that space after weathering the ableist world.

The following day I spent many hours feeling KripLove surging through my body. I cried tears of joy, as I went over the event in my head and looked through our photos. This was much like the feeling I got from hosting the disability and sexuality conference at UF in 2005 – an overwhelming feeling of peace, as though I achieved something that I was supposed to do. For the UF conference, I glowed for about a week over a job well done – a well-attended event that was profound because it explored KripSex, an issue still rarely spoken of.

This time around my joy was cut a bit short through challenges of language at the event and critiques on ways it could have been better. Maybe my skin was thicker when I was younger – because I thrived on the editorials written about how awful I was for hosting a “freak show” with an adult film star talking about disability issues – or maybe it all just means more to me now to have people really feel the message I’m trying to share about disability.

I want people to get what I am doing – trying to shift social conception around disability. I want people to be liberated from the shackles of disability oppression, because it’s not just me and my krip siblings that hurt from these ideas of bodily, intellectual and sensory perfection – it’s all of us. Disability liberation is CENTRAL TO ALL of our liberation. That is what I want people to understand: this revolution of love, especially of the Krip flavor, is for everyone. I say this because if we all really LOVED DISABILITY – just imagine what cultural doors that would open (and be wide enough, with ramps, braille notations, lights, etc.) around our collective interpretation of the meaning of bodies. This could be a huge title wave of relief for so many people who hate our bodies because our culture teaches we shouldn’t or we can’t. Dream and talk about the possibilities of this with your comrades.