Yearly Archives: 2010

New book: Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader

accessibility, intersectionality, social attitudes

Living the Edges book cover, with a white title on background of an abstract type painting with a road or path and floating spheres of colourHere’s a book for your list, if you’re celebrating a gifty holiday soon – or just splurge on it for yourself!

Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader, edited by Diane Driedger, was launched last week in Canada, and it should contain plenty of interest for readers of FWD/Forward.

The McNally Robinson book-launch blurb is as follows:

Diane Driedger has written extensively about the issues of women and people with disabilities over the past 30 years. Diane is an educator, administrator, activist, and researcher in the area of disabled women’s issues in Canada and internationally. She is also a visual artist and poet, and holds a Ph.D. in Education. She lives in Winnipeg.

This collection brings together the diverse voices of women with various disabilities, both physical and mental. The women speak frankly about the societal barriers they encounter in their everyday lives due to social attitudes and physical and systemic inaccessibility. They bring to light the discrimination they experience through sexism, because they are women, and through ableism, because they have disabilities. For them, the personal is definitely political.

While society traditionally views having a disability as “weakness” and that women are the “weaker” sex, this collection points to the strength, persistence, and resilience of disabled women living the edges.

A partial contents list, from Disability Research Forum reveals a whole lot of must-read articles:

“Feminism, Disability and Transcendence of the Body” by Susan Wendell

“Living on the Edges” by Charlotte Caron and Gail Christy

“Mirror Woman: Cracked Up Crazy Bitch Conja Identity” by Marie Annharte Baker;

“Margins Are Not For Cowards” by Cheryl Gibson;

“Triple Jeopardy: Native Women with Disabilities” by Doreen Demas

“Coming Out of Two Closets” by Jane Field;

“Performing My Leaky Body” by Julie Devaney

“To Be Or Not to Be? Whose Question Is It, Anyway? Two Women With Disabilities Discuss the Right To Assisted Suicide” by Tanis Doe and Barbara Ladouceu

“Living Poorly: Disabled Women on Income Support” by Sally Kimpson

“‘Have You Experienced Violence or Abuse?’: Talking With Girls and Young Women with Disabilities” by Michelle Owen

“The Geography of Oppression” by Joy Asham

There was an audio interview with Diane Driedger at CBC’s Weekend Morning Show last Sunday, in which Diane speaks of the book and of her experiences with invisible disabilities and workplace accommodations.

My transcript of the Weekend Morning Show interview, titled “Double Jeopardy”, is below the cut. All errors in transcription are mine.

Continue reading New book: Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader →

Recommended Reading for 13 December, 2010

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You are Here: Safety Haiku: Automatic Captions

This is the reason why you should not send me breathless, excited emails about the wonders of automated speech-to-text. You see the “CC” button and you think you and I will both enjoy the same media. This is what I actually get. (On the other hand, in a black turtleneck and beret, with bongos in the background, this little poem could actually be kind of cool.)

Where’s the Benefit: Demolition of the Case for DLA Reform

In fact, though the report claims that there exists a “perception of disability permanently precluding work is prevalent among individuals with disabilities not already in employment”, there is no evidence cited in the report that suggests DLA could be a barrier to work. The section and all references to it in the consultation paper could be interpreted as an attempt to misdirect, and should be removed forthwith. Further, it should be noted that the consultation commits the statistical crime of confusing correlation with causation. Whilst RR No. 648 does provide evidence that low employment is correlated with claiming of DLA, this in no way implies that one causes the other.

Guest Post at MarfMom: Jennifer’s Birth Story #2

Jennifer Levesque, 38
Diagnosed with Marfan at age 12 -inherited from father
Mother of two
Methuen, MA

Boing Boing: Universal Subtitles: add subtitles to any video on the web

For video creators, this is a dead simple way to increase the audience for your work — especially since there’s a full-text search coming shortly. For subtitlers, the upcoming workflow management and collaboration tools will make volunteer efforts even easier to run.

Both Mozilla and Wikipedia will be including the Universal Subtitles tool for their videos — and the tool itself is free/open source software, which means that the community can be sure that it won’t be orphaned and that the tool can always be improved.

Trigger Warning for violence against disabled people: Damn Interesting: Howard Dully’s Lobotomy

Howard Dully was brought in for the procedure because his stepmother described him as “unbelievably defiant,” saying among other things: “He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says ‘I don’t know.’ He turns the room’s lights on when there is broad sunlight outside.” After Howard’s stepmother visited with Dr. Freeman, he suggested that “the family should consider the possibility of changing Howard’s personality by means of transorbital lobotomy.”