17 | May | 2010 | FWD/Forward

RMJ is a twentysomething with OCD who grew up in Kansas and currently lives in Virginia. She works in education and loves cooking, cats, and television. She blogs about feminism and stuff at Deeply Problematic. RMJ’s previous guest post: Athletes with Disabilities: Arm-Wrestlers as Exceptions and Inspirations.

Ableist Word Profile is an ongoing FWD/Forward series in which we explore ableism and the way it manifests in language usage.

Here’s what this series is about: Examining word origins, the way in which ableism is unconsciously reinforced, the power that language has.

Here’s what this series is not about: Telling people which words they can use to define their own experiences, rejecting reclamatory word usage, telling people which words they can and cannot use.

You don’t necessarily have to agree that a particular profiled word or phrase is ableist; we ask you to think about the way in which the language that we use is influenced, both historically and currently, by ableist thought.

Please note that this post contains ableist language used for the purpose of discussion and criticism; you can get an idea from the title of the kind of ableist language which is going to be included in the discussion, and if that type of language is upsetting or triggering for you, you may want to skip this post

Like every ism, ableism is absorbed through the culture on a more subconscious level, embedding itself in our language like a guerrilla force. Crazy is one of the most versatile and frequently used slurs, a word used sometimes directly against persons with mental disabilities (PWMD), sometimes indirectly against persons with able privilege, sometimes descriptive and value-neutral, and sometimes in a superficially positive light.

As a direct slur against PWMD:

Crazy as a word is directly and strongly tied to mental disability. It’s used as a slur directly against PWMD both to discredit and to marginalize. If a person with a history of mental illness wants to do something, for good or bad, that challenges something, that person’s thoughts, arguments, and rhetoric are dismissed because that person is “crazy”. If a PWMD is going through pain because of something unrelated to their mental state, culpability for the pain is placed solely on their being crazy. Even if their suffering is related to their disability, it is, in a catch-22, dismissed due to their “craziness”; the PWMD is expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they want to be viewed as a valid human being.

Examples:
“I can’t believe Britney shaved her head. Crazy bitch.”
“Not only is Dworkin cissexist, she’s fucking crazy!”

As a way to discredit neurotypical people:

Crazy is also often used to describe a neurotypical person that the speaker disagrees with. It’s used to discredit able-privileged persons by saying that they are actually mentally disabled – and what could be worse than that?

Examples:
“Tom Cruise is fucking crazy. Seriously, he’s batshit insane about Prozac, yelling at Matt Lauer and shit.”
“Did you hear that Shirley broke up with Jim? She thought he was cheating on her.” “Yeah, she’s crazy, Jim’s a great guy.”

As an all-purpose negative adjective:

Crazy is often used – even, still, by me and other feminists – to negatively describe ideas, writing, or other nouns that the speaker finds disagreeable. Conservatives are “crazy”, acts of oppression are “crazy making” , this winter’s snow is “craziness”. This usage makes a direct connection between mental disability and bad qualities of all stripes, turning disability itself into a negative descriptor. Whether it means “bad” or “evil” or “outlandish” or “illogical” or “unthinkable”, it’s turning the condition of having a disability into an all-purpose negative descriptor. When using crazy as a synonym for violent, disturbing, or wrong, it’s saying that PWMD are violent, disturbing, wrong. It’s using disability as a rhetorical weapon.

Examples:

“They took the public option out of the health care plan? That’s fucking crazy!”
“Yeah, Loretta went crazy on Jeanie last night. Gave her a black eye and everything.”

Crazy as a positive amplifier:

On the flip side, crazy is often used as a positive amplifier. Folks say that they are “crazy” about something or someone they love or like. But just because it’s positive doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. Crazy as a positive adjective still mean “overly” or “too much”. It’s meant to admit a slight lack of foresight or sense on the part of the speaker. Furthermore, a slur is a slur is a slur, no matter the context. Crazy is mostly, and overtly, used to mean “bad”, “silly”, “not worth paying attention to”, “too much”. Persons with mental illnesses are none of these things as a group. The positive use is not that positive, and it doesn’t absolve the mountains of bad usage.

Examples:
“I’ve been crazy busy lately, sorry I haven’t been around much.”
“I’m just crazy about ice cream!”

Crazy a destructive word, used to hurt people with mental disabilities. It’s used to discredit, to marginalize, to make sure that we feel shame for our disability and discourage self-care, to make sure that those of us brave enough to publicly identify as having mental disabilities are continually discredited.

Editor’s Note: It can take longer than usual for comments to appear on Guest Post entries. Please review our comment policy. Interested in Guest Posting at FWD? Check out our Call for Guest Posts!

Description: a large number of crutches of multiple sizes leaning against a wall.
“Disabling Art”, by tomswift46, creative commons license.

Childhood, Disability, and Public Space

But adults with severe cognitive disabilities, like children and the elderly, often behave in ways that challenge non-disabled adults’ beliefs about how people should behave, particularly their beliefs about how people should behave in public spaces. The ways in which I’ve seen people be made uncomfortable by children in some ways mirror the ways in which I’ve seen people be made uncomfortable by people with disabilities.

The Questionable Privilege of being med-free

As a person who lived for two years without psychiatric medication apart from a PRN tranquilizer, I have experienced the relative privilege people who don’t use medication are awarded. It is subtle, in the comments people make. “Oh, that’s good for you,” people said when I told them I wasn’t on any medication. When, at the introduction to mental health recovery I attended, one of the speakers informed the audeince that she was med-free, everyone also either cheered as if it was the greatest goal to achieve, or mumbled in sorrow that they could never achieve that. Fortunately, the speaker made it quite clear that this was her personal choice and it was not in any way meant as advice to anyone else. But it’s not just patients who do this; I repeatedly caught the ward psychiatrist in compliments on the fact that I managed without meds. Yet whether a person is or is not on psychiatric drugs, may have little to do with how well they manage.

SDS 2010 conference is upon us! attend and/or follow via web 2.0

The Society for Disability Studies’ annual conference, “Disability in the Geo-Political Imagination,” kicks off Wednesday, June 2, on the campus of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This year’s will be the largest SDS conference ever, with a day-long inclusive education preconference on June 2, and five concurrent streams of papers, as well as a film festival in a dedicated theater, running Thursday, June 3 through Saturday, June 5.

To all you mothers, in every sense of the word

Even when it’s Mother’s Day, the ableists are out. They are folks who, among other things, are bound and determined to treat people with disabilities badly because they think they can.

I felt sorry for my mother when we ran into a waitress who acted as if I wasn’t capable of ordering my own meal yesterday. I watched as her eyes filled with tears when I was insulted in front of her.

I pushed back. That’s what advocates do, even on Mother’s Day. Maybe particularly on Mother’s Day. I believe I did it for all the mothers out there, in every sense of the word.

Shame, Medication and Mental Illness

Every month when my amitriptyline starts running low, I have the hardest time remembering to call it in. I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t remember on my own and if I don’t remember I’ll run out and could miss days of my medication. I missed more than a week last summer and ended up high for days and days as my body readjusted.

So every month I pick up a pen hold it to my hand and debate what reminder to write there. I don’t want to write “MEDS,” right there in big letters where everyone can see it, but that seems to be my only option. My friends suggest coining a codeword. I try faces, check marks, exclamation points and stars. Nothing works — except “MEDS.” Every time I try something else I somehow forget and end up missing a dose.

Science Fiction Writing Contest [More details at the link]

Open to Native, First Nations, Indigenous, and Aboriginal students currently enrolled part-time or full-time in any accredited university, college, or high school.

This year’s Judge: Acclaimed SF, experimental fiction, and horror writer Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet), author of The Fast Red Road—A Plainsong, The Bird Is Gone—A Manifesto, Ledfeather, and much more. http://www.demontheory.net/

Entrants should submit a personal statement (one paragraph) containing affiliation or descent, student status (the where, the when, the why, and the how much more), and goals for their sf writing, along with the previously unpublished writing sample.

“Canadians are most certainly welcomed! Canadians, Australians–all “indigenous” types from wherever they reside.”

News:

Three men charged for hate crime

FARMINGTON — The three men who allegedly branded a swastika on the arm of a mentally challenged man and who face hate crime charges for the incident were arraigned Monday in Farmington Magistrate Court.

Yet city and Navajo officials claim race relations in Farmington have improved dramatically during the last decade.

FWD/Forward

FWD (feminists with disabilities) for a way forward

Daily Archives: 17 May, 2010

Recommended Reading for May 17, 2010