Access Intimacy Abuse and Social Justice Oriented Community Activist and Academic Spaces

Siva Thangeswary Sivarajah & Krystal Kavita Jagoo

Dana Chan for Disabled And Here.

Land Acknowledgment

We wish to acknowledge this land on which we reside. It is the traditional territory of many Nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. We acknowledge that Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. This land remains home to many Indigenous communities from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live here, as we work in solidarity with Indigenous folx. Additionally, we acknowledge the many people of African descent who are not settlers, but whose ancestors were forcibly displaced as part of the transatlantic slave trade against their will, and made to work on these lands.

Agenda

Introductions, with Positionality

Krystal Kavita Jagoo, MSW

• lived experience navigating Migraine Disorder since teens, and sleep issues and other trauma impacts following retaliatory workplace harassment from a family health team in 2016 and a university after that
• professional experience as an Accessibility Advisor from 2018 to 2021 and facilitating workshops grounded in Disability Justice since 2020

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Siva Thangeswary Sivarajah, MA

• PhD Candidate in Curriculum and Pedagogy at OISE
• After navigating institutional violence (Administrators & Faculty) as a racialized, disabled, autistic, Queer, Trans student, I founded the OISE BIPOC Thesis Group to help co-create an affirming and supportive space with other BIPOC graduate students whose research focus is oriented around anti-colonial, decolonial and ancestral practice.
• This recognizes the increased and unique forms of violence and alienation that BIPOC students when doing this type of research

Access Intimacy

“Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that comes from someone else understanding your access needs enough that they can anticipate them or respond to them gracefully.”

— Mia Mingus, “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link” (2011)

Access Intimacy Abuse

Like Access Intimacy, the term coined by Mia Mingus in 2011, Access Intimacy Abuse can be an elusive, hard to describe feeling, such as when someone else “gets” one’s individual unique access needs, and weaponizes that Access Intimacy to take advantage of that person, who perceives their abuser as “safe,” based on shared experiences of oppression, which are perceived to inform their values

Community/ Academic Context

Brown’s “Letter to Activists” (2017)

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• Grief around social justice-based activist and academic space reproducing harm
• Love letter & rupture: names exhaustion, betrayal, rage of disabled, multiply marginalized people
• Activist/academic spaces reproduce colonial power, ableism, misogynoir, and more under the banner of liberation

Intercommunity Violence

Harm within identity-based communities where hierarchies persist, as violation of that trust is based on similar identity-based experiences

Labour Exploitation

Intellectual, emotional, and spiritual labour feminized and extracted from Black, Brown, femme/feminized people:

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“The thing about being working class or poor and/or disabled and/or parenting and/or Black, Indigenous or brown femme [feminized] is that people are going to ask you to do stuff for them.” (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2017)

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Structural and Embodied Tolls: How Access Intimacy Abuse compounds racialized and gendered labour in academia and organizing

Abuse of Equity Discourses

How terms like “equity” and “disability justice” can be co-opted and manipulated by bad actors for institutional gain, without actually practicing those values

Fear of Losing Social Capital and Institutional Power

These are people who have whole written and researched work around supporting student survivors, yet do not practice it

Resources Referenced

Access Intimacy: The Missing Link https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/

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A Modest Proposal for a Fair Trade Emotional Labor Economy: �https://transformharm.org/hj_resource/a-modest-proposal-for-a-fair-trade-emotional-labor-economy/

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L. X. Z. Brown’s Letter to the Revolution:

http://www.letterstotherevolution.com/lydia-x-z-brown

Questions?�Email us here:

Krystal@equitableforall.com

Siva.sivarajah@mail.utoronto.ca

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If you have benefitted from these slides, and are able to contribute to Krystal’s continued existence, attempting to recover from Access Intimacy Abuse, please send funds here: http://paypal.me/kjagoo