Yearly Archives: 2009

Meet a Contributor: abby jean!

meet a contributor

So everyone can get to know our contributors a bit better, we’ve decided to run a series called “Meet a Contributor”. Each Contributor will be interviewed by the others in turn.

Hi! I’m abby jean. I live in sunny Southern California and am an attorney in the public interest field, which means I work primarily on civil rights issues affecting low-income folks, including not only disability rights but also issues around language access, immigration status, and domestic violence. Right now I’m focusing on rights in the welfare system and issues around access to health care.  As you may have noticed, I am usually an all-lowercase girl, but am using these newfangled capital letter thingies in my FWD posts – only to relapse to all lowercase in comments.

The other huge area of my life is music – I used to dj in local dance clubs when I could still handle getting only 3 hours of sleep before going to my lawyer job – so I’ll start with the questions from Chally (What kind of music do you like?) and Annaham (“If you were going to a deserted tropical island and could only bring 5 albums, which would you bring?”) in one lump.

I like a whole lot of different kinds of music, but I favor pretty much anything with female vocalists. I like a lot of indie music, but I also love pop music and listen to a fair amount of hip-hop, even though I sometimes have misgivings about the violent and misogynist content. I’m not a huge fan of opera or ambient electronica or noise metal, but none of that is totally off the table, either. I do, however, have some core artists to whom I go back over and over again – and those are the albums I would bring to a deserted tropical island.

First, I’d bring a magical cd that contains the entire works of Tori Amos from Little Earthquakes to To Venus and Back. I used to follow Tori extremely closely – I had all the b-sides and live recordings and alternate versions and between 1994 and 2003 or so, I saw her in concert about 45 times. While I’m not nearly as invested in her later work, she’ll always be important to me and her music resonates for me in a way few others do. Second, another magical cd with the complete works of PJ Harvey. Her perspectives on femininity, and its power, were extremely influential on my ideas of what it means to be a woman. And especially what it means to be an angry woman, and how to use and channel that rage and energy. Third, another magical cd (you may quibble with these magic cds but you are sending me to a deserted tropical island which is also quite unreasonable) with the complete works of Nine Inch Nails. I’ve been listening to them since Pretty Hate Machine and this year was lucky enough to go to three of the concerns on their final tour. To me, nothing compares to standing with a huge group of people, united by the music, screaming along with the lyrics, with everything so loud and powerful there’s no room for thought or worry or anything but sound. Fourth, I’d go with another magical cd of Le Tigre to pep me up a bit – they’re still strongly feminist and political, but they make me dance and dance and dance. I also adore Kathleen Hanna, formerly of Bikini Kill, and will listen to anything with which she’s even tangentially involved. Finally: Britney Spears. You can’t think all the time.

Meloukhia asked “I can’t help but notice that you follow sports…do you have a favourite sport/team?” Mel noticed my interest in sports because my twitter feed often spits out a series of twits along the lines of “dear dodgers i’m not a team manager or anything but i think it helps to HIT THE DAMN BALL” and other ire when things aren’t going right for my teams. I actually follow sports mainly because of relationships with friends and family – I follow the Dodgers because I live in LA and need to be up on it at work (though nothing could convince me to care about either the Lakers or the NBA as a general concept), I vaguely follow some NFL teams because friends of mine follow them, but most of my sports love is tied up with teams my dad likes. We used to go to baseball games together when I was in middle school, and I’d bring my math homework and we’d calculate the batting average of the players for each at bat. We are also BIG BIG fans of the University of Kansas Jayhawks in NCAA college basketball – there are pictures of me in my crib wearing Jayhawks gear. BEAK EM HAWKS!

AnnaP asked “If I gave you one million Canadian dollars, and told you that they had to go to charity, but not just one charity, how would you divide up your one million Canadian dollars? It doesn’t have to go to Canadian charities, it’s just that one million US dollars looks like a lot of money, and I only have Canadian money.” I’d like first to question why we allow these Canadians to have dollars of their own. But to address the actual question: I’d give some to Planned Parenthood or another reproductive health rights organization. I’d give some to the American Civil Liberties Union so they can keep doing the essential work of forcing our government to comply with the Constitution. And then I’d give the rest, the majority, to an organization or movement working to provide a right to representation in civil court. In the United States, people charged with crimes are guaranteed an attorney to represent them in court, regardless of their ability to pay. There is no such right in civil court, so people being evicted, trying to get restraining orders, or being charged with enormous debts can only obtain representation if they can pay for it or if they can find a legal aid organization with resources to represent them. In my mind, this guarantees unjust outcomes based on ability to obtain representation rather than the actual merits of a case, making it more likely that low-income folks will be subject to court orders that don’t protect their rights. This access to meaningful justice is an extremely important issue and one I’d very much like to support.

Kaninchenzero asked “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Yoshinoya Beef Bowl is one of the top three fast food chains in Southern California. Discuss.” That may be true, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten at a Yoshinoya. My preferred fast food is TACOS. From taquerias, from taco trucks, from the grills they set up in tents along the side of the street late at night. They’re all just a little bit different, the salsas are all different kinds of ‘burn the hell out of your mouth’ spicy, and standing on a sidewalk with a bunch of other people waiting for your tacos to come up is a SoCal rite of passage. (So is trying to eat the tacos while walking without spilling all your onions and cilantro.) For anyone in LA, the best tacos in the entire world are the asada tacos from La Estrella in Highland Park, but I’m always looking for new places I haven’t yet tried and have driven all over the southland in search of rumored deliciousness.

Amandaw asked “Is that your picture? If so, what’s the story???” The photo she’s referring to is this one:

It is indeed me, and ties in to my regular attempts to explore undiscovered corners of the southland (which I call “going on an adventure.”) A while ago, we all went down to Irvine or Anaheim or one of the areas of Orange County just over the border of the county line, to go to the Orange County Barbeque Festival. (If you made me choose between eating tacos or eating BBQ I would have a hard time deciding.) After eating approximately my body weight in pulled pork and ribs, we were driving back home by a circuitous route and found ourselves passing by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda – something so amazing it was mandatory that we stop and explore it. It turns out that 4 giggling hipsters was not exactly what the library was expecting, and the pearls-n-suit wearing conservative lady working the lobby was none too pleased. I bought a “Nixon Il Capo” button and a postcard of him shaking hands with Elvis, and then went outside to the marvelous fountain in the parking lot. This photo is me, mid-balletic leap, in front of that fountain.

Lauredhel asked “What art or craft that you’re not accomplished at would you most like to be, and why?” Oooh. Screenprinting, or graffiti, or stenciling, or anything that would let me make street art. I HEART street art for so many reasons. It divorces art from galleries and museums and positions it as something for everyone, regardless of economic class. It’s often political and provocative in a way mainstream media isn’t. And it adds another layer of complexity and interest to the city – I’ve noticed so many amazing things while I’m keeping an eye out for posters or graffiti and feel that helps me engage with the urban environment more actively. I’m a fervent reader of Wooster Collective and other street art blogs, but don’t create any myself.

OuyangDan asked “Do you think the moon is really made of cheese?” And I totally do! (I mean, not really, because that would mean the moon landing was a hoax and I cannot in any way be affiliated with that argument.) There is this totally delicious cheese called burrata, which is basically fresh mozzarella that when it was made into a ball had some cream or other creamy deliciousness inside it, and it tastes like clouds and light and perfection. And it comes in a pale creamy colored lump, exactly like the moon! I discovered this at a restaurant and was amazed that there’s a factory in an industrial warehouse district of a nearby city that makes it by hand and supplies most of the United States with burrata – so of course I had to visit it and buy it direct from the source on another adventure.

Feel free to ask any questions – I reserve the right to not reply or to reply via private email if they’re things I consider personal or private. You can also find me at my tumblr blog, think on this, or on twitter at @abbyjean (entries are protected so you’ll have to ask me for permission).

This is something I avoid thinking about

feminism, gender, life changes, social attitudes

As a single lady with a disability, I have lots of complicated and tangled thoughts about romantic relationships. While there’s a lot to say there (my therapist can attest to that), it all boils down to my belief about myself (which I want to make very clear is how I think about me, not something I think applies to any other person with a disability in the entire world ever) that my disability makes me too much of a handful, too much work, too much effort, too much pain in the ass, to be worth loving.

This is of course demonstrably untrue – I have friends and family who love me dearly and demonstrate that daily. I have been in romantic relationships in the past as a person with a disability, relationships that ended for reasons not at all related to my disability.  And so most of the time, this fear is a tiny tiny voice in the far back of my head that only comes out when things get especially dark.

But then there are actual studies like this: Men Leave: Separation And Divorce Far More Common When The Wife Is The Patient. Some findings:

A woman is six times more likely to be separated or divorced soon after a diagnosis of cancer or multiple sclerosis than if a man in the relationship is the patient. Researchers were surprised by the difference in separation and divorce rates by gender. The rate when the woman was the patient was 20.8 percent compared to 2.9 percent when the man was the patient. “Female gender was the strongest predictor of separation or divorce in each of the patient groups we studied,” said Marc Chamberlain, M.D., a co-corresponding author and director of the neuro-oncology program at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA).

The study was relatively limited – it examined only patients diagnosed with either multiple sclerosis or significant brain tumors. And it did find that longer marriages were much less likely to result in separation or divorce. But overall, I found this pretty disheartening.

Disability 101: What is Able-Bodied or Abled Privilege?

101, blaming, bodies, identity, intersectionality, mental health, normality, ,

What is able-bodied or abled privilege?

The term able-bodied/abled privilege refers to the numerous benefits—-some hidden, many not—-that many societies and cultures accord to able-bodied and/or abled people. Despite many folks’ paying lip service to notions of equality for PWDs, the chronically ill, people with psychiatric conditions, and those with chronic health conditions, abled privilege still exists, and there are still a lot of people who are resistant to the idea of a truly equitable, accessible society. Able-bodied and abled privilege is often hard for non-disabled people to spot; yet, in the words of the famous Palmolive dish soap ad, [YouTube link] most of us are “soaking in it.”

Many cultures have social expectations, structures, cultural mores, and institutions that are set up to accommodate able-bodied and/or abled people with the most ease; this is, of course, problematic for those who do not fit the standard of “able-bodied,” or “fully able,” whether in whole or part. Able-bodied or abled privilege also encompasses things like not having to worry about one’s energy level and/or pain level on any given day, the possible negative reactions of others to one’s needs due to his/her/zie’s disability or chronic condition, being stared at or questioned about (with varying degrees of invasiveness) his/her/zie’s disability or condition by strangers, her/his/zie’s ability to move for long distances or on a variety of surfaces without inconvenience/discomfort/pain and at a pace considered “appropriate” by others, being able to make decisions about the course of one’s medical, psychiatric, or other type of treatment without being questioned by others as to whether he/she/zie is making “the right choice” or can make a “rational” decision about his/her/zie’s own treatment-related choices, or being ignored by able-bodied people when one needs assistance in public; these kinds of able privilege masquerade as “the norm” for those without disabilities. For more examples, see Rio’s update on Peggy McIntosh’s famous article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” [link goes to Amptoons].

An earlier version of this post was originally posted at Faces of Fibro on May 6, 2009.

Chatterday – Open Thread.

chatterday

mini graham cracker cheesecakes with fresh raspberries on top and scattered around, with a mint garnishThis is our weekly Chatterday! open thread. Use this open thread to talk amongst yourselves: feel free to share a link, have a vent, or spread some joy.

What have you been reading or watching lately (remembering spoiler warnings)? What are you proud of this week? What’s made your teeth itch? What’s going on in your part of the world? Feel free to add your own images, too. (Anna insists that these should only be of ponies, but I insist that very small primates, camelids, critters from the weasel family, smooching giraffes, and cupcakes are also acceptable.)

Today’s chatterday backcloth comes from What’s Gaby Cooking?, via foodgawker. It’s nearly fresh-raspberry season here, so raspberries are catching my eye – and these minicheesecakes look absolutely scrumptious.

A brief PSA on language

101, activism, justice, language, social attitudes, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So many people have complained that it is asking too much of abled people to stop using words they consider trivial: crazy, insane, lunatic, idiot, moron, dumb, blind, etc.

I beg to differ.

You know what is really damn easy? Erasing these words from your vocabulary. All you have to do is stop saying them.

You know what is really hard?

Confronting people on their use of same language.

We aren’t even asking you to do the hard work. We aren’t asking you to tell other people to stop using that language. We aren’t asking you to confront other people on their use of that language. We aren’t asking you to explain why it is problematic, to answer people’s questions, to deal with their redirection tactics, or to handle the attacks on and harassment of the people negatively affected by that language that such confrontations always seem to draw.

You don’t have to take the brunt of it. You don’t have to deal with the negative consequences. You don’t have to face employment discrimination, street harassment, caretaker abuse, and other people’s general cluelessness about our lives. You get to sit tight in your privilege, enjoying it without even realizing you’re doing it.

All you have to do is cut a few words out of your speaking and/or writing vocabulary. That’s it.

We’re the ones who are putting our safety on the line trying to change the cultural system that oppresses us.

Two seconds to reconsidering what you’re really trying to say? Easy.

Changing other people’s deep-seated attitudes? Really damn hard.

How do you think we feel when you complain that two seconds is just tooooo haaaaard for you to take on?

(Cross-posted at three rivers fog.)

Guest Post: Learning to Write About Disability

guest post, mental health, social attitudes, , ,

Mouthyb is an MFA student, majoring in nonfiction. She teaches first year students writing and second year students creative writing. In February of 2010, she will apply to PhD programs to study the effect of class discrimination in the college classroom. She is too excited to spit at the thought of a longitudinal study of the ways poor students are sloughed from the academy, so that she can put together a series of pedagogical suggestions. Someday, mouthyb plans to put together an entire department designed to study the intersectionalities of class, but she will never leave the classroom if she can help it because that’s where the good stuff happens.

This is my first post for FWD, although I occasionally hang out at Shakesville and other feminist blogs. When I received an email invitation to write for this blog, I sat down to plan out a set of entries on the sexualization of disabled and poor women’s bodies and promptly discovered something new to me. I’ve spent the last four years writing about child abuse, domestic violence, about being a sex worker, being queer and poly, about class and academia. I’ve turned those pieces in to workshop and sat through hostile and cruel critiques, and gone back and done it again because I honestly believe that these stories need to be told.

But writing about my own disabilities is scarier for me than any coming out I’ve done before because of the way disability is viewed. I went through 5 drafts in 3 days and kept banging my head against the walls. Which told me that this is what I needed to write first.

When I mention CPTSD, my disability, I get cast by the people around me in ways I find frightening. Even people I would otherwise think of as nice people, people who I work with daily, who have had a chance to see me working productively, seem to draw back from me—as if my disability makes me so different that they can have little in common with me. I become suspicious, because the way we are cast in society means that we are viewed as defective. I am viewed as unable to distinguish reality because my problem is mental. And therefore I am capable of anything.

And capable of nothing.

That’s what scares me the most about talking about disability. It’s being reduced to someone who is so broken that they are capable of nothing. And that’s exactly why I mean to talk about it. Because, like the other stories I write, talking about disability is a way to reclaim that agency. To demand and demonstrate that my disability does not mean that I am reduced to damage.

International Transgender Day of Remembrance 2009

Uncategorized

Today, 20 November 2009, marks the Eleventh Annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance. It’s the day that we set aside to commemorate the lives of people murdered due to trans hate and discrimination and prejudice. This year, we know of one hundred sixty-two persons who have been killed because they were trans* or were perceived by their killers as trans*. (Link to the T-DOR 2009 materials in English at the Transgender Day of Remembrance Website.) We don’t know — can’t know — the names of everyone who has been killed.

It doesn’t matter. Every murder hurts us. Every life stolen because we — everyone outside the cis binary, whether trans or intersex or nonbinary or any or all of those (I will be using trans* as a shorthand for this) — are seen as less than is precious and irreplaceable. We mourn for those who are gone. We grieve with the people who were closest to them. (Thanks to Chally for finding Queen Emily’s post from T-DOR 2008 on How to Mourn.)

I personally am angry. All over the world, in every society, we are there and we are dying. Because we are still seen as less than, as mistakes, as inherently deceptive, as the butt of every cruel man-in-a-dress joke, as freaks. Our genitals are viewed as substandard facsimiles at best, our sexualities are commodified and sold when they are considered at all. We are discriminated against in employment and housing, in immigration and criminal justice, in airplane travel, in language. Our medical needs are routinely denied coverage by insurance providers in the United States — even those needs which would be covered, if the insured were a cis person — and can be difficult to obtain even in countries which provide health care to their citizens. Worst of all we are dying because people feel entitled to kill us. Because we are who we are, there are people who feel we deserve to die.

So I am proudly out as a trans* woman with a disability here. (There are many of us who are trans* and disabled. Our bodies are freighted with meaning.) So I am not out in other parts of my life. In those parts I have to hope I pass and fear that I won’t. I want this space to be a safe space for everyone outside the cis binary. Not just for me though I need safe spaces too. It needs to be safe for the people who aren’t comfortable being out. That means no policing of gender identities. Just as no one has to prove their disability here, no one has to prove their gender or to have a gender at all.

Please help us remember those who are gone, and help us make our parts of the world safer for those who are still here.

Why are they so angry at her?

blaming, bodies, media and pop culture, television

Last week, Oprah did a segment on her show following up with Charla Nash, the woman who was viciously attacked by her friend’s pet chimpanzee in February 2009. The attack left Nash with significant and pervasive injuries to her hands and head, especially her face. After significant treatment and reconstruction, both her eyes were removed, she has only one thumb and no other fingers on either hand, and eats by taking liquids through a straw.

I did not watch the show – my feelings about all this are the press coverage is only to get a shot of her reconstructed face and show pictures of the “freak,” and I didn’t want to be a part of it – but I heard lots of reactions to the show in the media, on blogs, on twitter.

The primary reaction seemed to be anger. So many people said “if I lost my sight and my hands and my face looked like that, I would rather be dead.” And Nash is very clear that she would not rather be dead. She spends lots of time with her 17 year old daughter. From the Oprah site: “When Briana visits her mother, Charla says they just enjoy being together. ‘We lay next to each other and we hold each other and we talk about things—what she does at school or with her friends.'” She continues to push herself to recover, walking every day whether or not she feels good.

The reactions I heard would touch on her time with her daughter, her efforts to continue to heal, and dismiss them entirely. “You know, I love my kids and I’d want to see them grow up, but even still, I’d just rather be dead.” Despite being presented with the woman herself saying she was happy to be alive and happy to have survived, they ignored her, imposing their own ableist assumptions about living as a person with a disability and how awful they thought that would be.

They were angry at her for wanting to live, because it contradicted their thoughts about whether a person with a disability could live a fulfilling and happy life. They were angry at her even in the same breath as bemoaning how awful the attack was, how unfortunate for her that the injuries were so extensive. They were angry at her for thinking she was the same person, thinking she had a right to continue existing, for not giving up and going away to die.

I’m sorry that Charla Nash has to be the subject of this “freak” show. I’m sorry that she has to be the recipient of this anger. But I also want to put her face, put her story, on billboards nationwide, to say “fuck you” to everyone who wants her to go away and disappear.

60th Disability Blog Carnival: Intersectionality

recommended reading, Uncategorized, ,

Welcome to the 60th Disability Blog Carnival! Thank you to Penny at Disability Studies, Temple U for continuing to host the Disability Blog Carnival.

The 61st Blog Carnival will be hosted by Alison Bergblom Johnson at her blog, Writing Mental Illness, on December 13th (she requests submissions by December 4). Here’s her official call for submissions.

First, a personal comment from me: If you’re a regular reader of FWD/Forward, you probably know that I like to quote two or so paragraphs from everything I link, so that if people are just wanting to skim quickly over them and figure out what they want to read fast, they have that option.

I’ve tried to limit that here today, for two reasons. First, there are a lot more posts (I limit my recommended reading to five links). Second, it’s really hard to find just one or two paragraphs in most of these posts to link. “Is this the best paragraph? No, wait, look, later on, this paragraph is even better!” So, shorter excerpts because otherwise I’ll be quoting whole posts because they are very powerfully written, and need to be read as a whole, I think.

First Section: Intersectionality

At Ballastexistenz, Amanda writes This is not the post I started out writing, about intersectionality and the difficulties in writing about it:

So I will continue to move through the world (and the bits of the world that are around me will affect me, and I will affect them) and write (when I can) about specific aspects of my life, all of which have something to do with this thing they call intersectionality, whether that’s the topic of the day or not. Because I don’t stop being all these different sorts of person, when I stop specifically naming them.

At Urocyon’s Meanderings, Urocyon writes Intersectionality: It’s a way of life!, about the various identities that make up her life:

This has run long and personal, but it should give a pretty good idea of how I’ve been seeing intersectionality play out. Nobody and nothing exists in a vacuum. Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent. If you try to look at the world through a filter of “good” vs. “bad” oppositional dualism, all kinds of categories of people are going to be “bad”–and many of the “bad” people will fit into more than one category of badness.

Wheelchair Dancer, at Wheelchair Dancer, writes: Intersectionality, which is about internet feminism (as opposed to academic feminism) and the failure of intersectionality to really work on the web:

Internet feminisms are not so much representative of the scholarly field as a whole, but localized to individual websites and specific groups of people. At first glance, these sites are seemingly able to take on a diversity of perspectives; they have a large audience and multiple contributors. Despite this variation, however, internet feminism is not so much a set of philosophical perspectives, carefully worked out in conversation with other scholars, but a group of outlooks pulled together by friends and people who hold congruent (if not similar/the same) takes on stuff. Each website — each example of internet feminism — is thus a projection of the people who run, post on, and read a given site. They are examples — exemplifications, even — of feminism but they aren’t necessarily reference points to which one can go if you need to understand feminism.

Tera at Sweet Perdition writes Sweetie, asking how her treatment would change if her gender presentation, race, or age, amongst other things, were different.

But it is not niceness. It is You don’t belong here, dressed up in the prettiest Emperor’s clothes. Your kind belong somewhere else. And I am lucky as hell to get this form, this quiet suggestion that I am in the wrong place instead of disgust or gossip or a punch in the face or attempted murder or a refusal to acknowledge me at all.

anthea at Juggling with colours and smoke writes Dyspraxia and Gender, Part I, about gender and gender identity and being dyspraxic.

I don’t quite know what being female means to me. I don’t quite know what being dyspraxic means to me. But I think they’re quite capable of being parts of me that don’t undermine the validity of the other.

Bri at Fat Lot Of Good writes fat and depressed? or just fat? or maybe just depressed?, which is about being both fat and depressed, and the assumptions people make about both:

Like just because I am have depression (even when it is under control) I need someone else to tell me what is best for me, and the fact that I am fat and depressed…well, isn’t it obvious that if I lost weight I would no longer be depressed?

No, no and NO.

pgdudda, at Warp and Weft writes Hospitals: the Intersection of GLBT and Disabled Significant Others:

My partner of 13 years was recently hospitalized. His gall bladder was removed, and he had complications that extended his stay significantly. This was a very stressful time for both of us. The stress was compounded by the fact that (a) we are a homosexual couple, and (b) I have a significant hearing impairment. I have some thoughts for hospital personnel to consider when dealing with this particular intersection of queer-and-disabled.

hkfreeman, at The Living Artist, Touch/Don’t, which uses both art and words to discuss chronic pain:

While this piece is inspired by the personal, my hope is that it generalizes well to the experience of chronic pain, and also the experience of being a woman, and perhaps even the experience of being human: specifically portraying the conflict between the need for physical connection and the need for physical safety.

Kaz wrote a guest post for us here at FWD/Forward, Disability and Asexuality, about her experiences being both asexual and being on the autism spectrum:

Talking about the intersection of asexuality and disability is pretty difficult, because “asexuality” gets another meaning in disability rights discourse: it’s used to refer to the various stereotypes about disabled people’s sexualities. People do often seem to realise that this is problematic when it’s pointed out to them. However, what not so many people realise off the bat is that it goes beyond just “problematic”.

From The Mind Campaign, Mental Health Services for Refugees and Asylum Seekers: A Messy Picture, which is about … well, mental health services for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK:

But it is the plight of people who are seeking refuge in our country which has been highlighted by two new Mind reports which were launched yesterday. The product of two years of research seeking to understand the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers who experience mental health problems, the results make for interesting reading.

Jo Tamar, at Wallaby writes about the intersectionality between caregivers and disability:

So that’s intersectionality in one sense between being a carer and being a person with a disability: it is entirely possible (and based on the statistics above, maybe even likely) to be both.

But there’s intersectionality in another sense, too. The adverse effects of caring on a carer’s health and well-being has the potential to impact the person zie cares for. So the more difficult life is for the carer, perhaps the more difficult life may be for the person zie cares for.

Second Section: “General Posts” written by people with disabilities

At Bicoastal Gimps, shesabibliophile writes Ownership, which is about how the bodies of people with disabilities are often seen by others:

I would not be exaggerating if I said I have to deal with the hijacking of my ownership almost every day. There are few people who I feel completely comfortable around and who I know will not and do not take any power away from me unintentionally or intentionally. It’s a scary world for me, for us, but this world and my happiness is something I am willing to fight for.

Alison at Refract.Me writes Ablism 101, which is about the false assumptions people make about disability:

I’m talking about ableism. Ableism in the simplest meaning are societal prejudices about people with disabilities. It takes the assumption that being able-body, having a neurotypical mindset, boundless physical and mental endurance, etc. are normal. People that don’t fall into this category are abnormal.

Ginny, at Ginny’s Thoughts and Things, writes The World of Work, about pressure for blind people to be “the best” in order to demonstrate their worth:

See, the thing is, all of my life, the message I always got was that you’ve got to be twice as good at something to even be looked at the same way, or taken as seriously as, a sighted person. Being “just good enough” well, there was no such thing, because being “just good enough” for a blind person was “not good enough” for the sighted world.

hkfreeman writes on deafness, which is about the experience of being hard of hearing:

It can be difficult to imagine what life is like with a disability. For me, it is difficult to imagine what life would be like if I had normal hearing, but I am perpetually bombarded with reminders and barbs of how I experience the world in a different way, and how that difference is seen as a lack and a burden.

meloukhia, at this ain’t living, writes Nuance and Reproductive Rights, which is about disability and abortion, and how the abortion discussion is currently framed:

Views on abortion seem to fall into two broad camps: It’s always unacceptable and morally wrong (usually because people believe that a fetus has personhood) or it’s always acceptable (and the jury seems a bit mixed on morals). That doesn’t leave room for a lot of nuance, something I note in particular whenever discussions about abortion and disability crop up.

The next few posts are all posts from FWD/Forward Contributors and were on our blog:

By Laurdhel, Law & Order: “Dignity”, Worth, and the Medical Model of Disability, which talks about abortion and disability, and challenges the view presented both in Law & Order, and in feminist responses to the L&O episode she discusses:

As a feminist, I believe that we can have the abortion-rights conversation without marginalising, othering, and disparaging people with disabilities. I believe we can talk about abortion within that broader framework of reproductive justice, and that we can confront the ableism that creeps into some abortion-rights conversations head-on. This takes effort; we must think clearly, write carefully, read closely.

By kaninchenzero, Ill, which is about perceptions of mental illness, and about assumptions we make about violence and mental health:

Thing is, we’ll never know if Sodini was mentally ill or not. We can’t tell from what he left behind, and he’s no longer around to ask. The things he wrote aren’t all that unhinged; he just took the workaday hatred of black people and women that is everywhere in our society and picked up a gun and went hunting. And the mentally ill means violent narrative is false anyway

By Annaham, The Negative Side of Positive Thinking:

You’ve probably heard of positive thinking and its (supposed) benefits. You’ve also probably heard of things like The Secret, which is a self-help book and DVD (and they have other products, too, including a daily planner and something called an “affirmation journal”). For those of you who have had the good fortune to not have come into contact with The Secret, the basic premise is something that sounds pretty innocuous at first, if you don’t examine it too closely or think about it too hard: there is something called “the Law of Attraction,” which posits that the individual can attract their own good or bad circumstances in life just by thinking about them.

Oh gosh. Next time someone gives me the advice to add posts as they come in, I’m taking that advice!

I’ve really enjoyed reading all the posts at this Disability Carnival! If I had planned ahead, I could end with some way of saying “posts are great, and there’s lots of posts about disability all over the internet”, but I’ve just been kicked out of the lab I’m in and it is past my bedtime anyway. Thanks for all participants, and again to Penny for letting us host this time.

“Bad Cripple”

accessibility, autonomy, blaming, shaming, social attitudes, , , , , ,

Last month, I went to a non-partisan Campaign School, where women learned the nuts and bolts of running a winning campaign for political office in Canada. We all said a bit about ourselves, and I stood up and introduced myself as a Disability Rights Activist.

I spent the rest of the weekend being told how “Bad Cripples” are ruining the system for everyone else, and how every problem that I discussed, from how low disability-support payments were to how difficult it is to get around the city with a wheelchair, was caused by That Person.

You know That Person. The one Everyone Knows who doesn’t have a real disability. They could work – of course they could! – they’re just in it to scam the system. This One is bad because whatever he claims about his disability, it’s obviously exaggerated because no one could be in that much pain. That One is bad because she decided to move to another province where the disability support payments are better – obviously she’s just in it for the money.

Regardless of where someone fell in the political spectrum, they felt it very important that I knew that it wasn’t the government’s lack of support for people with disabilities and their families, it wasn’t the surplus of societal barriers, it wasn’t even their own individual fears of disability that caused any financial distress. It’s those Bad Cripples who scam the system and totally ruin it for the Good, Deserving Ones.

People tell me anecdotes about Their Friend (or a Friend of a Friend) who totally confessed to scamming the system, or they tell me about how Their Friend isn’t really disabled, and they can tell, because of X, Y, or Z.

I’m going to confess something to you: According to the way a lot of people define “Bad Cripples”, Don and I are really Bad Cripples.

I’ll start out with the comments. Both of us have very bleak senses of humour, and both of us (me especially) say some of the most awful things. These include things like “I just married him for the disability cheques,” “Damn it, I should have lied and told everyone your Cancer spread so I could get extra time to finish my assignments,” “Oh, Don fakes not being able to talk very loudly so he doesn’t have to deal with the Student Loan people”, and even “Oh, the wheelchair’s just for show.”

You might be thinking “That’s obviously you joking around, Anna! No one really thinks you’re serious.”

Yes, yes they do. All the time. I’ve been talked to by professors about my joking comments about Don’s Cancer, and asked not to make them in front of other students. I’ve gotten really angry @replies on twitter about some of them. I have an email I can’t quite get myself to delete that’s all about how I’m a horrible wife who’s just using Don for his money.

I have no doubt that people have said, either to you or someone you know, something that sounds like they’re just gaming the system, including a breezy “Oh, I’m just gaming the system.” But you have no idea if they’re serious or not, or what their circumstances are, or how much pressure they’re under, internally or externally, to “pass for normal”.

The second reason people think of “fakers” is the “I know stories of people who don’t have real disabilities and they get all this financial support!”

Here’s the thing: I don’t have an obligation to tell you what my ability status is.

My ability status is between me and my doctor. I have made the choice to share it with a few friends, and my husband. I don’t have to tell you. I don’t have to tell my teachers. I don’t have to tell the pharmacist, the person who’s demanding I justify my tax-status, or my landlord. I have not discussed it with Student Accessibility Services on campus. I have not disclosed to the people on any of the committee meetings I’m on. I didn’t tell anyone at Campaign School.

Because it is none of their business.

I do not owe it to you, or anyone else, to explain why we’re raking in those big disability cheques.

I also want you to consider that you don’t always know what disability will look like.

You can’t tell by looking at my friend with the mental health condition that she tried to climb out a third floor window and jump because she couldn’t take the idea of another day at her job, but you can probably tell she isn’t working right now while she recovers from the experience. You can’t tell by looking at my friend that she was bullied so badly at work that she has panic attacks whenever she thinks of stepping foot in the neighbourhood of her former workplace. Until Don got his cane, and then his wheelchair, lots of people wanted to know why he wasn’t working – aren’t people who have mobility issues always in wheelchairs?

I know people who tell me “Bad Cripple” stories are trying to be helpful. They want me to know that they understand how difficult it is, and that if it weren’t for all those Bad, Faking Cripples out there, Don and I wouldn’t be living entirely off the largess of his family and my scholarship money. (The government expects that I should take out student loans to pay for Don’s medication that he needs to live. Oh goody – overwhelming debt in exchange for a husband who lives! Thanks, Nova Scotia! You continue to be awesome. Yes, the big disability cheques comment was a joke.) What I think they don’t want to do is question why it is so difficult. Bad Cripple stories give us someone – a conveniently faceless group that Doesn’t Include Us – to blame.

I think a lot of people are going to rush to tell me stories about how this all may be true, but they totally know of this person who is totally lying about being disabled. Please consider whether or not that anecdote will contribute to a conversation, or just remind people with disabilities that they’re viewed with suspicion and have to prove their status to you.