Category Archives: social attitudes

BADD: Why I Write

activism, intersectionality, justice, make the world a better place, politics, poverty, resistance, social attitudes

(This was originally posted as a BADD contribution at my tumblr.)

I spend a lot of time blogging about and against ableism, about being a person with a mental illness, about the way policies and cultural attitudes and assumptions act to disadvantage people with disabilities. But for some reason, I was having a lot of trouble coming up with a topic for[BADD] . I got some good suggestions – issues of ableist language (and I’ve written in the past about the words ‘retarded’ and ‘hysterical’ and their ableist roots and effects), issues about the enormous intersection between poverty and disability (poverty leads to bad health outcomes and disability often leads to poverty, making a self-reinforcing cycle), and disability tropes in pop culture (I don’t watch family guy but have talked about 90210!).

I thought of some other topics I could address – why I see today’s immigration protests and related activism as a disability-related issues and the importance of intersectionality issues in meaningful social justice work, or even an info piece on how PWDs should take steps to prepare for emergencies such as natural disasters. but I didn’t feel excited about any of those.

So I’m going to go back to the beginning, and talk a little about why I identify as a person with a disability, why I talk about disability issues, why I’m a contributor to a blog about feminist and disabilities, why I spend so much time and emotional energy on these topics. (Which are, frankly, often personally distressing, what with all the info about how I’m going to die poor and alone.)

I write because I want things to change. I’m not always sure the writing helps me individually – it is hard to focus on these issues, to perpetually remind myself of the limitations caused by my disabilities, of the societal attitudes that assume that I am lazy and worthless and dangerous to be around, of the innumerable policies and laws that reinforce and ensure the unequal status of PWDs. And while I see the value of creating a space where other PWDs can discuss their personal circumstances and struggle and receive support instead of judgment and blame, the internet is a big enough place that I think that role is being filled, well, by lots of blogs and LiveJournal/Dreamwidth communities.

I write because I want people – both PWDs and TABs – to recognize the larger cultural and political forces that create and maintain societies that use disability as a punchline, as an insult, as a reason to keep people unemployed, poor, disempowered, and sometimes leading directly to their deaths. I want PWDs in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and other “first world” countries to understand that lobbying their governments to abandon use of land mines can directly affect the prevalence of disabilities in poorer countries like Cambodia (thanks to s.e. smith for that great post!). I want people to think about how recovery efforts in disaster-affected areas like Haiti need to include specific focus and attention on the unique and disproportionate needs of PWDs.

But for me, it’s not enough to just help people understand. I desperately want them to act. To get involved in the political process to advocate for the rights and needs of PWDs. To get involved in social justice issues as a whole, because issues affecting immigrants are going to fall heavy on immigrants with disabilities. To tease out how a national policy can and will affect PWDs in other, poorer, countries. To vote, to talk to their elected representatives, to encourage others to act.

I believe that change is possible. And I blog to facilitate, encourage, and promote that change.

Guest Post by Laura Overstreet: Book Review – Dancing at the River’s Edge: A Patient and her Doctor Negotiate Life with Chronic Illness

biography, bodies, books, guest post, identity, social attitudes

Editor’s note: We are very pleased to host this post from Laura, who is a first-time guest poster at FWD. FWD welcomes guest posts: please email guestposting [at] disabledfeminists.com for more information.

Laura Overstreet has been a wheelchair user for nearly 20 years as a result of transverse myelitis. She holds a Master of Arts in sociology, and her research interests include disability, sexuality, gender, health, and life course. She regularly speaks on disability awareness topics. Laura blogs at www.LeftyByDefault.com with the focus of surviving, thriving, and being real with disability.

Book Review – Dancing at the River’s Edge: A Patient and her Doctor Negotiate Life with Chronic Illness by Alida Brill and Michael D. Lockshin, M.D.

Alida Brill first landed on the “other planet” of chronic illness at age 12. In those years of the early 1960s, when her symptoms were not easily diagnosed and second-wave feminism was barely on the proverbial map, Alida became a feminist. Doctors ignored her and her mother because Brill’s symptoms were inconsistent and sporadic – and because she was a young girl. She has spent her professional career working for the rights of women and girls undoubtedly informed by those experiences in her young life.

Dancing at the River’s Edge is a dual memoir written by Brill, a woman with chronic illness, and Dr. Michael Lockshin, her physician. It is a rare, honest, and intimate account of their journeys. The chapters alternate between Alida and Dr. Lockshin as they tell us their stories of living with and working in chronic illness. Neither of them chose these respective lives – Alida never wanting to be chronically ill and Dr. Lockshin not intending to work in chronic illness – but their lives happened that way nonetheless. We as readers and fellow inhabitants of the “other planet” might admit something similar.

In reading about their journeys, we learn of their doctor/patient relationship which led to this book and we get a rare glimpse of the physician’s world and his delicate balance of treating patients. So often doctor visits are rushed and the relationship is one that primarily consists of the illness and/or disability. Sometimes we just want to get our questions answered and go home. More than any of this, though, we want to be seen and treated as whole people trying to do our best on the “other planet.” We want our doctors to know who we are in addition to our illnesses and/or disabilities. Dr. Lockshin does this with Ms. Brill, and we as readers reap the rewards of their partnership.

Brill voices the fears all too common for those with chronic illnesses and disabilities. Through the lens of the “other planet,”she gives us an honest portrayal of her illness, work, relationships, friendships, childhood and adulthood, the unique transition that occurs as we age, and the denial and subsequent recognition of illness. She brilliantly conveys the literal and figurative pain of a life filled with illness, yet in the end, she and the reader seem to recognize her life as one that, in her words, “really hasn’t been all bad.” Alida finds a way to thrive among the battle. Read this book not just because you can relate, you are chronically ill or disabled, or you are a supporter of the chronically ill and disabled. Read it for those reasons first – but pour yourself into it because it is beautifully written and a genuinely human story.

The paperback edition of Dancing at the River’s Edge is now on sale. It is also available in hardcover and e-book. You can also look for it on WorldCat.

Moderator’s note: Moderation on guest posts is often much slower than “usual” moderation times.

Go educate yourself (please!)

101, activism, blaming, bodies, disability activism, feminism, gender, i'm right here, identity, intersectionality, justice, othering, politics, race, shaming, social attitudes, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Image description: A shocked-looking cat perches on a chair, staring straight at the camera. Text reads: Concerned cat is just looking out for your best interests when she says that your tone might be alienating well-intentioned potential allies who just need a little polite education.

[Image via Tlönista in this comment thread at Flip Flopping Joy. Description: A shocked-looking cat perches on a chair, staring straight at the camera. Text reads: “Concerned cat is just looking out for your best interests when she says that your tone might be alienating well-intentioned potential allies who just need a little polite education.”]

One unfortunately common response to marginalized people saying that there’s a problem is the “Educate me NOW” demand from “well-intentioned allies” who totally mean well, but they just lack education on these issues and so just can’t understand what the fuss is all about.

I am using the following example not to appropriate from the awesome anti-racist work that Jessica Yee and the fabulous Racialicious crew (and countless bloggers around the web!) do on a daily basis, but rather for two specific reasons: 1.) I have already talked about my personal relationship with this oft-used derailing tactic rather extensively, and could probably talk about it ’til I’m blue in the face; 2.) anti-racist activism and disability activism are not completely separate, independent social justice strains — many of us who are involved in these activist projects are, in fact, fighting similar (though NOT completely analogous) battles. For me, claiming an identity as a feminist disability activist has entailed doing my best to fight racism and white privilege alongside fighting for disability rights. This is because disability and race intersect in many, many ways — sort of like how disability and gender, and race and gender, intersect. In other words, this is not just a disability issue, or a feminist issue,  or a trans* issue, or an anti-racist issue; it affects many of us in the social justice blogosphere, if in differing ways.

The “educate me now because I want to learn, marginalized person!” response played out, yet again, fairly recently in the comments to a post on Bitch authored by Indigenous activist and writer Jessica Yee. [Full disclosure: Some of us here at FWD guest blogged for Bitch as the Transcontinental Disability Choir.] Jessica had written a post on white hipster/hippie appropriation of native dress and why it’s not only ridiculous, but racist. Makes sense, right? (If it doesn’t, you might be at the wrong blog. Or go read this. I don’t know.) Overall, this piece seems like it would fit right in on a website for a magazine that is dedicated to showcasing “feminist response[s] to pop culture.”

And then the comments started rolling in, and so did the “but you have a responsibility to educate people who mean well!” trope:

I’m sure this is in fact extremely annoying. However, you might consider that when people bring that up, they’re not saying, “Hey I’m just like you and I totally understand what you deal with,” they’re trying to make a connection and learn something. Ignorant people are a pain in the neck, but they’re mostly not trying to be ignorant on purpose.

I‘m merely suggesting that if this is a cause you deem worthy of championing, then you should have a prepared source of information for them—be it this blog, book titles, or documentaries. Encourage them to learn more about THEIR history and perhaps you’ll draw a new soldier to your army.

It seems somewhat contradictory to put stickers on your laptop that indicate a Mohawk heritage and then rudely dismiss a stranger who expresses an interest in your advertisement. Perhaps a better way to accomplish your agenda (whatever it is) would be to engage in polite and open-minded conversation with those who mistake your stickers for an invitation.

Thea Lim at Racialicious pretty much nailed it in her recent post on what went down, entitled “Some Basic Racist Ideas and some Rebuttals, & Why We Exist” (which I highly recommend that you read in full, by the way). An excerpt:

This kind of hey-let-me-help-you-achieve-your-goal-by-suggesting-you-be-more-radio-friendly response totally misunderstands (and appears disinterested) in the anti-racist project, because it assumes that anti-racism is all about convincing white people to be nice to people of colour.   In other words, it assumes that anti-racism revolves around white folks.  Like everything else in the world.

Anti-racism and people of colour organizing is not about being friendly, being appealing, or educating white folks. While individual anti-racist activists may take those tacks to achieve their goals, the point of anti-racism is to be for people of colour.

I completely agree with Thea here — and I believe something similar applies to disability activism. That is: Those of us with disabilities are not here to make abled people feel comfortable, to hold their hands as they have a Very Special Learning Experience (most often, it seems, at our expense), or to make them feel good about themselves. I, personally, don’t care how “good” your intentions are, or that you reallllllly wanna learn, or if you think I’m being mean by not dropping everything to educate you when you demand it.  While I definitely don’t want to speak for Jessica, Thea, or any of the Racialicious contributors — or for people of color who do anti-racist work — I suspect that they may feel similarly about white people who come into PoC, WoC or other anti-racist spaces and demand that whoever is doing the activist work must halt whatever discussion is going on and educate them, now, because they are good “liberal” white people and have such good intentions, and you PoC want white people like me as allies, right? And if you don’t drop everything and rush over to educate me, well, you’re just a big meanie who must not want my support after all (such “support” is often conditional, and based upon whether the marginalized person can make the non-marginalized feel comfortable at all times), or you just want an excuse to be racist toward white people! Or some other ridiculous thing.

For me personally, the willingness that I “should” have to help well-meaning folks learn is also an energy issue. I am a person with disabilities, several of which I have written about at length on this website — and one of which is a pain condition subject to flare-ups. Thus, I have to manage my time and energy extremely carefully. Having to explain basic concepts over and over again to strangers on the internet because they’ve deigned to tell me that they “want” to learn — and some of whom may think, by extension, that they are somehow entitled to my time and energy — takes work. Writing takes work; additionally, a lot of bloggers do the blogging and responding to comments thing for free, on their own time.

And sometimes, those of us with conditions that intersect with our ability to do this work end up burnt out, frustrated, or we lose our patience. Though these end results are often nothing personal, they might read like it, and we end up paying the price energy-wise only to have that person who realllllly wanted to learn petultantly respond with something like, “You must not want to educate me, then, if you’re not up to answering all of my questions!” and leaving in a huff. But they reallllly want to learn. . . that is, if someone else does the brunt of the work for them and/or gives them good-ally cookies for just wanting to be educated about all this social justice stuff. Merely wanting is not enough; you have to actually follow through for your good intentions to matter.

There is, thankfully, a solution to this problem: those people who say, or comment, that they realllly want to learn must take responsibility for their own learning. There are several ways that this can be accomplished, among them lurking on blogs for a while before one starts commenting, reading a site’s archives (and most sites have them!), picking up a book (or two), reading some articles online or off. Certainly, there are a lot of things that are privileged about this assertion; of course, not everyone has the time to read about social justice, lurk on blogs, or take similar steps. But what is also privileged is the putting the responsibility for your own 101-type education onto someone else — someone who might not have all of the energy, time and patience that you might.

[A slightly different version of this post has been cross-posted at ham blog.]

I can’t count on anybody to understand. (Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010)

accessibility, invisibility, small stories, social attitudes, work, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(Cross-posted at three rivers fog. See more BADD 2010 at Goldfish’s blog.)

I’m pretty open about my health issues. To be honest, I don’t know any other way to be. I know how to strategically hide my disabilities from strangers in passing interactions, but from the people with whom I interact on a daily basis? Given my appearance — tall, slim, young white girl, pretty enough, clean and conventionally dressed, perfectly middle-class — you’d think it would be easy to keep from communicating variant health, while in reality it is highly tasking. It takes energy to mask my medication-taking, body-resting, trigger-avoiding, activity-budgeting ways from the people around me, and I’m already running an energy deficit just to be around them in the first place.

So fuck it. I don’t hide it when I have to down a pill. If pain, fatigue, or cognitive issues are preventing me from doing something — a task requiring me to stand up or walk somewhere when my back pain is flaring up; speaking with anyone by telephone when my head is throbbing and my brain is not processing full sentences — I say so. I’ve stopped bothering to tuck in my TENS wires to make them completely invisible. When people ask me about the Penguins game last night, the response they hear begins with a mention of my 8:30 bedtime.

There are drawbacks to this. Sharing or not sharing information about one’s health is an extremely fraught decision; some people consider this information rude and gross (even when the actual content is totally innocuous), it can invite unwanted questions and speculation, and there are people who will use your undisguised behavior or the information you have volunteered against you in the future. It amounts to a choice between a life of concealment, which can quickly drain a person’s spirit and often aggravate their actual condition — and a life of vulnerability, never knowing what will be held against you, or by whom. Continue reading I can’t count on anybody to understand. (Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010) →

BADD: How can I support Blogging Against Disablism Day?

activism, events, identity, intersectionality, language, recommended reading, social attitudes, , ,

Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2010Today is the “beginning” of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010. I put beginning in quotes there not just because the day is done in Australia and the West Coast of Canada is still waking up, but because Diary of a Goldfish, who hosts BADD every year, acknowledges that people with disabilities are not necessarily able to post precisely on the date of a blog swarm – that there is inherent disablism in demanding that disabled people write a post on a specific time table.

Every year since I started participating in BADD, I’ve had many people ask me how they – both as currently non-disabled people, and as people with disabilities – can best participate in BADD if they don’t want to, or can’t, write a post, put up a photo, or create a video or podcast. Here is just a short list of suggestions:

Check out the ever-growing list of BADD posts over at Diary of a Goldfish. Even “just” (there’s no just about your time/energy investment!) reading people’s posts and learning about their experiences contributes a lot to BADD. Blogswarms like this are all about raising awareness, and raising your own awareness is just as important. As well, you may find a whole new set of blogs to add to your blog-reading lists. There are so many bloggers with disabilities out there, fighting the good fight against ableism every day.

Comment on some BADD posts. I know that every time I write something and it gets no comments, I feel like I’ve put effort out for nothing. [This is not a demand for more comments for me! I’m just sayin’.] If you have the time/energy to do so, I would really encourage you to leave comments in support of BADD posts. They don’t have to be lengthy: even just “This post was great, thank you for writing it” can make a difference. If you’re up to writing more, go for it! But just leaving words of support can be a big deal.

Tell people about the awesome posts you’ve read. If you have a blog, link your favourite BADD posts so others can check them out – if not today, then over the next few days, or even weeks. Months. They’re not going anywhere, and although we all hope the prejudices against people with disabilities are going to disappear, that’s probably not going anywhere anytime soon, either. There’s nothing saying you have to only link to BADD posts this week. If you’ve got a twitter account, tweet some links to your followers! The hash-tag for BADD seems to be #badd, but I like to also tag my tweets #disability as well. (This is selfish on my part – I follow the #disability tags on twitter.)

Think about dis/ableism in your every-day life. This one is mostly for the non-disabled people, or for people like me – I always need to remind myself to think outside my box of “what disability looks like”. There are huge swaths of my workplace that someone in a wheelchair can’t get in, and I went to a university last week that claimed it was impossible to put floor announcements in their elevators. Many [not all – I’ve heard very good things about some places, like L’Arche] of the group homes in Canada for people with cognitive impairments are more like prisons than the “home-like” environment they claim to be. The websites for each of the major political parties in Canada are inaccessible to many people with disabilities, and events that are held for “all Canadians” have no captioning, no visual description, and no way for Sign users to participate.

I think BADD is a great opportunity to see just how much is out there about disability on the internet. For disabled people who may be feeling isolated, it’s a great time to see just how many people are out there that struggle with similar issues. For the non-disabled, it’s a great way to start educating yourself about disability issues.

The Blogging Against Disablism 2010 Page will update throughout the day. Here’s just a tiny selection of posts that I’ve had the chance to read, and highly recommend.

Guest Post from RMJ: Athletes with Disabilities: Arm-Wrestlers as Exceptions and Inspirations

bodies, media and pop culture, news, normality, othering, representations, social attitudes

Editor’s note: We are very pleased to host this post from RMJ, and will be featuring some more writing from her, and several other awesome guest posters, soon. FWD welcomes guest posts: please email guestposting [at] disabledfeminists.com for more information.

RMJ is a twentysomething with OCD who grew up in Kansas and currently lives in Virginia. She works in education and loves cooking, cats, and television. She blogs about feminism and stuff at Deeply Problematic. This post also appears at Deeply Problematic

Athletes with physical disabilities (hereafter AWPD) are a problematized group. Their accomplishments are questioned and devalued as less valid or challenging than those of able-privileged athletes. They are not party to the often problematic veneration of athletes in today’s society, nor are they permitted to participate in generalized sporting events.

Arm-wrestling is a sport, though, that seems to both accommodate and welcomes athletes with disabilities into their ranks. There is a specific subset of arm wrestling for athletes with disabilities that seem to be a regular part of official arm-wrestling tournaments. I don’t know much about the sport and I’m not currently physically disabled, so my perspective on this is far from authoritative. But my tentative reaction to this is positive, particularly since athletes with disabilities can and do succeed in general competition.

Larry Feezor is an athlete with disabilities who competed recently in the 3rd Annual U.S. Open Armwrestling Championship. He has used a mobility aid since a motorcycle accident paralyzed him from the waist down. This story from an Oregon television station makes Feezor the focal point of the championship. The story is pretty short and context is important to my analysis, so I’m going to reproduce it here in full:

FLORENCE, Ore. – The Third Annual U.S. Open Arm Wrestling Championship wrapped up in Florence Sunday, as amateur wrestlers took to the ring to battle it out.

One competitor stood out for beating the odds: Larry Feezor.

He has been arm wrestling for 18 years, traveling from Weaverville, Calif., to Oregon to participate in the competition. This sport is his outlet since he became disabled.

“I was involved in a motorcycle accident and a drunk driver ran me off the road,” Feezor tells KVAL. “I hit a bank at about 70 miles per hour, [and] was paralyzed from the chest down.”

Feezor received roaring applause when he beat his first opponent.

On Sunday he arm wrestled some of the strongest competitors at The Three Rivers Casino. And he wasn’t going down without a fight.

“Right after my accident,” Feezor said, “I told my father that I would fight, as hard as I could, for as long as I could.”

Feezor isn’t letting his disability bring him down. As a former athlete, he said his body may not be like it used to be, but his mind is stronger than ever.

“I am out here just like these other guys,” Feezor said. “I just happen to be in a wheelchair.”

Before I break this article down, I should mention its good points. It is wonderful that athletes with disabilities recognized. It’s fantastic that Feezor’s achievements are reported on in a positive fashion. Feezor is ostensibly framed as normative. The newspaper is using Feezor’s words and Feezor’s voice, rather than, say, his father’s.

However. Feezor’s participation is the only aspect of the tournament that’s detailed, and his accomplishments are not well-articulated. The singling-out of Feezor and complete erasure of any other athletes in competition is problematic because it trivializes Feezor’s competition in a sport. It implies that the sport is only notable for the inclusion of a person with disabilities – Feezor is not in a competition, but instead someone to be cooed over and patted on the head simply for participating. He’s not being applauded for his accomplishments, he’s being singled out because he “beats the odds”, whatever that means. If this were an angle in a story that clearly reported on the events of the tournament, it would be significantly less problematic. Feezor would be presented in the context of other athletes, and not just othered because of his disability and his marginalized sport.

An example of this is Joby Matthew, an Indian arm-wrestler, who has underdeveloped legs due to Proximal Femoral Focal Deficiency. Matthew seems to be higher-profile than Feezor, but increased coverage also means increased problems, particularly since it’s from the Daily Mail:

Who needs legs? Meet Joby, the 3ft 5in world champion arm wrestler who can bring down opponents twice his size

Instead of bemoaning what he lacks, Joby Matthew is using what he’s got.

Matthew’s accomplishments are not notable in this article: only his disabilities. I’m not quoting or going through the whole article because the able privilege is so dense. The first line is indicative of the attitude taken in the article: Matthew doesn’t “bemoan”, unlike those other people with disabilities who would surely be champion athletes if they just tried. The construction is an ableist implication that other folks with disabilities are lazy whiners. Throughout the article, every reference to barriers Matthew faced is immediately matched by emphasis on how he overcame this disability. The focus is not on his exceptional effort and achievements, but on the “heartwarming” “good cripple”.

There are a few good aspects of the article. It’s composed largely of quotes from Matthew, and it does make note of his many medals and of his training regiment (though that, of course, is as much focused on what he can’t do as what he can’t.) Matthew’s childhood athleticism is made a major point of focus, particularly his struggles in playing with other children. While I appreciate that the authors focused on quotes from Matthew, the focus on competition with currently able-bodied athletes frames participation in sports against currently able-bodied (CAB) athletes as the standard for athletic accomplishment for AWPD.

While I do not love the article, I loved these pictures of Matthew and am quite impressed with his accomplishments and his goal of climbing Mount Everest. Though the exceptionalist attitude makes the context problematic, these pictures are awesome:

Joby Matthew holds himself up with one hand while giving the thumbs-up with another. He is on the bank of the Periyar river on the outskirts of Ernakulam. He and his fantastic mustache smile broadly at the camera.

Photo: Joby Matthew holds himself up with one hand while giving the thumbs-up with another. He is on the bank of the Periyar river on the outskirts of Ernakulam. He and his fantastic mustache smile broadly at the camera.

Joby Matthew and an unidentified man arm-wrestle on a weight bench. The unidentified man, who has a beard and fully developed legs, grips the far side of the weight bench. Both men are grimacing and neither appears to be winning.

Photo: Joby Matthew and an unidentified man arm-wrestle on a weight bench. The unidentified man, who has a beard and fully developed legs, grips the far side of the weight bench. Both men are grimacing and neither appears to be winning.

These photos highlight his exceptional abilities, and while his disability is present and visible, it’s a part of his athleticism. However, there are only two pictures in the eleven-part picture post that actually show him competing. Training and physical strength are interesting and relevant, but this is about sports: as with the article, the focus should be on his achievements as an athlete, not on OMG HOW DOES HE DO THAT? or OMG HE BEATS NORMAL ATHLETES?

The accomplishments of athletes with disabilities face a double bind. In most cases, they are ignored and erased; they are thought to be impossibility and a contradiction. When AWPD are covered in the media, it’s rarely a positive, normed framing of them as accomplished athletes with valid bodies. They are objects instead of curiosity; they are heartwarming inspirations for the currently able-bodied; they are not quite freak shows.

Moderator’s note: Moderation on guest posts is often much slower than “usual” moderation times.

Why SF’s Proposed Sit/Lie Laws Are a Terrible Idea

bodies, class issues, invisibility, justice, news, normality, othering, policy, politics, poverty, social attitudes, Uncategorized, violence, , , ,

In San Francisco currently, there is something of a debate brewing about Mayor Newsom’s proposed sit/lie laws, which would make it illegal for anyone to sit or lie on any public curb or street in San Francisco (with a couple of exceptions).

The intersections with disability here are rather clear. For one thing, there are some intersections between homelessness and disability, because some homeless people are, for example, mentally ill or have disabling physical problems. Do either of these things make them unworthy of compassion, or not human? Of course not, but from the way this proposed ordinance is designed, it is, on a very basic level, criminalizing homelessness even more than it is already criminalized (not to mention socially stigmatized), while taking extra “common sense” steps to avoid citing non-homeless people for an offense. Observe the following response to concerns that SF police would begin to crack down on non-homeless people were the laws to go into effect:

During a heated, five-hour Board of Supervisors public safety committee hearing on the issue Monday, Adachi showed photographs of behavior that would be illegal under Newsom’s proposed law: a well-heeled tourist sitting on her luggage as she waits for a cab, a little boy sitting on a sidewalk clutching his skateboard, and tourists sitting on a curb and gazing up at the sights.

Assistant Police Chief Kevin Cashman said all of those people would be warned first to move and that none of them would probably receive a citation.

“Obviously common sense is going to be part of the training with enforcement of this statute,” he said at the hearing.

Ah, yes, “common sense.” Common sense, apparently, still makes the further stigmatization of homeless people de rigeur. Because apparently, they don’t deserve to sit down in public, unlike “well-heeled” tourists and neighborhood residents. I wonder what the response to a person with disabilities — tourist or not — needing to sit down on a public street might be? Someone waiting for an ambulance? While that is approaching a bit of a slippery slope argument (which I generally like to avoid), it is worth considering, simply because “common sense” will mean different things to different people — those whose job it is to enforce the statute included.

Also interesting is the framing of this ordinance in terms of concern for children. From one of the SF Gate articles:

Newsom, who bought a home in the Haight recently, was convinced to support an ordinance after walking along Haight Street with his infant daughter and seeing someone smoking crack and blocking the entrance of a business.

Certainly, children need to be protected from dangerous situations or potentially dangerous situations, but is an ordinance that criminalizes the poor and homeless — not all of whom are recreational drug users or addicts — really the way to do it?

Additionally, nowhere have I seen any plan to increase the number of homeless shelters or services for homeless people attached to this ordinance. The implicit message behind these proposed sit/lie laws seems clear: It’s too bad you’re homeless, but don’t you dare be homeless on our streets, because it might make our city look bad. Oh, and you certainly shouldn’t expect the city to help you not be homeless — even after it cites you for breaking the sit/lie law.

(Cross-posted to ham blog)

This Terrifies Me

accessibility, blaming, intersectionality, invisibility, justice, news, othering, policy, politics, race, social attitudes

Here in the U.S., there’s been a lot of buzz about a new immigration law passed in Arizona (including on meloukhia’s tumblr, where I first saw it). Their state legislature just passed a bill that “makes it a crime to lack proper immigration paperwork and requires police, if they suspect someone is in the country illegally, to determine his or her immigration status. It also bars people from soliciting work as day laborers.”

This is a big change from the current situation. Because immigration is a nationwide issue, the federal government makes the immigration laws. There is a federal Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services that administers applications for immigration status. There is a whole department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement with quasi-police enforcement agents that put people in quasi-jail immigration detention facilities. It’s a whole federal system that runs parallel to the police and sheriffs who work for individual cities and counties.

For a long time, not only were local police not solely responsible for enforcing federal immigration laws, it was a longstanding rule that state and local police did not have the authority to enforce those laws. State and local police actively tried to distinguish themselves from immigration enforcement so that community residents who were immigrants would continue reporting crimes and helping the police with investigations. The split between responsibilities serves an important purpose in protecting overall public safety.

This is why it’s a big deal that this new law would require local police to determine the immigration status of anyone they suspect to be in the country illegally. Given the vague description of what would be an acceptable reason to suspect someone to be undocumented, it’s extremely likely this is going to translate to “check the papers of anyone who is Latina/o.” “A lot of U.S. citizens are going to be swept up in the application of this law for something as simple as having an accent and leaving their wallet at home,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

Certainly a police officer fulfilling their requirements under this new law might in fact discover that someone is undocumented. But this law also gives every police officer carte blanche to insist on immigration paperwork from anyone they want – another tool for harassment and intimidation that will surely be deployed selectively. It warns not only undocumented people, but all immigrants and anyone who might appear to be or resemble an immigrant in any way – stay inside. Disappear. Vanish. We do not want you here and if we see you we will hassle and interrogate and judge you.

This law just used the official voice of the state to tell this whole group of people – most of them people of color, most of them legally present in the U.S. – that they are not wanted.

That message of not being wanted, that directive to become invisible and disappear, that clear desire that a whole group would just go away and stop being a bother. That’s the same feeling I get when reading articles like this one in the Fresno Bee bemoaning an effort to get local businesses to provide accommodations for people with disabilities. Just think of the economic effect on local retailers! They’ve been open for 20 years! How dare the PWDs file lawsuits instead of just asking the proprietor who I’m sure is very nice and would just love to help out voluntarily! The message is the same – having PWDs here is too expensive. Too much work. Something to be given only out of the generosity of those in charge, not demanded. If only the PWDs would just go away our local businesses would be fantastic!

In one instance, popular opinion and the business community are telling PWDs to go away or be invisible. In the other instance, the state government is telling immigrants to go away or be invisible. Both are premised on the acceptance of the idea that it’s ok to look at a minority group of people and reject them, as a group. That’s why I reacted negatively to both those news articles – it is not ok to oppress people as a group. If it’s ok to treat immigrants that way in Arizona, that legitimizes treating PWD that way in Fresno. And this law is such a big step in the wrong direction that it makes me worried about similar erosions for other groups – including PWDs.

On refusing to tell you my name

mental health, normality, social attitudes

In one of those things that some people will nod along to and others will be confused by, I deleted a bunch of accounts late Monday and locked up the other ones as tightly as I could.

Why?

Because someone I work with sent my private email address to someone else. The one that a quick search on any search engine leads to me, directly, with all sorts of things that can get me fired from my job or cut my chances of getting employment.

Specifically, I’m “out” online as being “crazy” [1. I like the term crazy. I embrace the term crazy. I tend not to use it too much online because I know that others don’t like it at all. But I’m crazy, and I’m okay with that.]. I’ve spent most of the past year blogging about having a mental health condition – one that I’ve referred to as being considered “dangerous” to have someone with around.

I’ve tried to be really careful about separating work-online identities. “Anna” is not the name on my ID, and it is not what anyone I work with calls me. Googling my government-ID name and my work-related email address gets you either people who obviously aren’t me, or an unused account on one of the “sort your books” sites. But googling my email address, my private one, leads you here. Or to my now-locked journal. Or to my now-deleted tumblr account.

This is one of the reasons why I get angry when people talk dismissively of those who choose to use pseudonyms online. “Oh,” comes the dismissive sniff. “You’re not willing to stand up behind what you’ve said.” Or “If you really believed that, you’d say it behind your ‘real’ name.”

Women like me – and so many other women and men with “hidden” disabilities, women and men who are trans*, people who are non-gender binary, who are bi or lesbian or gay, people who write about their struggles with racism or sexism or homophobia or bullying at work, people who are otherwise marginalized – risk losing their jobs, having their children taken away from them, risk being attacked in their homes or at work, having their children threatened, just for writing about their lives online.

There are all sorts of reasons people are pseudonymous on the internet. This one was mine. It’s not hard to find people with different, but equally pressing – and even more pressing – reasons for being pseudonymous.

I’m hoping I’ve been overly cautious. I’m hoping this person – who spent Monday sending me threatening emails to my work account – doesn’t notice he now has my private email address. I’m hoping that I look silly and stupid in a couple of weeks when nothing comes of this.

But I can’t count on it.

If you don’t see me posting much for a while, now you know why.

Related Reading:
Once More, With Misdirection
An Object Lesson in pseudonymity and internet privacy
On being a no-name blogger using her real name

Note: Any comments on this post are going to be slow to moderate. I won’t be publishing anything that attacks the person I work with, though, since that person is both not here to defend against such comments, and because I do believe it was one of those things where someone did something thoughtless, rather than deliberately malicious. The results are still the same, though.

Disability Representation in Music (Video), You’re Doing It Right: Janelle Monae’s “Tightrope”

bodies, creative work, happy posts, justice, media and pop culture, normality, race, resistance, social attitudes, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

This recent music video from singer-songwriter Janelle Monae is a great example of how not to completely screw up representation(s) of disability. Lyrics are located here.

And a description, courtesy of FWD’s own S.E.:

A black title card reads: ‘The Palace of the Dogs Asylum: Dancing has long been forbidden for its subversive effects on the residents and its tendency to lead to illegal magical practices.’

Two people in tuxedos are seen sitting against a white tiled wall. One is reading a book and the other is playing with a small ball, which eventually drifts up and floats in the air. The reader turns to see it and looks surprised.

Cut to an ominous-looking institution with a sign in front reading: ‘The Palace of the Dogs.’ Bright yellow text reading: ‘Monae and Left Foot: Tight Rope’ overlays the image as bouncy music plays.

Cut to a scene of a nurse pushing a cart full of medications. The scene starts with her feet, in sensible white shoes, and slowly pans up. She is moving down a hallway. As she proceeds, a woman (Janelle Monae) in a tuxedo without a jacket, with her hair in an elaborate sculpted pompadour, peers out the door of her room and then ducks back in. As she closes the door, we cut to her in her room, leaning against the door, and she starts singing.

The video cuts back and forth between the nurse moving down the hall, Monae singing and dancing in front of a mirror, and two ominous figures with mirrors for faces draped in black cloaks, seen from a distance. She eventually puts her jacket on and moves out of her room, softshoeing down the hallway, and other people, also in tuxedos, join
her. They storm into a cafeteria, where a band is playing, led by Big Boi, wearing a peacoat, a scarf, and a snappy hat. Monae jumps up onto a table and starts dancing, while people dance all around her.

As everyone dances, the nurse is seen peering around the corner with an angry expression. The scene cuts to the nurse gesticulating at the black-robed figures, who start to glide down the hallways and into the cafeteria. Monae dances right out of the wall, leaving an imprint of her clothes against the bricks, and ends up in a misty forest in what appears to be afternoon light, where she is pursued by the gliding black figures. Leaves cling to their cloaks. Evading them, she walks through a concrete wall, leaving another impression of her clothes behind, and she winds up in the hall again, where she is escorted by the robed figures. The video cuts back and forth between scenes of her
walking down the hall and the scene in the cafeteria, where music still plays and people still dance.

As she walks, a man in an impeccable suit and top hat walks by and tips his hat to her. She goes back into her room while people dance in the hall. The camera closes in on a table covered in papers and a piece of equipment which looks like a typewriter. She types a few keys, and then touches the papers, which turn out to be blueprints marked with ‘The Palace of the Dogs.’ She sits down on her bed,  rests her chin on her hand, and looks into the camera. The music fades and the scene cuts to black.

I really like what Cripchick has to say about this video: “i love the way that this video A.) critiques psychiatric institutions and B.) shows the ways that institutions/society/ableism polices our whole beautiful creative selves because if unleashed, we are powerful/uncontrollable.”

Additionally, I thought the cloaked figures were an interesting representation of the concept of the looking-glass self; another interpretation might be that they represent Bentham’s panopticon, or the sort of menacing, omipresent societal structure in which we must police ourselves constantly in order to be considered “normal.” Those are just two ways of looking at one aspect of this video, however.

What do you all think?