Daily Archives: 19 August, 2010

Recommended Reading for 19 August 2010

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.

NPR: Commanders Have Ignored Major Mental Health Issues, Army Report Concludes

(Trigger Warning for Statements of the Obvious and a seeming disregard for lives)

In his introduction, Chiarelli says that “now more than ever, our Soldiers need firm, fair and consistent leadership.”

Although he acknowledges that commanders — like troops — have been stretched thin by repeated deployments during two wars, Chiarelli says the Army’s leadership has to do better, taking “a holistic, multidisciplinary approach to address this risk.”

According to NPR’s Rachel Martin, “Defense officials say commanders on the ground don’t have the training to make suicide prevention a priority — or to recognize the signs of a soldier on the brink.”

VA Watchdog: Contract In-Home Nurse Steals from Disabled Veteran

When JoAnn went in for surgery on her hand, she noticed prescription medication missing. Soon after, her son noticed much more missing.

“When he came in the door he said, ‘Mom you have been robbed.'”

Pride admitted to police she had stolen it all: more than $5,000 dollars of garden equipment, electronics and jewelry.

flip flopping joy: disability on the face of gendered bodies

A feeling that stands in stark contrast to how we as viewers understand Emily’s injuries. Usually their narratives are the other way around. An abused woman is blamed, why did you stay with him? And a politically active woman is congratulated as fierce and mighty. Suddenly our consciousness is declaring the abuse victim “beautiful” and “strong” and we want to help–and the politically active woman is understood as a troublemaker. As somebody who maybe shouldn’t have been where she was. It’s sorta her own fault for showing up someplace where she knew there would be trouble. Right?

BBC: Ouch! (disbility) – features- Dragging accessible computer games into the 21st century

With up to 32 sounds playing at any one time, no one could accuse GMA Games Lone Wolf of not being exciting and challenging, even with zero graphics. For this is an ‘audio game’, Made with blind and visually impaired people like me in mind and based exclusively on complex stereo sound.

BBC News: With one good leg, US Veterans climb Mount Kilimanjaro (Apologies for the title, folks!)

(Moderatrix note: I felt the tone of this article was rather ‘splainey and shamey. Kind of “well, if I can do it with my prosthetic leg, than what is wrong with all of you crips at home who aren’t even going out for runs and swims?”. Still, I wanted to highlight the accomplishment, and would hope that we can focus on that, rather than on the negative.)

The trip typically takes five or six days, and the men had to stop frequently to adjust their titanium prosthetic legs, as they slipped constantly on the loose scree-covered paths.

The hikers were Dan Nevins, 37, who lost his legs in Iraq; Neil Duncan, 26, who lost both legs in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan in 2005; and Kirk Bauer, 62, who lost a leg in Vietnam in 1969.

If you have an exciting link, news article, or blog post that would be relevant to our interests, please feel free to send it to recreading [at] disabledfeminists [dot] com. We would be more than happy to credit you for any usable find!

Things That Make My Life Easier, A Reintroduction (Part 1 of 3)

A long time ago, I decided to start up a series. I lacked a catchy title, so I went with the mere truth: Things That Make My Life Easier.

What I meant by that is, of course, things that make my life with a disability easier.

Disability can introduce certain complications to a life — meaning that in reaching the same destination, a disabled person may have a bumpier, windier, more obstructed path than a nondisabled person. A disabled person may simply have more to deal with than hir nondisabled counterpart. And this is not inherent to hir condition: much of that difficulty, that obstruction, is constructed by a society that is built to suit a nondisabled person’s needs, concerns, and preferences. Some of it, to be sure, is difficulty that will never be eliminated, no matter the social context.

This means two things, things that are not at all contradictory but, in fact, must both be recognized for us to make any progress:

One, that disabled people face a great deal of difficulty that is ultimately the result of a society that cares more about the convenience of the comfortable than the comfort of the inconvenient;

And two, that disabled people may always face some amount more difficulty than their nondisabled peers due to the intrinsic nature of neurological and physiological variation.

Disability is an experience all its own. But at the same time, disability is not particularly [anything]. Disabled people are experiencing the same thing nondisabled people are, by the by: they are experiencing pleasure and experiencing pain; they are experiencing acceptance and experiencing rejection; they are experiencing stability and experiencing change. They are learning and expanding; they are teaching and demonstrating. They need food and drink, and the opportunity to get rid of bodily waste. They need shelter from the elements, a comfortable place to sit or lie. They need transport if they are mobile; they need a way to enter buildings; they need an effective method of communication with other people. They need social interaction; they need solitary time. They need intellectual stimulation; they need leisure and entertainment.

These are all things that nondisabled people need, too. They are not “special” needs. They are human needs. A core set of needs that we all share.

But these needs are not all met in the same ways.

This is the beauty of humanity, really: presented with a particular need, a set of people will take all manner of approaches, using all sorts of different resources available, finding all kinds of different ways to use them — different paths to the same end point. All paths take a toll on their travelers, while offering to those travelers certain advantages. It is up to the individual to weigh the costs and benefits of any specific way sie might take.

There is no moral weight to one path over another. That it harm none, do what you will. Whatever you are doing, so long as you harm no one else, it is good. Or, put another way: Whatever you are doing, however you are doing it, if it gets done, who the hell cares beyond that?

Next: A Reintroduction (Part 2 of 3)

Cross-posted: three rivers fog, FWD/Forward, Feministe.