Disabled lesbian speaker tells tale of life, challenges
By Sandra M. Klepach
for the Daily Kent Stater
March 12, 2004

A woman with an amputated leg with the words “what does death feel like? The loss of body.”

A chick hatching from an egg saying “I love working hard!”

Nomy Lamm, a self-described “badass, fatass, Jew, dyke, amputee, performance artist, writer and activist” from Chicago, presented her art and spoke about her experiences as a disabled lesbian before about 65 students at the Auditorium last night. Lamm has been speaking for almost 10 years, and although she usually speaks on body image, she said this multi-media presentation on homosexuality and disability was a welcome deviation.

“I love my life, but it’s rough,” Lamm, 28, said. “It’s been my dream for a long time that there would be a world that would want to hear a presentation about queerness and disability.”

Because she teaches voice lessons in Chicago, Lamm had laughing audience members stand to practice breathing, make funny faces and wave their arms to the sound of their own voices. She sang some of her own music, with lyrics such as “I’m [not an independent] entity / I’m just another product of industry” and “Do the job you want to do / Do it because you wanted to” while playing her accordion.

“She can really sing, wow,” said sophomore English major Cat Northrup. “She definitely has an energy and really got the audience involved.”

Lamm was born with proximal femoral focal deficiency, a congenital disorder with no known cause, which meant that she was missing almost all the femur in her left leg. Her left foot was amputated when she was 3 so she could wear a prosthesis, and she said the loss was a painful experience for her. Since she was 17 years old, Lamm has made her life public through zines, magazines, anthologies, performances and CDs, stressing the importance of happiness and comfort within one’s own body.

“The medical industry says, ‘OK, this is your problem. Let’s fix it,’ but they don’t address the spirit,” she said. “Disability is a tricky term that implies a deficit in a way, but the fact is we all live in the world, we all have challenges, and it’s sort of arrogant to say there are people in the world who have “nondisabled” bodies. We all struggle with empowering ourselves, finding a voice and a purpose and standing up for ourselves and our right to be happy.”

Lamm said her feeling of loss attracted her to the “queer scene.”

“For me, queerness is a lot about owning your own body,” she said. “Having a disability in a lot of ways made me feel [outside] of gender because I wasn’t sexualized like other girls.”

Brent Tornstrom, freshman marine biology major, said he felt a connection with Lamm’s struggle to discover herself.

“It takes a strong individual to go through what she went through and be proud of it, and it’s empowering,” he said. “It makes me want to be proud of who I am. I’m gay! Rock on!”

“And she can really play that accordion.”

Angela Wicks, president of PRIDE!Kent and junior political science education major, said she was glad the group co-sponsored the event with Ability Unlimited.

“Diversity comes in all forms,” Wicks said. “It (her story) is something different that has never been brought to campus, a different story for people to hear, one they should hear about the differences people have.”

Lamm said that community is difficult to achieve but she has faith it can be done, especially after watching a baby chicken hatch from an egg. She described the bird’s first taps from inside; they began slowly, but soon the head burst from the shell.

“It took about an hour, and I sat there riveted,” she said. “I was thinking about the leap of faith that it took to think that there was something beyond that egg.”