Oh fucking hell, not again.

It was bad enough that it happened once. But now it's happening again - this time to a 15 year old, and this time in the UK.

I still haven't got round to posting my respones to the Ashley X case itself. I ended up as good as leaving Barbelith after trying to articulate the disability rights position on this thread about it, and getting responses such as "I don't think Ashley is a fully human person" (and this on a community which is generally so committed to anti-discrimination on other issues that even getting vocabulary slightly wrong can lead to high-snark mass deconstruction) - feeling so overwhelmed by my need to respond, and by just how personally the horror of this case hit me, as to leave me, ironically, unable to coherently respond. (If anyone reads the thread, i was known on there as "Natty Rajah" at the time, and am currently "Hydra vs Leviathan", in case it isn't obvious).

But still, that was in the USA, and at least part of me thought "that could never happen here"...

Well, it has.

Or rather, will - and this is the crucial thing. Katie Thorpe hasn't been mutilated yet - the surgeons are still "seeking legal approval". There is still the possibility of this being not just condemned, but stopped.

The Disabled People's Movement in the UK needs to get together a response to this, and quickly, while there's still time for this to be prevented. The trouble is, i have no idea how to go about this. Try to dissuade the surgeons? Get human rights lawyers to argue against them? Somehow get Katie away from her parents (since she really deserves to be out of the clutches of "guardians" who want, essentially, to get legal approval to basically sexually abuse her - and hopefully fostered by someone who will love and accept her who she is, and have true understanding about disability)? I don't know. But i know with all my being that action is absolutely imperative...

Katie's parents are trying to justify themselves here - using exactly the same bullshit "reasoning" that Ashley's parents did.

And i don't know what the fuck the Times means by saying "Even some disabled campaigners are critical of them, saying we should focus instead on making society more accommodating to people with disabilities and offer more help to their carers" (emphasis mine)... as if it would somehow be intuitive that "disabled campaigners" would be pro this sort of thing? I don't know who the fuck those "disabled campaigners" are, but they're not any disabled campaigners i've ever met or heard of, and i'd be willing to bet money that they don't exist.

And as for this: "The parents of disabled children, however, point out that such critics are out of touch with the reality of caring for someone with severe disabilities"... for fuck's sake. Out of touch with the reality? How about the reality of being "someone with severe disabilities" (or a disabled person, to use a linguistically sensible phrase)?

Of course there's stuff behind families and "carers" of disabled people feeling burdened, ashamed, etc, to do with the ludicrous financial injustice of them having to subsist on below-unemployment-level benefits instead of getting a fair wage, and disabled people having to rely on family structures for assistance because of inability to get the assistance they (we) have the right to, so in a sense this goes back to Thatcherite economics, and that needs to be recognised. But this is about disabled people having their rights taken away from them, not about non-disabled family members having the right to make decisions about something as fundamental to a person as their bodily integrity, without the person's consent. No financial hardship gives them that right, and nothing, not even the sincere belief that what they are doing is "for her own good", can excuse a parent ordering the mutilation of their child (parallels can be drawn with what routinely happens to intersex or "gender-ambiguous" children here)...

I meant a while back to collate posts by other bloggers on Ashley X. This seems as good a place to do it as any:

Amanda at Ballastexistenz
Thirza at Fit of Pique (possibly now a defunct blog)
David at Growing Up With A Disability
William Peace at Counterpunch
Kate Olsen at The Gimp Parade
Zilari at Processing In Parts (also seemingly no longer active)
a whole load more here...

Edited to add - something really imperative - get Katie a communication aid - give her the chance to say whether she wants this done or not... on BBC Ouch here people are talking about her based on her appearancve of how "out there" she looks - too many people are assumed to be incapable of communication based on appearances, when they simply lack the technology to assist them to communicate... someone give her the chance, even if she doesn't take it...