Monthly Archives: October 2009

Ableism and the Aussie Battler

social attitudes,

I want to talk about how Australia’s ideas of the ideal Australian exclude people with disabilities. But first I have to explain a little about the Australian national myth.

The ideal Australian figure is known as “the Aussie battler”. Essentially this is an ordinary man working hard to get by and support his family without complaining. I guess it’s a bit like “the little guy”. I’m going to paraphrase how Queen Emily explained it (as we discussed this on Twitter with its 140 character limit): ‘It’s an idealisation of (implicitly working class) struggle, self-sufficiency. You work hard and get paid fairly – but not well. I think it’s different from the US rags-to-riches story, because it doesn’t imply that hard work produces social mobility.’

I’m not sure how to convey to you how ingrained the idea of the battler is in the Australian consciousness, but it really, really is. It’s everywhere from our popular culture to our political discourse. Our previous Prime Minister, John Howard, drew on it a fair bit. (In fact, in 2007, US President George W. Bush referred to him as a battler at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, a moment which caused a few raised eyebrows.) Our current PM, Kevin Rudd, doesn’t do so quite so much, but it is still very noticeable.

There’s a whole culture around cheering on the underdog and tall poppy syndrome (tearing down high achievers). But the Australian idea of the underdog – the “Aussie battler” – isn’t really who is at the bottom of the kyriarchal pile. If white, abled men represent the struggling Australian, that’s a pretty warped idea of hardship. It’s not about valuing the real battlers. A lot has been said about the racism and misogyny coded in the battler legend, and I could say a lot about the assumptions regarding family (structure); today we’re talking about the ableism.

The Aussie battler ideal is about a person working hard to get enough money for the family to live on. Every feminist knows how problematic it is to set up paid work as the only sort of real work. After all, women’s work in the home, raising children, running the household – the second shift – has been devalued in Western society as a matter of course. It also is very ableist. Many disabled people cannot fulfil the paid work requirements to be a battler, or not consistently, because those standards are designed to fit abled people, to privilege what they can do over what people like us can do. It would seem that only particular kinds and amounts of contribution to family and society will do. Setting up “typical” as “best” is just about always problematic, and there is no exception here.

And if you must be disabled, there’s a battler’s way to do that, too. Complaining is not the Australian way, you must be stoic and soldier on. Never admit that you need assistance, because not being able to do everything on your own is weak. Having to rely on anyone else is a matter of shame. If the Aussie battler must be self-sufficient, and a source of strength and support to those around them, then what of those people who require that support? The Aussie battler idea devalues those the battler is actually working for: wives, children… disabled friends and relatives, perhaps. It’s not that those people are valuable and worth fighting for, it’s that the battler gets to prove their toughness and reliability. For whichever group, it doesn’t leave a lot of room to just be human: needing help, giving help, everyone deserving of love and support regardless. That’s what archetypes do: set up impossible tasks and cut out those on the margins. It’s okay to lend a hand to a mate as a one-off, but you better get back on your feet straight away. Assuming you have that hand, and you are able to get back on your feet, of course (oh, bodily metaphors, how much you do assume).

In an effort to keep this less than novel length, I’m not going to explain any more about Australia’s notions of ideal citizenship, but if you’re interested, you can try looking up larrikins, the ANZAC spirit and mateship.

Do you have specific cultural features like the battler ideal that make life a bit tougher when you’re disabled?

Guest Post: Negotiating Disableism

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This is a guest from from Renee of Womanist Musings.

Disableism is very new to me. My chronic illnesses not only changed my status, but forced me to see just how pervasive ableism is. It has been a huge learning process, as I have sought to reduce the ways in which my language and behaviour support ableism. I have a physical disability which has caused me to more aware of the ways in which society is structured to benefit those that are able bodied, but it has not helped me to understand the ways in which those that are neurologically atypical face discrimination. Common phrases that I used to utter like bat shit crazy, must be erased from my vocabulary. I have struggled not to say that someone is blind to something, rather that pointing out that they are unable to see or understand.

What I have learned is that ridding oneself of disableism, is a process that is not easy but so very necessary. Each time I am reduced by the assumption of another, it causes me to examine the ways in which my language or behaviour support this. It took time to understand that though I am disabled, I still exist with privilege in certain areas. I can hear, I can see, I can get up and walk if I have to, I have all of my limbs, and people do not dismiss what I am saying because they deem me non-sensical due to being neurologically atypical. As long as they are not referring to my specific disability, many are quite comfortable displaying their disabliesm, as though it does not effect me.

I have sat and listened to the complaints regarding the accommodations that those who are disabled must have to participate in society. While most will not scream and carry on about a ramp, even a small thing, like getting more time to hand in a paper at school, is enough to cause a rant about favouritism and unfair standards. Disableism occurs when people feel as though they cannot take advantage of their able bodied privileges. It occurs when people resist that a task can be completed differently to allow a greater participation.

This weekend, on the way to Destructions hockey game, I ran into an old friend. She had not seen me since I contracted my illnesses but her first comment was that she had to get herself a scooter. To her it seemed a cool toy, while to me it is a reflection of all the things I cannot do. There is a man in my neighbourhood who uses a manual wheelchair and he has commented on more than one occasion, that he wished he had a motorized scooter to get around in. Though I am hurt by the ableist comments of a former friend, my class privilege is part of what allowed that pain. When I needed a scooter to facilitate my activities, we were able to afford one.

Though I am differently abled, I am barely at the 101 level. I went through anger, denial and finally acceptance but negotiating this life is something I must begin again like a newborn babe. I have isolated myself because I viewed my body as the great betrayer, refusing to see the ways in which I could and can still participate. When someone is racist against me, it is easy to find my voice because this is something that I have lived with all of my life, whereas; disableism, even when clearly directed at me, brings about silence and sense of shame. For now I count on the unhusband to speak when I cannot and this again is a marker of how blessed I really am. Even in times of weakness and sorrow, I can count on my family to do the heavy lifting. When I need comfort, each one of them is quick to run to my aid. They may not understand what I am feeling but my pain is enough for them to intervene or try to comfort.

I have learned that disableism cannot be reduced to a simple Black/White binary. Even as I struggle against it, I perpetuate it. Just as we understand that society is inherently racist, classist, or sexist, it is also highly ableist. If this were not an absolute truth, the various barriers that block or limit participation would not exist. My task is to now unlearn that which I have accepted as truth. For me it becomes difficult when I begin to look beyond the limited experiences I have had as a differently abled person. There are issues of race, class, gender and even differing abilities to contend with. This task would not be so difficult today, had I made a conscious decision to acknowledge my various privileges in the past. I allowed my privilege to dictate what I learned and studied, thereby reinforcing the very hierarchies that I claimed to struggle against. Today I understand is that there is no universal experience and it is this very rainbow of difference that I must commit myself to embracing.

Recommended Reading for October 28

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Join Marlee Matlin in Demanding Captioning of Online Video Content

Academy-Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin has been using her Twitter account to actively lobby for captioning of all the digital video content that is flooding onto the Web. The issue has rightfully hit a boiling point for the deaf community because Netflix and other services are now streaming video online without captions.

The National Association of the Deaf sent a letter to Netflix Oct. 5 complaining about the lack of captioning for “The Wizard of Oz,” which was available for download free at the Netflix Web site as a promotion.

Matlin points out the irony of a recent video about the Helen Keller statue unveiling at the U.S. Capitol on the CNN Web site that has no captions!

Related: How to add Subtitles and Translations to your Vids, Captioning Sucks!.

Ableism in 30 Rock [Includes an embedded video from HULU that is not available outside of the US]:

A lot of feminists love 30 Rock. As they should: it’s a funny show, and a rarity for television – a women-fueled enterprise with a two main female characters, written and conceived of by a woman. That is Cool, full stop. And 30 Rock has many deft explorations of the many facets of being a white, middle-class, straight, woman with able privilege. But persons with disabilities don’t fare quite as well.

30 Rock trades on ableism on an almost episodic basis. The show’s disrespect towards folks with disabilites, particularly those with visible disabilities, is constant and unrelenting from side gags to b-plots to regular characters. 30 Rock constantly places bodies with able privilege in a position of supremacy above bodies with visible disabilities through humiliation and devaluation. Its abuse of persons with disabilities in the name of comedy goes beyond the casual ableist language like “lame” or “retarded”. Such language is unfortunately ubiquitous to even shows that have been critical of ableism (eg, The Office has critiqued ableism through Michael Scott’s typical obliviousness on a couple of occasions, but, as in life, “lame” and occasionally “retarded” is still a consistent presence) but 30 Rock’s ableism is constant, humiliating, and dehumanizing.

An Example of an Article about FSD [FSD = Female Sexual Disfunction]

I’m still not fully understanding the claim that FSD is profitable. If that’s the case, why is it so difficult for me, someone who falls into the pain category, to find a doctor who is equipped to handle me? My experience is that often, my first line of defense doctors get tired of seeing me after I don’t respond to conventional treatments. I think right now my local gyno probably never wants to see me again.

The article goes on to talk about hysteria. For the most part I don’t find this section of the article to be inherently problematic. Except for the part about “pelvic congestion,” being in quotes, since it is mentioned as a real thing in Heal Pelvic Pain (p. 16)

Identifing:

But the real reason it followed me and stayed there in the back of my mind was the times I thought, “Wait. That’s me.” And then my guilt complexes came in full-force, telling me no, you can’t call yourself that, that’s for people with real problems, any problem you have is just in your head. And maybe most of them are in my head, but well, it doesn’t make them any less real. It doesn’t make it any less hard to me to function or to try and figure out how to fit into society. It doesn’t make my very concrete limitations disappear.

In the news:

Clem7 Tunnel Labeled a death trap for the disabled [Australia]:

BRISBANE’S Clem7 tunnel could be a death trap for the aged and infirm, a disability group has warned.

Queensland’s Spinal Injuries Association said the 4.8km-long tunnel’s emergency exits were too far apart and too narrow for people with mobility problems to escape an underground disaster.

…

Mr Mayo argues there are no design rules for tunnels but believes this infrastructure should follow the Australian Building Code which mandates emergency exits at every 60m in buildings.

Why I Identify As Disabled

activism, identity, language, mental health, social attitudes

For a long time, I’ve struggled with whether or not to identify as ‘disabled’ (or as a ‘person with a disability.’) It’s only very recently that I’ve identified myself that way in my own thoughts, and even more recently that I’ve begun identifying that way publicly. (As in, my name listed as a contributor to this blog was pretty much my first public identification as a person with a disability.) Because I know a lot of other people who are unsure if they qualify as a person with a disability or are reluctant to identify as such, I thought it might be relevant to talk about some of my hesitations to identify this way and what finally convinced me that I do identify that way and why it was important to me to do so publicly.

My first reluctance came from what seems to be a very common concern – I did not think I was disabled ‘enough’ to identify as a person with a disability. At this point in my life, my disability is fairly well managed by medication and the approximately 900 million hours of therapy I’ve been through. My psychiatrist sees me once every 12 months to check on my blood levels and spend 10 minutes with me checking in, and other than that, I’m totally disengaged from the mental health care system. (Except for the pharmacy.) To everyone except those who know me extremely well, I pass as neurotypical. I work full time at a professional job. I live independently and manage my own household and finances. I often have days where the only thing relevant to my disability is the 30 seconds at night when I take my pills.  Surely I cannot be disabled!

But I realized that view erases the very real aspects of my disability that I continue to experience. The periods in my past when I was more severely impaired by my disability (including my hospitalization) still exist and are still a part of me, no matter how well managed my disability is now. And the cyclical nature of many mental health disabilities means that while I’m at a relative peak now, I could find myself in a deep trough at any time. And there are limitations involved even with the minimal treatment I’m receiving – I have to make sure I have a dose of meds with me in case I sleep at a friends’ one night, I have to deal with the punishing withdrawal symptoms when I forget to take a dose on evening, I have the dry mouth and the flaky skin and the lump of belly fat that are side effects of one of my meds. (And there’s my monthly tangle with the pharmacy refill system.)

More importantly, I know that if I tell anyone my diagnosis, if they find out about the hospitalization or the 900 million hours of therapy or the meds I’m taking now, I change in their eyes. It’s easier for them to dismiss my emotions as an artifact of my disorder and thus irrelevant. It’s easier for them to patronize me because they assume I’m not capable of taking care of myself. However I think of myself, I know they will think of me as a person with a disability. (Actually, I suspect many of them would think of me as a “crazy bitch.”)

I’ve also struggled with identifying as a person with a disability because of the split between mental and physical disabilities. Even when I began identifying as a person with a mental health disorder, I still didn’t think of that as being a person with a disability. I thought people with physical disabilities focused mainly on physical access issues, which weren’t at all relevant to me. I don’t need reserved parking spaces, I can walk up stairs, I don’t need a special restroom.

Then I realized how artificial the distinction is between mental and physical disabilities. When I have a panic attack, it affects me physically. When I am depressed, I have no energy and I can’t walk up stairs. I also realized the enormous overlap – lots of people have both mental and physical disabilities, and it’s common for the treatments for physical disabilities (like narcotic painkillers) to have cognitive effects. I also started talking to people with physical disabilities and heard them concerned with much more than physical access which, while very important, is not the sole focus.

All of that is not why I began identifying as a person with a disability, though. I thought of myself as an individual struggling with a very specific and individualized problem. I know other people with the same diagnosis as me, and all of us have had very different experiences and very different approaches to treatment. So I thought of myself as an exceptionally special snowflake that had some exceptionally special difficulties for me to go through, difficulties that nobody else had or would experience. So I thought about my mental health issues as they affected me personally, how they had changed my life, how they had made me the person I am today. But because they were so inherently unique, because nobody had gone through exactly what I’d gone through, I tended to think of my disorder not even in terms of my diagnosis, but in terms of “the very special snowflake disorder that only applies to me.”

Thinking of it that way meant that all the negative reactions I got, all the judgments I got, all the dismissals and marginalizations and refusals to take me seriously, all the hoops I had to jump through to get what other people had – they were just about me. Personally. They were not about how people responded to mental health problems, they were not about how people respond to and discriminate against people with disabilities as a group, they were about ME. I had brought them upon myself because of my disordered behavior, because my special snowflake-ness was so annoying or intolerable that people had no choice but to write me off.

Amandaw recently told me that she thought of disability as a political identity and I strongly agree. Thinking of myself as part of a group of people who routinely encountered oppression on the basis of their disabilities meant that the reactions I got, the disregard, the disgust thinly veiled as pity, the refusal to deal with my emotions and ideas – that wasn’t because of me. That was because I was part of a group subjected to systemic and institutionalized discrimination and oppression. And it was wrong. But it wasn’t until I started thinking of myself as part of that group and thinking about how these systems affected all of us that I needed a term for “people who are discriminated against or oppressed by our culture and institutions in the same way I am.” It wasn’t until I started thinking of it as a group issue, rather than an individual issue, that I needed a word for that group.

These systems that oppress us don’t care one whit about my special snowflake-ness. They don’t care about how well I’m doing now. These systems exclude and marginalize and dismiss and mock me based on my disability status without taking into account any of the individual variations in my life and my disability. And when I hear a caseworker explain that “you can always tell who is crazy because they live in cardboard boxes and tell people it’s a palace and they’re the king,” it feels like a slap in the face whether or not she knows I’m disabled. It’s about the systems, the institutionalized attitudes. It’s not about me.

Even after realizing all of this, I was still reluctant to identify publicly as a person with a disability. I would share details of my mental health history and the effects of my mental health conditions, but I still wouldn’t come out and identify myself as a person with a disability. At least, until I began talking and working with the amazing women who are my co-contributors on this blog. Because that’s when I realized that identifying publicly gave me power. Gave us power. Allowed us to come together as women who experience oppression and discrimination on the basis of our disabilities. Allowed us to work together to identify and address these problems, to find others affected in the same way, and to come together to try to change things. Thinking of myself as a super special snowflake made that kind of collaboration and support impossible, because nobody could be in my special snowflake group with me.

So while I’ll always think of myself as a pretty damn special snowflake, I also now think of myself as a woman with a disability. And identifying that way has allowed me access to power and support that I don’t think I could have found otherwise.

Note: I’m going to moderate this comment thread with a heavy hand to ensure that there is absolutely no policing of disability. If I self-identify as a person with a disability, I do not owe you the information of my diagnosis, my health history, or my therapy records to ‘prove’ that I am disabled. Similarly, I will respect how others self-identify if they are doing so in good faith and expect other commenters to do the same.

Guest Post: Why I Say I’m Okay

guest post

Arwyn lives in the United States’ Pacific Northwest with The Man, the Boychick, bipolar type 2, and migraines. When the intersection of her neurology and the kyriarchal society she lives in allows, she writes feminist thoughts inspired by parenting a presumably-straight white probably-male at Raising My Boychick.

Arwyn previously wrote a guest post for us: Why I didn’t celebrate World Mental Health Day.

I am a very out person about my mood disorder. I wrote about it and talked about it in all my college applications and interviews; I mention it to everyone I know whenever relevant (and it often is); it’s in my bio here and on most social networking sites. I am an advocate for openness, for honesty, for forthrightness, for being out and proud as a person with a “mental illness.”

And yet, if you ask me how I am on any given day — even today, even when my sanity and stability are more potential and historical than current and actual –, I’ll probably say I’m OK. If you’re close to me, I might also tell you what’s going on today; if you know my mood history, I might tell you how else I’ve been feeling recently. But whether with a “more or less” appended to it or not, I will start with, and likely end with, “I’m OK.”

Why?

It is an affirmation; a statement of intention; a prayer to the universe. The more I say it, the more true it is likely to be — and oh do I want it to be. I need it to be.

It is a philosophical statement. Fundamentally, I am OK. I am privileged to have a comparatively easy life, with an understanding partner, a beautiful shining child, and the resources to do most of the things I need to do to be OK in the long run.

It is a temporal anomaly. I live in the moment; most of the time, I try to remember that, and it is especially important to do so when I my mood has not been stable. When you ask how I am, if you are worthy of an honest answer, I take a deep breath, center myself, and probably find that in this moment, I am OK. Stable? Not so much, but stability is a product of well-being over time: in the now when you ask me, I am OK (if you are a person who cares about me, you asking and caring about the answer may be enough for me to be OK in that moment). Now is all I ever have; now’s okayness may be the only answer you will get.

And, it is protection. I do not always have the spoons to let my mask down, to let you in — even if you love me and I love you –, to get into all the ways I might not be completely OK. Answering any other way might make me not OK, and frankly I’m tired of being unwell — bone-deep, wish-I-could-weep, wanna-sleep-until-it-goes-away-for-keeps tired of it.

None of these should give you the feeling you have any right to a different answer; none of these should leave you thinking “I should just push harder, she’ll let her guard down and admit her damage if I just say ‘really?’ skeptically enough.” I will tell you I might answer differently to “how’ve you been?” or “how’s life going?” or “how has that blighter bipolar been treating you today?” But I might not.

I have the right to be OK; you do not have the right to demand the laundry list of all the ways I’ve fucked up today. Talk with me: I’m an open kind of gal, and if I’m up to it and you’re open to it, odds are good you’ll eventually hear all about what’s been going on with me. But if we’ve just started talking, and you ask how I am? If you love me, if you purport to care about me at all, let me say I’m OK, and let that be enough for you.

Recommended Reading for October 27

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I’m writing this four days before you’ll see it. (I write most of my posts from the past, due to my schedule.) I mention this so people know that I’m not ignoring recent posts, I’m just not seeing them yet.

Disability & Desire: The Dance of the Heart – This is a pointer link. The actual article is PDF.

From the article:

In 1996, at the age of 24, I found myself in hospital, with empty walls and broken dreams colouring my days. My partner at the time, Janine Clayton, and I were caught up in local taxi violence in Cape Town, South Africa, with members of rival taxi organisations firing at each other. The driver of the taxi we were in died, and my spine was severed by a bullet. My body told me long before doctors had the courage to admit it. I was paralysed from the chest down. During those endless afternoons with little else than my mind to entertain me, I contemplated the extent of my loss. Perhaps what struck me deepest at the time was my conviction that I would never be desired or loved again. I felt that my body had become damaged goods, my sexuality erased.

As time went by, I began to dismantle my perceptions by analsying their origins. I recognised that my mental picture of a person with a disability was that of someone in need of care, someone to be pitied, someone who certainly had no real claim to love or any kind of fulfilling life. The basis of my beliefs was largely informed by society’s consensus on people with disabilities … these were people who were mostly invisible, unless as beggars on the street or patients

When Simply Stating Your Truth Isn’t Enough:

What matters, then, is what you do with what you call facts, experiences, truths and ideas. It’s how you handle your perspectives on gender, race, ethnicity, class, and disability. It’s the way that you align the facts (or not) with societal preconceptions about those who are somehow “different.”

It doesn’t matter whether or not you, personally, don’t share the stigmatizing impulses that lead to discrimination and hatred; members of your audience most certainly do. As an artist/performer/writer/…, you have a responsibility to treat those facts in such a way that you don’t perpetuate the beliefs that enable harm. You might even take on the responsibility to change the way that people think and act. Or, then again, perhaps not.

Accessibility: The Soundtrack of my Life

We would never expect the average able bodied person to push themselves to the point of pain to participate in a public event. Whether I am watching my son play hockey or considering taking my boys to the Santa Claus parade, I must consider how much pain I am able to live with to participate. Differently abled parents are no different than able bodied parents. We want to be a part of our children’s lives and yet the barriers that exist often make this impossible.

Those that parent with a disability also bear the social stigma of being unfit. Social services has intervened on many occasions because of questions about our ability to parent. Disablism in this case is supported by concern for the children. It never occurs to many, that if the world were more accessible, that there would be no reason for concern. The fault is not with the body in question but with the makeup of the world.

Pain vs a Life:

Friday morning the group I was with wound up discussing a scenario of tension between the demands of being healthy and the desire to live life. I’d love to have both good health and the ability to pattern my life in the manner I want. I don’t. (And I would argue that none of us really do.) I live in a body that will experience pain if I try to do too much. I consider myself lucky to know about where that line lies. And sometimes I choose to push and bring extra pain meds. And sometimes I choose not to push and to be pain free. There’s no magic formula. I try to balance the life I want against what I expect the physical costs of extreme activity to be.

And, this comment was left by Amanda of Ballastexistenz and I’m just going to C&P the whole thing because it is full of good reading material:

I’d like to present some links that could be useful further reading on these topics….

The first one is from The Perorations of Lady Bracknell. She addresses some really common misconceptions about the social and medical models. Her article is useful for people new to these ideas, many people not new to them, and especially anyone who has ever believed that the social model means impairments don’t cause problems on their own, or that the medical model is the model that good medical professionals ought to use. The link is Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.

Then there’s some things by a writer named Cal Montgomery. She’s cognitively and physically disabled, but has been pressured by physically disabled people to pass as purely physically disabled (the same thing happens to me sometimes). She frequently criticizes the entire concept of “invisible disability”, saying that it makes it sound like the “invisibility” is happening as a trait of the disabled person rather than a lack of understanding in the particular observer. I see very few other people tackling that idea and I think she’s absolutely correct. She talks about it in a lot of places, but her two best articles on the topic are A Hard Look At Invisible Disability and Tangled in the Invisibility Cloak.

I’ve been challenged enough (told I’m making crap up, basically) when I say that autistic people who can pass for non-autistic are usually visible if you understand what to look for, that at one point I got fed up when writing a post that dealt with that, and wrote up a detailed description of precisely what combinations of things are visible to me that are invisible to people who have no idea what to look for. (I then got criticized for writing a “DIY autie-spotting guide”, but that was absolutely not my intention. I was just trying to be concrete about something to avoid being accused of lying.) For people who have trouble imagining how something could be invisible to them but visible to people who know what to look for, this post I wrote might be useful. (Note that I use a lot of terms in it to refer to other people’s perceptions, that I would never use myself.)

If you have links you think are relevant, don’t hesitate to email me: anna@disabledfeminists.com Please note my schedule means I may not see your email for a few days.

Scooterblogging: I’m Right Here

autonomy, i'm right here, social attitudes

(This was originally posted at Hoyden About Town on July 29, 2009, and has been edited for FWD)

I got a scooter just a few months ago. It’s red, and shiny, and its name is Smaug. It’s made my life vastly better. No longer do I struggle to walk the block to school pickup, and I can zip up to post a letter or get some library books or go to a shop without getting into the car then plodding along out of the carpark. My life is still very limited based on inability to cope with sitting up, noises, lights, interactions for any length of time; but the world’s accessibility has still taken a big jump for me.

Within a week or two of getting the scooter, which was within perhaps 2-3 hours of scootertime, I had my first Talking-to-my-companion-and-not-me experience.

It was a couple of weeks ago. The Lad (aged 6) and I were meandering down a suburban footpath on the way back from the postbox. We were chatting and laughing about life, and he was resting his hand on my armrest, which helps stop him getting his feet tangled under my wheels.

A woman was walking by the other way. She looked at the Lad, and said in a sickly sweet voice,

“Oh, you’re a good boy. A good, GOOD boy.”

And kept walking.

…yeah.

Disability Blog Carnival 59 is up!

intersectionality, recommended reading

The fabulous and amazing Liz Henry has up a variety of awesome posts for the 59th Disability Blog Carnival!

The theme for the Disability Blog Carnival #59 is Work and Disability. It’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Thank you to Penny from the Disability Studies Blog for co-ordinating the Disability Blog Carnival through 60 issues!

Thank you all for your contributions! All through October, they buoyed me up and gave me food for thought. I felt intense pride to be part of this very loosely knit online community of thinkers and writers.

Blog Carnivals are totally my favourite way of finding new bloggers to read, so be certain to check it out!

Also, next month, we’ll be hosting the Disability Carnival here at FWD/Forward. The optional topic is disability and intersectionality. Email your links to carnival@disabledfeminists.com, and check back here on November 19th!

Recommended Reading for October 26

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Linkblurt: We Are Immobilised

A disabled college student is having trouble getting around campus, after someone stole his motorized wheelchair. […] Horus had locked it up and left it charging overnight. When he returned to campus, it was gone – all that was left was the charger. […] Horus’ wheelchair cost about $5,000 and that means whoever stole it faces grand theft charges.

“It’s really difficult for me to replace it. To replace it, it would take me like a year,” Horus said.

Health Care is an anti-racist issue [US]:

See, I’m one of the 25 million Americans who are underinsured. I have health insurance — pay $350/month for it — as part of a new policy that I switched to back in January when I quit my 9 to 5 to become a freelancer/fulltime writer for awhile. I’m pretty healthy and only in my thirties, but I have a family history of fibroids (like 50% of black women). So every year when I get my annual physical, I also get an ultrasound to check for those. This year the test showed small fibroids — too small to worry about, really, not even requiring treatment, though I need to keep an eye on them in case they grow. No biggie, I thought; my doctor’s efforts at preventative care had done what they were supposed to do, and detected a potential problem early enough that I can fix it easily if necessary. Health care at its best.

When two whole cakes ain’t enough arsenal…

I was leaning against a sign that read “Bus Stops Here” and jamming to some Dresden Dolls, my trusty guide dog sitting politely at my left leg. He laid down impatiently as the minute hands ticked and still no bus in sight. Then, out of what most docs wouldn’t call peripheral vision I spotted a figure stooping for a pet-by.

What is a pet-by, you ask? It’s when a knowing pedestrian sneaks in a pet or smooch or otherwise grossly boundaries-crossing form of affection at an unsuspecting service animal. Not to be mistaken with human grabbings or other forms of harassment but nonetheless devious and irritating for both animal and human handler.

Without missing a beat and sans usual snark I said loud enough for passerby to hear that “that was a shitty thing to do.” There, I said it. That was a shitty thing for person to do. Ask first, respect my answer, move on. Clearly knowing petting wasn’t allowed, ze sneaked on by, hoping I wouldn’t notice. Too bad my dog alerts me, not liking unknown human touch too much.

Where Neurodiversity Meets Feminist Theory: Part I, Part II, Part III:

Another area I see feminism and disability-rights perspectives reinforcing each other is on the question of caregiving. This might not seem like an obvious choice, since you often see feminists and disabled self-advocates at odds over this issue: when disabled people assert our right to adequate care in our own homes (or wherever we choose), feminists argue that we are also claiming entitlement to the underpaid or unpaid labor of women. (See the feminist blogswarm over Ashley X for ample evidence of this conflict).

But when you think about it, modern industrial capitalist society’s way of dealing with children, disabled people, elderly adults and every other group that needs help with daily tasks is exactly what you’d expect from a society in which women are invisible second-class citizens. When women are not valued as highly as men, women’s work is not regarded as real work, and obligations that fall under the umbrella of “women’s work” (say, care for the old, the sick and the disabled) will be more likely to be dismissed as “family responsibilities” in which government meddling is unwarranted.

Post-Trauma.net is “here to help you access information about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and related mental health information.” They have a list of resources available.

Umbrella Terms

101, introspective, social attitudes, , , ,

My pet peeve: Labeling “othered” groups as though everyone who falls under that umbrella term has the same needs to achieve full inclusion in society.

For obvious reasons, I’m going to focus on the umbrella of people with disabilities/disabled people right now, but these thoughts have been heavily influenced by reading posts from GLTB activists about trans* inclusion (or lack thereof) and blog carnivals like the Asian Women’s Carnival and International Blog Against Racism Week.

Over the summer, while I was in the process of ranting to Don about my disappointment with our current government’s inclusion of people with disabilities, I was stopped on the street and invited to a talk. “Is it fully accessible?”, I asked.

“Oh yes,” responded the person inviting us. “We have a wheelchair ramp.”

“Do you have material available in braille? Do you have a Sign interpreter?”

“No.”

“Well then,” I snapped. “I guess you aren’t fully accessible, are you?”

(As I said, I was just ranting about this when we were interrupted with this invitation, so it was already on my mind. People need to pick better times to interrupt me. I’d like to think that normally I’d be more polite.)

There’s a certain hierarchy of accessibility that “everyone” knows about. If you have a ramp, you’re good! That this doesn’t address the needs of any number of disabled people is irrelevant – the main image of people with disabilities is that person (usually white and male) in a wheelchair.

So, in the effort to be inclusive without thinking thoroughly about what disability means, and who is included when making accommodations, we end up with situations like this one, from the comments on a post on disability at Feministe:

Willow:

Fire alarms. So it’s great and all when fire alarms have bright flashing lights in addition to the blaring sound, so people with hearing loss (like my dad) will know if the alarm goes off and be able to evacuate, right? Yeah, well, it so happens that I have photosensitive epilepsy, and the light on pretty much every alarm cycles on a frequency that triggers my seizures. So if the alarm goes off, not only do I have a seizure, which sucks in the first place, but I also cannot evacuate the building because I am either (a) unconscious and convulsing or (b) in “zombie mode” and unable to navigate the world safely.

…

I always feel so, so guilty about advocating for accommodations for people with epilepsy that will make the place unsafe for people with other disabilities…but at the same time, I have EXACTLY THE SAME RIGHT to be able to be there and/or be safe there. It seems as though some types of disabled people–deaf, blind, and/or in a wheelchair, in particular–are privileged over others. I lived on campus as an undergraduate, and when the school installed a new fire alarm system that included flashing lights, I was told that they would have someone “come check on me” whenever the alarm went off. Excuse me? You can’t have someone come check on the zero deaf students in the building but the three of us with photosensitive epilepsy have to wait until the fire department shows up? Not to mention the risks that come with having a seizure in the first place (such as, for example, death)?

Thoughtless accommodations, but gosh darn it, we’re “accessible”.

I know next to nothing about epilepsy, and my knowledge of deafness is limited, so I have no idea what sorts of accommodations would balance both the need for a flashing alarm and the need not to cause seizures in people. But that’s not my point. The point is that full inclusiveness, rather than going for the “easy” solution, would actually consider those needs and work them both in. It would be working with people with disabilities to design safety systems that would accommodate everyone. (Deaf people can also have epilepsy, after all.)

Grouping “othered” populations under this umbrella term allows the “general” population to decide “Oh, I’ve included a ramp, I’ve got a flashing light, and there’s braille on my elevator buttons, I’m set.” But we don’t all have those needs.

We’ve been grouped together as having the same needs both because it’s easier for the “general” population to decide they’ve “done enough”, and because we have greater strength in both self- and group-advocating when we band together. But, just like when other “othered” groups band together, things get left out, put aside, maybe next yeared.

I’m still mulling all of this over. My main activism-related issues are The Big Ones – my city is full of “just one steps” and has a serious lack of Sign Language interpreters. But right now, I’m sitting in a room with fluorescent lighting (severe migraine trigger). It looks like the fire alarm is of the flashing-light type. The door is pretty darn heavy. I haven’t seen a single TTY- pay phone on campus. And probably several other things that I’ve missed.

It’s almost like the easiest, umbrella-term solution isn’t the best one.

I’m still thinking about a lot of this stuff – I certainly don’t have all the answers. Feel free to get into it in the comments. (My schedule is such that I won’t be able to respond to anything until evening my time at the earliest, although other moderators will be approving comments for me.)