Seeking Great-Aunt Sarah: Learning From the Abuse of My Disabled Ancestor July 27, 2019 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment Great-aunt Sarah, age 12 [Image description: This 1921 black-and-white photograph shows the author's great-aunt Sarah as a girl of 12 standing on the grounds of a state school in Wrentham, MA. She is a white girl with shoulder-length brown hair pulled back on the top with a large bow. Her dress is white and extends below her knees, and she is wearing leather lace-up shoes. She … [Read more...]
How Do I Understand Being Jewish While Also Holding White Privilege? April 12, 2019 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment [Image description: The photograph shows the author, a light-skinned woman with graying brown shoulder-length hair and glasses. She is wearing a navy-blue hooded sweatshirt, and her right hand is resting against the side of her face. She is looking into the camera and smiling. Behind her is a curtain in a mandala design.] I recently decided to purchase a genetics test from … [Read more...]
Living Inside the Contradictions: My Father’s Love and My Father’s Abuse January 5, 2019 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment I've been thinking a lot lately about the polarized extremes that show up in our public discourse. It's nearly impossible to find a comment thread on the Internet in which people do not feel compelled to take only one position on an issue and to reject any contradiction, any paradox, any additional truths that might illuminate the issue in a more complex way. Perhaps we humans … [Read more...]
All That I Did Not Know: Supporting My Transgender Kid November 14, 2018 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment In 2012, my kid West came out as genderqueer and now identifies as non-binary. Although assigned a gender of female at birth, West does not fit inside binary gender categories and uses the pronouns they, their, and them. For West, gender is fluid; sometimes, they move between male and female, and at other times, they are outside the binary altogether. My reactions to West … [Read more...]
10 Answers to Common Questions People Ask When Being Called Out for Using Ableist Language October 27, 2018 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 4 Comments The Body Is Not an Apology’s goal is to share the myriad ways human bodies unshackle the box of “beauty” and fling it wide open for all of us to access. Our goal is to redefine the unapologetic, radically amazing magnificence of EVERY BODY on this planet. When we do, we change the world! Join the movement and become a subscriber today! bit.ly/NoBodiesInvisible. *** This … [Read more...]
Letting Down My (Gray) Hair September 9, 2018 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 1 Comment This article is the second in a three-part series on aging. For me, this picture is a major departure: it marks the first time that my gray hair frames my face in a photo. Much of my hair is still brown, but the right side is graying much more quickly than the rest. I usually wear my hair up or back, where the gray only shows like a streak on the top of my head. I … [Read more...]
Why I Do What I Do: Homelessness and Disability Justice August 13, 2018 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment [Image description: The photograph shows ten open brown paper bags — five in the front and five in the back.] Hey, Lunch Lady! Over here! In Santa Cruz, I’m known as The Lunch Lady. Since last August, I have been distributing bag lunches to homeless and hungry people living on the street and in one of the city parks. What began as an experiment giving out nine lunches on … [Read more...]
An Updated Birth Announcement, 22 Years Later for My Transgender Kid August 8, 2018 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment In August of 1992, when I was five months pregnant, I went in for my sonogram and asked to be told the gender of my baby. The technician looked at the image and said, "It's a girl!" [Image description: The photograph shows a sonogram image of a baby at five months' gestation. The image is blurry, in black and white, and in a triangular shape against a black background … [Read more...]
What Disability Bigotry Looks Like March 27, 2018 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 3 Comments Ten years ago, if you'd ask me whether disability bigotry existed, I would have given you a blank stare and blurted out, "Disability bigotry? What the hell is that?" Then I was diagnosed with the disabilities I'd had all my life, and so much made sense. I finally understood how my body worked, and that knowledge was life-changing. But more than that, I finally understood the … [Read more...]
What? You Mean I Look Like That? Thoughts on Not So Gracefully Aging November 30, 2017 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment This article is the first in a three-part series on aging. Stay tuned for additional posts on Wednesday and Friday! [Image description: The black-and-white photograph shows the author's dark eyes, glasses, and nose. She is a white woman, and her forehead is crinkled.] About 20 years ago, someone told me that we all carry around a picture of ourselves in our heads, and … [Read more...]
Where Are All the Disabled People in the Body Positivity Campaigns? September 28, 2017 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 1 Comment As I’ve become more aware of myself and my standpoint as a disabled person, I’ve become more aware of how many otherwise progressive causes ignore us. For example, in academia, critical theory often leaves out issues of disability from the triad of race, class, and gender, even though disability weaves its way through all of them. I was shocked when I realized that theories … [Read more...]
How Positive Thinking Can Do More Harm Than Good September 28, 2017 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 2 Comments Occasionally, I read articles and see memes that suggest that loving ourselves and our bodies involves believing in the power of “positive thinking” – a belief that dictates that if we just believe in ourselves enough and put out positive energy into the universe, good things will happen. Following is an example of this type of meme: I have to admit a certain … [Read more...]
Why the Words Stick in My Throat: Talking about Aging August 29, 2015 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment [The graphic consists of a lilac background with four rows of cartoon-like pictures, four pictures to a row. A figure of a woman in white pants stands in front of one of the pictures, blocking it from view. Each picture has a word at the top. The pictures read Beauty, Skinny, Sexy, Fit, Hot Mama, Smart, Fine, Charm, Spirit, Dazzle, !, Adorn, Lust, Cute, and Attract. The woman … [Read more...]
Why the Words Stick in My Throat: Talking about Aging August 29, 2015 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg Leave a Comment This article is the third in a three-part series on aging. Source: Wear Your Life Well [Image description: The graphic consists of a lilac background with four rows of cartoon-like pictures, four pictures to a row. A figure of a woman in white pants stands in front of one of the pictures, blocking it from view. Each picture has a word at the top. The pictures … [Read more...]
The New York Times, Racism, and the Politics of Discomfort July 20, 2015 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 1 Comment On July 1, The New York Times Op-Docs page published a short documentary called A Conversation with White People on Race (transcript below). The video runs a little over five minutes. https://youtu.be/xXow7olFyIM My take away? If this is how white people have a conversation about race, it’s perfectly apparent why nothing is changing. The video features white people, … [Read more...]
We Need Your Help: Specifying Race and Gender in Image Descriptions July 8, 2015 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 3 Comments At The Body is Not An Apology, we are committed to accessibility for our community members with disabilities. As the Content Manager, one of the ways in which I help to create accessibility is to write image descriptions for photographs and other graphics included with our articles. Many blind and visually impaired folks use Screen Reader, which reads text but not graphics. So … [Read more...]
