Recommended Reading for December 2

“[L]ook at who they are and how many of them are saying it”

When you ask for help, and other people assume it’s motivated by your being lazy or just a smartass, pretty quickly you learn to stop asking. If you started out wanting to please, and people around you keep jumping to negative conclusions about your motives, you may come to believe that you’re really a lazy smartass who could really do things without help (or clarification) if you tried.* If you repeately get told that you’re more than smart enough to figure out and do things on your own, you might start thinking this is so. If you’re told that you’re obviously too stupid to do something properly, you might believe it.

I really identified with some of Dave Spicer’s descriptions of how he learned to cope and make sense of things, growing up as an undiagnosed autistic.

Guess what I want for Christmas!

Yesterday, I read an interesting post on FWD/Forward, called Cerebral Palsy Humour? Not so much, in which the author Esté Yarmosh writes about the offensive pity crap she found on Café Press and Zazzle when she was looking for humourous graphics about disability.

In the comments, Codeman points towards even worse examples, Animals 4 A Cause, which is by far the most godawful “awareness” merch I’ve ever seen. It features daft pictorial puns like cartoon dogs that “Piss on Autism”, bulls that “Bully Autism”, an “Autism Stinks” skunk, and so on.

Ugh.

Wheelchair Tourism covered at conference

Dr Stumbo said her presentation would cover leisure, health and disabilities and remind tourist operators and hospitality managers about the importance of accessibility.

She said there was a misconception among these operators and managers that people with a disability did not use leisure centres or visit tourist attractions.

“They say, ‘we don’t have anyone with a disability come to our program or facility so why should we bother to become accessible?’

“This is a chicken-egg dilemma. Of course they serve people with disabilities. They are just unaware of the extent of it.”

Awareness Days

Hey, Hey, Hey, it’s Disability Awareness Day! Everyone gets a chance to see what it’s really like to have a disability! Yank out those blindfolds, grab cotton to stuff in your ears, and plop yourself in a wheelchair to navigate around an obstacle course! To get the most out of Disability Awareness Day, it is important to try almost all the disabilities on for size.

…

No doubt about it, life with a disability is a tragedy! Why these poor gimps, blinks, and others would be better off dead! They are so courageous and yet pitiful as they go about their daily routines. Yep, I’m so glad it is their fate and not mine . . .

Sadly, these are the misconceptions that the public holds about those of us who live with disabilities. Disability simulations do nothing but reinforce these negative stereotypes about persons with disabilities.

To Everything There Is a Season

It is not the film makers fault they have tapped into “disability = scary = violent = bad” and helped promote that concept in public consciousness. It is the fault of the disabled person pointing it out; that they’re refusing to rise above it. {Strong Black Woman, Strong Black Man, You’re So Strong If I Had That I Would Kill Myself, Model Minority, So Hard Working} They are refusing to not change the world, starting with themselves; namely their outlook, attitude and tone to something more positive.

Which frankly I read as ‘you should be less confrontational’, even though the original post wasn’t. It was simply pointing out a trope.

But more than that, something I do not think the individuals debating with the OP seem able to recognize, the tropes about what behavior is abnormal and thus scary and potentially violent and bad are actually based on either exaggerated behaviors within minority stereotypes OR they are based on behaviors regarding human states medicine in the past had no answers for; Those behaviors of course representing a gambit of symptomatology within another minority.

And, just another reminder that I’m always looking for posts to include in this. Because I’m only sporadically able to get into comments due to my schedule, it’s best to email me. anna@disabledfeminists.com . Feel free to send me your own links – I’m all for self-promotion!