A Little Bit About The Talk At The White House, PART ONE

Okay, sadly, there is just no way to cover this whole event in its full complexity, but holy CRAP what an astounding event!

I promised to talk about it a little, but I have an early plane to Scotland so it’ll have to just be the outline of what it was, and then I hope to cover more bits soon.

I was at New York, and I had HUGE signing lines all weekend at the convention, I was getting a little loopy. My husband checked my phone and said, “You’ve just been invited to a forum at the White House.”

And I said, no kidding, “Oh, that’s nice.”

About five minutes later it hit me, and I said, “WHAT?”

They asked me to attend a forum at the White House. I was invited by Rebecca Cokley, Executive Director of the National Council on Disability.

Only problem, I live in Oregon, we were scheduled to go back home on Tuesday, I was exhausted, and the forum was on Thursday. AND I had no clothes, just con stuff, Batgirl t-shirts and things like that.

I said no, at first. I just didn’t see it working out. My husband said, “What if we go straight to DC from here, and not go home in between?”

And I thought about it, and I thought, maybe they just want me to be in the forum, in the audience? So I asked Rebecca, and she said no, “The White House wanted me to be a featured speaker.”

I panicked a little. I panicked a lot. It took some time to get information out. The idea was that it was a forum, the first such forum, on the intersectionality between LGBT and disability communities and activists. 

Okay, so at this point, I again said no. I am aware of how easy it is for these conversations to be dominated by allies and not the voices of the actual communities, and I felt highly unqualified to speak on either topic. 

But it turns out, dominating the discussion was not even remotely possible. They had a big line-up of amazing, AMAZING speakers, some of whom were disabled, some of whom were lgbt, most were both. It was astonishing and humbling.

They wanted me there to talk a little bit about how treatment of these communities has changed in genre media. Which I actually felt qualified to talk about at least a little bit. But it’s still the White House!

I wrote already about how we ran around like mongooses trying to find something appropriate to wear in Times Square. I had one hour to find appropriate clothes that didn’t look like I worked at a pizza place. I didn’t have time to find shoes so I wore fit-flops (don’t tell anyone, they look dressy if you don’t look too close) and for strength, a Wonder Woman shirt under my Calvin Klein suit. HA!

I was nervous. They had major, major heavy hitters at this event. I had posted about it here, and people had a lot of questions I didn’t have the answer to, but I did receive, I kid you not, HUNDREDS of emails, notes, and DMs from people encouraging me to go. It was very moving that so many people believed I would try my best. There were a couple letters, something like three or four, people who QUITE UNDERSTANDABLY asked why I was being asked to speak at a panel like this. I totally got that and it was on my mind a lot.

But the avalanche of people who wanted me to go, to represent geek culture a little bit, that was huge and very moving. Several people, at least a couple I know of who are hurting for money, wanted me to go speak on these topics for the comics community so much they offered to take up collections to pay my airfare (the White House paid for most expenses and we happily covered the rest, it was never an issue). That was pretty moving.

Okay, so I wrote a speech, and I put a lot of the things in there that have irritated me. I really don’t have a lot of interest in talking too much about a few successes, I wanted to talk about history and what we still haven’t come close to accomplishing. I worked hard on the speech, but I was still pretty scared.

The next day, we got to the White House, and went through all the security, which is quite intense, really. It feels different from airports, these people feel more like soldiers.

I met Rebecca and several other White House and Washington friends, folks I had met at various con events. I was nervous, but there were some cool signs in the middle of this very formal thing. A gentleman in a really nice looking suit showed me he was wearing Batman cufflinks. A woman I met at Geek Girl Con was wearing a great suit and Wonder Woman tennis shoes.

That helped a surprising amount!

I can’t cover all the details but there were journalists and administration and many other important folks. There were some starting comments, and then the first speaker.

It was Chai Feldblum, and holy crap, am I a fan of hers now. She is lesbian and disabled, and she actually helped draft  the Americans With Disabilities Act, the most important legislation dealing with the rights of the disabled in American history.

She was funny and smart and just immensely powerful. She talked about how two gay people, or two disabled people, can have similar circumstances and entirely different lives based on their communities. She said we have a “Patchwork nation,” where there are huge differences in how people are treated and how the community is educated.

She also brought up some great stuff I didn’t know, how in the past, the disability rights movement had come through for gay rights legislation and protest, and vice versa. She said many people in both communities were not aware that they had stuck up for each other for decades. 

And this was a big theme. Some people asked me why these two communities were lumped together in one forum. The thing is, this is a new approach, to talk about how two marginalized communities can work together. The themes of Lgbtq Pride and Disability Pride came up a lot, and there’s clearly a great deal of overlap.

Rebecca and her crew have been trying to make this event happen for six years. They recently also did a black community and disability community joint forum, would have loved to have seen that.

It was lovely, seeing these fierce, heroic people speak with passion about justice, but also practical matters of legislation and community.

Chai killed. She was amazing. Look up her name for her full credentials. She could not have been nicer, either. After the forum, she said, “I can tell you are a writer…” which made me happy.

Next was the part I most regret not having a transcript of. It was a Panel of BRILLIANT people on the Intersections of LGBT and Disability issues. It was not a lot of laughs, but MAN.

That was Matt Heinz, and MD and Director of LGBT Outreach, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (he spoke a lot about additional health dangers people in both communities face), Megan Schuller, Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (she talked about how many LGBT and Disabled people are not even aware of the anti-discrimination laws that are recently enacted that they can take advantage of), and Michael Yudin, Asst. Secretary to the Office of Special Education.

People are cynical about politicians and you can’t blame them. But these people are devoting their lives to these topics and it’s extraordinary to hear them speak. Michael Yudin made the point over and over that the kids from these two groups are often excluded from the benefits of education, and that they are punished by further exclusion, which makes things worse. 

It was powerful, emotional stuff. Hard to hear, at times. 

MORE IN PART TWO!

Also, sorry I talked about clothes so much. ONWARD!