Recommended Reading, July 2

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post and links are provided as topics of interest and exploration only. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Dave Hingsburger: Disability Blog Carnival 67: Proud Voices!

People are proud of writing that comes from a place that’s often deep and secret. People are proud when they manage to put into words anger, fears, terror, tears, love, longing, regret, fury … I found myself going on a real journey here. My intros are brief, the blog is long. We have a huge number of contributors. I’ve only used the names that appear on the blog. These appear in no order, I did not attempt to group them, I did not attempt to make them flow. I think the haphazard way they bring up various topics works.

Jedifreac: It sucks to be right, it sucks to be right

Yesterday and today, Paramount screened The Last Airbender to Racebending.com for free as kind of an olive branch, and also to show us just how diverse the movie is–to prove us wrong. I’m a big bundle of emotions right now, I guess. Here’s the conversation I had with Ken about the movie, since he is better at ‘splainin feelings and stuff.

While we had a lot of concerns about racial sensitivity going in, we at least had some idea of what to expect. It was pretty much as bad as we thought. The poor way the movie treated women and feminism–in comparison to the animated series–other hand, floored me. I just…yeah. If you were expecting M. Night’s version of Airbender to at all reflect the way the animated series treated gender, well…

Stan at Teen Mental Health Blog: What Next?

If I had a dollar for every hour that a patient with a mental health crisis had to wait to be seen by the emergency physician in many of the hospitals that I have known, I could have retired a wealthy man. Why is it that people who have a mental disorder end up at the back of the line? Surely it can not be because of stigma in health providers? Surely it can not be because of inefficient care pathways? Surely it can not be because of inadequate numbers of mental health providers?

Links via Delicious (Thank you kind contributors!)

Matthew Palumbo at The Other Baldwin: Guest Post: Thoughts on Visual Disability

Another notable mention regarding activities with respect to visually disability regards movies and television programming. No matter the screen, even up close, I can’t ever make out everything that is going on. Thus, I largely rely on my wife, or a friend, to clear up those things I miss. Subtitles are a biggie for me in this regard. Interestingly enough, though, the exception to this issue comes when watching cartoons. The bright, vibrant colors of a cartoon seem to work well with my vision and, thus, I largely catch all that transpires in them. CGI and live action, though, are very hit-or-miss.

Mary Bullstonecraft at Hysteria:Rethinking Access, Rethinking (my) Feminism

Yes, yes, Justice Breyer. Anyone can use the steps to access the court. Anyone can walk under those grand “equal justice under law” columns. Anyone can access justice just by skipping up the front entrance.

Except, just kidding, they can’t. And we can see that they can’t if we just look at the Supreme Court’s illustration of the new entrances above, which is included with the New York Times article reporting otherwise. There, on the left: “This entrance is wheelchair accessible.” The main, grand, marble entrance–the one promising equal access, equal justice–isn’t equally accessible. It’s not accessible to people using wheelchairs, people with disabilities that make walking up giant marble staircases a problem, or people with children in strollers, or people who are several months pregnant, to name a few. People in these circumstances have always had to use the side entrance, the symbolically denigrated entrance. And the fact that using the same entrance as these people is cause for poetic outrage should make us stop and think a bit.

Videos

All videos have transcriptions.

By Mia at Leaving Evidence: Video: Crip Sex, Crip Lust, and the Lust of Recognition [Transcript available at source]

Recently, I met up with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ellery Russian for an evening and got to capture some of our musings, sharings and stories. Whenever i get to hear crip stories, i am entranced. i love hearing our words (all of them, in whatever way they come tumbling out) and feel ever-so appreciative, especially knowing how long i went without ever hearing any of our voices tell our own stories and stumble through sharing and asking and loving. It’s so important for us to tell our stories–to each other. As much as we can. There are so many different stories that we have to tell about (queer) crip sex and about our relationship to crip sex, to sex period, to sexuality and more. Our stories are so different and complex and they all have value–we have value. Much love and gratitude to Leah and Ellery for sharing some of your stories, knowing that it’s not all of your story.

By Lisa at A Voice For Neli: Neli Tells His Story [Transcript courtesy of terajk at Transcripts for Everyone]

I have been searching my heart, mind and soul trying to figure out why this has happened to my son. I feel so powerless as a mother. We are supposed to protect our children, yet, I couldn’t save him from this. I’ve been living in sheer torture since the events of 24 May 2010. Now my son, who had a future is locked away due to police harassment and brutality. And in spite of my best efforts, I have not been able to get any news outlets to bring this story to light. I pray every day and I hope every day that we will be delivered. Neli is holding on, but each day he is gone like this, I’m losing a little part of him.

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Disability Living Allowance Exists for a Reason

Why should I again prove my disability to satisfy George Osborne?

Disabled People are Not Scroungers

If you’re on Delicious, feel free to tag entries ‘disfem’ or ‘disfeminists,’ or ‘for:feminists’ to bring them to our attention! Link recommendations can also be emailed to recreading[@]disabledfeminists[.]com

About Ouyang Dan

is an extremely proggy-liberal, formerly single mommy, Native American, invisibly disabled, U.S. Navy Veteran, social justice activist and aspiring freelance writer currently living in South Korea on Uncle Sam's dime. She has a super human tolerance for caffeine and chocolate and believes she should use those powers for good. She said should. She is not a concise person, and sometimes comes on a little aggressively in comments. Sometimes her right arm still twitches when military brass walks past her, but she would rather be reading YA Lit or pwning n00bs. She can be found being cliche about music, overthinking pop culture, and grumbling about whatever else suits her fancy at her personal website, random babble.... She also writes about military issues for Change.org's Women's Rights blog. If you have something interesting to say email her at ouyangdan [at] disabledfeminists [dot] com. Lawyers in Italy looking to hold lottery winnings in her bank account may wait longer for reply.

One thought on “Recommended Reading, July 2

  1. On the Last Airbender note, Rotten Tomatoes pretty much says it all. Aside from the racefail and genderfail, it’s just a terrible movie all around.

    At this moment, only 9% of all featured critics liked it. I don’t think it’s ever gotten above 10%; at one early point, none of the 10 or so critics whose reviews had then been indexed enjoyed it. Some of the reviews are laugh-out-loud hilarious.

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