Sins Invalid

Founding and Documentary

Sins Invalid was founded in 2005 by Patricia Berne and Leroy F. Moore Jr. The organization, which Berne has described as "a hybrid between a community-based organization and a performance," originated in the San Francisco Bay Area and tours nationally. Berne and Moore, who are old friends, have both had disabilities since birth, and they started the project upon realizing the paucity of venues dedicated to celebration of their work and their bodies. Both co-Founders have a long history of advocacy and activism in various fields. Berne serves as Director of the organization, and she has been involved in work surrounding asylum claims, youth incarceration alternatives, the LGBTQIA community, and mental health support for survivors of violence, among other fields. Moore is Sins Invalid's Community Relations Director. His work extends to writing, poetry, lecture series, and hip-hop/music. He has worked, studied, and lectured internationally and is considered a "leading voice" regarding police brutality toward and wrongful incarceration of people with disabilities.

According to a Huffington Post interview conducted by Cory Silverburg with Berne and Moore, Sins Invalid's (pronounced as in "not valid") name came from the idea that a disabled child is a manifestation of "the sins of the father being cast upon the son". As Berne articulates, there is a pervasive societal norm that validates bodies according to beauty, hygienic, health, and other sets of standards. The Sins Invalid framework asserts that humans have a wide variety of embodiments, and all bodies are valid and worthy of celebration. It is also a play on words, since people with disabilities have historically been referred to as "invalids".

Since its creation, Sins Invalid has held annual major theater performances and an artist-in-residence performance, which have all received critical acclaim. In 2012, the project launched a Kickstarter campaign, culminating in the 2013 release of a 32-minute documentary titled Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility, directed by Berne, which details its disability justice efforts and the value of artistic expression. The documentary also elucidates the need for inclusion of sex and sexuality in disability rights discourse.

Disability and Sexuality

Sins Invalid makes the conscious choice to engage in the topic of sexuality precisely because it has historically been so taboo, especially when it intersects with disability and other social markers. The discussion of identity is also vital here, especially in terms of creating a space for identities that have become politicized as a result of socialization. In an interview with The Icarus Project, Berne cites the high rates of sexual violence against people with disabilities, tying the trend to an issue of dehumanization, not sexualization. According to the World Health Organization, adults with disabilities are 1.5 times as likely to experience any type of violence—physical, emotional, sexual—than adults without disabilities. Adults with mental or intellectual impairments are almost four times as likely to experience violence than those without. Children with disabilities are 3.7 times as likely to experience any type of violence than children without disabilities. Children with disabilities are 3.6 times as likely to experience physical violence and 2.9 times as likely to experience sexual violence. Children with mental or intellectual impairments are 4.6 times as likely to experience sexual violence than their counterparts.

The WHO attributes these alarming statistics to stigma, discrimination, ignorance, and lack of social support, but Berne echoes scholars in the disability studies field, who argue that the issue runs deeper. The discussion of disability and sexuality, based on cultural assumptions, categorizes the combination under sexual deviance. Public perception of those who are differently abled has come to form the disabled body as one incapable of attaining sexual agency. Philosopher and disability studies scholar Abby Wilkerson has written that, in order to respect the sexual agency of all individuals, this agency must be reimagined as political. Her argument hinges on the assumption of the disabled body as incapable of becoming a full citizen. Reimagining sexual and political agency is an aspect of the overall effort to change views and frames regarding disability and the perception of disabled bodies.

In the Cory Silverberg interview, Berne said, "I can experience my sexuality as a crip, as someone who fully occupies a non-normative physical space. And part of that movement to fully living in one's own experience is naming and resisting dehumanization." Acknowledging the full history of disability in the United States requires a deconstruction of the dehumanizing practices that have plagued the community. All types of experiences are included in the show, and the denial of sexuality is part of that dehumanization. In the same interview, Moore said, "…we’re sharing these stories in a way that hopefully connects us to our past and also allows us to change our future." The medicalized framing of disability has framed it as a problem to be cured, a pathology that decides, alongside doctors, the future of its host. People with disabilities are often told what their futures will look or feel like, and part of gaining agency involves the decision one makes when deciding one's future for oneself. Sins Invalid aims to reinforce this agency and choice in the futures of people with disabilities, including an audience in order to expand the message and so that people with and without disabilities might internalize it.

Eugenics

The documentary alludes to Harry Laughlin's 1914 coining of the "Five Ds," or people who should not, according to the tenets of eugenics, reproduce. These are degenerate, dependent, deficient, delinquent, and defective. Sins Invalid's work is not solely a matter of performance; rather, it is an active fight against the idea that people with disabilities should not exist.

The history of eugenics in the United States dates back to before World War II, in which the eugenics programs provided inspiration for practices in Nazi Germany. During the late 19th and early 20th century, it came to be seen as "a method of preserving and improving the dominant groups in the population," and it was not until later that its racist, nativist, and ableist elements were unearthed and included in public discourse. There were various pieces of legislation mirroring eugenics practice in the US. In the documentary, performers reference being referred to as "an excuse for abortion". Increasing access to sex, sexuality, and reproduction for people with disabilities is a cornerstone of disability justice and the ability to be viewed as a full citizen with the same privileges afforded to those without disabilities. Sins Invalid's performances and community engagement fosters these efforts and includes them in its framework.

Forced sterilization

Sterilization is part of eugenics, and the US had legislation making it compulsory for "imbeciles" for a large part of the early 20th century. The documentary touches on the fact that, between 1910 and 1970, over 60,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized in the US, with many more undocumented cases. Sins Invalid works against the frame that the world would be better off without people with disabilities and that others should decide their reproductive futures.

Though the issue of forced sterilization still exists in this country, it has been occurring more commonly in women's prisons.

Intersectionality

Sins Invalid's acceptance and celebration of the multiplicity and diversity of identities is an iteration of intersectionality in practice. The human body is not permanent and unchanging; rather, it is a non-static being that can change based on nature, the environment, or perception. Since disability does not discriminate, it is useful as a category of analysis in terms of its potential to create, as disability studies scholar Simi Linton puts it, "a prism through which one can gain a broader understanding of society and human experience". Since Sins Invalid includes performers with disabilities who are also people of color, queer, etc., intersectionality is woven into its performances and guiding ideology. In the documentary, Sins Invalid member Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha comments on the freedom that the space provides for various manifestations of difference, such as queerness. She says, "No one has to closet themselves," and this applies to any identity. This ties into Berne's idea of being able to "orient the gaze," or the position the audience occupies as consumers of the performance. Since the project is conscious of so many diverse lenses and does not limit the frame to disability, performers and audience members alike have the opportunity to feel empowered by the acknowledgement of identities.

In order to understand the idea of embodiment, of occupying the body, as Berne states, one must have an understanding of the body as situated within a historical, political, cultural, and social context. Feminist disability studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues that, "integrating disability as a category of analysis and a system of representation deepens, expands, and challenges feminist theory". She is, essentially, arguing for a more intersectional approach to both fields, allowing conversation across coalitions and co-opting of messages and theories. For Garland-Thomson, the "shared human experience of embodiment" provides a framework in which all individuals should be able to understand the way systems affect or do not affect them based on their bodies. The sharing of experience should, theoretically, make difference more palatable in interpersonal relationships. In the documentary, however, one of the performances includes narration that says, "We labor to shield you from our differences…We live in continual risk." People with disabilities, both visible and invisible, live with a higher risk of experiencing violence and an extreme amount of pressure to conform. The more identities intersect with one another, the more complicated it becomes to navigate spaces that are unwelcoming or biased. Sins Invalid aims to address this difficulty through creating a performance space that is inviting to all identities.

Objectives

A review by Terry Rowden states, "Moving decisively beyond any simple ‘shock’ or ‘transgressive’ aesthetic…challenges the politics that systematically disables our ability to recognize beauty." Sins Invalid has, for certain audience members, achieved its goal of redefining ideas like beauty, sex, and sexuality. Further, Berne has described the project as, "an erotic event featuring people with disabilities". Sins Invalid harnesses the power of the erotic, using it as a force in politicizing the disabled body. According to Audre Lorde, the erotic is a means to assert power for people who have historically been denied agency. She writes, "The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings." Her argument is based on those in power suppressing or repressing eroticism, feeling, and emotion, dismissing each as weak and without value. Sins Invalid's invocation of the erotic is a means to empower those who have been denied a space for expression in the public sphere.

Another concept that Sins Invalid confronts is shame. In his book The Trouble with Normal, Michael Warner writes about shame as a "political resource that some people use to silence or isolate others." In his view, sexual deviants are considered a "danger to the body politic." Analyzing the politics of shame in a disability rights discourse requires the acknowledgement that people with disabilities are framed as objects of shame. Sins Invalid seeks to address this issue through the assertion that their claim is "unshamed" from the get-go. Furthermore, unabashedly claiming sex and sexuality in an empowering way serves to eliminate the shame that people with disabilities may become subject to.

Berne and Moore have both expressed a commitment to concrete change. For Moore, this manifests in changing laws, but going further and beginning to change our physical environment. Berne writes on the move from individual legal rights toward a collective human rights framework. Berne's writing speaks to both types of change. She uses herself as an example, discussing the fact that her wheelchair does not climb stairs and asking the reader if this is a problem with the wheelchair or a problem with the stairs. She encourages her audience to think critically about our surroundings and the barriers that exist for various members of society due to identity. Berne and Moore both view the oppression of the non-normative body as something to move beyond, toward opportunities for liberation and beauty and a new vision of embodiment.