All posts by Anna

And if this keeps up, there won’t be any

My pet hate: “Crip Drag”.

Crip Drag is when a character has a disability, but the actor playing that character doesn’t have whatever disability they are portraying. Recent examples that come to mind are Kevin McHale, who plays Artie on Glee, any wheelchair-using villain you see in Doctor Who, and whoever got the role of Eleanor Perry in the Stargate: Universe episode “Sabotage”.

(And those are, of course, just shows that have wheelchair users. How many movies have you seen with a blind character who is played by an actress who isn’t?)

When pushed on issues of Crip Drag, the creators of these shows and movies often respond in one of two ways.

First, the character has the Miracle Cure Plotline, and thus they can’t have an actor with an actual disability play that role.

At first I didn’t question this much, beyond my general irritation with the Miracle Cure Plotline (Hey, television and movie producers: We have more stories than that, thanks), but I’m beginning to be very irritated with that idea the more I think about it. Amongst other things, there are wheelchair users who can (gasp!) walk. They may walk with a cane, or some other assistive device, but as long as you’re not asking them to climb several flights of stairs and then go for a run, they’ll probably be able to manage enough to satisfy the “It’s a miracle, he can walk!” plotline. I suspect blind actresses could act like they could see for the sake of a storyline, too.* It’s almost like they can learn to act like they can see, the way another actress can learn to act “blind”.

The second reason, the one that’s got me all irritated today, is the wonderful excuse that all minority groups get when they point out casting disparities: There aren’t any Big Names that will Bring In The Money who have disabilities, and Do You Know How Hard It Is To Find An Actor Who Could Do This Role At All?

The latest in a long line of insults of this nature is the casting of Abigail Breslin as Helen Keller in the upcoming Broadway production of The Miracle Worker.

For his part, the show’s producer, David Richenthal, claims that the production was unable to find a blind or deaf child actor with the star power to bring in enough of an audience to justify the show’s large budget, saying “It’s simply naïve to think that in this day and age, you’ll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance,” he said. “I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making a serious effort to get a star.” The show will, however, be making an effort to find a blind or deaf actress to play Breslin’s understudy — but they won’t make any promises.

Gosh, I wonder why there aren’t any Big Name Child Actresses who are d/Deaf or blind (or both) and can thus play Helen Keller. Do you think it’s because there aren’t enough roles that are given to such actresses so they can develop a name for themselves? Do you think it’s because any roles that could be given to a d/Deaf or blind actress are given to non-disabled actresses? Do you think there might be some sort of bias going on in casting decisions that might be impacting this at all?

I sympathise a bit with the situation Richenthal is in. All he’s trying to do is make sure that an expensive production makes money, and Breslin has the star-draw. Apparently there are no other roles in The Miracle Worker that one could cast a name-drawing star in, and of course it’s foolish for anyone to think that the role of Helen Keller would go to an actress with a disability! What nonsense!

This is, of course, a self-perpetuating system. Disabled people are not cast in roles that would demonstrate their acting talent. They do not get the experience and the face time that the currently non-disabled do, so they can’t increase their name recognition. Then, when a role comes up that is perfect for a person with a disability, the role goes to someone else, because people don’t have a clue who this disabled person is.

The biggest actress, of course, who disproves this rule is Marlee Matlin. However, as much as I respect Marlee Matlin she is not the only actress in all of North America who is deaf. Honestly, I promise, lots of d/Deaf people do act. So do lots of blind people. My husband, who is a full-time wheelchair user, used to do Shakespeare. We are out here, and we are looking for paying gigs just as much as the next person.

Stop the Crip Drag. Stop the Miracle Cure Plotlines. And stop acting like it’s just a wild coincidence that you don’t know of any disabled actresses with the star power to bring in the money for the role of Helen Keller. It irritates me.

Please note: As with all of my posts, my schedule is such that I won’t be able to see comments for hours after you make them. My co-moderators will be approving most comments as they become aware of them, and will try and respond to any and all of them when I’m free.

* I’ve described wheelchair users as male and blind people as female because this is how they are typically cast in North American shows.

Recommended Reading for November 4

Disability and Loss

If you are born differently abled, the state of your body is absolutely normal to you but if you come to this identity after being fully abled, it is a loss. I think that it is important to acknowledge this for exactly what it is. I have had doctors tell me that this is not healthy or normal. I have been encouraged to medicate myself into a false state of happiness. Being sad makes people uncomfortable and to own this sadness as completely as I do, even more so.

The woman that I was four years ago is gone forever. The woman that I thought that I would become ten years from now will never appear. This is a loss and it is traumatic. I have only lost one person in this life who was close to me and dealing with this disabled identity is very much the same sort of feeling. It is natural to mourn and this does not mean that you do not accept or love your new identity; it means that the person you were before was also of value.

Torchwood 2×11: Adrift

Do not start with ‘but she’s not mad, she’s autistic’. This is not the moment for comparing isms and/or deciding that neurological disabilities deserve more or less stigma than psychiatric ones. For the moment, please, let’s lump them all in the same category, under ‘things causing one to be locked in a loony bin so that no one has to see us’.

This episode disrespects people like Amanda. Do not argue that it’s different because this is a special *space* madness that doesn’t follow the normal rules of psychiatry or neurology. It’s not, it’s playing on the same tropes human beings have been playing with since madness was *invented*. They made it a special space madness so they had an excuse to drag out those tropes and wallow in them without conflicting with contemporary knowledge of the realities of mental illness, post-traumatic stress, etc.

With this Steam-Powered Prosthetic Arm, I Could Be As Strong as… A Normal Person [Note: This post has some problematic content, such as using the term “wheelchair bound”, but overall I think it’s interesting and worth reading.]

Steampunk, as we all are aware, draws its inspiration from the Victorian era, which, for all its accomplishments, wasn’t very good to people with disabilities. Halifax, where I live, has a few Heritage Houses, many of which were built during the era, and it doesn’t take much to see that most of them are wheelchair-inaccessible. By and large, disability issues fall off the steampunk radar. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any steampunks with disabilities. Out of curiousity, I put out feelers on Brass Goggles.

In fact, there are quite a few, and disabilities don’t really stop anybdy — Mark F. has been living with chronic muscle and join pain for 30 years (plus osteoarthritis; we should note that for many, it’s never just one illness, but a whole clusterfuck of problems which exacerbate each other), and yet has managed to refurbish an entire work cubicle, among other projects. Many other steampunks with disabilities also involve themselves with the physical side of steampunk: DIY, costuming, conventioneering.

Linkblurt: We are assaulted

*WARNINGS apply to this post – descriptions of assault and abuse of people with disabilities, including sexual abuse*

In the news:

Alan Johnson ‘stops the clock’ on Gary McKinnon’s extradition proceedings

In an eleventh-hour intervention, Alan Johnson told MPs that he had “stopped the clock” on proceedings to give Mr McKinnon’s lawyers time to consider medical reports and make legal representations.

Mr McKinnon, 43, from Wood Green, North London, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. He says that his hacking of Pentagon computers was nothing more than him searching for reports of UFO sightings.

Feel free to send me anything you think I’d like to look at to anna@disabledfeminists.com

Recommended Reading for November 3

If you have a child with Asperger’s

When I was a little girl, nobody knew the word Asperger’s. My way of being was called “weird,” “strange,” “slow” and other equally nice things. Today, we are finally getting to understand that not everybody is neurotypical, that the variety of human difference is huge, and that, most importantly, it’s ok.

Everybody on the spectrum is different. There is no single list of characteristics that would encompass all of us. Still, when I think about it, there is a whole range of things that people around me could have done when I was a child to make my existence easier. So if you have a child who might have Asperger’s, these are the things you should consider:

1. First and foremost, it is not the end of the world, a tragedy, or a reason to feel miserable. It isn’t a disease or “a public health crisis”, as some ignoramuses claim. It’s a way of being that is in no way worse or inferior to yours. I believe that in some ways it might actually be better. There is nothing in this condition to prevent your child from being happy. Of course, she will be happy on her own terms and within her own way of understanding happiness.

Transcription, because you do too much

A choice to engage in dialogue, discourse, or movement-building without making a commitment that any video used will be transcribed has a real cost in terms of cutting progressives out. A commitment to accessibility, combined with intersectional issues that make one short on time, energy, or spoons, has a real cost in terms of cutting progressives out. We can’t do it alone, people!

As a member of the progressive community, I have something I can give to help with that.

Quickhit: Pedestrian Bridge Lifts Turned Off At Night:

Oh, but it’s only at night, right? Surely all well-cared-for people with disabilities are locked up at night. So this would never be a problem. Right?

Halloween on Wheels

It seems slightly wild and bubbly-making to be thinking about partying (a little). Karaoke (OMG, yes)?? Costumes?? Yes. I’ve been wondering though about disability specific — OK, wheelchair specific costume. I mean, where is the disability/wheelchair culture that would enable us (cuz it would have to be one of us — don’t want to repeat the disability equivalent of blackface) to joke about ourselves in a Halloweeny kind of way.

Dreams aloud for a second. Well, the costume would have to embody both chair and user. I can certainly see wheel wings, but what would the scary, exaggerated, ironic wheel thing be? A flat just isn’t funny. I often refer to my wheels as my ass — could something be made out of that. Envisions wheels and buttcheeks together. Shakes head. Tries to wipe mind tv. Wheels with spikes, studs, water pistols –OK. Done before. But perhaps a starting point. How to ironize wheels?

Via Wheelie Catholic’s twitter feed: This family needs help buying an expensive device that would allow their daughter to communicate:

“The sad thing is that with a lot of these kids, you can tell the lights are on upstairs, but unfortunately, they almost become a prisoner of their own body,” said Shayna’s mother, Kym.

Spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy is the most serious form of cerebral palsy. It’s a disease that’s difficult on both those with the disease and their loved ones — but not one without hope, thanks to new technology.

A $15,000 device, the Dynavox Eyemax, would make it possible for Shayna to communicate. An infrared light on the machine’s screen has the ability to “read” her pupils, detecting where and what she is looking at, and then speaking for her.

Friendly Reminder: Disability Carnival!

Just your weekly reminder that we’ll be hosting the 60th Disability Blog Carnival here at FWD/Forward on November 19th.

Our optional theme is Intersectionality – how does identifying as being disabled intersect with being a woman? With being queer? With being of colour? With all of those things?

Of course, feel free to submit other posts you think are related to disability! Don’t be limited by the theme.

Submissions are due no later than November 17th. Earlier = Better! Feel free to email either your own or someone else’s post to carnival@disabledfeminists.com .

Recommended Reading for November 2

It’s my favourite Monday of the year! The clocks fell back an hour for most of Canada last night so I feel like I’m up extra early and have lots of time to accomplish things today!

Not that this actually works out in practice.

What I Want To Write To Abled-People But Don’t:

How do you talk to a disabled person?

Twice this week, two people who were listening to me talk about the social changes that coincide with disability told me that people just don’t know how to talk to someone in a wheelchair. Now one of these people, a friend, certainly talks to me and the other person works with a service dog group, so they don’t mean themselves. I’ve found what they said to be true. My suggestion is to at least try, because often you’ll be the only person who does. This is often more damaging to my children than to me. Converse with me as you would with anyone–about the kids’ school or activities, education, politics, the arts, travel, our children, the odd weather, upcoming holidays, disability issues, health care reform. If you don’t know me, make the same small talk with me as you would with anyone. If you already know me, I’m truly the same person. If you’re feeling awkward about wheelchair use, work on overcoming that; I don’t feel awkward about it at all but I do sometimes feel absolutely unwelcome when you won’t make eye contact, say hello, or speak to me anymore. If you’re so concerned that you’ll be rude that you’ll freeze up, here are some suggestions, most of which have little to do with what you say and more with safety or manners:

The Knitting Community Has Assholes Too:

So I posted an innocuous, friendly sort of post in the large and voluble lace-knitting forum on Yahoo about knitters with disabilities which keep them from reading charted patterns. Correction–the knitters themselves had brought up their experiences and frustrations, and after some back-and-forth on the subject, I thought, “Hey, let’s see if anyone’s willing to send polite notes to publishers, en masse, to bring the problem to publishers’ attention.” Cos hey, I love my charts and I find following written instructions really difficult, but that doesn’t mean that knitters who can’t read charts due to a disability should have to miss out on the fun.

Well goddamn, you would not believe the sheer hostility that erupted. One woman in particular posted a rambling screed about how her mother had polio, but “overcame” her disability and got angry when people offered to help her; she then claimed that the knitting world didn’t need to be “fixed,” and that she was being discriminated against. I’m not sure how anyone is discriminating against this able-bodied person; did a brigade of visually-impaired and neuroatypical knitters march up to her house and forcibly steal her charted patterns? (Given how hostile her response was, I think I’d enjoy seeing that!) Language about “preferences” (a very different thing from a disability) and defensiveness about how it’s okay to like charts proliferated in the discussion. If suggesting that all knitters should get to enjoy their craft is such an offensive idea–if the idea of someone else sharing the dignity means, to these people, that there’s suddenly not enough dignity to go around, as if dignity was some kind of limited-quantity resource–then yes, the knitting world does need fixing. Then again, the world in general could use a little fixing, by those standards.

Denise Handicapped:

Last week on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry meets a woman named Denise in a coffee shop. They flirt and Larry asks her out. Larry is excited about it… until he sees Denise is in a wheelchair.

Larry is clearly repulsed by the idea of going out with Denise but as he tells his friend Jeff, “I was stuck. I didn’t want her to think I was a bad guy.” Jeff tries to reassure Larry that it’ll be okay to date a woman in a wheelchair by saying, “It’s an adventure, it’s an adventure.” Yeah, Larry, dating a woman who can’t walk is like a trip to see the freaky disabled woman in the sideshow at the circus. Who knows, she may even get frisky with ya. That’ll be adventurous, for sure.

So they go on their date. As Larry pushes Denise up to the restaurant’s entrance he says, “If we’re going to have a second date, you’re going to have to get an electric chair. I’m not doing this again.” Cue symphony of tiny violins.

In the news:

House bill likely to include long-term health care [US]

House health care legislation expected within days is likely to include a new long-term care insurance program to help seniors and disabled people stay out of nursing homes, senior Democrats say.

The voluntary program would begin to close a gap in the social safety net overlooked in the broader health care debate, but it must overcome objections from insurance companies that sell long-term care coverage and from fiscal conservatives.

Female veterans complain of less pain than men [Warning: This is a mainstream media discussion of a medical report.]

Female veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are less likely to complain of painful physical conditions than their male counterparts, according to a U.S. study.

The study of more than 91,000 U.S. veterans runs counter to what is seen in the general population where women typically show higher rates of chronic pain conditions, including migraines, fibromyalgia and persistent abdominal pain.

Recommended Reading for October 30

#Antidev: Some thoughts on disability “devotees”

The issue of disability devotees — and let’s call a spade a spade here: they’re fetishists — divides the disability community at every level, from academia to, well, Facebook. It’s something women with visible disabilities encounter regularly. And I believe that, while the extremists are relatively rare, the growing acceptance of “devotees” online will trickle down into the broader social constructs around disability.

It’s widely believed that people with disabilities are viewed (in contemporary Western culture, at least) as “asexual.” The truth is more complex. We certainly do not fit the airbrushed-cover-of-Vogue ideal of beauty that is shoved down our throats. But then again, neither do all but a few supermodels on the planet; we don’t consider 99.99% of women as asexual, though. So here’s a key point: differentiating beauty (or physical attractiveness) from sexuality. To be sure, sex can be different and require a bit of creativity and patience, but most women with physical disabilities (at least, the ones I know!) have pretty normal sex lives. Nevertheless, because we can fall so far outside the norm of what is considered attractive, we (like all women) tend to conflate general beauty with sexual attractiveness, making us easy targets for people calling themselves “disability devotees” — sexual fetishists who objectify women with disabilities and reduce them to the sum of their (disabled) parts. Many women with disabilities entertain such advances, or even encourage them; when you’ve lived in a society rife with ableism it can be easy to believe that your disability defines you (and as a woman, that your sexuality defines you), and fetishists play right into that mindset.

Personal Situation

Now that I know all these things about my father I can‘t stop thinking about it (especially the new info in addition to the terrible tirade from him the day before). I don’t want to live with him anymore, but I don’t really have any other options. I need constant care and there’s no one else in my family who is able to take care of me. I know everyone says this, but he truly does love me and wouldn’t be able to take care of me like this if he didn’t. Out of everyone in my life he’s given above and beyond anyone else when it comes to my caretaking – he’s here full time and any one else is less than once a month. But I can’t stand to be around him anymore. I have so much anger. I’m angry how he treated my mother, and indirectly caused her to hurt me. But I’m angry at my mother for directly hurting me. I’m angry at my father for having such an anger problem that we had to be afraid of it. I wish I was healthy so I could just move away, but my disability is so severe that I really can’t do anything for myself and need the constant care. I don’t want to go to some nursing home – I’ve heard too many stories about that to trust it.

One time in the past when he exploded emotionally, I called a nearby shelter because it was having such an emotional impact on me. I told them about my physical situation and they said that they were not handicap accessible and referred me to another shelter. Neither shelter would be able to care for me in the way that I need it. I just don’t want to be alone in this world – it‘s not just emotional, I need a someone to physically protect me because I am that fragile. It sucks that my family sucks, but they’re all I’ve got right now and they’ve helped me in a lot of other ways.

In the news:

Via email from Ira G.: Minds Interrupted: Stories of Lives Affected by Mental Illness:

The three will be among eight Baltimoreans who will discuss the ways in which mental illness has wreaked havoc with their lives in a program called “Minds Interrupted.”

Participants wrote and edited their intimate, sometimes funny, often harrowing tales at a recent workshop that included tips on performance skills. Tickets will be sold to the show, which is being held at Center Stage, and which was modeled on the popular Stoop Storytelling series in which nonactors tell seven-minute-long anecdotes about their own lives.

The hybrid nature of “Minds Interrupted” can be perplexing: Is the evening a high-minded attempt to publicize a vexing and misunderstood social problem, or is it entertainment? And can the two categories successfully be mixed?

Five benchmarks for social assistance [Canada]

The next bold move the government must make is to stick to its guns on a comprehensive review of Ontario’s broken social assistance system.

The commitment to review Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program – made in the province’s poverty reduction strategy last December – has been agonizingly slow to get off the ground.

With the first anniversary of the strategy quickly approaching, more and more Ontarians are being forced to deplete their savings and join Ontario’s swelling welfare rolls.

As the province moves to more effectively employ resources to meet people’s needs and promote economic recovery, we can no longer afford to wait.

Student beaten to death in his Sac State Dorm Room

Scott Hawkins had Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, “that made him very obsessive about his favorite things,” his father said. He especially enjoyed studying ancient European and Middle Eastern history and was hoping he could graduate with a minor in one of those areas, his father said.

“He could go on and on about the history of Rome or the reasons that the Greek empire did this or that,” Gerald Hawkins said.

The attack was reported just before 2:30 p.m. Wednesday when one of the dorm’s resident assistants called police after hearing a loud disturbance coming from one of the suites.

Recommended Reading for October 29

Sexy with a Disability:

It’s not like there are many role models out there in the media. The disabled are rarely portrayed as sexy. Brave, yes. Melancholy, sure. Angry about their lot, check. Objects of concern and pity (stop calling me “special”!). But sexy? No. The hot babe who gets the guy isn’t limping toward him, gnarled fingers grasping his strong shoulders as they kiss. And if she is in a wheelchair, it is only temporary.

Ally Issues: Feeling Useless:

At the same time, I have this nasty prickly little feeling inside me which tells me, “what right do you have to write about this issue? You’re perfectly able-bodied. You’re so able-bodied you’ve been holding write-ins at the Paperchase Cafe for years. It’s not like you’ve ever done anything to be a good ally to people with disabilities.”

The horrible thing is that the voice is right.

I’m wondering though, if it would be worse if I let the voice hold me back. That I have to wonder is, I think, pretty bad. Able-bodied people can talk about disability issues, and do, all the time. I’ll probably fuck up at some point, but that happens, right?

A piece of ableist language I could really do without

It’s that dreaded question, upon meeting: So, what do you do for a living?

It hurts. And what’s worse, people often don’t stop there; they keep on asking. ‘Oh, you don’t work? Why not? So are you on the dole then? Are you looking for work? But how do you afford to live? A pension? What are you on a pension for?”

Honestly, sometimes I just want to tattoo it on my forehead: “Hi, I’m Cinnamon Girl, and I’m insane. Thanks for the tax dollars!”

You see, I have a psychiatric disorder, and receive a disability support pension as a result. I don’t work to make my living. I also don’t want to disclose to every last person I meet that I have a mental illness. But, with that loaded innocent question, that’s pretty much what I’m forced to do.

Bones and Invisible Disability:

To be clear, Brennan’s Asperger’s is never directly mentioned by her co-workers. Her social awkwardness, typical of the syndrome, is frequently the punchline of jokes or leads to the repetition of one of Brennan’s favorite phrases, “I don’t know what that means.” However in interviews, Emily Deschanel, the talented actress who plays Brennan, often states that her character does have a mild form of Asperger’s.

The lack of awareness Brennan’s co-workers show about her Asperger’s, leads me to believe it could be considered an invisible disability. At first glance, Brennan appears “normal” and the only way her co-workers would know about her Asperger’s is if she tells them and then proceeds to advocate for her unique needs. In fact, she has made steps towards self-advocation already, at one point last season asking her psychologist, Dr. Lance Sweets, to help her understand social cues and to read facial expressions.

Dealing with disability is fine – it’s the phonecalls that shit me!

Peopel who don’t know you gasp and think life must be unbearably dificult, draining, and emotionally tough when you have a child with a disability – but to be honest, it’s the endless phonecalls, wrangling and organisation that can shit me to tears. Picking up Miz M from childcare yesterday, where she beamed delightedly and kicked her little legs and waved her arms, that was lovely. Trying to help her eat slices of mango was sticky but, hey, just fine. Making the fourth phonecall to the same organisation to try to organise for her mobility device to be fixed, on the other hand, brought a hot flush of frustration to my face and tears of irritation to my eyes. Put on hold while the woman I needed to speak to was on another call, after which the original unhelpful phone-answerer got back to me and said oh, she’s left now, and won’t be back till tomorrow. This, at 9 am.

Recommended Reading for October 28

Join Marlee Matlin in Demanding Captioning of Online Video Content

Academy-Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin has been using her Twitter account to actively lobby for captioning of all the digital video content that is flooding onto the Web. The issue has rightfully hit a boiling point for the deaf community because Netflix and other services are now streaming video online without captions.

The National Association of the Deaf sent a letter to Netflix Oct. 5 complaining about the lack of captioning for “The Wizard of Oz,” which was available for download free at the Netflix Web site as a promotion.

Matlin points out the irony of a recent video about the Helen Keller statue unveiling at the U.S. Capitol on the CNN Web site that has no captions!

Related: How to add Subtitles and Translations to your Vids, Captioning Sucks!.

Ableism in 30 Rock [Includes an embedded video from HULU that is not available outside of the US]:

A lot of feminists love 30 Rock. As they should: it’s a funny show, and a rarity for television – a women-fueled enterprise with a two main female characters, written and conceived of by a woman. That is Cool, full stop. And 30 Rock has many deft explorations of the many facets of being a white, middle-class, straight, woman with able privilege. But persons with disabilities don’t fare quite as well.

30 Rock trades on ableism on an almost episodic basis. The show’s disrespect towards folks with disabilites, particularly those with visible disabilities, is constant and unrelenting from side gags to b-plots to regular characters. 30 Rock constantly places bodies with able privilege in a position of supremacy above bodies with visible disabilities through humiliation and devaluation. Its abuse of persons with disabilities in the name of comedy goes beyond the casual ableist language like “lame” or “retarded”. Such language is unfortunately ubiquitous to even shows that have been critical of ableism (eg, The Office has critiqued ableism through Michael Scott’s typical obliviousness on a couple of occasions, but, as in life, “lame” and occasionally “retarded” is still a consistent presence) but 30 Rock’s ableism is constant, humiliating, and dehumanizing.

An Example of an Article about FSD [FSD = Female Sexual Disfunction]

I’m still not fully understanding the claim that FSD is profitable. If that’s the case, why is it so difficult for me, someone who falls into the pain category, to find a doctor who is equipped to handle me? My experience is that often, my first line of defense doctors get tired of seeing me after I don’t respond to conventional treatments. I think right now my local gyno probably never wants to see me again.

The article goes on to talk about hysteria. For the most part I don’t find this section of the article to be inherently problematic. Except for the part about “pelvic congestion,” being in quotes, since it is mentioned as a real thing in Heal Pelvic Pain (p. 16)

Identifing:

But the real reason it followed me and stayed there in the back of my mind was the times I thought, “Wait. That’s me.” And then my guilt complexes came in full-force, telling me no, you can’t call yourself that, that’s for people with real problems, any problem you have is just in your head. And maybe most of them are in my head, but well, it doesn’t make them any less real. It doesn’t make it any less hard to me to function or to try and figure out how to fit into society. It doesn’t make my very concrete limitations disappear.

In the news:

Clem7 Tunnel Labeled a death trap for the disabled [Australia]:

BRISBANE’S Clem7 tunnel could be a death trap for the aged and infirm, a disability group has warned.

Queensland’s Spinal Injuries Association said the 4.8km-long tunnel’s emergency exits were too far apart and too narrow for people with mobility problems to escape an underground disaster.

Mr Mayo argues there are no design rules for tunnels but believes this infrastructure should follow the Australian Building Code which mandates emergency exits at every 60m in buildings.

Recommended Reading for October 27

I’m writing this four days before you’ll see it. (I write most of my posts from the past, due to my schedule.) I mention this so people know that I’m not ignoring recent posts, I’m just not seeing them yet.

Disability & Desire: The Dance of the Heart – This is a pointer link. The actual article is PDF.

From the article:

In 1996, at the age of 24, I found myself in hospital, with empty walls and broken dreams colouring my days. My partner at the time, Janine Clayton, and I were caught up in local taxi violence in Cape Town, South Africa, with members of rival taxi organisations firing at each other. The driver of the taxi we were in died, and my spine was severed by a bullet. My body told me long before doctors had the courage to admit it. I was paralysed from the chest down. During those endless afternoons with little else than my mind to entertain me, I contemplated the extent of my loss. Perhaps what struck me deepest at the time was my conviction that I would never be desired or loved again. I felt that my body had become damaged goods, my sexuality erased.

As time went by, I began to dismantle my perceptions by analsying their origins. I recognised that my mental picture of a person with a disability was that of someone in need of care, someone to be pitied, someone who certainly had no real claim to love or any kind of fulfilling life. The basis of my beliefs was largely informed by society’s consensus on people with disabilities … these were people who were mostly invisible, unless as beggars on the street or patients

When Simply Stating Your Truth Isn’t Enough:

What matters, then, is what you do with what you call facts, experiences, truths and ideas. It’s how you handle your perspectives on gender, race, ethnicity, class, and disability. It’s the way that you align the facts (or not) with societal preconceptions about those who are somehow “different.”

It doesn’t matter whether or not you, personally, don’t share the stigmatizing impulses that lead to discrimination and hatred; members of your audience most certainly do. As an artist/performer/writer/…, you have a responsibility to treat those facts in such a way that you don’t perpetuate the beliefs that enable harm. You might even take on the responsibility to change the way that people think and act. Or, then again, perhaps not.

Accessibility: The Soundtrack of my Life

We would never expect the average able bodied person to push themselves to the point of pain to participate in a public event. Whether I am watching my son play hockey or considering taking my boys to the Santa Claus parade, I must consider how much pain I am able to live with to participate. Differently abled parents are no different than able bodied parents. We want to be a part of our children’s lives and yet the barriers that exist often make this impossible.

Those that parent with a disability also bear the social stigma of being unfit. Social services has intervened on many occasions because of questions about our ability to parent. Disablism in this case is supported by concern for the children. It never occurs to many, that if the world were more accessible, that there would be no reason for concern. The fault is not with the body in question but with the makeup of the world.

Pain vs a Life:

Friday morning the group I was with wound up discussing a scenario of tension between the demands of being healthy and the desire to live life. I’d love to have both good health and the ability to pattern my life in the manner I want. I don’t. (And I would argue that none of us really do.) I live in a body that will experience pain if I try to do too much. I consider myself lucky to know about where that line lies. And sometimes I choose to push and bring extra pain meds. And sometimes I choose not to push and to be pain free. There’s no magic formula. I try to balance the life I want against what I expect the physical costs of extreme activity to be.

And, this comment was left by Amanda of Ballastexistenz and I’m just going to C&P the whole thing because it is full of good reading material:

I’d like to present some links that could be useful further reading on these topics….

The first one is from The Perorations of Lady Bracknell. She addresses some really common misconceptions about the social and medical models. Her article is useful for people new to these ideas, many people not new to them, and especially anyone who has ever believed that the social model means impairments don’t cause problems on their own, or that the medical model is the model that good medical professionals ought to use. The link is Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.

Then there’s some things by a writer named Cal Montgomery. She’s cognitively and physically disabled, but has been pressured by physically disabled people to pass as purely physically disabled (the same thing happens to me sometimes). She frequently criticizes the entire concept of “invisible disability”, saying that it makes it sound like the “invisibility” is happening as a trait of the disabled person rather than a lack of understanding in the particular observer. I see very few other people tackling that idea and I think she’s absolutely correct. She talks about it in a lot of places, but her two best articles on the topic are A Hard Look At Invisible Disability and Tangled in the Invisibility Cloak.

I’ve been challenged enough (told I’m making crap up, basically) when I say that autistic people who can pass for non-autistic are usually visible if you understand what to look for, that at one point I got fed up when writing a post that dealt with that, and wrote up a detailed description of precisely what combinations of things are visible to me that are invisible to people who have no idea what to look for. (I then got criticized for writing a “DIY autie-spotting guide”, but that was absolutely not my intention. I was just trying to be concrete about something to avoid being accused of lying.) For people who have trouble imagining how something could be invisible to them but visible to people who know what to look for, this post I wrote might be useful. (Note that I use a lot of terms in it to refer to other people’s perceptions, that I would never use myself.)

If you have links you think are relevant, don’t hesitate to email me: anna@disabledfeminists.com Please note my schedule means I may not see your email for a few days.

Disability Blog Carnival 59 is up!

The fabulous and amazing Liz Henry has up a variety of awesome posts for the 59th Disability Blog Carnival!

The theme for the Disability Blog Carnival #59 is Work and Disability. It’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Thank you to Penny from the Disability Studies Blog for co-ordinating the Disability Blog Carnival through 60 issues!

Thank you all for your contributions! All through October, they buoyed me up and gave me food for thought. I felt intense pride to be part of this very loosely knit online community of thinkers and writers.

Blog Carnivals are totally my favourite way of finding new bloggers to read, so be certain to check it out!

Also, next month, we’ll be hosting the Disability Carnival here at FWD/Forward. The optional topic is disability and intersectionality. Email your links to carnival@disabledfeminists.com, and check back here on November 19th!