Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

Elizabeth Switaj at Gender Across Borders: What does a (disabled) feminist [poet] look like?

For mainstream feminists who are looking to get a piece of the pie rather than to change it into something more nutritious, disability is the last thing they want to be associated with. To put it more generously, women often feel that in order to be treated as fully human let alone to succeed professionally they need to prove that they are more skilled and more generally able than men.

Our Bodies, Ourselves: Want to Participate in Updating “Our Bodies, Ourselves”?

Our Bodies Ourselves is seeking up to two dozen women to participate in an online discussion on sexual relationships.

tigtog at Hoyden About Town: And still they defend him

Much of the language that anti-vax advocates use about their children with autism is also breathtakingly negative. They are describing their own children, in public and often with the child right there beside them, as “soulless” and emotionally/physically destructive creatures who have ruined their dreams of a normal family life, as children who have had their “real self” kidnapped by autism.

Patrick Alan Coleman at Blogtown (The Portland Mercury): Breaking: Does Whole Foods’ New “No Fatties” Employee Incentive Program

We’ve received a call back from Amy Klare of BOLI who is still concerned, despite Whole Foods promise to look at disabled employees’ participation in the program, suggesting Whole Foods may still open themselves up to liability from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“How are they going to evaluate how a person has a disability?” she asked. “How are they going to do determine that?”

She was also concerned that many of the health indicators, or bio-metrics as Whole Foods calls them, may not be as neutral as they seem to be. “This could also have a disproportionate affect on African Americans or other racial minorities,” she said, noting the prevalence of high blood pressure in African American communities.

Cold Snapdragon: What Disability Teaches

There are other things [disability] taught you as well. In relation to yourself. In relation to your family, your friends, and all those other acquaintances who populate your life.

The Border Watch: Community service recognised [editorial note: Heavily othering language. And how nice to know that PWD don’t have the “worries” of inaccessibility, discrimination, hate, poverty, abuse, rape and murder. Can I live in this world? ~L ]

But on Australia Day, Graham [Bignell] finally gave in and accepted the Australia Day Citizen of the Year Award? […]

Graham, who is also a carer for two people with disabilities, said he would continue to work with people with disabilities.

“It is the friendship. Life is great for them and they don’t have all the worries of life. It rubs off on you and you just feel so good in their company,” he said.

MK News: Oxygen in aeroplanes should be free as air

John Mugford, 58, from Emerson Valley, has enlisted the help of local MP Dr Phyllis Starkey to petition airline companies to stop preventing passengers from bringing their own oxygen cylinders on to planes and charging hundreds of pounds extra for them to use the oxygen that the airline provides. […]

He has added his voice to The British Lung Foundation’s ‘Oxygen on Planes’ campaign, which is encouraging other airlines to follow the example now being set by Thomson, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic in ensuring that people with a lung condition do not have to pay extra. […] “To refuse patients the right to carry medical equipment that has been certified as safe, and then to charge large sums for alternative provision, is outrageous.”