I am apparently a month behind as I originally dated this for October. Oh self. If it were October, I wouldn’t be so far behind! Wishful thinking?

Captain Kitt at A Gentle Nerd of Leisure: Our Mental Health System? More Mental than Healthy! (Note this post also includes discussion of eating disorders, self harm, and sexual assault but mostly focuses on experiences within the Australian mental health system) (via vass)

Thing is, often those services are really hard to access! I’m great with search engines – thanks to a librarian Mother – so it’s easy for me to find where the services are. Actually getting help from them? Not so easy.

Laura Hershey at Spinal Cord Injury and Paralysis Community: Fairness for Attendants: Enacting Justice in an Unjust World

We can start by acknowledging the profound disconnect between the importance of the work and the compensation it offers. In understanding and analyzing this, we can call upon a radical understanding of how disability justice and worker justice intersect. Providing hands-on personal care has acquired over the years an aura of sentimentality. People are assumed to do such work out of pure compassion (which translates as pity), or because “it’s so rewarding” (rewarding in a vague, emotional, non-material sense). Within this framework, disabled people embody neediness, while support workers cheerfully fulfill our needs. Disabled people are passive objects of support workers’ active “caregiving.”

Elizabeth McClung at Screw Bronze: Aren’t You Proud?

We are, disabled and Able Bodied, all types of bigots, and one of the most supported forms of bigotry is how we encourage each other to give in to our fear of illness, and altered human function and form. Drool, and averting the eyes is ‘doing you a favor’ – haha. Yes, because having everyone glace, look away and then talk about you, because your being alive makes them uncomfortable is helping me? No, helping them. It is no different than spotting who the odd one is in grade school, and somehow, they end up with no friends. They are stared at. They are, as you will well know if you were one, asked, “Why do you keep coming?”, and the idea of invitation to a party, or even having anyone show up at one you host is laughable.

crabigail adams at if you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit here by me: i am disabled

of course, this is a fixed income. if i find one day that it’s not enough money to get by, i don’t have any options. i can’t apply for a better-paying job. i can’t further my education in hopes of a professional career & the attendant boost in income. this is it. & there are other caveats as well: if i ever decide to live outside the united states, i lose my disability money altogether. if i ever get legally married, the government will pull the extra money i get from the disabled adult child program & i’m back to just my $525 or so in disability money. i would have to rely on my partner to support me financially, which is a lot to ask of someone, & which is something that makes me very uncomfortable. i’m not sure what the rules are around having assets (ie, if i were to sign a mortgage, even if i wasn’t the sole person responsible for paying down the mortgage). i’m not sure how social service programs i may be eligible for if i were to have a child (ie, WIC) would impact my social security income.

Casekins at If My Hands Could Speak: Martha’s Vineyard – Utopian Society (Caseykins is not Deaf – I’m linking this because the history is very interesting.)

The prospects for deaf people on Martha’s Vineyard were completely different. Many of the former residents of the island were interviewed, and they paint an idyllic picture of what it was like to live in Martha’s Vineyard during this time. Because everyone had a deaf family member, everyone in the community knew sign language. Deaf people were farmers, store clerks, anything they wanted to be. Hearing people would sign to each other over the large expanses the island farms created, a deaf person could walk into a store and the clerk would always know sign. Deaf people were even elected to high political office, becoming mayors and council members for the island, a thing unheard of in the rest of the country. When telling stories about the community, the people who were being interviewed could only remember after much prompting if the people they were talking about were hearing or deaf.

I’m closing comments on this one because I’m hip-deep in alligators (do people still say that?) and I always feel bad when people’s comments sit on Recommended Reading posts for days until someone can look at them.