Category Archives: media and pop culture

A Few Relevant Posts on “Glee”

media and pop culture, recommended reading, , ,

ETA: I’ll be adding links from the comments to the bottom of this page, so check back for more when you get a chance!

I know people are searching for our responses to the Very Special Disability Episode of Glee. I’ve got something going up Monday, but I wanted to highlight a few very good responses from other people to the episode, specifically people who are actually knowledgeable about the disabilities presented on the show. So, obviously no one actually associated with the show itself, because they seem pretty clueless.

From Wheelchair Dancer, who is an actual dancer in a wheelchair, Glee

And then there’s the sad fact of the “dancing;” the choreography sucks. The one potentially interesting move that McHale supposedly “does” is a cut — he wheelies on one rear wheel. The rest is notable only for the way that it shows that able-bodied, non-wheelchair-using folk really do think of chairs as bicycles you move with your arms. There’s absolutely no body-chair integration at all. They think of sitting in a chair as being only about not being able to move their legs (and in Artie’s case as being about having his hips and legs twisted to one side). That mistaken understanding leads to some very weird looking people in chairs. On chairs would be a better phrase for it. The fake paralysis of their legs somehow wends its way up their bodies so that they are really only able to push with their elbows (no wonder they have sore arms!).

It’s so interesting watching them try to dance. Push. Make a dance gesture. Push. And they are only able to muster up those little beginner pushes. You know the ones I mean? The frantic shoves at the wheel? They push, the wheel doesn’t respond; they don’t know how to ride a stroke and feel the momentum. This means that they basically either push the chairs around in formations (because they can’t dance and push) or keep the chair still and hurl their upper bodies and arms around. Hilarious. Explains the weak choreography, too. Understand how a disabled dancer moves with the chair, Mr. Woodlee, and you will be able to create something a little better than bad dance.

And Kaz (who you may recall wrote a fabulous guest post on asexuality), who has that stutter that Tina’s been faking to get out of basically everything, wrote Because incurable speech disorders just up and vanish all the time, don’t you know:

THIS IS THE PROBLEM. They “figured it would go away”. Because nearly every single fucking time a stutterer appears on TV (or in movies, or in books, or or or…), it just. Magically. Vanishes. They learn to accept themselves! Overcome their fear of XYZ! Face their deepseated trauma! BYO offensive stereotype! And poof, the stutter is gone!

I think the only good thing I can say about the development in Glee is that at least they spared me that. At least she was just *faking* it, at least it didn’t just do the impossible and spontaneously vanish.

Kaz also left a comment on my post about the idea you could get out of things with a stutter:

Sure, other schools may be different, but I really doubt that many of them will just say “okay, you don’t have to do this” to a stuttering student (particularly if they start stuttering just before the presentation, and I’d think that teachers would know developmental stuttering almost always develops between the ages of two and five or so, but – oh, right, I’m bringing *facts* into this. Mea culpa.

And, a few reaction posts from us, off this blog:

In case you missed it, here’s melouhkia’s review over at Bitch, Glee-ful Appropriation:

There were so many problems with the way this episode handled disability that it’s almost impossible to know where to start (truly, earlier drafts of this ballooned into thousands and thousands of words). It hit a number of major tropes for pretty much a hat trick of disability fail. We got “disability is inspiring,” “disability is a burden,” “appropriation of disability for a Very Special Learning Experience,” “faking disability,” and “see my sister has a disability so I’m not a bigot.”

Here’s the thing about tokenization, which is what this episode specialized in: It does nothing to advance the cause of people who live in marginalized bodies. Hiring an actress with Down’s Syndrome for a single throwaway guest role is not including actors with disabilities. Centering a disability plot around able bodied characters is not including people with disabilities. Continuing to use crip drag (and having the actor unabashedly say “this isn’t something I can fake”) is not including people with disabilities. Painting accessibility as a hardship, a burden, and “special treatment” is also not including people with disabilities.

And, this was my review, just a couple of hours after I saw it, Why Can’t I Make You Understand / You’re Having Delusions of Grandeur:

Three people faked having disabilities in this episode. (Well, I guess four if you count Kevin McHale, but let’s put that argument aside for a moment.)

Tina’s been faking her stutter all along, in order to get out of having to give a speech in the sixth grade.

People with stutters are routinely mocked and yelled at, told to get over it, and basically the subject of ridicule. And yes – people do think stutters are faking it for attention. But Glee, that “diversity” show, has presented stuttering as something that will get you left alone, and something easy to fake. For years.

This is the show that’s supposed to make people with disabilities feel empowered.

I have no doubt there are lots of reviews of this episode by people with disabilities. Please leave links in the comments! I haven’t had time to go looking for them, so I really want to read them.

ETA: From Matthew Smith: Wheelie Catholic wrote Glee Wheelchair Episode Not Gleeful

All I can say is that Glee is in a fine mess now. The real problem with this show, as with the rest of Hollywood, is that it keeps insisting on portraying an able bodied version of characters with disabilities. Writing an episode on sensitivity toward a character who doesn’t really have a disability to convince those of us who really have disabilities that the show is enlightened just isn’t going to work. Nor did the subplot of a girl with a stutter confessing she really doesn’t have a stutter help. It’s all very confusing and gave me a headache.

Here’s what I suggest. Since the show decided a sing-off was fair between two characters, why not bring in a wheelchair user to sing and dance against Artie?

ETA 2: Sarah points to her post: This Week’s Glee: Good, Bad, and Horrific:

Cheerleading coach villain Sue was “humanized” this week. And how was she humanized? Because we found out she has a sister with Down Syndrome. That’s right. Suddenly we’re supposed to see that she’s actually a good person because she’s nice to her disabled sister. (And she gave an opportunity to a girl with the same disability as her sister, and she donated money for wheelchair ramps which the school was legally obligated to provide in any case.) I find this absolutely disgusting, as it seems to indicate that characters with disabilities exist only to prove “background story” and “humanity” to the “normal characters.” They are, at best, plot devices, rather than true characters. I can’t believe some people are seeing this as a good way to include people with disabilities. And please, don’t expect disability rights advocates to pat this show on the head for hiring a few actors with disabilities in minor roles. Just because the show considered Down Syndrome harder to fake for the general public than paraplegia doesn’t mean it’s doing anything to expand opportunities for actors with disabilities. These two minor roles (which probably won’t even recur again, I would guess) don’t make up for the aforementioned crip drag, let alone for the ways in which people with disabilities are being used in this episode.

Via The Goldfish, Terri’s post My Hopes for Glee

First, disability simulation exercises usually lead to more pity than understanding (you can tell by the things people say when they are over–more about relief and feeling bad for people, rather than about empathy and feeling more like people with disabilities.) Secondly, having seen professional wheelchair dancers, the performance was kind of one-dimensional…

My daughter saw the show before the rest of us and her concern about wheelchair issues took a definite back seat to her anxiety about what was going to happen between the cheerleading coach and the young teen with Down syndrome.

[Terri also talks about her conversation with her son, who is an actor, about the crip-drag elements.]

Access Fandom is also doing a link-roundup, because Access Fandom is made of awesome. If you’re looking for fandom-related discussions about disability, I really recommend following Access Fandom. [This is totally influenced by the fact that Sasha Feather, Kaz, and Were Duck are amongst my very favourite people.]

Guest Post: Davros, Daleks, and Disability

guest post, media and pop culture, ,

CapriUni has cerebral palsy. She grew up with, and alongside the Disability Rights movement. She was among the first of her generation to be mainstreamed in education, in starting in the late 1960s, she completed the Masters of Arts program in Creative Writing at SUNY Stony Brook in 1991. And she has been a regular participant in the theatrical and literary endeavor known as The Art Garden for many years. She currently lives in Virginia, where she spends much of her time geeking out on her DreamWidth Journal over the topics of language, disability rights, and general silliness, but not necessarily in that order.

This post was originally written in June 2009.

This post wanders down a primrose path of links — or maybe it makes a daisy chain of links (maybe the all those flowers are fertilized by the BS the essays in these links complain about).

Almost a year ago, I watched again, for the first time in nearly thirty years, Episode Two of Genesis of the Daleks (the one where we first see, and hear, Davros) and wrote this review: I know that this episode predates this PC-ness by about ten years, but still. I tried to articulate how painfully ableist Davros is/was (it might have helped if I’d had the word “ableist” in my vocabulary, back then). But the discussion thread wandered off into Nazism, racism, anti-Semitism, and the internalization of oppression by the oppressed — all are important topics, but Davros’s disability ended up being treated (even by me, woe) as a secondary metaphor for some other issue, and not as an important attribute in its own right (which is another of my long-time pet peeves).

Then, earlier this week, [info]troubleinchina watched Genesis of the Daleks for the first time, and she wrote this review: Davros is not a physically handicapped scientist overcoming his “shortcomings” through technology (the link she posted in that review, btw, to an essay about the cybermen, has been taken down by the author).

In reply to that review, Goldfish (the host of “Blogging Against Disablism Day”) posted this: It would be better if we were represented as a great variety of characters, but Davros did at least have some … spirit.

And she posted this link (from the BBC’s official Disability Culture Blog: “Ouch!”): ReTARDIS: Doctor Who and Disability (written on the eve of NewWho, and expressing the hope that RTD would help Who get beyond its old biases; shall we have a moment of silence for our dashed expectations?).

And finally, I’ve come to the end of my primrose path. For there is one paragraph in this last blog essay clarified for me why I preferred the Daleks before they had Davros as their single, twisted, “Creator”:

To cut a long story short, Davros foresaw that his entire race, the Kaleds, were slowly turning into slimy, green blobs. Being a wheelchair user himself, his solution to this problem was to build mobility aids for everyone to travel around in – a.k.a. the Dalek machines. Now you’ve got to admit, turning your entire race into wheelchair users is quite an extreme way to bring about disability equality!

I realized, when I read this, that I was (partially) incorrect in my original analysis, last June. What’s really promblematic about Davros is not (so much) that his “spiritual disfunction manifests as physical disfunction,” but that he diliberately creates the Daleks to be more disabled than he is. He deliberately erases their capability for empathy and compassion. He expects them to be obedient to his every command, and to be grateful to him, as their creator and their “father.” If Davros’s plans unfolded the way he dreamt them up, he’d be the most able-bodied (comparitively) “Emperor of Skaro.”

So, with Davros in the picture, the Dalek mythos only perpetuates and reinforces the hierarchy of Ability and Personhood. The more able you are, the more you’re a “real” person. If you’re disabled, your role in life is to be obediant and grateful, and the more “severe” your disability is, the more passive and grateful you’re expected to be.

But pre-Davros, in the First and Second Doctor’s eras, the Daleks had created their machine casings over time, and under their own initiative. In the Peter Cushing movie versions of William Hartnell’s Dalek stories (thanks again, [info]gordon_r_d!), the Dalek city is full of color, and art for art’s sake. Even though they’re still evil, they’re portrayed as having a complete culture, and being complete people. So yeah, I find the pre-Davros Daleks to be more interesting.

As for the argument that Terry Nation had to create Davros to give the Daleks some unique history compared to the Cybermen, I’d say that both the Cybermen and Daleks represent the abject fear that the Privileged have of the Oppressed:

“They Hate Us!! And if We Give Them Any Freedom, They Will Bring Us Down to Their Level!!”

The Daleks and Cybermen are “mechanized” selves, who have gradually lost their Personhood as they gradually lost their physical abilities, and compensated for their weakness with technology. This, in itself, makes them morally suspect, at best. What makes them evil is their desire to inflict their reality on the rest of us, “robbing us of our humanity.”

Other modern sci-fi examples of this trope would be, I think, Hitchcock’s The Birds (where humans are punished by the avians for our species-based privilege), and Franklin J. Schaffner’s (director) Planet of the Apes (again, with species privelege, with added thinly disguised race privilege). But this trope goes back much further than the genre of Sci-fi, if you consider the ancient (patriarchal) Greeks’ fear of, and fascination with, the Amazons, and what they did to men.

This fear and fascination probably arises out of the subconscious knowledge that:

  • privilege is arbitrary and more a matter of luck than innate goodness, and

  • the acts committed via this privilege are unjust, but

  • the privilege-holders are so dependent on the power of privilege for their way of life that they equate letting it go with Death.

And of course, this fear completely distorts reality. Birds have no desire to wipe out humans as a species. Nor do Apes wish to own human slaves. Women don’t want to castrate and enslave men.

And the disabled have no desire to inflict their impairments on the able-bodied. Christopher Reeve’s advocacy for “The Cure” made me squrim, but I took no pleasure in his suffering. I was simply distressed when his advocacy, and the celebrity status that fuelled it, drowned out nearly all discussions of civil rights and equality.

[I’ve been writing this post on and off (mostly on) for nearly six hours, now (I thought it was going to be a quickie; I didn’t expect it to be so hard to put into words). It’s time I stopped. Here’s my conclusion:]

Davros is a painful character for me to watch because he represents the fear that the Disabled are full of hatred — both self-loathing and hatred of the able-bodied, and is another example of the fearful trope:

“They Hate Us!! And if We Give Them Any Freedom, They Will Bring Us Down to Their Level!!”

(So We better get Them, before They get Us).

I don’t want to bring you down, able-bodied white men, staring at me from the bed of your pick-up truck,* please don’t stare at me with such virulent hatred.

*I’m remembering an actual time when I was leaving the grocery store with Audrey, my aide. This was when I had the old van, with the slooow wheelchair lift, and I was manuevering to get onto the lift. Meanwhile, there were four red-necky-type white guys hanging out in their truck in the next parking space over. And they were staring at me with such angry expressions, I couldn’t look them in the eye. If I’d been alone, I would have feared for my safety. Yes, this was one moment out of my lifetime, and it was atypical in its extremity. But it still sticks in my mind, and it’s still painful.

ETA November 29: I’m temporarily turning comments off on this post because it’s become some sort of magnet for very strange and repetitive spam. I’ll turn them back on in the future. If you come across this and want to make a comment, please let the mods know.

It’s not progress if we’re going backwards

media and pop culture,

These two things crossed my inbox on the same day.

Latest Data Follows Historic Trends

Despite years of bargaining with producers to include the hiring of performers with a disability in Casting Data Reports, this protected category continues to be left out. Fifty-six million Americans — 20% of the U.S. population — have a disability. Despite being the largest minority group in the country, people with disabilities remain virtually invisible in entertainment media.

Glee Cast to receive award for Diversity

The cast of the quirky Fox musical comedy will receive the organization’s 2009 award for favorite new diverse ensemble cast in November, according to Reuters. The series, which focuses on a less-than-cool high school glee club, mixes jocks and cheerleaders with a boy in a wheelchair (Kevin McHale), a geeky girl (Lea Michele), a gay student (Chris Colfer), an Asian goth (Jenna Ushkowitz) and an overweight African-American girl (Amber Riley).

Of course they are.

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

media and pop culture, social attitudes, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

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.

The Invisible Disability

media and pop culture, , ,

Moderatrix Note: Originally posted at random babble… on 15 September 2009.  At the time the movie was just out over the previous summer.

Because of the new movie that is out I am currently re-reading Jodi Piccoult’s My Sister’s Keeper.  I read it about five years ago, but I read that the screenwriter for the movie changed the ending (why do we do these things, Hollywood?  The movie ending sounds awful, but more on that after I see it), so I thought I would brush up so that my memory is fresh when I see the movie.

There is one character in the book, Campbell Alexander, who is a lawyer who agrees to take Anna’s (the central protagonist) case for medical emancipation from her parents, pro bono.  Alexander has a service dog that assists him.  The need for the dog becomes something of a running joke throughout the book, because everyone assumes that if he has a service dog he must be blind, which he is not.  He cracks a series of jokes, including “I have an iron lung, and the dog keeps away from magnets” to avoid directly answering any questions.  It isn’t until the end of the book that you find out why he actually needs the dog (but re-reading this I find that there are many fairly blatant clues to the acute reader), and no I will not tell you, just in case it happens to be omitted from the movie. I am a jerk like that.  =)  While Campbell Alexander’s situation provides a good many of moments to laugh in a book that is incredibly tear jerking, his situation is all too familiar.

See, the reason Alexander feels the need to crack jokes and be sarcastic is because his need for the dog, named Judge (…ha ha!  I C wut U did there!) is constantly questioned.  Every time he walks into a restaurant, a hospital, a public building and despite the fact that Judge is described as wearing a service dog’s harness he is told that dogs are not allowed.  When he mentions that Judge is a service dog the common response is “But you aren’t blind!”.  Campbell Alexander’s reason for needing a service dog isn’t obvious to the casual person on the street, but his need, his disability, is just as real in the world created in the book.  But were he a real live person living in the world today his disability would be met w/ the same types of skepticism.

Even though it is becoming more common to be diagnosed with what were previously thought to not be real conditions the idea of an Invisible Disability is still foreign to most people.  People living with conditions such as Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Sarcoidosis, any number of non-neurotypical disorders, or Lupus, just to name a few, go through chunks of their lives never showing visible signs of the often constant and frequently overwhelming pain that sometimes limits their lives.  I know that when I am on the subway in Seoul I am given odd looks if I use a seat that is left open for PWDs, even though my joints and legs hurt so much that standing brings tears to my eyes, because no one can see my pain or know my need.

It is easy to assume looking at a person that they are completely able-bodied.  TAB has become the norm to society at large, and in order to be anything outside of the default you have to display physical signs of your difference.  That is what our society today demands.  A wheelchair.  A handicapped parking plate.  A cane or seeing-eye dog.  The lack of these markers can mean the difference between accessibility with independence, and limitation.  My need for accessibility isn’t obvious unless I point it out, but it is real.  It’s the reason I have to ask if the single’s lodging on a base has elevators or insist on staying in the main building which does.  It’s the reason that some people get angry when limited access forces them off of their scooter, in great pain, while standers by watch and assume that the person is faking in the first place.

The presumption that a disability must come with a big obvious sign so that other people can identify them is part of the problem to making the world outside our homes accessible to everyone.  It isn’t the job of PWDs to make their conditions obvious to you or to explain themselves to the AB-TAB crowd, but it should be the responsibility of the public and society to make sure that PWDs can access the rest of the world, which is a step, for many, to independent living.

New Blog: You Make Me Feel Less Alone

activism, biography, media and pop culture, mental health

Samantha Schultz is the author of I Don’t Want to be Crazy, a free verse recounting of her struggles with her anxiety disorder. I haven’t personally read the book, but several of my friends speak highly of it and the Amazon reader reviews seem quite positive. (Although I would skip the School Library Report review, which commends Schultz for having “had the courage and wisdom to seek professional help.”)

After publishing the book, Schultz received a number of letters and emails and found that the most common sentiment was that the book had made people feel less alone in navigating their own mental illnesses. As she says, “I am honored to be your audience of one, but your story—like mine—has the power to help others.” In order to facilitate the sharing of stories and experiences from people who have a mental illness, she’s created a new blog, You Make Me Feel Less Alone,  for people to submit their stories and poems, which she will then post. There’s an option to have your submission posted anonymously as well.

As Schultz says on her blog, and as we clearly believe also, “Your words are powerful. Your words can help people.”

Focusing on College Students’ Mental Health (For the Benefit of the Neurotypical)

media and pop culture, mental health, social attitudes, violence

I live in Los Angeles and the local papers have been abuzz about the recent stabbing of a UCLA student by another student during science lab. Apparently a professor reported concerns about the alleged attacker’s mental health about 10 months ago. And so, according to the LA Times:

The recent arrest of a UCLA student in the brutal stabbing of a classmate in a campus chemistry lab has again focused attention on an issue that gripped the nation after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech: the mental health of troubled college students. The Virginia Tech shootings, which left 32 victims and the gunman dead, raised difficult questions about how a disturbed student could have been allowed to remain at the school despite danger signs. The Virginia Tech killings were followed last year by a deadly attack at Northern Illinois University, in which a former graduate student killed five students and himself.

So – to be clear – the focus on students’ mental health has the primary goal of identifying students who are at risk of violent attacks on other students and staff. And presumably treating or confining them. While protecting the safety of students and staff is unequivocally something that a school should be doing, characterizing that goal as “focusing on college students’ mental health” ignores violent crimes against staff or students committed by people without mental illness. It also does a vast disservice to the vast majority of students with mental illness who are at zero risk for committing premeditated violent crimes.

The US Department of Justice estimates that there are 34,000 violent crimes committed against college students on college campuses every year. Most of those were non-fatal, there were 20 on-campus murders in 2000 (there were about 1800 rapes in the same year). While it’s likely that some of those violent crimes were committed by a student with a mental disability, the vast majority of them were not. It’s certainly more likely that a college student who is a victim of violent crime is affected by one of these “garden variety” crimes than something like the incidents in the article – of which there have only been 3 since 2007.

Additionally, the message that focusing on mental health is solely to prevent these incidents marginalizes and harms college students with mental illness who aren’t ever going to kill or physically attack anybody, much less bring a gun to class and start shooting randomly. Those students are being told that people with mental illness are scary and dangerous and need to be found right away so they can be kept away from other students.

Many colleges now require a mental health assessment for a troubled student to stay enrolled and more readily expel those who refuse to comply, said Brian Van Brunt, president-elect of the American College Counseling Assn. who heads the counseling center at Western Kentucky University.

There are a whole lot of things wrong with this. First, it’s very unclear who will be subject to this kind of review – who counts as a “troubled student”? Once a student is required to undergo this review, they’re required to subject to a psych assessment and disclose past traumas, sexual assaults, all kinds of things to the college administration, at the threat of expulsion. And the implication is that if the college doesn’t like the outcome of the mental health assessment, the student might be expelled on the basis of their mental health status.

This gives students a huge incentive to stay quiet about their mental health concerns, to hide them. Going to student health for psych counseling might trigger a review by the administration to see if a student was too sick to be at school. Talking to an RA might result in a report to student services. Even fellow students might report you to be psychologically reviewed by the administration. And it’s not at all clear the colleges are that enthusiastic about keeping these students around:

Colleges try to retain students if they are not violent, said Keith Anderson, chairman of the American College Health Assn.’s best practices task force in mental health. “The goal is to keep them in school, keep them functioning and engaged, and in treatment at the same time,” said Anderson, who is a staff psychologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Tory, N.Y

“Try to retain students if they are not violent” is a far cry from “affirmatively and eagerly addresses the mental health needs of students.” It sounds an awful lot like “will tolerate those students, I guess.” And that message is having an effect:

In a recent survey of campus health officials, the American College Counseling Assn. report noted “growing intolerance by faculty and others about students perceived to be odd.”

“Maybe if we shun the weirdos, they’ll leave before we have to expel them!” It’s clear that this focus on mental health is not at all for the benefit of those college students with mental illness – it will affirmatively interfere with their ability to get support and treatment. It will make things worse for them. So the only motivation for this increased focus on mental health is to protect the neurotypical from the violent attacks from individuals with mental illness, who are considered universally dangerous and deserving of suspicion. This new focus is for the comfort of the neurotypical, at the direct expense of students with mental illness.

This is Hard

activism, identity, media and pop culture, mental health, Uncategorized

I sat down this evening to find some stuff I could write a few posts about. I went to google news and did a search for “mental illness” and one for “bipolar disorder” and looked through everything that had come up in the past week.

There was a fair amount of stuff – some workers in the CA Department of Mental health are working enough overtime to double their salaries, continuing involvement in your field of work after retiring may help mental health, some news updates on the British guy scheduled for execution in China – so I just picked out a couple of stories to look at.  I was specifically looking for something that would be positive or at least neutral – something that wasn’t about people with mental disabilities being violent criminals, or about how pharmaceutical companies are making money.

So I picked an article that seemed positive: a piece by Glenn Close in the Huffington Post about ending stigma. It’s titled Mental Illness: the Stigma of Silence, and there’s a lot in it that’s great. She criticizes the movie Fatal Attraction (in which she starred) for portraying her character as a dangerous psychopath and misrepresenting the reality of mental illness. She points out how other “topics that were once unspeakable,” like breast cancer and AIDS, have gained wide acceptance and awareness, while there is largely silence on the issue of mental illness. She is frustrated by the societal assumption that people with mental disabilities are lost causes. She even calls out ableist language like “‘crazy,’ ‘nuts,’ or ‘psycho’.”

But. She opens the piece by saying that “mental illness and [she] are no strangers” – and then cites her “challenge — and the privilege — of playing characters who have deep psychological wounds” as the basis of her authority. She also mentions that her “sister suffers from a bipolar disorder and [her] nephew from schizoaffective disorder” (emphasis mine). Which … isn’t great and made me frown a bit. But I could have overlooked that – it’s an article with a lot of visibility that makes strong arguments against stigma, it’s connected to an organization “that strives to inspire people to start talking openly about mental illness, to break through the silence and fear [and has] the support of every major, American mental health organization and numerous others.”

Except then I clicked through to the website of the organization, Bring Change 2 Mind. And here is the first thing I saw: (screencap of a video, so excuse the graphics)

Bring Change 2 Mind

I literally gasped out loud. She is a mom, his mom. And he is not even her son, not even a person, not even a person with schizophrenia, not even a schizophrenic, he is labeled with his diagnosis. There’s other photos on the front page- someone with a “post traumatic stress disorder” shirt, and Glenn Close (wearing a “sister” shirt) sitting next to her sister, who is wearing a “bipolar shirt.” And I closed the window. Any kind of anti-stigma campaign that would involve me wearing a shirt saying “bipolar” on it is not a campaign I want to be a part of. More power to those who did choose to be involved, but it just feels wrong and isolating to me. Like that is the only relevant characteristic of the person with mental illness, while people without mental illness are defined in terms of families, relationships to other people.

And that’s why this (and by ‘this’ I mean being a person with a mental disability) is so hard – even those allies who genuinely want to end stigma and address ableism can do things that feel like a slap in the face. We are embedded in a culture so steeped in ableism with institutions providing a long term structure for discrimination and dismissal that it shows up everywhere you look – even when you’re intentionally looking for something good and supportive. So some days it seems easier not to pay attention to mental health issues at all, because around any corner could be something like this.

Yes, it DOES make a difference

blaming, i'm right here, media and pop culture, shaming, social attitudes, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(Cross-posted at three rivers fog.)

I wrote this yesterday in an extreme fog and do not have the spoons to rework and polish it. Apologies for the brainspill, but these days it’s the only option I have.

***

For background, see Ouyang Dan’s post on the problematic aspects of the TV show House. Don’t tell me that people realize this is fictional. Don’t tell me that people know how to maintain that separation. Some do. Many don’t. And they’re everywhere. At the bottom of the totem pole… and in positions of power over the very people they are prejudiced against.

***

I was called back to work two weeks ago. I work at a government office that provides certain assistance programs. (Once you go to work for one government agency, you realize there are a whole lot more of them than you ever thought before.) I really don’t want to go into it any more specifically than that.

It’s been very rough on me. Last winter, work was physically draining. I basically have two whole hours every day that I am awake and not at work, preparing for work, or traveling to and from work, and semi-conscious. Not only am I so physically exhausted that I go to bed three hours after work ends, I am so physically exhausted that my brain just cannot be pushed any further. I have trouble comprehending the blogs and news sites I normally read; writing is usually out of the question. Of course, we won’t even talk about anything more physical than that — even preparing a boxed dinner for myself is too difficult. My apartment is even more a mess than usual, because I don’t have the energy to pick up the clothes that I shed as soon as I get the front door shut, the mail and personal items that trail after me from the couch to the bedroom…

Unfortunately, so far this year, it hasn’t just been physically draining. I’ve been dealing with a sudden onset of severe migraines, and not the type of migraines I’ve had since childhood and have an intimate knowledge of — these are more classic migraines, the nausea, the aura and vision distortion, the intense pain and pressure behind the eyes… The pain is not as overwhelming as my normal migraines (where a twitch of the toe makes me want to scream or cry or at least moan, but the movement and force of emitting any noise at all would hurt even worse, so I just curl up and remain frozen in misery), but the experience is just as miserable because it block’s my brain’s ability to function, even to process the smallest of information. I’ve been having trouble writing six-digit numbers on the top of each application. And normally I work faster than the worker next to me, but the past two weeks she’s been cranking out work three times faster than me.

It’s frustrating. I’ve been doing everything in my capacity to do to fight these headaches off. Everything. And no, I don’t want any helpful suggestions. But regardless, even with all the desperate measures I have been taking, they persist.

On top of it all, my endometriosis has decided to flare up at the same time. So I get double nausea, extreme abdominal cramps, persistent pelvic pain and other symptoms.

I’ve been in a lot of pain.

I take a lot of medications. For pain. I take medications that have no effect on people who do not have a specific type of pain disorder. And I take medications that people who are not in pain popularly take to get high. (I do not, for the record, take anything to get high myself.) And I put up with a lot of shit to continue taking one of few medications that works and that enables me to work.

(I guess I could give it up and therefore be putting up with less shit. But then I’d, you know, not be able to work. And for so long as I have the option to be able to work, I’m taking it. Because I may not even have that option forever. Situations change, bodies change, and bodies change how they react to medications over time. I’m doing what is necessary for myself and my family at this point in our lives.)

So, at work today.

I sit on the far side of the first floor of our building, along with all the other people working in my particular program, the people working on another program, and a couple stray general clerks across from all of us. The other program’s supervisor and one of the other program’s workers (OPS/OPW hereafter) were talking about a certain case, a woman who was being denied medication and needed help obtaining it. This was before lunch, it was a general talk in a work context, that is how to get the problem solved.

My husband and I went home for lunch, as we do regularly, given that we live less than five minutes from our workplace. It takes half the lunch period but it is worth the spoons because it makes the workday so much more bearable — two four-hour chunks rather than one long nine-hour one. We sit around, watch The People’s Court reruns, eat our lunch and laugh at the cats who get in silly, hyper, meddling moods around that time.

I returned from lunch, feeling a lot better having had a break from the fluorescent lighting and ambient noise of the HVAC system. And a few minutes after I got back, sitting next to the OPS scanning documents into the computer system, OPW wandered back over and began talking again about the client from before.

The medication? Oxycontin. Her doctor has been prescribing it to her for over 15 years.

And the conversation? Went like this. (As typed soon after in an email to my husband, as close as I could get to what they actually said, given how stunned and hurt I was while it was happening.)

OPW: do you watch house?
OPS: no not really
OPW: well he has some sort of leg injury, but he takes that other one, what is it? vicodin
OPS: uh huh
OPW: and they sent him to rehab, and he just had to find something to occupy his mind so he wouldn’t think about it
OPS: yeah they get addicted so easy
OPW: and now they put him on regular pain killers and he’s doing just fine
OPS: yeah a lot of the time tylenol or advil works just as well, people just want the high
OPW: exactly, and their doctors prescribe it to them and they hand it out to family members…

And the conversation went on like this for a couple minutes, with the two of them walking back and forth fetching printed documents, attending to the scanning etc.

I just… I’m not terribly private about my condition. I don’t bring it up, but if it’s relevant I talk about it. I do try to avoid telling my coworkers that I take narcotic medications (as opposed to just “medications”) but I have gone over it specifically with HR as it can be a security issue in some agencies.

I was sitting right there. OPW sits on the other side of me, and had to walk around me to get to where OPS was at the scanner. I was sitting right there.

They were talking about me.

They weren’t thinking of me, of course. They’d never make that connection. I’m young and thin and pretty enough. They know I work hard. Most of my office loves the hell out of me.

But if I had spoken up — rather than sitting there holding my breath trying not to cry — how would that opinion change? Would they start seeing me as lazy, as slacking off? Would they whisper about me every time I went to the water fountain for a drink? What was I taking? What was I doing with it? Would they start taking certain behaviors as symptomatic of addiction? If I passed too well one day, appearing to be just fine (to them; I am good at covering up my pain) — would they take that as evidence that I couldn’t actually be in pain and couldn’t really need that medication? And if I didn’t pass well one day — especially these days, when I’ve been stopped more than one time as someone remarks on how deathly pale I am and asks if I’m OK and tells me to take a break — would they see that resulting, not from my pain, but from the supposed addiction?

They were talking about me. They didn’t even know it. But I am that person on that medication. Pushing through the pain to keep working.

The difference is, Dr. House is a character.

I’m real.

And that woman. These were the attitudes of the people who were helping her resolve an issue. As much as I wish otherwise, workers do have some degree of latitude in deciding how they are going to approach a case, and can apply the law in different ways for different people, even if it appears pretty strict on paper.

I am that woman.

I have been there. I am there. I have to deal with unsympathetic figures in obtaining my treatment. Doctors, nurses, office staff, pharmacists, insurance reps, welfare reps, other reps. I have issues I have to call to have resolved. I have that person on the other line who’s promising me on the one hand to resolve the issue — but on the other hand …? How can I ever know?

I don’t know what was going on in this woman’s life. I don’t know if she’s dependent (there is a difference). I don’t know if she would be better off on another course of therapy. Or whether she’s tried all those other courses and they’ve given her awful side effects or they’re contraindicated given her particular condition or they’re unavailable to her due to income or access. I don’t know.

Maybe she’s abusing. Maybe she’s handing it out on the street corner.

Maybe she’s just like me. Just one person trying to power through this world as best she can. And this is the best way she’s found to do it.

The Negative Side of Positive Thinking

blaming, bodies, class issues, intersectionality, media and pop culture, shaming, , , , , , ,

“I don’t have time for positive thinking. I spend all of that time thinking negatively.” –Kathy Griffin

I might as well come right out and say it: I highly dislike the whole positive thinking movement. I would say “I hate it,” but that might get me accused of being bitter, cynical, negative, and many other colorful things in the comments. I do not dispute that I am, at times, all of those things. However, the fact that so many people take the construct of “positive thinking” as the big-T Truth on how people other than themselves can (apparently) improve their own circumstances by thinking “positively” is something that I find very troubling and a little bit scary, and also a bit naive.

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

I want to stress the part about the “bad circumstances” here. If you swallow that bait–which, like most bait, conceals a dangerous trap–here is what you are buying into: I can attract good things by using my thoughts. If I think positively, I will attract good things.

However, the other side of such a dichotomy is–to put it mildly–really creepy, at least for those of us who have health issues and other problems beyond individual control. I will use myself as an example here: I have fibromyalgia. According to the dubious logic employed in The Secret, I have somehow attracted this. And, according to The Secret, I can think my way out of it. I can be CURED!

Oh, wait. My condition does not have a cure, and thinking one’s way out of a chronic condition is generally not recommended by certified medical professionals. However, according to the “Law of Attraction,” if I don’t think my way out of my condition, or can’t, then I basically deserve whatever happens to me. I brought it on myself, after all.

Therein lies the problem: This type of philosophy places an untoward emphasis on the individual: You control your reality. You control what happens to you. You control how much money you make. You deserve the best. Solving problems or helping others is beneath you, because it is all about you. You’ve got the world on a string, (sittin’ on a rainbow!) and it’s yours for the taking. Why help others, when you can just attract everything you want with your thoughts?

By now, you are probably starting to see exactly why this way of thinking is so troubling, particularly if you are a feminist, have a disability, are aware of social justice issues, or are not C. Montgomery Burns and therefore obsessed with your millions (and not much else).

What is so problematic about The Secret and many other self-help products is that they, however indirectly, make the status quo feel better about itself. People who buy into the “Law of Attraction” philosophy are not actually changing the world; no, that would take actual work. Instead, sayeth the Law, why not just think about changing the world, and let The Secret’s specious (and incorrect) use of quantum physics do the rest? See? Wasn’t that way easier than, ugh, going out and doing things?!

Telling someone to just “think positive” will not help her or him. I know that’s a rather harsh statement to make. I have had people “helpfully suggest” positive thinking (numerous times, I might add) in order to help with my illness. It is supremely frustrating, and it also makes me want to ignore whomever has offered that particular fool’s gold nugget o’wisdom. I get that people are scared of illness, disability, and death, and I understand why they are scared. But shaming people–particularly those with disabilities, chronic pain, mental health issues, and other chronic conditions–into silence by “helpfully” suggesting that they “think more positively”–and thereby shutting down the conversation or any room for the PWD to defend hirself–is not a solution. Rather, it just reinforces the it’s all about me claptrap that so much of the self-help industry traffics in; such “helpful suggestions,” oftentimes, are really meant to make the person who offers them feel better about hirself, and are not offered out of concern for the PWD or whomever else is unlucky enough to have been outed as a non-Positive Thinker.

After all, when someone offers those types of “helpful” suggestions to a non-Positive thinker–particularly PWDs or other people who have been marginalized by various cultural institutions–what she or he is saying starts to sound like, “I don’t take your experiences seriously. I care about expressing my opinions about your life and how you live it, so I can feel like I’m doing something and thus feel better about myself.” So, in effect, it really becomes all about them once again. And, in their minds, it is all about them, because the latest self-help craze told them so!

I will end with a quote from disability scholar Susan Wendell:

[T]he idea that the mind is controlling the body is employed even when physical causes of a patient’s symptoms are identified clearly…The thought that ‘she could be cured if only she wanted to get well’ is comforting…to those who feel the need to assign a cause and cannot find another, and to those who want to believe that they will avoid a similar disaster because they have healthier, or at least different, psyches. (The Rejected Body, 1998)