Yearly Archives: 2010

Some snappy answers for your stockpile

Following on from Amusing Answers to Clueless Questions. For when you get sick of answering the same questions over and over.

Q: How are you?
A: Well, I was born and I continue to exist. That’s how I am. What kind of a question is that?

Q: Can I try out your assistive device?
A: Sure, if you want the disability that comes with it.

Q: If you could have just one day of not being disabled, what would you do?
A: If you could have just one day of not being incredibly rude, what would you do with all the spare time?

Q: So what do you do all day then?
A: Be amazing.

Q: How does being disabled feel?
A1: Like pudding.
A2: How does it not feel?
A3: How does being abled feel?

Do you REALLY trust women?

For the purposes of this post, I would like to remind everyone that the range of disability includes people who are mentally ill, paralyzed, Blind, Deaf, permanently injured, autistic, physically disfigured, with compromised immune systems or disordered speech or chronic pain or cognitive impairments, and many, many others. Disabilities may be fatal or not, may be degenerative or not, may be apparent or not. Being painful, fatal, stigmatized, or poorly understood does not mean that life is not worth living, and I will not tolerate any attempts to enforce a hierarchy of disability; there is no category of Especially Bad Disability that destroys any chance of worthy life.

A blue-purple sunburst in the background, white letters reading "TRUST WOMEN: Blog for Choice Day 2010"

Blog for Choice Day 2010

Have you ever participated in the stigmatizing of pregnncy, childbirth and childrearing when the parent, child, or both have, or could have or obtain, disabilities?

Have you ever participated in the cultural narratives that say:

  • Older women should not have children because their children are more likely to have a disability
  • Women with disabilities should avoid having children because their children might also have a disability, and it would be wrong, unjust and cruel to give birth to a child that is not in perfect health
  • Women with disabilities should avoid having children because only temporarily-abled women can properly parent a child, or being a mother with a disability would somehow deprive the child of necessary experiences or put a burden on the child
  • Women with disabilities should avoid having children because they are more likely to be poor and need public assistance, and their children would also be more likely to use public assistance in the future, resulting in a drain on temporarily-abled taxpayers
  • Women with disabilities would be selfish to have children, and to do so would contribute to environmental destruction, economic decline, and even degradation of the human species, and they and their children would be less valuable members of society because of their lack of perfect health
  • It would be a tragedy to have a disabled child, disabled children are less desirable than temporarily-abled children
  • Life with a disability is inherently worse than life without one; life without a disability is the baseline by which all life should be measured, so of course to have a disability would be a negative and would make a person’s life worse
  • Disabled children are a burden on their temporarily abled parents, more so than any other child would be, and this is because of the child’s disability rather than because of the lack of support and affirmation throughout all levels of society for PWD and their loved ones
  • Of course it is more desirable for a child to be perfectly healthy than to have some sort of medical imperfection, and those medical imperfections are a big stress and hassle on the temporarily abled people around the child, and there is something wrong with the child for failing to meet an impossible standard of perfection
  • Health and ability are objective concepts and our current cultural wisdom on them are completely right and the medical industry that puts them forth is infallible; our ideas about health and ability are the only right way to look at things and can be universally applied
  • To violate those cultural ideas means that you are inherently flawed
  • The answer to all of this is to go to excessive lengths to avoid ever having, or being around someone who has, health problems, up to and including letting the least healthy die off or be terminated before they can live at all

You know what? I’ll bet you’ve all done it. Even the most radical disability activist has participated in some of these cultural tropes at some point in their lives.

But I’ll bet the vast majority of people “blogging for choice” would never think of disability as related to “choice” issues, and if they did, it would be for the right of temporarily-abled higher-class white Western women to terminate a pregnancy that has a more-than-minute chance of resulting in a less-than-perfectly-healthy child.

This is why the “choice” framework fails. It fails all of us, but it particularly fails those of us who fail to meet society’s idea of the optimal person: the pale, thin, beautiful, and financially comfortable picture of perfect health. The person who never relies on others (no!), is “self-sufficient,” and isn’t likely to end up a burden on the important people.

The rest of us can “choose” to stop existing.

Do you really trust women? Or are you perfectly willing to override their choices if you feel they threaten your comfortable position in society?

And you expect me to think you’re any better for my rights and needs than pro-lifers, why?

(Cross-posted at three rivers fog.)

Edit, Saturday 1/23: I am being very strict in moderating this thread. The primary response from people who do not identify as disabled seems to be “Well, I respect your choice, even though it is clearly cruel and bad/makes me ‘uncomfortable’/is the ‘wrong’ choice.” That is exactly the opposite of what this post is saying. If that is what you got out of this post, you have a LOT of stepping back, listening, and learning left to do.

I’m not asking you to be nice enough not to forcibly prevent us from ever having children, or anyone from ever having disabled children, even as you eagerly stigmatized disabled motherhood/childhood; I am asking you to genuinely examine the deep-rooted prejudices you have been taught and challenge your thinking on childbearing/rearing and disability. I am asking you to question why you have these ideas about disability, and whether they are appropriate to hold as a person committed to social justice. Including for women.

Because, here’s a hint: a lot of us women have disabilities, and all of us were children once, and some of us will have children of our own. And we are still women. Are you really protecting women’s freedom? Or are you merely preserving the temporarily-abled supremacist structure of society, with temporarily abled women as a convenient proxy?

I ask you to consider these prompts, to attempt to truly challenge your assumptions about disability and parenthood. If you aren’t willing to do that, please don’t drop in to explain why disabled women are “Doin It Rong.” Check your privilege. Thanks.

Chatterday! Open Thread.

slow loris reaching out to a human handThis 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. (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.) Just whack in a bare link to a webpage, please – admin needs to deal with the HTML code side of things.

Today’s chatterday backcloth, a slow loris, comes via The Daily Squee.

Recommended Reading for January 22nd

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

eruthros: air security and the normal body

This isn’t the first time this has happened; it happens every time there’s a security scare, and suddenly people are being told by airport security that they can’t take their meds on the plane, that they can’t take the things that make flying bearable, that they can’t have a pillow or a blanket.

And it makes me so angry, because it’s completely obvious that there are millions of people who can’t do the things air security tells us to do, and who are willing to tell TSA so at length. But they’re ignored, they’re transformed into suspicious bodies because air security defines “normal” bodies.

Laura Hershey: More about Haiti and Disability…

Americans should continue giving generously, and always respectfully. Let’s not leverage our largess to lecture Haitians on the proper attitude toward disability. Let’s ensure that our aid programs don’t discriminate, or deny access, thus aggravating disabled people’s isolation.

Chronicle Online: LCT cuts strand disabled riders

Carol Dennison and Adrian Linden have been completely dependent on Lorain County Transit to get to work and other places they need to go. Starting this week, the two women, each of whom contends with a disability, have to find alternate means of transportation in the wake of severe cuts in Para-Transit service. […]

For Linden, the news is especially bitter, as she has served as facilitator for a number of Lorain County Multiple Sclerosis Support Groups in Lorain, Amherst, Sheffield and Wellington for the past several years. “I used to get to those meetings on the bus, and now I’m not going to be able to handle them anymore,” she said. “Someone else will have to take over.” […] She was looking forward to starting up an MS support chapter in Elyria “but that’s out now.” […]

Dennison learned Monday her LCT service was ending because her destination — Crestwood Elementary School — was well outside the three-quarter-mile limit. “They must have known about these cuts for a while,” Dennison said. “They didn’t get informed on a holiday with less than 24 hours notice for people who have to get to a job in the morning. I have no idea what I’m going to do tomorrow,” Dennison said Monday. […] “The bus is my only means to get to work,” she said.

Bloomberg.com: Haiti’s ’Shunned’ Disabled Kids Cope With Loss of Their School [about how the only school for children with disabilities in Haiti has been destroyed]

Church officials are trying to move the pupils to Montrois, a city north of Port-au-Prince, to house them temporarily in a former Episcopal seminary, Sadoni said. The Rev. Lauren Stanley, Episcopal missionary to Haiti, said by telephone today that Duracin confirmed the information provided by Sadoni. “The urgent now is to feed them,” Sadoni wrote. “And we don’t have any materials (cloths, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap).”

Even then, the struggle is far from over, Nelson said. “Most of the kids there are in wheelchairs, blind or deaf, and much of the staff is handicapped, too,” she said in a telephone interview last week. “But it’s not just the physical problems. Handicapped children are also shunned by society there. It is really very scary.”

Washington Post: Up to 10 percent of Iraqis disabled by war, sanctions

Iraq’s health ministry said it has no specific figures but it estimates the number of physically and mentally disabled people at between 2 million and 3 million.

U.S.-based Mercy Corps considers 2 million conservative. It said a 1977 census put the disabled population at that time at 9 percent of Iraq’s 12 million people, or about 1 million. The government now estimates the population at 30 million. […]

Only a quarter of amputees who need artificial limbs get them because the raw materials are not available, it said.

Media dis & dat: Report on Latinos with disabilities now available for free download

Three years ago, Proyecto Visión released a report that examined the low employment status of disabled Latinos and recommended ways to improve their job and other opportunities. Latinos with Disabilities in the United States: Understanding & Addressing Barriers to Employment presents a snapshot of this growing population, outlining factors affecting the extent of participation, and degree of success, of disabled Latinos in the service delivery system; highlighting innovative research and employment projects that are working to reduce barriers; and presenting profiles of individuals and families who have attained success and others who have fallen between the cracks.

Question Time: Three Words

Question Time is a series in which we open up the floor to you, commenters. We invite you to share as you feel comfortable.

What are three words (or phrases) you would use to describe your experience of disability? It can be with regard to what goes on inside you, or responding to other people’s reactions, or whatever you like. (You can explain what each of the three things refers to if you want!)

Disability in Rwanda

Nobody knows how many people with disabilities there are in the world. In doing some basic research, I saw estimates ranging from 300 to 600 million. This is partly a definitional issue – it’s hard to get people to agree what “disabled” means – but mostly is because nobody has ever tried to figure it out. What is clear is that most people with disabilities live in poverty. According to the UN, two-thirds of people with moderate to severe disabilities live below the poverty line. Only two percent of people with disabilities in developing countries have access to basic services.

Take, for example, Rwanda, where poverty is both a cause and an effect of disability. It’s a gorgeous country and home to the rare mountain gorillas. It also had a massive genocide in 1994 during which an estimated 800,000 people were killed – an eighth of the population. Currently, organizations estimate that about 300,000 of the 10 million residents have disabilities. Nearly ten percent of the disabled population has had one or more limbs removed – either hacked off by machete or destroyed by mines, bombs, and bullets during the genocide. The genocide also caused resources like food to be diverted and scarce, resulting in malnutrition, which in turn has caused disability. Despite all that, the genocide is not the major cause of disability in the country – poverty, disease, accidents, lack of medical care and congenital causes are more common.

It’s also one of the poorest countries in Africa. “In 2006, 56.9% of the total population were living below the poverty line and 37.9% were extremely poor. In rural areas about 64.7% of the population were living in poverty… 28% of the rural population was food-insecure and 24% was highly vulnerable to food insecurity.” Poverty is more likely in households headed by females (which are more common after many men were killed during the genocide) and especially in households headed by individuals with HIV/AIDS.

Unfortunately, attitudes towards people with disabilities in Rwanda are not positive. From a report on disability policy in Rwanda:

‘Social exclusion’ is not a concept that is widely used in Rwanda, but disabled people are both actively and passively excluded in Rwandan society. Rwandans do not value disabled people. Disabled people are seen as objects of charity. They are underestimated and overprotected, and their potential and abilities are not recognised. Disabled children are seen as a source of shame and often hidden away. Name-calling is common. Disabled women find it difficult to get married. Disabled people suffer discrimination in employment.
Disabled family members are sometimes passed over in matters of inheritance. Land and assets are given to others who are deemed to be able to make better use of them, thus leaving the disabled person dependant on family to support them and removing the opportunity for them to lead independent lives. Negative attitudes are particularly strong towards those with severe disabilities, people with intellectual and learning disabilities, blind and deaf people.

Another organization reports that “disabled people are commonly addressed by their disability rather than their real name.”

Rwanda is making significant economic progress since the genocide, with yearly economic growth twice as high as what’s usually expected for a developing nation. It is described by Fortune Magazine as “a business-friendly nation that wants to become a model of private sector development in Africa.” The United Nations awarded Kigali, the capitol city, “the Habitat Scroll of Honour Award for many innovations in building a model, modern city symbolized by zero tolerance for plastics, improved garbage collection and a substantial reduction in crime.”

But it’s unlikely that this economic development will benefit Rwandans with disabilities. The country’s first Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy Plan “had no specific reference to disability or how to include people with disabilities in the process.” While there has been significant foreign investment in the country, that impacts only the urban corporate portion of Rwanda. When nine of every ten adults are subsistence farmers in rural areas, those incoming dollars are extremely unlikely to reach the hands of most of the country’s inhabitants. The countryside isn’t appealing to private investment, especially when there’s no health stability. Any job development programs in rural areas are run by NGOs operating on donations and the products they create ($85 silk-mohair knitted scarves for Whitney Port from MTV!) are marketed based on pity for Rwandans. Those are not sustainable jobs or industries and will not create long term employment for those in rural areas. The most viable avenue for rural economic development has been through microloans through organizations such as Kiva.

Even these limited opportunities for work are unlikely to be available to people with disabilities. PWDs are unlikely to be awarded microloans to run their own businesses and are rarely employed by the NGO projects. As one research report observed:

Disabled people are generally excluded from development activities. They are often extremely poor and are continually in ‘survival mode’, so they literally cannot contribute to development activities, either materially or in terms of their time. They are largely excluded from micro-credit programmes because they lack assets as collateral and are seen as a bad risk. Disabled informants for this study said that they were often not told about development activities in their communities in the first place and when they tried to get involved, they were deliberately excluded.

It’s clear that colonization and ongoing meddling from the Western world has done nothing but contribute to and exacerbate problems like the genocide, so the solution isn’t to charge in there and tell Rwanda what policies it should have and how to run things. They were colonized by Belgium until 1960, for goodness sake. So I can’t say I know what the solution is, and the only advocacy action I can think to take is to encourage/pressure NGOs to be inclusive of PWDs when designing and implementing development projects. There’s a number of disability organizations in Rwanda and I think we’ll have to rely on them to do this work. Some lists of the organizations can be found in this report and in a project report from Handicap International.

Recommended Reading for January 21st

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

The Baltimore Sun: Young, gifted and disabled
Zarifa Roberson in front of a poster-size front cover of i.d.e.a.l. magazine. DJ SupaLee is on the cover.

This was the summer of 2003, and she had recently graduated from college, was studying for the LSAT and browsing the store’s magazine selections. There were magazines for bikers and hikers, runners, travelers, eaters, golfers — just about every category of person one could think of, except disabled people, a group to which Roberson has belonged since she was born with a rare condition that contracts joints throughout the body, dislocates hips, locks the jaw. […]

She took it on. She saw the need for a magazine and decided she’d produce one. She called it “i.d.e.a.l.,” an acronym for “Individuals with Disabilities Express About Life,” and put the emphasis on young disabled people.[…]

Along with reported stories, Roberson contributed a first-person piece about how her disability and her bisexuality complicate her personal life. It’s the sort of frank treatment of the lives of disabled people that she feels has been missing from available publications, and was missing even from the first two issues of “i.d.e.a.l.”

“I’m my own worst critic,” she said. “I don’t think it was as relatable to me” in her life as a disabled person. Her hope is that disabled people reading the new magazine will find their lives reflected in it, “so people will disabilities can say ‘Oh my God, I’m not the only one going through this.’ “

Su Sayer at The Guardian: Politicians must recognise that people with learning disabilities have a right to vote too

Yet when it comes to democratic rights, the overwhelming majority of adults with learning disabilities still find themselves largely excluded by the complexity of the system and low awareness of their right to vote. Our research found that while 80% of people supported by United Response in England were registered to vote in the 2005 election, only 16% used their vote. This compares with a turnout of 61% in the general population.

As regular users of social services, public transport, health services and much more, people with learning disabilities are affected by political decisions in the same way as everyone else. The majority of adults with learning disabilities do have the capacity, as well as the legal right, to vote, and would like to do so if given the opportunity.

Ethan Ellis at NJ Voices Public Blog: Disability: the hidden horror of Haiti

Those of us with disabilities who know the island also know that after the last body is buried, the last hospital is rebuilt and the country begins to come alive again as its rescuers move on to the next disaster and the eyes of the watching world move with them, that people like us, now multiplied by the earthquake’s crush will be buried under the crushing weight of the country’s other unmet priories.

CNW Group: Women with heart disease are more likely to be poor than men

“Cardiovascular disease is the major cause of death and a leading cause of disability among Canadian women,” said Dr. Arlene Bierman, a physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and principal investigator of the study. “In fact, eight times as many Canadian women die from heart disease and stroke every year as from breast cancer. If we’re going to change this we need prevention programs that reach out to low income women and that focus on the effects of poverty and the factors that lead to poverty among women.”

The Telegraph (UK): Hi-tech prosthetics are getting our injured back on their feet

Historically, war has provided a great spur to technological development in prosthetics. Before the First World War, amputations were comparatively rare in Britain and most artificial limbs were primitive objects made by saddlers. […] The sudden influx of 41,300 young military amputees, many hoping to return to some sort of employment after the war, generated a new prosthetics industry and encouraged co-operation between limb-fitters and surgeons for the first time.

[Jerome Church said]: “But the warfare of the past eight years in Iraq and Afghanistan has produced a paradigm shift in the way we consider prosthetic possibilities.”

[Ian Jones, prosthetics manager said] “With a BK [below knee] injury there is no reason why a soldier should not return to front-line infantry. Some will be as fit as anyone else.

The Michigan Daily: Silently Disabled: The everyday struggles of those with invisible disabilities

It wasn’t until a week before the end of the academic year that [Leslie Rott] was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus — a chronic inflammatory disease that attacks the body’s tissues and organs. Rott said she was unsure of what accommodations she would be entitled to going into her second year. Unlike those who have lived most of their lives with disabilities, she had no previous experience as a disabled individual and didn’t even know how to go about asking for accommodations. […]

Felder, who is fairly upfront about her Crohn’s disease, says that despite her attempts to inform her classmates about her disability, she has received less-then-ideal reactions as sometimes, students “literally scoot their chairs away” when she talks about the disease in class.

There is also, at times, the issue of other students thinking accommodations means disabled students are getting “special treatment.” For example, LSA sophomore Sarah Rabinowe, who was diagnosed with two learning disabilities in the beginning of elementary school, said her classmates often judge her for getting accommodations because they don’t understand how difficult it is to live with her disability.

“I’ve had a little bit here of ‘she gets special treatment, she gets this,’ the sort of jealousy, almost, because they don’t understand how hard it is to live with this,” Rabinowe said.[…]

Though some members of the disabled community would like the University to take a larger role in advocating for and raising awareness of disabilities on campus, SSWD “acts under a philosophy of self-advocacy,” Segal said. “In other words, part of what we’re trying to do is turn people into young, responsible, independent adults, and part of the way of doing that is making people advocate for themselves,” Segal said.

Part of this notion of self-advocacy includes changing the campus’s perception of the disabled community without the University’s help. For example, if individuals want peer mentors or support groups, it’s their responsibility to make that happen. Likewise, if individuals sense a stigma associated with disabilities on campus, the disabled community must find a voice within itself to raise awareness of disability issues rather than rely on the University to make this change for them.

Call for Submissions is out for Disability Blog Carnival #63: Relationships

The call for submissions is out for the 63rd disability blog carnival, which will be held at the Dreamwidth disability community. PWD and allies are welcome to submit.

The theme is “relationships”. Avendya explains:

This does not necessarily mean romantic relationships – how has your disability affected your relationship with your family? How do you manage balancing friendships with a limited number of spoons? How well do your coworkers deal with your disability? Basically, how does your disability impact (or not impact) your relationships with the people around you?

Submissions are due by February 20th – just leave a comment in this post to submit your article. Older essays are welcomed so long as they haven’t previous been in a Disability Blog Carnival.

Spread the word!

Seven reactions to reviews of Rachel Axler’s “Smudge”

On-stage scene from the play. A man and woman stand looking into a pram, the woman with a many-limbed plush toy. The pram has a wild series of tubes and wires snaking out of it.

I’ve been shaking my head over the press for Rachel Axler’s new hipster-ableist play, Smudge. Here’s a lightning tour, with my response

s at the end. Emphases are mine.

In ‘Smudge,’ Baby’s disabled, and mom’s not much better, from Newsday:

Most couples look at the sonogram of their impending baby to see whether it’s a boy or a girl. But when Colby and her husband, Nick, scrutinize the picture of the life in her womb for an answer to the “what is it?” question, they are appalled to realize that they mean it. Literally.

Rachel Axler’s “Smudge,” the very dark 90-minute comedy at the Women’s Project, aims to be part horror movie, part domestic relationship drama. Their baby, a girl, arrives unbearably deformed, with no limbs and one big eye. Nick (Greg Keller) bonds with the unseen character in the pram encircled with tubes, and names her Cassandra. Colby (Cassie Beck, in another of her achingly honest performances) attempts to protect herself from the agony through brutal humor, maniacally snipping the arms off baby clothes and taunting the “smudge” until “it” miraculously responds. Or does it? […]

BOTTOM LINE The unthinkable, faced with wit but not enough depth

More, from Variety:

Title comes from the first word that comes to mind when Colby (Cassie Beck) gets a glimpse of her infant daughter, grotesquely described as having no arms or legs, an undeveloped skeletal structure and only one (beautiful, luminous blue-green) eye in her misshapen head.

More, from Time Out New York:

She is nearly indescribably deformed: a purple-grey mass of flesh and hair, with a single, disconcertingly beautiful Caribbean Sea–colored eye. Her horrified mother, Colby (Beck), describes the child as looking “Sort of like a jellyfish. Sort of like something that’s been erased.”

More, from SF Examiner:

Continue reading Seven reactions to reviews of Rachel Axler’s “Smudge”

Recommended Reading for January 20th

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

A brief obituary at Life as a Hospice Patient, the blog of Judi Chamberlin, psychiatric survivor and rights activist. The comments include tributes from friends, readers, and fellow activists. [via Disability Studies, Temple U]

With deep sadness we want to let you know that Judi died late last night [Saturday]. […]

If you want to mark Judi’s memory in some tangible way, it was her wish that contributions be made to either:

* The National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations
Checks can be made out to: NEC [National Empowerment Center]. Note on the check that it is “for NCMHCSO in honor of Judi Chamberlin. Checks can be mailed to: National Empowerment Center, 599 Canal Street, Lawrence, MA 01840
or
* Visiting Nurse and Community Health
[Checks can be made out to VNCH. Note on the check that it is for “Hospice in honor of Judi Chamberlin”] and can be mailed to:
Visiting Nurse and Community Health, Donations, 37 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Arlington, MA 02474
Or on line.

More about Judi Chamberlin at NPR: Advocate For People With Mental Illnesses Dies

Judi Chamberlin, who died this weekend at age 65, was a civil rights hero from a civil rights movement you may have never heard of. […] Chamberlin’s book [On Our Own] became a manifesto for other patients. But it influenced lots of people in the mental health establishment, too. Today, notes Oaks, it’s common for people with mental illness to have a say. “Most U.S. states now have an office of mental health consumer affairs or something to hear the voice of mental health clients,” says Oaks. “And it certainly is people like Judi that did that.”

Smart Bitches Trashy Books: GS vs. STA: Handicapped Heroines

Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid is a recommendation thread devoted to books in a specific genre that feature a type of heroine, hero, plot, or locale that is often difficult to find, particularly when that feature is done right. Today, Heather, the awesome, from The Galaxy Express, is looking for handicapped heroines:

“When you have a chance, I’m hoping you can assist me with information about a particular type of romance heroine. I’m thinking my question might be eligible for your HaBO feature. A friend of mine and I were discussing how we’d like to read romances involving a handicapped heroine—one where the heroine gets the hero without any serious cop-outs.”

Delirious Hem: A Preview: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Forum #2: This is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful wife. by Jennifer Bartlett

Sometimes, I feel like the community has forgotten us! Despite wonderful strides toward inclusion in many areas of feminism, disability is often the overlooked element. The issues of women with disabilities are among the most extreme cases of female abuse in the United States. So, it is shocking to that the pages of MS. Magazine are not full of issues such as forced sterilization or the fact that some women with disabilities have their children forcefully taken away at birth. Many people do still do not know about abusive institutions, such as Willowbrook, which were the norm as late as the 1980’s. The unemployment rate for women with disabilities remains at a steady 70% or more. […]

On a more mundane note, women with disabilities are consistently absent from women-only poetry conferences, journals, and anthologies that champion diversity. When popular feminist journals do write about people with disabilities, they often use outdated, offensive language; confined to a wheelchair, wheelchair bound, and, my personal favorite, ‘the disabled.’

BarbManning.net: Nevermind Healthcare – Should Visitability be a Federal Law?

What is Visitability?

“It defies logic to build new homes that block people out when it’s so easy and cheap to build new homes that let people in.” — Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D. -IL)

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires access for people with disabilities for all new multi-family dwellings and a small percentage (5%) of single-family homes constructed using public funds. This law obviously does not address the vast majority of single-family housing in the United States. Visitability seeks to make new housing accessible by having it meet three basic conditions: one zero-step entrance with a wheelchair approachable route, hallways and doorways wide enough for safe navigation by wheelchairs, and one wheelchair-accessible bathroom on the main floor. […]

In March 2009, Representative Jan Schakowsky re-introduced the Inclusive Home Design Act (HR 1408) to Congress. For new homes built with federal assistance, this bill supplements the existing 5% requirement of fully accessible units by mandating visitability in all of the other units. If this bill becomes law, it will make subtle, but substantial changes in how America constructs new homes.

L.A. Times: Families of autistic kids sue over therapy’s elimination

Families of autistic children in eastern Los Angeles County filed a class-action lawsuit today against the nonprofit agency that provides them with state-funded services, alleging that it had illegally discontinued their therapy for the disorder.

The agency, the Eastern Los Angeles County Regional Center, informed more than 100 families late last summer that the therapy — known as the DIR model, or “developmental, individual difference, relationship-based” — was being eliminated for their children because of state budget cuts.