All posts by lauredhel

About lauredhel

Lauredhel is an Australian woman with a disability.

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?

Today’s chatterday backcloth comes via … me. I captured these bees on lavender flowers at a winery down South last year. (Click photo to embiggen – recommended!)

bees on lavender flowers

Recommended Reading for Gimpuary 151st

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.

wheelchaircurling

British wheelchair curling team

Wheelchair Curling Blog: GB’s McCreadie “quietly confident of gold”

Bob Cowan reports Michael [McCreadie, British team captain] saying: “If we play at our best we will be a real handful for any country in the world …. The GB Paralympic teams work just as hard all year round and prepare for our winter games just as much as the competitors who are presently out in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics.”

Check out the rest of the Wheelchair Curling Blog, this Youtube video of wheelchair curling, and this Disaboom writeup which explains the game: Wheelchair Curling: Meet Paralympian Patrick McDonald .

kestrell at Reading in the Dark: Does anyone else experience a sense of horrified fascination whenever they read the word “blind” in a book title? [comments are actually recommended on this one]

What stereotypes do my fellow blind readers feel need to be included in the blind bingo card? Definitely the psychic blind person, although if you can make that an African-American blind person you get double points. And the pathetically helpless blind person, double points for combining it with other negative images of ageism. And the emotionally-isolated blind person, or the blind person who has nothing to do all day because s/he can’t reaqd or pursue any intellectual hobbies.

Washington Post: House approves bill to limit physical restraint of students [WARNING]

The House approved a bill Wednesday to limit the physical restraint and seclusion of students in schools, a response to an investigation last year that found numerous reports of students abused or killed through such disciplinary measures.

The bill, approved 262 to 153 with support from Democrats and two dozen Republicans, would establish safety standards in schools and prohibit physical restraint and seclusion of students except to stop imminent danger of injury.

Honolulu Advertiser: Hawaii’s special treatment courts threatened by fiscal crisis

As a result of budget cuts, the 11 treatment courts, including those for adults with mental health issues and families with substance abuse problems, are handling fewer cases, providing less treatment and delaying more services, Judiciary officials say. At least one court is at risk of running out of treatment money by the end of the fiscal year, five have wait lists for accepting new clients, and O’ahu’s Adult Drug Court has reduced its treatment capacity by nearly 20 percent.

BBC: More help for adults with autism

Plans have been published by ministers in England to tackle the “social exclusion” of adults with autism. Campaigners have long accused the state of ignoring adults with the condition – just 15% are in employment and half live at home.

Burnham & Highbridge Weekly News: Burnham teen fights vile online disability abuse

A determined Burnham girl is fighting back against the cyber bullies who posted vile taunts on a web page she created to raise awareness of disabilities.

A Facebook group set up by schoolgirl Lydia Williams, who has a young sister with Down Syndrome, was hijacked by anonymous bloggers who uploaded cruel photos poking fun at disability, and left sick jibes on the comments section.

Recommended Reading for February 4th

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.

Knox Leader: Talks over parking for disabled in Boronia

…are in talks to put a much-needed “disabled” car parking space in front of the school after a mother was forced to park in a no-go zone and fined for it. A Wantirna mum is livid at Knox Council for having no “disabled” spot at her daughter’s school and then fining her $117 for parking in a school safety zone. But she said she had no choice because there was no “disabled” parking outside the school. Her daughter, 5, who has a disability, has just started at the school. […]

Department of Education and Early Childhood Development spokesman Nick Higgins said when a child with a disability was enrolled at a mainstream school, the needs of the child were assessed and catered for through the department’s integration program. Where possible the department also advocated for indented parallel car parking spaces outside school grounds. But Mr Higgins put the onus for “disabled” parking on the council.

The Lariat Online (Baylor University): Faculty Senate focuses on Disabilities, BU bookstore

Faculty members have recently been looking into concerns about how far to go to accommodate disabled students. Dae Vasek, director of the Office of Access and Learning Accommodation for Baylor, addressed some of the concerns of the faculty at the meeting.

Dr. Dennis Myers, chair of Faculty Senate, said an example concern was if a student with a disability is required to follow the same attendance policy as other students.

Vasek said the answer was yes. Myers said faculty members were also concerned about students who might disrupt class, such as students who have panic attacks. “It is not permissible, whatever the accommodation for the student, for the student’s behavior to be disruptive to the class,” Myers said.

Students who have disabilities that may be disruptive are asked to sit in the back of class.

Edmonton Journal: NDP MP’s bill seeks to outlaw genetic discrimination

Increased use of genetic testing is leaving Canadians more vulnerable to discrimination on the basis of their genetic characteristics, a Winnipeg MP says.

“We’re starting to hear about people who are actually losing job opportunities, employment opportunities because of (their) genetic characteristics. So it’s a real issue,” Judy Wasylycia-Leis told a news conference Thursday, flanked by members of the newly created Canadian Coalition for Genetic Fairness.

Assiya at For a Fairer Today: Time

Sometimes when people ask me what activities I do, I jokingly include my health as an activity. I either say, “I get sick a lot” or “and I have chronic health problems” or something like that. Often it’s kind of awkward and I make a mental note to never say that again (until the next time of course). But here’s the thing: being ill, or disabled, or whatever label you want to afix, takes a LOT of time.

Nilesh Singit at Disability News Wolrdwide: The Right to Learn

Universal primary education by 2015: this is the second of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed by every country in the world in 2000. Yet this mission will only succeed if it reaches all children, including those with disabilities. Today more than 80% of all children in developing countries are enrolled in primary school, but up to 90% of children with disabilities in developing countries do not attend school.

Panel at The Guardian: A matter of life, death and assisted dying

After two high-profile court cases reignited the arguments around assisted deaths last week, Observer policy editor Anushka Asthana brought together five of the most outspoken figures in this controversial debate and put to them the most challenging questions raised by these cases.

See also:

Madeleine Teahan at The Guardian: A welcome message for the weak

BBC Daily View: Assisted suicide law clarification

Clair Lewis at The Independent: Disabled people need assistance to live, not die

Dominic Lawson at The Independent: Who are we to decide that a dependent life is a pointless life?

[NB: These latter links are purely for your information. I request that you take discussions of the pros and cons of euthanasia/assisted suicide elsewhere. Thanks. ~L]

Recommended Reading for March 3rd

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.

captionedplay

A scene from an open-captioned performance of “Twelfth Night” in Central Park last year.

New York Times: Making Broadway Accessible for the Disabled

“No one wants to feel left out of a performance,” said Lisa Carling, the director of the Theater Development Fund’s [TDF] accessibility program, which offers assistance to theatergoers with physical disabilities. “If you miss a punchline or a dramatic statement, everyone else is included but you are not.”

Pulling out a comment from this article from “HAROLDAM” of Ft Myers:

I dislike the metaphors “the” and “disabled.” We are not a generic ” ‘the’ disabled” […] “Universal access” is a metaphor that is appearing quite often, it intends that venues not disable people from attending, participating. That electric door that opens for you, opens for people with disabilities. That curb cut that allows wheelchairs easy access, allows baby carriages the same access.

aris_tgd in access_fandom on dreamwidth: Dancing on Wheels ep 3: Simone, Harry, and the reality TV narrative.

So the drama in Episode 3 of Dancing on Wheels is interesting because it’s the first time on the show they’ve really talked about the representation of people with disabilities on and because of the show. And given the subject, I’d like to talk about the edit that the producers gave Simone and Harry this week.

sarahj at My Own Last Words: Celebrity Stuttering

Connecting to other people who stutter is important to me. People like Marty Jezer, who embrace their identity as someone who stutters, make me more inspired to accept me and my stutter as they are. Celebrities that hide and denounce their stutter as a childhood vice plays into the “inspiring disabled person” story that I and many others detest.

Bernama.com: Facilitate Accessibility For Disabled, Urges Chew

The disabled are finding the environment increasingly unfriendly, no thanks to a wonderful law which glaringly lacks proper enforcement. […]

These were among encumbrances that need to be addressed to facilitate the accessibility of a disabled person, said Women, Family and Community Development Deputy Minister Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun. Expressing displeasure towards the snail-pace progress in creating a barrier-free environment, she said:

“A wonderful law without proper enforcement cannot create a disabled-friendly environment…a lack of cooperation from the local authorities would make it almost impossible to create a barrier-free environment.”

Washington Post: Parity law requires mental health benefits comparable to physical care benefits

While visits to [Denise Camp’s] internist for physical problems required a $20 co-pay, her weekly therapy sessions with a social worker cost $50 and trips to the psychiatrist who prescribed her medication were $75. A similar disparity applied to medicines: Drugs to treat the crippling depression that ended her engineering career cost her twice what she paid for an antibiotic. […]

Camp is among an estimated 140 million Americans, most of them covered by group insurance plans provided by employers, who are the beneficiaries of a sweeping new federal law designed to guarantee parity in insurance coverage.

The law, which took effect for most plans Jan. 1, applies to groups of more than 50 employees and is designed to end what Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called “needless and arbitrary limits on care.” Higher deductibles, steeper co-pays and other restrictions are no longer allowed for mental health and substance abuse treatment.

The Mainichi Daily News: People with disabilities snubbed by Tottori prefectural housing complex manager

The manager of a prefectural housing complex appointed by the Tottori Prefectural Government refused to rent apartments to three people on the grounds that they had disabilities, it has been learned. […]

Officials said that the 25 people were selected to enter the 156-apartment complex in Yonago, Tottori Prefecture, in August and December last year and January this year. A prefectural official reportedly handed over information on the 25, including the name of the householder, the number of people in each home, and data on whether there were elderly or people with disabilities. The official also verbally conveyed the level of disability of three candidates who used wheelchairs.

The manager subsequently refused to allow two of the disabled people to enter the apartments. One other person with a hearing disability who was selected in June last year was also turned away by the complex manager on the grounds that he had a disability.

Recommended Reading for March 2nd

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.

Modus Dopens: In Utah, miscarriage = criminal offence

What counts as non-”reckless” behaviour? If you don’t eat five portions of fruit and veg a day and do (gynecologist-approved) cardiovascular exercise three times a week, is that “reckless”? What if you have a glass of wine at a party (there being no scientific basis for believing that drinking in moderation poses any risk to a fetus)? What if you take over-the-counter medication for a headache, without a doctor’s prescription? What if you take prescribed medication that carries a pregnancy risk?

Elizabeth Switaj at Gender Across Borders: Are Children an Oppressed Class?

Many people I respect have written about this subject before. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find most of these posts through Google, though I remember that one appeared here. You see, when I first started seeing these posts, my response was anger. Haven’t women, and disabled women in particular, been fighting not to be treated like children? Doesn’t saying that children are oppressed undo all of that?

But enough people I respect had commented on the subject that I sat on my rage and thought about it for a while. Eventually I came to see was that my reaction to the idea of children as an oppressed class resembled the way some temporarily able-bodied feminists respond to discussions of ableism. Able-bodied women don’t want to be treated like “cripples”, after all. Then I had to admit that of course children are oppressed as a class.

Hoyden About Town: Not your punchline, Amanda Palmer.

If you missed this week’s Good News Week, or couldn’t see it because you’re not in Australia, here are the “disabled feminists” sledges aimed at FWD/Forward from Amanda Palmer, Des Bishop, and Paul McDermott. The ones we’ve been talking about in Otterday.

CBC News: Stroller rules for buses rejected in Ottawa

City staff and advocates of seniors and people with disabilities had proposed tighter rules in response to complaints about the area at the front of the bus reserved for seniors, pregnant women, people with disabilities and passengers with small children. Customers and operators said the strollers blocked other passengers and resulted in injuries. However, parents said folding up their strollers was difficult and impractical.

NPR: For Some Jobs, Asperger’s Syndrome Can Be An Asset [Remind anyone of The Speed of Dark?… ~L]

Thorkil Sonne is the founder of Specialisterne. The company currently has three dozen consultants with autism spectrum disorder doing software testing and data entry.

“[The company] actually sees autism — the autism characteristics — as a potential competitive advantage,” Sonne says.

Maia Szalavitz at Time: Are Doctors Too Reluctant to Prescribe Opioids?

Decisions about a patient’s pain treatment are now made much more collaboratively, but even in modern times, the process is fraught with moral judgment, stemming largely from the nature of available pain treatments and an incomplete understanding of how to use them. Patients who ask for more pain drugs are eyed as potential addicts; doctors who prescribe pain medications too frequently fear being arrested for it.

“Defiant Birth”: Impolite Women Who Didn’t Make History

[WARNING for this post: ableism within and without the medical system, pregnancy/baby losses mentioned]

defiantbirthDefiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics, by Melinda Tankard Reist, is a book about women. It is a book about families. It is a book about resistance. It is a book about women who refuse to be told what they “should” do with their own bodies by healthcare staff, friends, and family.

It is a book of stories, of women’s voices.

All of the women in the book have chosen to continue pregnancies against medical advice. The medical advice is based on something about the pregnancy falling outside of the very narrow “norm” – the women’s disabilities, their “elderly” ages, a diagnosis (or misdiagnosis) of a fetus labelled “defective”. There is a woman with diabetes in her forties; a woman who chose to carry to term and birth two babies with anencephaly; women with babies with trisomy 21; women living with HIV; women with incorrect prenatal diagnoses of lethal conditions; a woman with lupus and a woman with MCTD and pulmonary hypertension; a woman with Scheurmann’s disease of the spine; a woman with severe asthma; a woman with cerebral palsy; a woman and man both with dwarfism; a woman exposed to rubella during her pregnancy; a woman with thalidomide-related phocomelia; and more.

I’ll start by letting some of these women tell their own stories, as this is the significance of the book as I see it:

d. a. marullo writes:

The next day I went to see my regular doctor whom I hadn’t seen yet. He was my general practitioner and I’d known him for eighteen years. I told him the news and he tightened up his face and looked at his paperwork while speaking.

“Well, you’re going to terminate, right? I mean it would be the smart thing to do!” I was so devastated by his words I almost started crying.

“I haven’t really decided anything,” I said. […]

“Well, the numbers add up, after all – your age and all. It’s probably not going to be normal!”

Teresa Streckfuss writes:

“He came bursting into our room and listened for Benedict’s heartbeat and said, “Okay, that’s all fine,” before awkwardly leaving us again. Lucky he left. If he hadn’t I might have screamed, “THAT’S ALL FINE? THAT’S ALL FINE? GET OUT OF MY ROOM! MY BABY HAS JUST DIED! IT’S NOT ALL FINE! WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THAT’S ALL FINE?” I know what he meant. Our ‘non-viable fetus’ had died, as expected. He failed to recognise that we had just lost a person, someone we loved.

Johanne Greally writes:

On returning home I went to see my doctor. I was totally unprepared for his reaction. “There will be no problem getting you an abortion,” he said. “You meet all the requirements on both physical and mental grounds.” “But,” I stammered, “I don’t want an abortion. I want a baby.” I felt shocked, belittled, and disempowered by him.

“Your back is unable to support just you, let alone a baby. You will never be able to carry a baby. You will be in a wheelchair by the time you are seven months.” It was true that my back couldn’t support me at that time, and I had been trussed up in a corset-type back brace off and on for over a year, so that I could not move around freely even without a baby.[…] All through the pregnancy my back continued to improve. I was now able to lift and bend, even chop wood by the time I was at the seven-month mark.

Heather Arnold writes:

The added pressure of a baby pressing on my lungs would cause more problems. This doctor also reinforced that the ‘standard of care’ in my condition would be to abort the baby. I told her immediately that abortion was not an option and that I would be carrying this baby as long as I possibly could. She encouraged me to go home and talk with my husband before making the decision, although my mind was already made up.

Leisa Whitaker writes:

I remember sitting in his rooms listening as he explained that there was a 25 percent chance that our child could still inherit the dominant achondroplasia gene and the dominant pseudoachondroplasia gene- a combination that they had never seen before anywhere in the world. They had no idea of what effect this would have on the baby – whether it would die soon after birth or if it would have lasting physical problems. They had absolutely nothing to go on. Having told us this, the specialist offered us an abortion. He asked us to think about whether we wanted to bring another dwarf baby into the world.

Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds writes:

We learnt this one day when my mum went to pick Deborah up from school, only to find her in floods of tears. The children in her class had been asked to tell a story about someone that they admired. She talked about her elder sister, who didn’t have any arms or legs, and Deborah was told off by the teacher for having “a horrible imagination!”

Jo Litwinowicz writes:

I heard mum calling dad to the phone and she asked me to repeat what I had said so I told them that I was expecting. Their reaction devastated me. “Well Jo, that news has turned this day into a tragic day. You are an irresponsible and stupid girl.” They might as well have kicked me in the stomach; I was so upset that I slammed the phone down. If my parents’ reaction was bad, what chance did we have with complete strangers?

When I went to see my doctor at his antenatal clinic his first words were, “God, you were the last person I thought I’d see here.” “Sorry to disappoint you,” I replied. He asked how we felt about the prospect of becoming parents, and we told him that deep down we had both secretly pined for a child and it was the greatest news ever. His response was to say that throughout my pregnancy, if I ever wanted an abortion, he could arrange it. […]

The next day there was a knock at the door and this woman said she was from Family Planning and could she come in for a chat. I joked, “You’re a bit too late.” She went on, saying how hard it was going to be to raise a child in my condition. I said, ‘What condition? You don’t know me and what I’m capable of. […] She calmly went on, “You do realise that when your child can walk and talk it will come to you and say, ‘I hate you, mother, because you can’t talk properly, you dribble and you’re in a wheelchair and I want a new mother.'”

Note that the stories are much longer and fuller than the bits I have picked out, which concentrate on ableist attitudes. There are many parts focusing on the authors’ happiness also!

One of the most powerful tools in our toolkit as PWD is to read the world in ways that others do not; to take tools for one purpose, and to use them for our own; to resist the appropriation of our stories for the political purposes of others. To this end I am also making a conscious choice to not review the introduction or closing words of the book here.

There are many stories in this book, and it is a book with multiple possible readings. I have deliberately avoided reading any other reviews while writing mine. I imagine that some may choose to read it as an anti-choice screed, just as some forced-birthers choose to see posts on FWD about the effects of ableism on pro-choice discourse as “on their side”. I choose not to read it that way. Only two or three times while reading did I get an sense of the voices possibly self-identifying as politically “pro-life”, and those moments were brief. One, who used the words “I chose life”, may or may not have been playing into the political nature of the phrase; either way, she is more than entitled to use the phrase in regard to her own personal choice. The other mentions in passing that she had worked at a “crisis pregnancy centre”, gave me a bit of a chill. But these are not the majorities of the stories, nor were they the most important or prominent parts of the stories in which they appeared.

The women who speak about their religion influencing their decisions, the women who touch on much-misused catchphrases like “I chose life”; these particular sentences did not resonate with me. However, not everything in this book needs to resonate with you for the stories to have power, for the experiences to speak. It was particularly noticeable that in some cases the medical staff just assumed that the choices to continue a pregnancy must be based in obedience to external religious edicts. The stories most of the women tell are quite different; their decisions were individual and deeply nuanced, not based in unquestioning submission to some sort of “authority”. Sometimes their religious beliefs were involved, and sometimes not; in no story did I read the story-teller proclaiming that other women’s choices should be legally constrained or outlawed. They are telling their own stories. I trust readers at this blog to handle the nuance, even as I might not trust those who bring their own agendas to the work.

Another issue I have with the book is the occasional mention of the experience of parenting a child with a disability as transformative for the parent. While this is not necessarily untrue, I think it needs to be written very carefully so as not to dehumanise or objectify the child, turn the child into an “inspiration” instead of a full, rounded person. I’m not sure whether that line was quite crossed – I’d have to re-read in detail, and the book has to go back to the library today! – but it skated close here and there.

If you’re looking for a statistical representation of how often prenatal diagnosis is wrong or misrepresented or used to pressure women, this is not the book for you. This books isn’t statistics; it’s lived experience. The stories have been chosen because they represent those times that women are pushed around or lied to or subject to misdiagnoses and poor medical care. The issue in the book is not whether this is a majority or minority experience, but that it happens at all, and that it can be handled very, very badly. Given the number of readers and writers on this site who’ve been stampeded in the healthcare system, I think many of us do have a sense of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that treatment. In these stories, the stakes are high: the result of the stampeding, unresisted, would have been, in each case, a wanted pregnancy lost.

But I am overemphasising my nitpicking and reservations, here. In short, I recommend this book highly. The stories of disabled women, in particular, I found absolutely riveting. Their stories are vivid, immediate, at times horrifying, but more often joyful. The joy can be transcendent, yet entirely ordinary: the joy of a wanted baby, the magnificence of a disobedient woman.

I would love to see a followup book, in a similar format, with a broader scope. I’d like to see a book including stories from parents in non-Western countries; from trans or nonbinary parents; from very young parents; from undocumented immigrants and refugees and Indigenous people. A book including more analysis of the intersections of class and nationality and gender and race and queerness with disability could only be stronger. Whether we’re likely to hear that book from Reist is, well, a matter for debate; but she doesn’t, nor should she, have a monopoly on this type of story. As it stands, I am left thinking that it is only the privilege that the women in this book have – mostly white, mostly relatively wealthy – that allowed them to resist as they did, to survive as they did. The stories in this book are particular types of stories, and do not represent the realities of all pregnancies labelled “abnormal” for one reason or another.

However, even in its current form, I think this book should be considered a basic primer – for healthcare professionals, for pregnant people, for anyone else interested in disability and rebellion. It is not a primer about chromosome diagrams or placental configurations or how to eat or what to expect; but a primer about lived experience. The book covers what medical textbooks and pregnancy self-help books do not: the intimate, touching stories of women who rebel against crushing ableism.

Above all, Defiant Birth, to me, is defiantly pro-choice. It’s a book about reproductive justice. This book deserves its place in the stable of pro-choice works dedicated to the equally valid and necessary choice to not have a baby.

Recommended Reading for March 1st

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.

Radical Bookworm: Ottawa Columnist Argues for Forced Sterilization

From Dr. Gifford-Jones of the Ottawa Sun: Should women who deliver FAS children be sterilized?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No no no no NO what the fuck is wrong with people.

National Minorities with Disabilities Coalition: Black Disabled History 2010 [USAns can Register for the Black Disabled Leadership Summit here]

The National Minorities with Disabilities Coalition like many local and state minority disability organizations was born out of frustration with the persistent and pervasive disenfranchisement of minority individuals with disabilities and their families. Despite the significant gains made by some groups within the disability rights movement, in 2010, we still cannot ignore:

* Lack of cultural competence among service providers and policy makers, leading to their disrespect for beliefs other than their own

* The absence of significant numbers of minority persons with disabilities among senior professionals and policy makers […]

ewin at Blossoming Into Hysteria: A Note On Depression [Note: discusses suicide]

Having just found out that Andrew Koenig did, in fact, take his own life, and that he had been a lifelong sufferer of chronic depression, I’d like to note a few things.

The Sacramento Bee: Federal judge blocks cuts to California’s adult day care program

Disability rights advocates have scored another victory — and thwarted another budget cut — with a federal court injunction this week that blocks tightening eligibility guidelines for getting into California’s adult day care program.

An Oakland-based judge’s preliminary injunction Wednesday is “a major victory” because it recognizes that seniors and the disabled could be “irreparably harmed by losing these crucial services,” attorney Elizabeth Zirker of Disability Rights California said Thursday.

Paul Hochman at Fast Company: Bionic Legs, i-Limbs, and Other Super Human Prostheses You’ll Envy [I’m guessing this author thinks accessible parking is a super duper “perk”, and that it’s awesome having a fatiguing disability ‘cos you get to sit around all day. ~L]

Save your tears for Tiny Tim. A boom in sophisticated prostheses has created a most unlikely by-product: envy.

There are many advantages to having your leg amputated.

Pedicure costs drop 50% overnight. A pair of socks lasts twice as long. But Hugh Herr, the director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, goes a step further. “It’s actually unfair,” Herr says about amputees’ advantages over the able-bodied. “As tech advancements in prosthetics come along, amputees can exploit those improvements. They can get upgrades. A person with a natural body can’t.”

New York Times: Long-Term Care Hospitals Face Little Scrutiny [WARNING: abuse/neglect in hospitals]

Despite the rapid expansion of long-term care hospitals and the serious illnesses they treat, Medicare has never closely examined their care. Unlike traditional hospitals, Medicare does not penalize them financially if they fail to submit quality data.[…]

The 22 violations represent an estimated 2 percent of the serious violations Medicare found nationally, even though Select operates less than half a percent of the nation’s hospital beds. Put another way, on a per-bed basis, Select hospitals were cited about four times as often as the average.[…]

Therefore, long-term care hospitals are most profitable if most patients are discharged at or just after their 25th day, with a few discharged earlier. Select adheres closely to this formula, with an average length of stay at its hospitals of about 24 days, according to public filings. At some Select hospitals, the 25th day is called the “magic day,” ex-employees say.

Quickquote: Clare Hemmings on emotion and feminist stories

I’m reading Helen Merrick’s The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms[1]. This pullquote in it, from Clare Hemmings, struck me as being very relevant to the work we do on FWD/Forward and on our other blogs:

Feminist emotion … is central to the feminist stories we tell, and the way that we tell them … as a result, an account of ways of telling feminist stories needs to be attentive to the affective as well as technical ways in which our stories about the recent feminist past work. It hurts because it matters…

~~~
[1] ObDisclosure: I have met Helen in meatspace, and call her “friend”; I bought the book retail and there are no inducements of any kind involved in me blogging about it.

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?

Today’s chatterday backcloth, one weeny turtle on the head of another, comes via The Daily Squee.

turtles

Recommended Reading for February 26th

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.

Mia Mingus at Leaving Evidence: “Intersectionality” is a Big Fancy Word for My Life (Excerpts from MBGLTACC 2010 Keynote Address)

We live in a heterosexist society, we live in an ableist society and we all have a responsibility to actively work against it. We can’t guarantee that things won’t be ableist or won’t be racist (that’s not the world we live in right now); but we CAN guarantee that when there is racism, when there is ableism, that we will do something about it. We will LISTEN to those most impacted; we will listen to people of color, we will listen to disabled folks; we will listen to trans folks; we will listen to the queer disabled people of color—and hear them. […]

So I would say the same thing to the queer able-bodied folks in the audience and the folks who benefit from able-bodied privilege (in many different ways): how are you connecting your fight for queer liberation to challenging able-bodied supremacy? How are you connecting your queerness to your able-bodied privilege? How are you listening to queer disabled folks in your world, supporting them and practicing solidarity? How are you actively noticing how ability, ableism and able-bodied supremacy play out in queer communities, student groups, organizations, and movements?

cripchick: memo on “intersectionality”

“intersectionality” is not simply the meeting place of single issue politics. it is something where pieces of our experiences are so intertwined and so entangled together that they cannot be pulled apart into strands.

the way you treat intersectionality is like asking me to look up in the sky and pinpoint where the clouds begin and end.

megpie: Sometimes Shit Happens

But try explaining this to the average layperson who doesn’t have depression, and they look at me as though I’m even more crazy than I actually am – I can’t just be this depressed without a REASON; it goes against all logical thought. […] So maybe what’s needed is a little less time spent searching for the massive, traumatic REASON for my mental illness, and a bit more time spent on dealing with the reality of its existence.

justira at Dreamwidth: Utah actually considers criminalizing miscarriage, my brain explodes

And then there is the presumption that a family without children is incomplete, not a proper family, so when are going to start a family? You better do it before you’re 30, or 90% of your eggs will shrivel up! And then it’s back to the fertility clinic, but watch out, if you have the gall to delay having children for that long you will probably have some kind of gross disabled kid. Better get a gene scan just to make sure and keep working on those cures! Unless you’re some lazy unemployed slut, in which case you should be sterilized against your will. Feminists / liberals / pro-choicers / whathaveyou don’t get a free pass here, either, not when shit like this and this needs to be said. Not to mention this and this. Not when you use a misogynist slur to describe one of the lived realities of women in childbirth. In short: white, non-disabled upper-class women are to have white, non-disabled children, whether they want them or no, and be goddamn happy about it.

The Washington Post: Shinseki: US will fix broken VA disability system

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said he’s making it a top priority this year to tackle the backlog of disability claims that has veterans waiting months – even years – to get financial compensation for their injuries. […]

Shinseki said he’s often asked why, 40 years after the Vietnam war and nearly two decades after the Gulf War, his agency is still trying to resolve issues related to those veterans’ illnesses. […] Shinseki said he’s looking ahead to make sure Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries don’t have similar problems getting financial compensation.

The Telegraph: Travel industry ‘failing to cater for disabled’ [via Rolling Rains Report]

Britain’s leading travel companies are failing to serve the needs of disabled travellers, new research has found. […]

Brian Seaman, head of consultancy at Tourism for All, said the travel industry needs to do more to understand the needs of disabled travellers. “We have conducted independent research in the past by sending disabled travellers to the high street to find a disabled-friendly holiday to Majorca,” he said. “In every case, not one travel agent was able to offer a product that might have resulted in a booking. The agents had great difficulty in finding suitable accommodation and when it came to visiting the accommodation on the island that they were able to find, they turned out not to be as accessible for disabled people as the agents had suggested.”