A bill calls for the de-maritalization of the Disabled Adult Allowance. Its current method of calculation weakens the people who benefit from it, and associations are asking that it change.
Émilie Guigueno, alias Lili, is a handi-feminist, activist against validism and fights so that management associations like the Association des Paralysés de France (APF) no longer monopolize the issue of disability. Why ? Because a managing association, as its name suggests, is also responsible for the management of centers and institutions for people with disabilities. They are therefore caught in financial conflicts of interest on the issue of disability which, for many people concerned, deprives them of any legitimacy on the subject.
This is why several non-managerial associations (Act Up-Paris, CHA, CLE Autistes, CLHEE, Les Dévalideuses, Handi-Social, Objectif Autonomie) have come together under the slogan “APF out of our struggles”. They believe today that the APF is monopolizing a fight they have been waging for years:individualization of the calculation of the Disabled Adult Allowance, a help which today remains linked to the marital situation of any disabled person. Those associations also denounce, in a press release, alienation and confinement suffered by people with disabilities. Émilie Guigueno recalls that the UN has pinned France for its policies related to disability, which does not respect human rights. The anti-validist collectives demand that France finally respect its commitments made before international law, and that it put an end to the institutionalization regime and social segregation of disabled people.
Émilie gives us a powerful text to denounce the validism of society, which denies the right to autonomy of people with disabilities, assigning them to an infantilizing posture. This text reflects the experiences of many women with disabilities who receive the Disabled Adult Allowance (AAH).
“80% of disabled women have been, are or will be victims of psychological, physical, sexist or sexual violence”
“I am one of those who are assaulted, who are violated, who are raped, who are killed. I am among those who are infantilized, those who disturb, those who experience contradiction , those who experience negation, those who experience the violence and subjugation instituted by patriarchy and validism.
I am one of those who are always too much or not enough, too handicapped, not enough woman, the quantity negligible, the least, the contemptible.
I am one of those you cowardly look upon with pity, of those that you send back to the indisputable vulnerability, but my vulnerability is not the one you want to attach to me, the one you would like me to wear on my skin like a obviously, the one you like so much, which suits you, which would explain everything; the one which would make of me by nature a victim and because naturalized victim of a blow rejected would be the idea that you are responsible for it, you who are not responsible for anything, you who nevertheless decide everything.
You can get around your responsibility like the steep edge of a ravine, spread your pitying stories about my vulnerability like a truth, work to naturalize unjust social dominations because they are comfortable to you: it is time to peel your eyes on the ground. abrupt reality and to ask yourself once and for all the question of the conditions that make possible and promote violence against women with disabilities.
80% of us have been, are or will be victims of psychological, physical, sexist or sexual violence; 34% of us are victims of domestic violence and what do you do? You prefer to dismiss all the knowledge acquired on the mechanisms of control, on the construction of a relationship of domination and on the maintenance of an ordinarily violent environment, you prefer to ignore all the brutality of the validism that oppresses us. and you prefer to refuse, against us, to de-maritalize the calculation of the AAH, to the point of political indignity.
“No, I am not a victim”
No, I am not a ready-made victim, no, I am not the product of multiplied vulnerability, and no I am not vulnerable by nature, I am vulnerable.
When you assign me to poverty, it is you who make me vulnerable. When you refuse to de-maritalize the AAH. When you strive to renew the conditions of social injustice, it is you who make the present unbearable to me. When you force on me the violence of an unfair choice to make that no one should ever be faced with. When you force me to sacrifice for love my financial independence and with it my freedom, my individuality, it is you who rob me of my dignity. When I find myself subordinated, inferior, infantilized and my life subjugated to that of another, it is you who reduce me to being nothing. When you refuse, impassive, to de-maritalize the AAH, it is you who establish a relationship of domination between my partner and me, it is you who allow me the hold over me by organizing my dependence, it is you who m ‘expose to domestic violence. You are responsible.
No, I am not vulnerable, I am vulnerable and it is you who are making me vulnerable.
It is now your political responsibility that no naturalistic rhetoric will ever succeed in eclipsing to finally act and adjust the law to the necessities called for by equitable social justice. You who decide, refuse to infantilize me, to decide for me what my life should be like, refuse to make the bed of domestic violence and to be complicit in it, refuse to make me vulnerable. Take the measure of your responsibility: deconjugalizing the AAH is a necessity, to ignore it any longer would be nothing but cowardice. “
Missions: Mathilde is an expert in subjects related to women’s rights and health. Addicted to Instagram and Twitter, never stingy with a good …