Meeting with Charlotte Puiseux, author fighting against the validist society

Charlotte Puiseux is no stranger to Madmoizelle. This activist, doctor of philosophy and psychologist, member of the Dévalideuses, has already regularly enlightened us on the anti-validist struggles as well as on the issue of handicapped parents.

This autumn he published with La Découverte editions meat and iron, a book in the first person, but which highlights the strength of the collective to fight and change society. She recounts her militant apprenticeship, through feminism, queer militancy and anti-capitalist commitment, and deploys a lively critique of the way our validist society is structured. Accessible, didactic, and abundant, this essay is filled with examples of the banality of discrimination and validation mechanisms, and calls for an intersectional struggle..

With her, we wanted to continue some reflections started in her book, through the feminist struggle, the issue of sexual assistance, the end of life, or even the cultural representation of people with disabilities. Maintenance.

Interview with Charlotte Puiseux, author of De carne et de fer

To miss. Recently the deconjugalization of the AAH has been a struggle that has made visible the struggle for the autonomy of people with disabilities. The law has passed… but is that enough?

Charlotte Puiseux. Deconjugalization has been the number one claim of people with disabilities for decades. In recent years things have accelerated and we have witnessed hyper-skilled oppositions, distressing arguments from the minister responsible for the disabled [Sophie Cluzel, ndlr]. It is a fight that has been fought in pain. Today he settled down but there is still a lot to do, it’s a first step to really be able to do it to bring people with disabilities out of precariousness. Today we let people live below the poverty line and that shocks no one or not many people.

What do you think of the involvement, or perhaps the lack of involvement, of feminist associations on this issue?

Clearly, and I have said this several times, there was no presence of feminist associations. Too bad, it was a way to build bridges to move faster. I have often raised the question of intersectionality, several surveys have shown that women with disabilities are the category where there are more victims of sexual violence. This question is a feminist question. The fact that the victims are disabled necessarily changes the treatment: we often speak of inaccessible family homes, feminist campaigns that do not address them, even if affected.

People with disabilities are asexualized, but one could say that women with disabilities are desexualized despite being the first victims of sexual violence. In the patriarchal system it is extremely logical, you just need to analyze the situation. The attackers of these women are perceived as benefactors, they are interested in them, while society is not. Disabled women are assaulted and are not seen as such.

In relation to the AAH, in the book you also deal with the theme of work, a blind spot when it comes to disability, while the question of precariousness is crucial.

We have a capitalist, hyperproductivist vision of work, everything must be profitable, bodies and minds must be pushed to maximum efficiency. Inevitably people with disabilities are quickly excluded because they do not meet these criteria.

Eventually, when these criteria are applied to good bodies, they too are handicapped, driven psychologically into burnout and depression, work injuries, muscle disease. We make work inhumane. It is a productivist view of work that excludes people with disabilities.

In the book you develop a reflection on assistance to sexual and emotional life that we rarely encounter. How did you arrive at this approach, which is very different from the ones we usually encounter?

I have always been against sexual assistance as a disabled person. It always bugged me, I always thought it wasn’t what I wanted for myself. But I also campaigned alongside Strass [Syndicat du travail sexuel, ndlr] and I didn’t want to stigmatize a form of prostitution. How to reconcile these two points of view? It’s true that at first I had a hard time finding people to campaign with on this issue. There are anti-validist collectives that oppose sexual assistance but with a very abolitionist purpose, and that didn’t sit well with me. When the Dévalideuses were created, it was indeed within their claim, to say that we support sex workers, being against sexual assistance for people with disabilities.

I am not for the decriminalization of sex work, but to create an exception to the law against procurement, as has been requested by some associations for the disabled, to make this activity something very specific, under the pretext that it would be the only way a handicapped person has access to a sexuality, I can’t stand this speech. On the contrary, I think there are many other things to be done regarding access to sexuality for people with disabilities.

Would using the services of a prostitute when you are able-bodied be wrong, but when you are disabled, would it be charitable and charitable? It was essential not to create demarcations, and to do so don’t prioritize bodies and practices again depending on whether you are disabled or able-bodied. Decriminalize sex work and create sex work for people who want to work with disabled people, why not. But to believe that it is a solution for people with disabilities is not true, and it is valid. What if we made our society accessible instead? So that people can come out of their homes and meet. It seems basic to me and it is not done.

Will the end-of-life issue be discussed at a citizens’ conference, why is it a matter of concern for anti-validism activists?

The end of life is a reflection supported by an able company. Justifies the end of life of disabled people. By locking them up in institutions, as is currently done in France, we don’t necessarily give them much will to live.

In France there is a strong tendency to send people to institutions, and it’s not just a handful of disability activists denouncing it, France has been condemned by the UN for its institutional policy! Institutions should be closed becauseI am against human rights, It’s nothing. But in France, we continue to say “we will improve them”.

If we offered the possibility to live independentlywith carers, a life at home where they can make plans, get out of the house and meet people, all these possibilities, we would have much less desire to die.

Today there are people with disabilities who ask to die, to be accompanied at the end of their life because they are locked up in institutions, they are completely blocked in this validating system that crushes them. Being disabled their life is worth little, it is normal that they want to die but we do not question ourselves at all: and if they were offered a more dignified life, would they want to die?

Does the question of the representation of disability in culture and entertainment seem important to you, as it can be for LGBTQI+ people, for example?

The cultural representation of people with disabilities is still quite problematic. Already very few disabled people are in the medium of culture and visible in films, often they are able-bodied people playing the roles of disabled people.

However, they are very validistic scenarios about overcoming oneself, heroic stories with a disabled person who, thanks to a fabulous encounter, will overcome his condition, eventually returning, if possible, able.

When I was a teenager it wasn’t the kind of image I could relate to, I think a lot of disabled teenage girls are. If we internalize these kinds of images, if we tell ourselves “Ah, I must become valid”it is very destructive, psychologically, because it is the repetition of the idea that being disabled is not good and that one must be able-bodied to be happy. We make young people grow up with the idea that they are worthless, negative images, that they cannot be loved, that they are not desirable, this doesn’t necessarily always make them want to continue.