Tag Archives: myths and misconceptions

…And At This Point, I Don’t See It Stopping Anytime Soon

11 August, 2010accessibility, disability activism, intersectionality, invisibility, justice, medical practice, military, oyd rants, policy, violenceabuse, Department of Veterans' Affairs, disability, disabled veterans, Eric K. Shinseki, exclusion, health care, health care is an accessibility issue, intersectionality, Military Sexual Trauma, myths and misconceptions, problematic attitudes, PTSD, social treatment, the dogdamned VA, things people sayOuyang Dan

Courtesy of amandaw I bring you this stellar article that once again rubs in my face how brilliantly miserable the VA is scratching the surface of realizing what is wrong with they way they even see women veterans. If you read along carefully you can even see the lightly sugar-coated condescension artfully woven in TIME writer Laura Fitzpatrick’s story. It really is a piece of work, from the dismissive way she re-counts the testimony of the “presumed” treatment of a victim survivor of sexual assault at the hands of a medical professional (because they NEVER do THAT) down to the detailed description of the very girlie attire of the staff at the impressively mostly women-run facility in Palo Alto. I crave to read the way a man’s shoes click-clack on a hospital hall’s floors in such a manner. But it is a very cliche description etched in the halls of descriptive-writing history, INORITE, so who am I to argue with the laws of good writing. I am, after all, only an amateur.

The news isn’t that the VA is failing women veterans. I’ve known that for quite some time. Really, I have. I have encountered some of the treatment described to some degrees first-hand:

I remember having to hunt around for a toilet in an ill-fitting paper gown at my own exit screening, past several other open, occupied exam rooms. I was the only woman there. They had no sanitary napkin to offer me and it was an embarrassing scene trying to find a place where I could insert a tampon. I was fighting back tears when I finally found a (presumably) unisex bathroom.

So My Dear Friend Ms. Fitzpatrick’s dismissal of Anuradha Bhagwati’s story, the one she gave as testimony before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is ill-received. It isn’t too far-fetched for me to imagine the way she recounts “the ham-handed manner in which a male gynecologist, upon being told by a patient that she had been sexually assaulted, left the exam room and — presumably to beckon a female staff member — yelled down the hall, ‘We’ve got another one!'”. I can easily see the inept professionals at the inadequate facilities just stumbling over how to even grasp a way to provide basic courtesy to a patient who isn’t like them. And failing. Miserably.

The news here is that they seem to have no idea how to fix it, and no set, immediate time line in mind for seeing progress. Sure, Secretary of the VA, Eric K. Shinseki recently, at a forum at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, has said that he hopes to have the VA ready to serve 100% of veterans in 25 years, but what is going to happen to this generation of women veterans who are already being ignored? To the women veterans of the wars past who have been fighting for help all along already?

Because their concerns are already being swept aside. You can already see as things like their urinary-tract issues being categorized as simple “gender differences”, because women react to the desert differently. Sure, possibly. I’ve seen this intimated a few times. People looking to explain away womanly behavior in high stress situations. Oh! They didn’t want to stop the convoy! Well, why is that? Maybe because we know that women are far more likely to be killed by their fellow servicemembers than by combat in combat zones that they learned defense mechanisms, as confessed to by Col. Janis Karpinski. Women tended to drink less water, as little as they thought they could get away with, to avoid using latrines or having to stop roadside alone with men out of fear of sexual assault. And it killed some of them. If you remember, though, Karpinski was even dismissed as a woman scorned because of the Abu Ghraib scandal, anyhow, so we can’t win for losing. She was just ratting out her old boss because she got in trouble.

Some of it is true, though. Most of the VA’s 144 hospitals do not have the proper facilities to even offer privacy to non-men patients, let alone provide gynecological care, or as I mentioned above, pads. The TIME article notes a hospital in Salt Lake City which announced that it delivered its first baby this past October (the article mentions that its average patient is 78 and male), but the day after the little girl’s arrival they didn’t know how much she weighed (I cringe to think how much more they couldn’t provide) because they didn’t even have an infant scale.

Women veterans are spiking in numbers. They, funnily enough, are not the same as men. That means they are not the same as the average patient, such as that the Salt Lake City hospital are used to dealing with, and their health care with be different. Even if you line up the matching parts, the treatment for heart disease and blood pressure, to my lay knowledge, is not the same. The numbers have been growing since The Great War, and surged after we had the need to call the next one World War II. It took until 1988 for the VA to start providing even limited care to women veterans.

Today, women veterans in need of help from the VA are of an average age far younger than the average male veteran (for obvious reasons) and have different needs. They are at least twice as likely than civilian women to be homeless (with only 8 facilities in all the U.S. available to help homeless women veterans with children). They are likely to be mothers when they are. Many of them returning from combat zones — yes, combat zones, why do you ask? — are coming home to families and are more likely than their male counterparts to get divorced following combat connected tours. They are really damned likely to get asked if that is their husband’s or boyfriend’s shirt they are wearing, or asked for their husband’s social by a thoughtless agent on the phone. They are the forgotten in war. Doubly so if they served in a branch of the military that isn’t on the forefront of the public’s mind as “really the military” (as slave2tehtink has said, Aircraft carriers tend to not be zipped around by civilians, yo). Extra-specially so if you had a thinkin’ job, like “nuke” or “spook”, and your Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or Military Sexual Trauma (MST) didn’t happen “In Country” (Iraq or Afghanistan), the only sanctioned places where these things can occur, you know.

It’s frustrating as hell. And while I don’t believe that the VA is intentionally forgetting about us, I don’t believe that they are doing everything that they can to make sure that it gets better faster.

And honestly, I don’t think writers like Ms. Fitzpatrick are helping. But maybe I am jaded and have been at this for too long. But the VA needs an overhaul, stat. Pretty words from the Secretary of the VA and promises that it will be better in a couple of decades just aren’t good enough.

New VA Research Could Explain Lasting Effects of PTSD

8 June, 2010intersectionality, justice, medical practice, military, oyd rantschronic illness, disability, health care is an accessibility issue, intersectionality, invisible disabilities, justice, medical care, mental health, mental illness, military, myths and misconceptions, the dogdamned VAOuyang Dan

Gentle readers! I come to you today with a delighted feeling that I do not believe is caused by the half life if a painkiller! Today I read an article in my paper version of Stars and Stripes that had to do with the intersection of disability and veterans and I was not instantly thrown into a bout of contemptuous paper shredding! I mean, really, I could make party favors and possibly go into business selling paper mache animals for children to beat with broom handles in hopes of gathering candy! But I am a slightly morbid person some days, especially when the painkillers aren’t working.

But in all seriousness, this article, about the long term effects of PTSD on the body, has some points which I will now discuss with you in a non-concise manner! Not the least of these details, relegated to two brief paragraphs, is the fact that the people at the VA are doing one study specifically aimed at women who served in the Vietnam War, acknowledging that while women did not serve in combat, that the war affected them in very real ways:

Women did not serve in combat during the Vietnam War but many experienced trauma while serving as nurses and care providers to the wounded returning from battlefield, Magruder said.

“No one has studied the mental health of these women,” she said. “Their experiences were certainly different than the men, but they had other experiences. Some of these women were the last people to hold the hand of an 18-year-old kid who was dying.”

Gee, their experiences were different from men, you say? No kidding? *ahem*

One of the biggest myths that I encounter, being the go-to girl on military matters in some social justice blogging circles is that combat veterans have the patent on PTSD, which is not only incorrect, but also erases the experiences of countless other people whose lives are destroyed by the ways that PTSD is still misunderstood. I’ll take two paragraphs if it means that the VA is finally getting around to accepting the idea that ladies might actually have what it takes to handle the VA being wrong (about ladies having PTSD, that is).

The VA is now trying to weasel out of the fact that they were ordered to look into this PTSD business a long time ago — a decade but who’s counting, amirite? — but decided to throw Congress the bird and a “Ah do what Ah WANT!” Eric Cartman impression. The National Vietnam Veterans Longitudinal Study, expected to help create new policies and effect changes for incoming veterans with PTSD by 2013 might have actually done some good for people who are already having trouble convincing doctors at the VA that their condition is real if the VA could have been arsed to get this show on the road back then. A decade ago they were one less war behind.

It’s nice that they are starting to get around to looking into things like the correlation between living with PTSD for years and developing other conditions. Things like cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, asthma and diabetes are common among Vietnam vets who have been living with PTSD for decades, and according to the article there are some who believe even the immune system is affected by years with PTSD. But you can’t help anyone when you aren’t doing the research to find out how.

As the VA is becoming sandwiched between claimants from war era veterans from major wars that have left physical and mental scars on so many, it is important that they get their act together and start doing what they were told to do a long damned time ago. Having the longitudinal data from Vietnam veterans will more than likely prove useful as more and more people come home from two fronts to their old lives and attempt to readjust, and it could lead to better services for more veterans from any war. I can’t say that I have a lot of faith in them to get it together. As Charles Trumpower, a disabled Marine who tours the country speaking to veterans about PTSD notes, not a lot has changed in the last 35 years.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to see this research and this effort going underway, but wow, readers, should this have been done a long time ago. I can’t help but think of all the people that this could have helped.

Kids these days! The “Generation Y” panic, privilege, and erasure

7 June, 2010accessibility, age, autonomy, blaming, politics, social attitudes, workableism, chronic pain, disabled youth, education, erasing, higher education, invisibility, labor, mental illness, myths and misconceptions, paid work, personal, privilege, problematic attitudes, right to work, university, we're right here, work, workplace accommodationsAnnaham

Recently, I read this odd article, penned by Judith Warner, in the New York Times–one in a stream of many that detail how excessively awful the current generation of young people (read: young workers) is at putting its collective nose to the grindstone, sucking it up, and generally not acting like a bunch of brats, or something.

Many of us have heard about, or come into contact with, some of these bright young things. They are heralded — or, more commonly, blasted — as naive, entitled, too optimistic, and over-confident. In many of these articles, their numerous faults are listed: They don’t know how to dress professionally! They expect to march into the workplace of their choice and immediately start making a six figure-salary! They think they are perfect! They want praise all of the time! (Does no one who writes these sorts of articles stop to consider that many human beings want praise when they complete a task to the best of their abilities?) They have tattoos, dyed hair, and iPods! EVERYBODY PANIC, because the American workplace is apparently going to be dragged down by Generation Y’s entitlement, narcissism and laziness! This narrative, however, seems to apply mostly to a very specific subset of the population (and even the picture that accompanies the NYT article reinforces this): young, able-bodied, middle to upper-middle class, college-educated white people.

This erases, or conveniently ignores, a hell of a lot of folks who are not young, abled, middle/upper-middle class, and white. It erases young workers who may not have had the “expected” educational opportunities (such as college), or who had to take more than the expected four years to finish their degree, or who did not finish school. It erases people whose parents or family members may not have been quite so “involved” in their education, or in their lives at all. Of course, it also erases young people with disabilities — both those who cannot work, and those who want to work but who may be bumping up against various narratives such as that of the “entitled” Generation Y kid. Some of us have psychological issues or disabilities that put us completely at odds with the “overly-confident” and “entitled” stereotype that apparently befits the current generation — because we cannot stop worrying despite the fact that we are supposed to be totally optimistic and confident all of the time, always thinking that the roads leading to our perfect job will be lined with rainbows, fluffy bunnies, and gold.

Some of us have physical disabilities, chronic pain, or chronic illnesses that prevent us from working 40-hour weeks (or more); asking for accommodations or disclosing our condition(s), we fear, may make us look “entitled,” or like we do not want to put in the time necessary to work our way up — even if this is not the case. The fact is that many people, and many young people, with disabilities are already at a tremendous disadvantage when it comes to the labor market and making a living. Not only are many people with disabilities, at least in the U.S., more likely to face lengthy stretches of unemployment and/or live in poverty regardless of age, but many face additional hostility, discrimination, and unreasonable demands, both in the workplace and from society at large because of their disabilities.

While I am not saying that these over-entitled Generation Y-ers don’t exist (I’ve had run-ins with quite a few of them, myself), I am struck by the fact that the narrative surrounding them is so dependent upon erasing or ignoring certain people whose bodies and experiences do not fit the “expected” attitudes about labor that have been traditionally upheld by American culture. Many of these attitudes, furthermore, rely heavily on binaries that reinforce who “counts” and who does not: You either work full-time, or you’re lazy. You’re willing to be mistreated in the workplace and do whatever it takes “for the job,” or you’re a wimp. Suck it up, or go home. If you’re not making enough money to live on or are poor, you just aren’t working hard enough. If you ask for “accommodations,” you’re asking for too much — just do your job! You have to work hard to “make it,” and if you don’t work hard enough, it’s your fault. If you don’t like your job or face daily mistreatment, you can always quit and find another one, right? But if you can’t, it’s your fault, and why did you quit that job, anyway? These attitudes surrounding work affect people with disabilities in a wide variety of age groups and generational cohorts, and this is a crucial part of why they are so important to critically question and examine.

The message for Generation Y, in general, may be “Get over yourself,” but the message for those who do not fit the characteristics of the “average” Generation Y worker is more severe — and ultimately more dire.

[Cross-posted at ham blog]

Dear Imprudence: Thank You for (Proving) Your Service!

6 June, 2010Dear Imprudence, intersectionality, military, Uncategorizeddisability, good advice, intersectionality, military, myths and misconceptions, social treatment, things people sayOuyang Dan

Slate Magazine’s Dear Prudie got one right this week, with a letter from a woman who’s husband is a U.S. military veteran, who recently lost his leg “due to a medical condition that was unrelated to his time in the military”. According to the letter writer, her husband has adjusted well to his recent amputation, however, it is the passers-by who seem to not be able to just let it go. She writes:

[O]ften strangers will pause to talk to him while we are in public, and these well-meaning individuals will ask whether he is a veteran. When my husband answers yes, it is inevitably assumed that he was injured in Iraq, and he is often thanked for his sacrifice for our country. One elderly gentleman hugged him with tears in his eyes! While my husband is a veteran and technically qualifies for the warm gesture, it seems deceitful to allow these people to believe he suffered a grave injury in Iraq. We don’t want to share my husband’s complicated medical history with strangers, but we don’t want to discourage people from giving thanks to vets in the future. What should we do?

Prudie’s response is pretty solid, in my opinion here. People with disabilities face nosy questions all the time. Everyone from children who can’t help but be unabashedly honest to grown-ups of the well-intentioned and otherwise variety. People with visible disabilities are constantly questioned about the whats, the hows and the whys of their conditions, as if they are under some obligation to share private pieces of their personal medical information. PWDs with invisible conditions are scrutinized by even their close friends when their health varies from day to day.

Veterans also face a barrage of these questions even when they are able-bodied, from people wanting to know about their service, where they’ve been, even if they have killed someone (hint: you should NEVER ask a veteran this question). Sometimes this line of questioning ends in tears and hugs and thank yous because people are grateful and some even want to share common experiences. Sometimes this creates tense situations. One place where I was stationed in California this actually resulted in people throwing their drinks on sailors and calling us “baby killers”, resulting in a lockdown on how and when we were allowed to leave the base or our houses.

The place where this intersects creates a wholly unique situation. Like Prudie says, people see a person of about the right age with a disability and presume that this person must be a combat-wounded veteran. Cue the questions and thank-yous, and demands for, once again, medical information that is none of their business. All based on presumption.

I agree with Prudie here. “Didn’t” and her husband are under no obligation to correct these people, no matter how well intentioned they may be in their demands for information or genuine their appreciation of his service. It is an invasion of his privacy, of their privacy, and it should be enough to appreciate the sacrifice that they made as a family (however much of that time was spent together) and he himself for his time spent in service, because it is a sacrifice of time and life. If these strangers want to assume that his loss of leg is related, then that is on them, but there is no litmus test of injury or illness that is required in order for your service to be appreciated.

Being patient and understanding that some of these people mean well is one thing, and it reflects well on Didn’t and her husband if they are willing to do so, and thank them for their gratitude. But when it goes beyond a thanks and violates their comfort levels they should feel no guilt over drawing a line and letting them know that they would rather not discuss it.

Where About Us But Without Us Leads

3 June, 2010blaming, class issues, justice, mental health, news, othering, policy, politics, poverty, representations, social attitudes, violenceaccessibility, mental illness, myths and misconceptions, problematic attitudes, social treatmentkaninchenzero

On 1 June 2010, E. Fuller Torrey MD wrote an op-ed column for the New York Times, “Make Kendra’s Law Permanent.” Dr Torrey is the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit group whose sole purpose is to lobby states for the passage of so-called assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) laws like Kendra’s Law in New York and Laura’s Law in California. The New York law is named after Kendra Webdale, who was killed by Andrew Goldstein in 1999.

Dr Torrey and TAC will tell you Mr Goldstein had untreated schizophrenia. They’ll tell you people like him are dangerous, they’ll tell you people like Mr Goldstein are often so sick they don’t understand they’re ill and need treatment, and they’ll tell you they know best. They won’t tell you that Mr Goldstein had been seeking treatment desperately and been turned away repeatedly.[1. Source: Time Magazine, “Will the Real Andrew Goldstein Take the Stand?”] Continue reading Where About Us But Without Us Leads →

Go educate yourself (please!)

2 May, 2010101, activism, blaming, bodies, disability activism, feminism, gender, i'm right here, identity, intersectionality, justice, othering, politics, race, shaming, social attitudesally, ally work, anti-racism, derailing, disability 101, education, exclusion, feminism, intentions, internet, intersectionality, marginalisation, myths and misconceptions, privilege, problematic attitudes, race, racism, social treatment, things people say, this all sounds awfully familiar, white privilegeAnnaham

[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)

1 May, 2010accessibility, invisibility, small stories, social attitudes, workableism, accessibility, assholes, badd, badd 2010, chronic illness, chronic pain, disability, disclosure, head asplode, health, migraines, myths and misconceptions, pain, pain management, pain triggers, passing, personal, problematic attitudes, social treatment, stories, things people say, welcome to my life, workamandaw

(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) →

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FWD (feminists with disabilities) for a way forward

Tag Archives: myths and misconceptions

Recommended Reading For 12 August 2010

New VA Research Could Explain Lasting Effects of PTSD