Yearly Archives: 2010

Pop Culture: The Good Wife & Disability

About two or three weeks ago, I finally got around to noting the existence of the show The Good Wife. And then I watched every episode I could, as quickly as I could, because wow is this show good.

It’s one part legal drama, one part family drama, and one part mysterious conspiracy theory drama. The Wikipedia summary is pretty good: “The storyline focuses on Julianna Margulies as Alicia Florrick, the wife of Peter Florrick (Chris Noth). Her husband has been jailed following a very public sex and corruption scandal. She returns to her old job as a litigator to rebuild her reputation and provide for her two children.”

Except the whole article somehow manages to skip over how feminist the show is. In the early episodes, Alicia has a male coworker who is pretty damn sexist to her, including talking down to her, ignoring what she says entirely, and acting like her being both older and a parent makes her not very smart. Later episodes have her pointing out how she keeps getting shunted aside to “hand hold” clients, which she admits is important but is curtailing her career. And these things are shown as being bad, not as being acceptable because, you know, woman.

The show is filled with interesting relationships between women as well. We’ve got Alicia’s relationship with both her investigator, Kalinda, and one of the managing partners, Diane. Both relationships are complicated by professional needs and the fact that they’re still working in a sexist office environment. Diane is involved in EMILY’s List, and there’s an implication that her “pet project” is looked down on by her male colleagues.

At home, Alicia’s mother-in-law has come in to help care for the kids while she’s working and Peter’s in jail, and their relationship is also complicated, with concerns about parenting and their different views of Peter’s prison sentence.

I just love this show. Love it.

But I’m not just talking about it here because it’s awesome. It also managed to (mostly) side-step some disability fail that I was expecting.

The rest of this is full of spoilers for Season 1, Episode 4, “Fixed”.
Continue reading Pop Culture: The Good Wife & Disability

Recommended Reading for February 14th

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. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Sins Invalid: Sins Invalid’s Interview with Terry Rowden

Leroy of Sins Invalid: We are both music historians, and in The Songs of Blind Folk, you touch on the invisibility of Black blind female Blues artists. Can you expand on this for our readers?

Terry Rowden: As I wrote in The Songs of Blind Folk, the fact that blind and other disabled women were perceived as being particularly vulnerable made and continues to make the image of a blind woman on stage an uncomfortable one for audiences that have been much more willing to accepted disabled male performers.

Carnal Nation: It Can’t Happen Here [***stalking/sexual assault/NSFW WARNING***]

Nina does not aspire to the street punk life, but she’s usually barely a heartbeat from the gutter anyway. She lived in constant peril of losing her home. Her mother was always threatening to throw her out, and would often go so far as to pack Nina’s bags and toss them through the door onto the street. Alternately, she would lock Nina in her room for whole days. She constantly belittled Nina, saying she “looked disabled” and would never be able to make it on her own in the world.

Toronto Sun: Elections Canada must open door to disabled

In March 2008, Hughes went to vote in a federal byelection in Toronto Centre — when Bob Rae was elected — only to find the polling station was in a church basement and not accessible to disabled people.

Determined to vote, he crawled down the stairs on the seat of his pants.

When he had to face the same stairs in the general election of October 2008 he complained to Elections Canada officials who “dismissively said it was not their problem,” Hughes’ lawyer said.

Brisbane Times: Holidays without hassles: a rare find for the disabled

The business [BE Lifestyle Retreats] now employs 10 fully-qualified staff and includes a retreat at Cooran in the Noosa hinterland that accommodates four people and a four-bedroom holiday house at Peregian Springs.

Special features of the accommodation include electric beds, pressure mattresses, hoists and commode chairs as well as wheelchair access and wheelchair accessible vehicle pick-up and delivery service. Picnic packages and tours to wheelchair accessible venues can be organised.

Charlotte Observer: One man in a wheelchair, one big day for racial equality

From his wheelchair, [the Rev. Cecil Ivory] led Rock Hill blacks through a bus boycott that shut down the bus company. He led the NAACP. And now he was leading the lunch counter sit-ins. He told those gathered that night he was determined to wheel himself into McCrory’s the following day and park himself at the lunch counter. “His reasoning: How could he be arrested for not violating the custom, for not taking up a stool reserved for white customers?” Boone said. “Plus, he clearly couldn’t stand up in the back to eat.” […]

Soon Assistant Police Chief John Hunsucker and another officer arrived. Hunsucker instructed the manager to ask Ivory and Hamm to leave, Ivory wrote. The manager did.

Ivory asked why.

Hunsucker said “he did not care to discuss the matter,” he wrote. Ivory argued they had just “made previous purchases … and no one had objected.” He added he wasn’t sitting on a stool reserved for whites. Still, Hunsucker arrested the two.

KATU: Disabled man tasered by Transit Police officers

[Jamal] Green, 34, is disabled, with serious cognitive impairments. His lawyer says it is hard for Green to understand and follow orders. According to McKenzie, her grandson was attempting to get home using the public transit system. He initially got on a bus that wasn’t operating, but when the police officers first approached Green they instructed him to show his hands. According to a Portland Police spokesperson, Green didn’t comply with the request and instead kept them tucked up in his sleeves.

The police report indicates that the first officer warned Green he would use a tazer, then did so. Then the other officer, who deemed the first tasering ineffective, tasered Green a second time. Green says that he didn’t understand the commands as he was confused why the officers wanted to see his hands. He was eventually taken to jail then later released.

But Green’s grandmother is also upset that the officers confiscated his seizure medicine. The police report confirms that they officers initially thought it was ecstacy and at first attempted to charge Green with posession of a controlled substance.

[More detail and security video at The Portland Mercury]

Accessibility & Sustainable Transportation

Last week I attended a meeting at my university campus regarding sustainable transportation options for the next five to ten years. We’re at an interesting point in time here, as both the transit routes and the university are putting in long-term planning, so we may have a chance to push for real, useful, interesting change that can have long-term impact on both the university community and the greater community.

I would say “Ask me what wasn’t covered at all!” but I’m sure you can all guess – accessibility was never mentioned, even though the initial study into the needs of students, faculty and staff on campus had raised issues of accessibility.

But! Credit where credit is due. I brought this up at the meeting, and then again (as in, ten minutes later) with head of my particular branch of student government, and this afternoon attended a meeting including myself, the president of my particular branch of the student union, and student accessibility services to talk about concerns regarding accessible transport and sustainable transport.

Basically, the topics of conversation were around the fact that we’re a growing campus, we have greater needs regarding getting people to and from campus every day, but we want those needs to be Green in focus. The initial meeting I attended last week focused on things like faculty bus passes, incentives to car pool, and what encourages people to walk or bike to campus.

What we talked about today were more focused ideas that were inclusive of people with physical and sensory disabilities. I wanted to talk about this here, because I have no illusions: Even with student accessibility services there, we were still only talking from a limited perspective. I focus a lot on mobility needs, and more specifically on the needs of people using wheelchairs, for reasons I think are obvious, and the gentleman from student accessibility services then focused a lot on issues around students with low-vision, or who are blind.

I figure I’ll use our meeting for a greater discussion here. I want to both bring attention to others about sustainable transportation conversations and how to include concerns about accessibility and people with disabilities in them, but also I want to have more feedback and input. There are new students every year, new faculty who may have different issues regarding transportation and accessibility. The more we talk, the more we collectively can ask for things that will aid as many of us as possible.

Things that were brought up:

– Sidewalks. We talked about how horrible they are around the university, although this is pretty universal in our city. SAS brought up the needs of students who are low-vision or blind about sidewalks, including the need for high-contrast paint jobs on the curbs and around obstructions, and to have some sort of guide on the actual sidewalk for canes.

– Buses. More seating for bus stops around campus. Pushing to get more accessible routes to come here. Stop announcements (municipally they’re on the agenda for next year). Giving out cards to people so they can just show their card (usually something bright) so the bus driver will just lower the low-floor buses without you needing to ask. A recording to indicate when the next bus is coming.

I happen to know from looking at the current five-year plan regarding the bus service here that it will cost $1500 per stop to get a stop up to what they want for accessibility needs, and that a route must be entirely made up of those stops before it is allowed to carry people who use wheelchairs. This is a long-term project, sadly.

– Parking. I confirmed that here there is no additional charge for parking passes if you have a disability, you get guaranteed parking, and if there is a greater need for parking in front of a building, Facilities Management will actually designate more spots accessible. I don’t know how that plays out in reality, though. (I note there’s only one accessible parking space in front of the Library, for example.)

What are your thoughts regarding this?

Chatterday! Open Thread.

This 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 comes via Tjflex2 on flickr, who took the photo in a cemetery in Prague.

red squirrel

Either/Or – Both/And

One of the ways mainstream media talks about things is in binaries. People are either book readers or they read nothing at all, for example. Women are either sluts or they aren’t having any sex at all.

People are either caregivers or they have disabilities and thus are cared for.

Or so I keep hearing.

So, when we talk about needs relating to children with disabilities, somehow the idea that there may be parents with disabilities who are primary caretakers for these children is missed. When we talk about caring for elderly or disabled parents or extended family members, we don’t talk about how to do that if you are also disabled. Because people with disabilities are cared for, right? You can’t be both cared for and caring for someone, right? Right?

Right now, I’m getting a lot of literature sent my way about “caring for” a spouse with Cancer. That literature will often include the information given by Family Caregiver Network Society: “We understand the common feelings of isolation, helplessness, exhaustion, stress, anger and guilt faced by family caregivers.”

All of that is often true for caregivers. But for some of us, that stuff is unrelated to being a caregiver because it comes from our status as people with disabilities in the first place.

I think this feeds into the ideas of disabled people as passive receptors of whatever, who never act on their own, who can’t act on their own, and whose only stories are those of being a burden. These perceptions feed into how and what support is given to families affected by disabilities that have long-term caring needs, what accommodations are made for meetings with caregivers (I was invited to a meeting in a space that isn’t wheelchair accessible, for example), and basically how society views everything to do with being disabled. Suddenly, your whole life is perceived as a burden to others, with nothing to live for and nothing to look forward to.

I know there are readers of this blog who are disabled and care for others, either in their homes or workplaces. I want to talk about how we are both disabled and carers. [1. ETA: It is not my intention to imply that if you are not both/and in this case, you are somehow a burden or not worth talking about, or ruining it somehow for everyone else. I am just focusing this particular discussion on that bit of intersectionality.]

Recommended Reading for February 12th

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. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Tom Sawyer actorsSt Louis Globe-Democrat: Tom Sawyer to be staged by actors with disabilities as part of ‘Big Read’

“The Assorted Short Adventures of Tom, Huck and Becky” will be performed for local students by That Uppity Theatre Company’s DisAbility Project, an ensemble of actors with and without disabilities, as part of St. Louis’ “Big Read” project.

This is possibly the first production of this classic book to be created through a disability perspective and performed primarily by actors with disabilities. […]

The ensemble has 15 active members, both with and without disabilities, who are diverse in age, race, ethnicity, class, occupation, education, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability and performance experience.

Politics Daily: My Left Breast Put Fancy TSA Scanner to the Test

Then she said she needed to check something. And she began sweeping her hands around my left breast and rib cage.

This didn’t bother me all that much; in fact it made me smile. For one thing, I don’t really have any feeling in my left breast. That’s because it doesn’t exactly exist. For six years now, it’s been a composition of part of my lat dorsi (mid-back muscle) and a skin graft from my back, supplemented by a sac of silicone. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the result of a mastectomy and reconstruction, which in turn is the result of breast cancer. […]

The takeaway here is, if you have fake body parts, you should be prepared to explain them to the full-body screening folks at the TSA.

WHEELIE cATHOLIC: Saying it doesn’t matter, when it does

Now imagine this being repeated over and over in the course of a number of hours, days, weeks, months, even years, when a resentful, angry person responds like this when you as a person with a disability make a choice. […]

Their reaction may be passive or outright anger. Sighing. Heaving. Verbal retorts. Arguing. Complaining. Or worse.

Makes me wonder if “learned helplessness” is really that or an intelligent choice in the face of these situations.

“Any color is fine.” “Doesn’t matter which flavor it is.” No, don’t rock the boat. Just don’t say anything. This can even lead to not asking in the first place.

SnowdropExplodes at A Femanist View: Dancing on Wheels 1st episode [includes spoilers]

Britain has until now never entered into the European Wheelchair Ballroom Dancing Championship. The objective of the series is to find a couple to represent Britain in the next competition.

The wheelchair dancers are all novices to dancing, but have been wheelchair users for some time (the shortest has been for 18 months after becoming paralysed). The temporarily-able-bodied dancers are all celebrities who either appeared on Strictly Come Dancing or else have dancing training due to their showbiz background.

The Smith College Sophian: Dis/Ability: An Introduction

As Smithies, there is a lot on our minds. Worries about classes, papers, exams, relationships, fitting meals into our schedules, money and so many other things constantly flit through our minds.

But how many of us worry about getting our course materials in accessible formats, having a note-taker whose notes we can follow, or deciding whether to go on medical leave for the third time in as many years or to tough it out for one more week – only to pay for it for months after?

Maybe you don’t have to think about those things. We do.

The News Tribune: Delvin backs closing institutions housing disabled

At the top of [Arc advocates’] wish list was for the Legislature to consider closing the state’s institutions and allow people to live and get services in their own communities.[…]

Teresa Payne, an Arc client and advocate for people with disabilities, said people should be allowed to choose where and how they live.

Payne, who has impaired vision and slight mental retardation because of a birth defect that affected her brain development, lived in the state’s Lakeland institution as a child and left when she was 17 because she was allowed to make the choice. She said she doesn’t remember much about living there because she was medicated, but she knows her life is better because she lives independently now.

“I am successful,” Payne said. “I am in the process of buying my own home. I have a part-time job. I serve on the (Developmental Disabilities Council) board. I want others to have the same opportunities.”

Recommended Reading for February 11th

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. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Marian E. Lupo: Bringing Back the Baby Lion: Reflections on the Conference on Disability, Culture, and Human Rights, Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol 29, No 4 (2009)

The question I began my presentation with is a question still with us: “We have global poverty, we have global disability, but we also have global resources. Who has those global resources?” I would suggest, as one source, the multinational corporations, which now occupy the historical space of unjust wealth carved out by the East India Company.

I say unjust because the wealth owned by these entities is premised and accumulated based on the human body as commodity, as object. Those already disabled are a disvalued commodity. The process of extracting economic “value” from other bodies all too often produces “disability,” and a devaluation of the now exhausted commodity. Thus, once the value of these bodies is used up, they are discarded. In the U.S., more value may be extracted from the exhausted commodity through the cold-blooded ingenuity of the profiteering insurance industry.

My suggestion is that disability is a given of the human condition, not an economic exception. Thus, the equitable distribution of resources is not a privilege to be earned, but the most basic component of human rights. Basic respect for the disabled means respect for the inherent fragility and mutability of the human body.

Wicked Local Cambridge: Letter: Don’t deny access for handicapped

Imagine a woman in a wheelchair, trapped in her home, with no way to get in or out. No, this is not a scene from a horror movie; it’s the daily reality of Lesa Dane.

Trapped in her home for more than three weeks, Lesa, a paraplegic, was recently denied a building permit for a chairlift to be put in her second-floor condo by the city’s building commissioner — more concerned with whether the chair might obstruct a stairwell than the safety of a disabled woman who suffered a crippling autoimmune disease that left her in a wheelchair. […] The commissioner stated her application would not be approved unless she had a 6-foot-wide staircase.

SFGate: Legal-test firm fights blind student in court

The company that administers the California bar exam has asked a federal appeals court to stop a blind law student from using computer-assisted reading devices in the test, which starts in two weeks. […] Enyart works as a law clerk for Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley and would suffer no hardship by waiting a few months for an appeals court to review the case, the company said. […]

Enyart, 32, has been legally blind since 15 from macular degeneration and retinal dystrophy. As a UCLA law student, she took tests on a laptop with software that magnified the text and read the questions into earbuds. […]

The examiners offered a pencil-and-paper test with questions displayed on a large screen, a human reader and twice the usual three-day testing period. Enyart said she would become nauseous from having to look at the screen and needed the computer setup to have a fair chance of passing.

MSNBC: Different colors describe happiness, depression: Study could help doctors gauge moods of patients with verbal challenges [I wonder how culture-bound this is? ~L]

The study found that people with depression or anxiety were more likely to associate their mood with the color gray, while happier people preferred yellow. The results, which are detailed today in the journal BMC Medical Research Methodology, could help doctors gauge the moods of children and other patients who have trouble communicating verbally.

NPR: Children Labeled ‘Bipolar’ May Get A New Diagnosis

In a move that could potentially change mental health practice all over America, the American Psychiatric Association has announced that it intends to include a new diagnosis in its upcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — and hopes that new label will be used by clinicians instead of the bipolar label. The condition will be called temper dysregulation disorder, and it will be seen as a brain or biological dysfunction, but not as a necessarily lifelong condition like bipolar.

Telegraph.co.uk: Patients in ‘vegetative’ state can think and communicate

Experts using brain scans have discovered for the first time that [a minority of] victims, who show no outward signs of awareness, can not only comprehend what people are saying to them but also answer simple questions. […]

The patient was then asked six simple biographical questions including what was the name of his father and whether he had any sisters. In each case, his thoughts were picked up by the scans within five minutes. In each case he was 100 per cent accurate. […]

Jacob Appel, an expert in medical ethics at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, said that doctors should help end the lives of people trapped in their bodies, if they think that is what they want.

[Note that there is nothing in this article suggesting that the technique might be used to drive assistive/communicative technology to improve the quality of life of the few people who could use it. There is only the rush to use the tech to find out whether people want to die.]

Related: SciAm: Conditional Consciousness: Predicting Recovery from the Vegetative State

Recommended Reading for February 10th

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. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

Niamh at Get Ahead Blog: Fee paying schools need a shift in thinking.

Many children with disabilities are being inadvertently discriminated against in Irish schools because of attitudes and unchallenged thinking about disability. What are these attitudes? What do principals, staff and parents think about the ability of students with disability? It is nearly a cliché, but they see the DISability not the child. In schools where parents are paying high fees for an excellent education, disability is perceived as a threat to a concept of the gold star student.

The Hindu: Disability groups apprehensive of amendments to laws

Disability groups on Sunday expressed strong apprehension that the Centre was going ahead with proposed amendments/harmonisation in various laws without consulting them.

Participants at the two-day meet that concluded here on national cross-disability consultation, titled ‘Harmonisation of laws with the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities [UNCRPD],’ felt that the government would make a shoddy job of it and compromise the real objectives if there was no effective consultation.

Hawke’s Bay Today: Young sailors tame Lion

By the end of the year, Katy Wylam hopes to recruit up to 80 people who, despite their disabilities, will have a chance like everyone else to experience sailing in Hawke Bay. And this weekend that goal came a step closer when the well-known yacht Lion New Zealand visited Napier on a special fundraising day for Ms Wylam’s Sailability Hawke’s Bay. The organisation, a trust formed a year ago, aims to provide boats and sailing equipment for people with disabilities to enjoy recreational and competitive sailing.

ABC: Muni passengers sound off at town hall meeting

“My name is Herbert Weiner and I’m a Muni victim,” Weiner said at a town hall meeting Saturday.

Muni riders are angry. They packed the meeting to voice their outrage over the money-saving measures Muni is proposing. Muni needs to bridge a $16.9 million budget shortfall. The Muni board is considering raising monthly passes from $15 to $30 for seniors, the disabled and youth, reducing service system wide and renegotiating Muni drivers’ contracts.

Daily Mercury: Better wheelchair access needed

William Lowe can smell the coffee but he can’t drink it. He can see the goods but he can’t purchase them. That is because he is wheelchair-bound and the majority of shops and cafes in Mackay’s City Heart are not accessible by wheelchair. […]

“Hog’s Breath Cafe is one I have tried to go to but can’t get in. It is a problem everywhere.” Mr Lowe said there were a few shops that had built-in or portable ramps but most did not. “In a way it is discrimination,” he said. “Some of them have only a little lip at the door but because you have only a small amount of room on the bottom of your chair, you can’t get over it. People have offered to lift the chair into some shops but it is just too heavy with the combined weight of me and the 110kg chair.” An owner of Hog’s Breath Cafe denied there was an access problem at his premises and refused to speak about the issue.

The Guardian: Disability tests in need of overhaul

Already research has highlighted problems: the National Autistic Society found that the system was not always working for people with autism; Citizens Advice Scotland reported that the system was causing disabled people “unnecessary financial distress and emotional strain”; Macmillan and Citizens Advice reported that some people with terminal cancer were not being fast-tracked through the system.[…]

Benefits should not be about targets but about ensuring the right support is delivered to those who need it. If disabled people can be supported into work then there will be a direct benefit for them, and also for the taxpayer. But if people are forced off the benefits designed to support them and into appeals by an unfair system, then that could lead to wasted opportunities, and even poverty.

Recommended Reading for February 10th

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 material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

black and white photo of wheelchair users squaredancing, and a caller. There is movement blurring.

Edmonton Journal: Rockin’ rollers spin the night away: Swinging Spokes troupe puts fancy wheelwork into their square dancing

When Al Deby calls for “fancy footwork” from the Swinging Spokes, he expects both fast feet and snappy steering.

Half of the square dance troupe get around in wheelchairs and nimble rolling is essential. That and quick wits, to help navigate a setup that’s more rhombus than square. […]

But the Swinging Spokes are old pros at this. Modelled after Vancouver’s Wheeling Eights and run through the Paralympic Sports Association, the group has been dancing since 1976 and have travelled cross-country to boogie at jamborees, nursing homes, shopping malls, and every Canadian National Square and Round Dance convention, held biennially.

CaitieCat at Shakesville: Russian Debate About Rights of the Disabled

(Trigger warning: this post discusses a progressive response to a violent ‘solution’ to the problem of people with disabilities, as well as some language which will be very offensive to people with disabilities) […]

One of my Russian friends posted a link today to a post on Livejournal – which has always had a thriving Russian-speaking community, where it’s called “zheh-zheh”, analogous to our “el-jay” – about a journalist on a Moscow radio station who’d posed the question: “Do ‘defective’ children have the right to life?”

Afronline: Disabled rights group seek 20 seats in House

Representatives of disabled people have asked the Committee of Experts and the House to give them at least 20 seats in the next Parliament. This the number would comprise 15 seats in the National Assembly through mixed representation and five seats in the Senate. The group also wants at least one representative in all constitutional commissions.

Wales Online: Study to look at ways of protecting the vulnerable

A three-year research study has been launched in a bid to keep people with learning disabilities safe from abuse.

The project by the University of Glamorgan, New Pathways in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taff People First, has received more than £410,000 from the Big Lottery Fund.

The study will explore what people with learning disabilities understand by abuse, what help and support they need to keep themselves safe from abuse and, if someone has been abused, what are the best ways to provide support. It comes after people with learning disabilities have been identified as some of the most vulnerable in society. […]

An earlier work has found that people with learning disabilities are rarely consulted on policy and do not know what is available to protect them.

Brimbank Leader: Disabled doesn’t mean unable for Taylors Lakes woman

Ms [Elvira] Alic is heading Models of Diversity~Down Under, an extension of the UK-born campaign Models of Diversity founded by Angel Sinclair. […]

In January, Ms Alic, who has spinal muscular atrophy type 2, auditioned for Australia’s Next Top Model with fellow campaigner Jodie De Ruvo. While she said they received the recognition they were after from the judges, there were no ramps available to get on stage.

“That itself shows people will assume people with disabilities won’t go to auditions,” Ms Alic said. “You should be able to go there and hold your head up high.”

The Australian: Disabled in remote areas abandoned

The disabled are left to fend for themselves in remote Aboriginal communities, and the Northern Territory’s worst mental health cases are confined to isolation cells in prison, a damning report that has been suppressed by the Labor government reveals.

Evelyn Evelyn: Ableism Ableism?

Let’s get something out of the way: I say this out of love and respect. I say this as a fellow artist (albeit an unknown one). I also very much doubt that the people involved in this project have created it with any bad intentions. That said, however, intentions don’t equal a free pass for an end result, particularly if the end result is problematic.

I am conflicted, to put it mildly, about this latest project in which singer and pianist Amanda Palmer has involved herself (full disclosure: I am a fan of Palmer’s music). For those who need a refresher, she and fellow musician Jason Webley are performing together as Evelyn Evelyn, a fictional set of conjoined twins and former circus performers with an elaborate past who reside in (of course!) Walla Walla, Washington. The group’s upcoming self-titled album seems to be getting quite a bit of press in the indie world. Part of the press release reads as follows:

Rather than being limited by their unique physical condition, the Evelyn sisters prove that two heads are indeed better than one. Audiences will marvel at the twins as they dexterously perform their original compositions on piano, guitar, ukulele, accordion and even drums.

Ah, yes! It’s the “overcoming disability” trope, with a heaping side of totally unexpected and not-at-all-stereotypical circus-freakdom. Might Evelyn Evelyn be musical Supercrips?

And then:

Unsatisfied with the grind of circus life, at the age of nineteen the twins decided to explore a solo career. It was then that they were discovered by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley, who heard the twins’ music on MySpace. Webley and Palmer encouraged the twins and offered to help them record a proper album.

The album will be accompanied by a full US and European tour and – later this year – a graphic novel about the twins’ inspiring life, illustrated by Cynthia von Buhler and published by Dark Horse Press.

The stereotypes about disability here are pretty well-worn: according to this (fictional) backstory, the twins were “discovered by” and need “help” from two abled individuals, Palmer and Webley, to realize their musical potential. Add to this their “inspiring” origin story — which is fodder for a graphic novel tie-in — and you’ve got yourself one hell of a three-ring circus of disability stereotypes.

Thus far, it looks like Evelyn Evelyn’s primary aim is to be “inspiring” to abled folks (and to be a bit of creative fun for Palmer and Webley). The three songs currently available on MySpace only serve to continue this trope; “A Campaign of Shock and Awe,” in particular, casts the twins as “the 8th wonder of the natural world.” Good to know that even fictional people with disabilities are not exempt from being cast as “wonders” from which non-disabled people can draw inspiration and “marvel” at. Sound familiar? Add in a dash of hipster ableism and you’ve got something that looks positively transgressive, especially in comparison to the rest of the music industry.

Unfortunately, Evelyn Evelyn seems like a project that is far from actually being transgressive, even given the initial appearance of said transgression (because what’s more shocking and weird than conjoined twins, at least according to abled culture?). The project, as far as I can tell, makes no reference to the ways in which actual people with disabilities are treated in Western culture; this probably seems like a tall order for any musical project, but there is a chasm of difference between at least acknowledging that there are people like this (in this case, conjoined twins) who do exist and that they probably are affected by ableism, and outright appropriation of this uniqueness in the name of art. Certainly, Evelyn Evelyn is fictional, and while Palmer and Webley are not required to make any sort of political statement, the seeming lack of awareness that there are actual conjoined twins and that they do not only exist for abled artists’ dressing-up-and-performing purposes is rather troubling.

The larger cultural context of treatment of real people with disabilities, too, is conveniently forgotten (see the lyrics to “A Campaign of Shock and Awe”); the twins seem to exist in a world that is completely free of ableism (in forms subtle and not), harsh social treatment of PWDs by abled people, and pernicious, damaging stereotypes. This is particularly disappointing given that Palmer has written some great, quite un-stereotypical songs about PWDs and people with mental health conditions (one of which I wrote about in a blog post for Bitch Magazine).

I am a person with disabilities. I am a music fan. I am (sort of) an artist — one who mostly does graphic work about the disabilities of non-fictional people. However, Evelyn Evelyn, as a multimedia project, seems designed to keep people like me — real people with disabilities — out; this is not a new thing, considering the attitudes that folks in our culture hold about people with disabilities and their acceptable social roles. There are other, more creative ways to portray people with disabilities that don’t rely on facile stereotypes or on the ways that PWDs are already represented in popular culture. Representing Evelyn Evelyn as variously inspiring, freakish, weird and a “wonder” just reinforces existing stereotypes about PWDs, while ignoring the cultural context in which the project was conceived; while Evelyn Evelyn may be artistic and, at first glance, “different,” the attitudes beneath the project’s surface seem awfully mainstream.

Special commenting note: First-time commenters, please read and abide by our comments policy. Kindly refrain from commenting if your argument consists of any of the following: “You just don’t get it,” “You do not understand art,” “You are taking this too seriously,” “Evelyn Evelyn is not real, therefore the stereotypes about disability examined here do not matter,”  “Justify your experience and/or disability to me, NOW,” “Why are you criticizing Amanda Palmer? She is brilliant; how dare you!” I am familiar with all of these arguments — please be aware that they will probably not add anything to the discussion because they are classic derailing tactics, and I will most likely decline to publish comments that utilize the above arguments.

Similarly, this is not a thread in which to discuss how much you like or dislike Palmer or Webley’s music in general; comments to the effect of “Her/his music sucks and here’s why” will not be allowed, as they are also derailing.