{"id":197870,"date":"2017-06-21T19:28:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T02:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/?p=197870"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:22:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:22:17","slug":"dvp-interview-tara-ayres-and-leah-rothman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/06\/21\/dvp-interview-tara-ayres-and-leah-rothman\/","title":{"rendered":"DVP Interview: Tara Ayres and Leah Rothman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Leah Rothman interviewed Tara Ayres. for the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disability Visibility Project\u2122 at StoryCorps San Francisco on December 6, 2014<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In this clip,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tara Ayres talks with Leah Rothman about the Michigan Womyn&#8217;s Music Festival, which she has attended for many years. Tara describes the intersectionalities of being queer and a person living with disabilities. Tara also shares about the DART community at Mich Fest, what it means to her to be a part of the community, and how she came into her disability consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1360\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F327350541&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=1360&#038;maxheight=1000&#038;secret_token=s-l8c3g\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>Text Transcript:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>[Instrumental music \u2013 acoustic guitar, twangy and bright tone]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tara Ayres: <\/strong>Since I was 18 I\u2019ve been going to the Michigan Womyn\u2019s Music Festival. This past summer was my\u2026 either 35<sup>th<\/sup> or 36<sup>th<\/sup> time attending. And\u2026 You know, Mich, Mich Fest is an interesting place because it is a rustic camping music festival. Everything that\u2019s on the land, um, gets built, um, for the festival every year and torn down at the end of the festival.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tara Ayres: <\/strong>Well I have Multiple Sclerosis so about 6 or 7 years ago I had just, I had arrived at festival just having come out of an exacerbation and I could barely walk. I set up in general camping where I always, where I always do and uh, my friend basically kicked me and said \u201cyou can\u2019t, you can\u2019t camp in general camping.\u201d There is a disabled resource area called DART. I did not want to move to DART, I did not want to acknowledge that I had a severe enough disability to have to be there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tara Ayres: <\/strong>So there are women like me who have fairly significant mobility impairments. There are women who are there because, uh, we\u2019re the only place on the land where you can plug a CPAP in and or, uh, recharge a power wheelchair or a scooter. We\u2019ve got women who don\u2019t really think of themselves as disabled. We\u2019ve got women who are totally righteous amazing disability justice activists. And we\u2019ve got women who are coming in because they\u2019ve had an injury. Or women who are newly disabled, who are freaked out about what\u2019s going on in their bodies, like, like I was my first year in DART.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tara Ayres: <\/strong>From the minute I am in DART I\u2019ve got women being kind to me, taking me under their wing. Um, but I\u2019ve also got women commenting on everything from ableist language that was coming out of my mouth to mmm\u2026 you really\u2026 that piece of adaptive equipment you have really is not the right one for you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tara Ayres: <\/strong>I found women that I could talk to who, who have similar things going on in their body that I had never ever had the opportunity to talk to or probably would ever feel safe to talk to anybody in a different context about everything from how do you deal with sex when you can\u2019t move this part of your body. Or what do you do when the Port-o-John is a quarter of a mile away from your tent and you have to, you\u2019re going to have to figure out how to get down there in the middle of the night. How do you deal with that kind of stuff?\u00a0\u00a0<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tara Ayres: <\/strong>You know, part of the problem with having a disability in this culture is that one of the things that anybody needs for decent mental health is a sense of realistic mirroring. You get to see us kick back and drinking beer and you know\u2026 that\u2019s the other thing. You know, models of disability out in the rest of the world are so bloody sanitized and or so infantilized. It\u2019s just, it\u2019s different when you\u2019re hanging out in the woods in your underwear for a week.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tara Ayres:<\/strong> I feel recognized and seen in a way I don\u2019t really anyplace else on the planet. And it\u2019s a gift. Able bodied people who want to be, or able minded people who wanna be allies to people with disabilities, look at institutional barriers. In the same way that I try to think about being an effective ally to people of color and look at where there isn\u2019t access. Check attitudes about who is fully human and whose not. If we can\u2019t get in the door, we can\u2019t be part of your community.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Instrumental music \u2013 acoustic guitar and drum beat, hopeful, garage band tone]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">Source: Freemusicarchive.org<\/span>Music Credits: \u201cSparks Fly\u201d by Waxahatchee and \u201cRosalie\u201d by KieLoBot. All songs under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>Support Disability Media and Culture<\/b><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/donate\/\"><b>DONATE<\/b><\/a><b> to the Disability Visibility Project\u2122!<\/b><\/h2>\n<h3><b>Suggested Reference<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disability Visibility Project\u2122. (6\/9\/17<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">). DVP Interview:<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tara Ayres and Leah Rothman <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Retrieved from:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/06\/21\/dvp-interview-tara-ayres-and-leah-rothman\/\">http:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/06\/21\/dvp-interview-tara-ayres-and-leah-rothman\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Image Description:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A photo featuring <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tara Ayres and Leah Rothman <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was taken on December 6, 2014<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A close up portrait of two women outside the metallic exterior of the StoryCorps booth sitting next to each other, both facing the camera. The woman on the left, Tara, has chin length curly, brown and gray hair. A pair of glasses are propped up on top of her head. Tara also has blue eyes, identifies as white, is dressed in a turquoise leather jacket with a light blue scoop neck t shirt and a thin silver chain necklace with a larger silver pendant. Tara is facing the camera and smiling. The woman on the right, Leah, has short dark brown hair, is wearing oblong dark brown glasses and appears to be white. She is wearing a collared button down shirt that is tan with muted black, green, and dark red plaid stripes. Tara is facing the camera, smiling, and also has two black backpack straps visibly around her shoulders.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Credits:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Produced for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 by Yosmay del Mazo and Alice Wong with interviews recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the story of our lives. For more:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/exit.sc\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.storycorps.org\"> <b>www.storycorps.org<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/exit.sc\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.disabilityvisibilityproject.com\"> <b>www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For any questions, please refer to the<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/about\/terms-of-useprivacy\/\"> <b>Terms of Use<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leah Rothman interviewed Tara Ayres. for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 at StoryCorps San Francisco on December 6, 2014. In this clip,Tara Ayres talks with Leah Rothman about the Michigan Womyn&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/06\/21\/dvp-interview-tara-ayres-and-leah-rothman\/\" class=\"read-more\">Continue Reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">DVP Interview: Tara Ayres and Leah Rothman<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":202802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[548705951],"tags":[13403,40576,562550991,226595,581473525,4775291],"class_list":["post-197870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dvp-interviews","tag-camping","tag-disability","tag-disabilityvisibilityproject","tag-michfest","tag-michiganwomynsfestival","tag-musicfestival","post-has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/sfb003029_g1-1-e1498098495871.jpg?fit=4446%2C3275&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-Pts","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}