Another link roundup, as i haven't posted in a while...
Breaking news, via FRIDA, cripchick and various Facebook friends* - at least 91 disabled activists from ADAPT (the US's equivalent organisation to DAN) were arrested yesterday outside the White House, and another 99 today on Capitol Hill, protesting against the institutionalisation of disabled people in nursing homes and for Medicaid (the US's "safety net" healthcare system for poor and disabled people) to cover the costs of employing personal assistants to live independently in the community as well as those of "care" in "care homes". This is incredibly inspiring (in the true, good way, not the bullshit "inspirational" way!) - especially from a UK perspective, the sheer numbers of disabled people getting out on the streets and taking organised, high-profile, risky and radical action are amazing.
We really need a movement like this in the UK... oh well, we're getting there... ;)
Youtube video of yesterday's (Monday's) action here...
*Yes, i'm on there. I only add people i know in real life. If you're reading this, and you're someone i know in real life, and you're on Facebook but not on my friends list already (which, tbh, i think is pretty unlikely, but you never know), then feel free to add me (er, i'm presuming that if you are all those things, you know my real name)...
I haven't blogged about much pure political theory (anarchism, socialism, libertarianism...) stuff recently because i've not had quite the right kind of verbal spoons for that very abstract type of thought, but i have been attentively reading stuff on the subject, and particularly liked (even if not felt able to coherently respond to) several recent posts by Rad Geek (aka Charles Johnson):
"Hoverbikes", on the false dichotomy between anarchist localism/decentralism and creative use of technology;
"Fight the powers that be", on "the reasons why a thick conception of libertarianism — or just a realistic assessment of the human predicament — recommends a left-libertarian strategy of connecting radical libertarianism with a thoroughgoing form of psychological, institutional, and cultural anti-authoritarianism (as a general thing, and also when it comes to specific forms and markers of privilege and subordination, like bossism, patriarchy, heterosexism, white supremacy, et al.)";
and this open thread on "localism, decentralism, anarchism, thick conceptions of libertarianism, and the U.S. Constitution", which is incredibly long (i haven't even read to the end), but an awesomely detailed and high-level discussion, containing far too many spinning and whirling ideas to hold coherently in my brain at any one time.
An awesome new blogger i have just discovered is Anarchafemme (who i actually thought, from hir* description of hirself as "a chubbers, trans/genderqueer femme with disabilities, anarcho-syndicalist, vegan, polyamorous slut" might have been a real life friend of mine, until i saw hir location as being in the US).
Particularly awesome and powerful posts from hir blog "Memoirs of a Genderqueer Femme Anarchist":
Musing on Smashing the Gender Binary
Ownership of Bodies
I Hate To Say "I Told You So"... (the best takedown of the hype surrounding Obama that i've seen so far)
Ablism In Radical Spaces (which is a topic i really need to blog on... and, yeah, i can't link without saying i strongly prefer the usage "disablism" over "ablism", but, that aside, i agree with everything there, and of course language and usage is a huge UK/US thing...)
*Anarchafemme, if you're reading, please correct me if i've used the wrong pronouns - i think i saw you saying somewhere that you preferred gender-neutral pronouns, but now can't find where you said that, so apologies if i mistook you for someone else...
And lastly, for those who are into webcomics, Digger by Ursula Vernon is one i've discovered recently which i've been finding pretty damn awesome (and i don't usually like either black-and-white comics or anthropomorphic animals, especially when mixed with humans... but, nonetheless, Digger is awesome).
Also, i've been pretty pissed off with myself for not writing anywhere near as much as i've wanted to recently, so i've (somewhat tentatively) decided to set myself a challenge in May to try to overcome that. I'm not doing an official NaBloPoMo, because a) i'm almost certain that there are going to be at least a few days when i don't manage to write anything, due to, well, all the other things going on in my life, and b) i know that at least a few of the things i want to write won't be blog posts, but my aim is to write something significant every day in May. So expect more frequent (if perhaps consequently shorter) posts over the next month, and possibly longer if i pick up longer-term momentum - and wish me luck...
(And, yes, i really need to update my blogroll. And layout. I am going to get round to this at some point soon.)
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Oppression Olympics... literally.
ABFH posted recently about a Special Olympics poster campaign called "Spread The Word To End The Word". Her post concentrated mainly on the motives of the advertising agency, but here i want to address the poster campaign itself.
The aim of this advertising campaign is putatively to "make people stop and think about their hurtful and disparaging use of the word “retard.”" - however, i think there are several ways in which this advertising campaign is deeply flawed, and is, in fact, arguably offensive and oppressive to disabled people in itself.
The posters (which can be seen online here, here and here) are certainly striking and powerful - I do have, on one level, admiration for their boldness and shock value, and i think the point they are trying to make is, from a certain standpoint, a valid one - however, i think that standpoint is a naive and unexamined one. This gets me into complex knots of identity politics and standpoint theory of the sort that i always struggle to articulate, but i'm going to try, and hope i make some sense...
The first thing that struck me when i saw the posters was the open use of racist (primarily) and homophobic insults on them - in 2 of the 3 posters, without censorship of the racist and homophobic terms, and in the other one with those terms censored but "retard" uncensored. I very much doubt that the first 2 posters would even be allowed by the Advertising Standards Agency in the UK (and that's not to make the UK out to be less prejudiced than the US, or to say that the ASA isn't hypocritical or fucked up - they seemed to have no problem with this shit, for example) - the obliviousness of whoever made them to the effect that seeing them could have on members of the groups who were slurred uncensored on them (Chinese people, gay men, African-Americans and Jews, respectively) is breathtaking. The remaining poster, in removing the vowels from the racist and homophobic terms (while still leaving them obvious enough to have the same effect on members of the groups attacked by them - African-Americans, Latino/as, and gay men again) but not from "retard", is arguably even more offensive by falling hideously blatantly into the "last acceptable prejudice" trap.
The second thing that struck me was the visual imagery - which i concede has a powerful aesthetic that i like in purely visual terms. However, two things strike me about it - firstly, that the whole visual point hinges around the visually obvious facial appearance of people with Down's syndrome, thus equating all cognitive impairment with that one condition (which also spreads the false, but common, conception that cognitive impairment is something immediately and obviously "visible"); and secondly, how strongly the imagery draws on tropes of fear and horror, referencing horror cinema to portray (whether intentionally or not) disabled people as frightening and monstrous. (I'm not sure what horror film(s), if consciously any, the first poster references, but the second clearly references the "classic" film depictions of Frankenstein's monster to me, and the third J-Horror films such as The Ring). While i think there is an incredible amount of subversive power in disabled people reclaiming such imagery (some great short film examples from the UK disability arts movement here and here), this doesn't feel like that to me - it feels more like it is simply putting out the message "disabled people are scary and shocking".
(Also, i can't help wondering what effect seeing those adverts would have on people with cognitive impairments who, due to those impairments - for example, someone who is unable to interpret language non-literally - wouldn't "get" the intended nuances of shock value, but would still "get" all too well the use of hateful words and scary images - i can easily see some people, on first impression (which may be all they get) seeing these adverts simply as a socially-sanctioned, brutal disablist attack on themselves...)
As for the comparisons, well, this post by the ever-awesome Eli Clare - inspired by a previous Special Olympics advertising campaign - makes all the points i want to make far better than i ever could - i could quote the whole thing, but i'll just quote a couple of bits of it:
1) The violence has already been done. The damage won’t be rectified by a refusal to say the words. In our activism and analysis around hate language, we need to be vigilant and conscious about triggers and re-creating the power dynamics put in motion by hate language, but I’m not sure that euphemistic substitutions for hate language is a good stand-in for vigilance and consciousness. At the bottom of this part of my ambivalence is a sense that the “r-word” construction is designed largely to protect those of of us who have been battered by the word retard and by the institutional, material, and attitudinal realities that come with it. As one of those people bruised by the dismissiveness, hatred, and physical violence of retard, I don’t need protection; rather I need compassion, rage, allies, and an end to ableism.
In the light of this, there is a clear contradiction in the current Special Olympics campaign - their motive in trying to eradicate the word (and, it seems, only the word, not necessarily the ideology or systemic injustice behind it) is, consciously or not, "protection" - which is fundamentally patronising and paternalistic - yet the posters used for that have the exact opposite effect, precisely the kind of re-victimisation in Clare's second sentence.
2) The “r-word” construction mirrors the “n-word” construction, which precedes it. I don’t know from where the “n-word” construction originates nor what mix of opinions/feelings/thoughts Black people have about it. But whatever the origins, the mirroring of the two constructions communicates that retard and nigger function in the same ways as hate language and carry the same violence and that all the repulsion and outrage white people supposedly feel upon hearing the word nigger should also be felt in the same measure by non-disabled people upon hearing retard. Here again is analogy failing to do the deeper work of intersectionality. Certainly racist hate language and ableist hate language share much in common. (The ways the word monkey has been used against disabled people (both poc and white) and people of color (both disabled and non-disabled) highlight these commonalities.) But there is so much historical and present-day difference between the usage of retard and the usage of nigger and such a lack of real anti-racist work among white disability activists that the analogy reads to me like white people appropriating the political work of Black activists yet again. The analogy sidelines Black disabled people’s experience, and assumes that disabled people are white and Black people are non-disabled. And the question isn’t asked: how does the snarl of hate sound in the lives of disabled people of color?
Now, "appropriation" is generally an area of discussion i avoid, because i find it incredibly difficult to get my head round what constitutes "appropriation" and what does not; i don't know how far one can take an analogy before it becomes appropriative, or even if ultimately it's appropriative to draw analogies between different oppressions at all (and, if so, is appropriation even avoidable, considering that for any analysis of oppression whatsoever, there's going to be one oppressed group that "got there first" - and that's particularly relevant when talking about disability, because it's historically undeniable that disabled people's oppression was, in most cases, one of the last categories of oppression to be recognised as such). But Clare is absolutely right that this is all about the feelings of the privileged group of people - the feelings of the actual people directly oppressed by the term "retard" don't even seem to be taken into consideration.
But since when is the Special Olympics about justice for cognitively disabled people? For many years that organization has been one of the biggest creators of super crip images–that is “heroic” disabled people “inspiring” audiences with their “bravery”–and and have often fanned the flames of pity with its charity-model fundraising. Even the name Special Olympics sets up a charity-model context, rather than a social-justice-model context. I believe that an organization that frames disabled people as inspirational and/or objects of pity is also setting the stage for the unquestioned use of retard. If the Special Olympics is serious about its r-word campaign, it has a lot of internal work to do.
And, of course, here the patronising and paternalistic nature of the "protect the vulnerable disabled people from hate speech by eradicating words, even if not what lies behind them" campaign makes perfect sense, because the Special Olympics is a fundamentally patronising and paternalistic organisation.
I believe that there is an unexamined but deep-seated disablist ideology behind even the "non-special" Olympics, and in fact all competitive sport, but i don't have time to go into that here. However, in its relative (if not absolute) uncompetitiveness, and emphasis on "develop[ing] self-confidence, social skills and a sense of personal accomplishment", another level of patronising disablism is revealed - whether in the idea that cognitively disabled people "can't take" losing and thus need to be protected from it, or that they don't have a realistic chance of winning in a genuinely competitive environment. (It's also noteworthy that the Paralympics - which has the same unashamedly competitive outlook as the "normal" Olympics - does not allow "intellectually disabled" athletes to take part, whereas the Special Olympics is solely for those with cognitive/intellectual impairments, reinforcing divide-and-rule segregation by impairment and encouraging "we might be impaired in X, but that doesn't mean we're impaired in Y, like them" attitudes on both "sides"...)
I believe that comparing disabled people's oppression to other oppressed groups' oppression in order to make people realise that it is oppression does have its value and its place (see my comments to cripchick's posts here and here, for example) - but this is an example of spectacularly missing the point... an advertising campaign aimed at combating hate speech which, for many people - even arguably including the very group it's meant to oppose hate speech against - is hate speech. Pointing out oppression that most people are unaware of is shocking - arguably, if you aren't shocking people, you aren't doing it right. But doing it in ways that hurt the oppressed more than the privileged is not cool at all.
The aim of this advertising campaign is putatively to "make people stop and think about their hurtful and disparaging use of the word “retard.”" - however, i think there are several ways in which this advertising campaign is deeply flawed, and is, in fact, arguably offensive and oppressive to disabled people in itself.
The posters (which can be seen online here, here and here) are certainly striking and powerful - I do have, on one level, admiration for their boldness and shock value, and i think the point they are trying to make is, from a certain standpoint, a valid one - however, i think that standpoint is a naive and unexamined one. This gets me into complex knots of identity politics and standpoint theory of the sort that i always struggle to articulate, but i'm going to try, and hope i make some sense...
The first thing that struck me when i saw the posters was the open use of racist (primarily) and homophobic insults on them - in 2 of the 3 posters, without censorship of the racist and homophobic terms, and in the other one with those terms censored but "retard" uncensored. I very much doubt that the first 2 posters would even be allowed by the Advertising Standards Agency in the UK (and that's not to make the UK out to be less prejudiced than the US, or to say that the ASA isn't hypocritical or fucked up - they seemed to have no problem with this shit, for example) - the obliviousness of whoever made them to the effect that seeing them could have on members of the groups who were slurred uncensored on them (Chinese people, gay men, African-Americans and Jews, respectively) is breathtaking. The remaining poster, in removing the vowels from the racist and homophobic terms (while still leaving them obvious enough to have the same effect on members of the groups attacked by them - African-Americans, Latino/as, and gay men again) but not from "retard", is arguably even more offensive by falling hideously blatantly into the "last acceptable prejudice" trap.
The second thing that struck me was the visual imagery - which i concede has a powerful aesthetic that i like in purely visual terms. However, two things strike me about it - firstly, that the whole visual point hinges around the visually obvious facial appearance of people with Down's syndrome, thus equating all cognitive impairment with that one condition (which also spreads the false, but common, conception that cognitive impairment is something immediately and obviously "visible"); and secondly, how strongly the imagery draws on tropes of fear and horror, referencing horror cinema to portray (whether intentionally or not) disabled people as frightening and monstrous. (I'm not sure what horror film(s), if consciously any, the first poster references, but the second clearly references the "classic" film depictions of Frankenstein's monster to me, and the third J-Horror films such as The Ring). While i think there is an incredible amount of subversive power in disabled people reclaiming such imagery (some great short film examples from the UK disability arts movement here and here), this doesn't feel like that to me - it feels more like it is simply putting out the message "disabled people are scary and shocking".
(Also, i can't help wondering what effect seeing those adverts would have on people with cognitive impairments who, due to those impairments - for example, someone who is unable to interpret language non-literally - wouldn't "get" the intended nuances of shock value, but would still "get" all too well the use of hateful words and scary images - i can easily see some people, on first impression (which may be all they get) seeing these adverts simply as a socially-sanctioned, brutal disablist attack on themselves...)
As for the comparisons, well, this post by the ever-awesome Eli Clare - inspired by a previous Special Olympics advertising campaign - makes all the points i want to make far better than i ever could - i could quote the whole thing, but i'll just quote a couple of bits of it:
1) The violence has already been done. The damage won’t be rectified by a refusal to say the words. In our activism and analysis around hate language, we need to be vigilant and conscious about triggers and re-creating the power dynamics put in motion by hate language, but I’m not sure that euphemistic substitutions for hate language is a good stand-in for vigilance and consciousness. At the bottom of this part of my ambivalence is a sense that the “r-word” construction is designed largely to protect those of of us who have been battered by the word retard and by the institutional, material, and attitudinal realities that come with it. As one of those people bruised by the dismissiveness, hatred, and physical violence of retard, I don’t need protection; rather I need compassion, rage, allies, and an end to ableism.
In the light of this, there is a clear contradiction in the current Special Olympics campaign - their motive in trying to eradicate the word (and, it seems, only the word, not necessarily the ideology or systemic injustice behind it) is, consciously or not, "protection" - which is fundamentally patronising and paternalistic - yet the posters used for that have the exact opposite effect, precisely the kind of re-victimisation in Clare's second sentence.
2) The “r-word” construction mirrors the “n-word” construction, which precedes it. I don’t know from where the “n-word” construction originates nor what mix of opinions/feelings/thoughts Black people have about it. But whatever the origins, the mirroring of the two constructions communicates that retard and nigger function in the same ways as hate language and carry the same violence and that all the repulsion and outrage white people supposedly feel upon hearing the word nigger should also be felt in the same measure by non-disabled people upon hearing retard. Here again is analogy failing to do the deeper work of intersectionality. Certainly racist hate language and ableist hate language share much in common. (The ways the word monkey has been used against disabled people (both poc and white) and people of color (both disabled and non-disabled) highlight these commonalities.) But there is so much historical and present-day difference between the usage of retard and the usage of nigger and such a lack of real anti-racist work among white disability activists that the analogy reads to me like white people appropriating the political work of Black activists yet again. The analogy sidelines Black disabled people’s experience, and assumes that disabled people are white and Black people are non-disabled. And the question isn’t asked: how does the snarl of hate sound in the lives of disabled people of color?
Now, "appropriation" is generally an area of discussion i avoid, because i find it incredibly difficult to get my head round what constitutes "appropriation" and what does not; i don't know how far one can take an analogy before it becomes appropriative, or even if ultimately it's appropriative to draw analogies between different oppressions at all (and, if so, is appropriation even avoidable, considering that for any analysis of oppression whatsoever, there's going to be one oppressed group that "got there first" - and that's particularly relevant when talking about disability, because it's historically undeniable that disabled people's oppression was, in most cases, one of the last categories of oppression to be recognised as such). But Clare is absolutely right that this is all about the feelings of the privileged group of people - the feelings of the actual people directly oppressed by the term "retard" don't even seem to be taken into consideration.
But since when is the Special Olympics about justice for cognitively disabled people? For many years that organization has been one of the biggest creators of super crip images–that is “heroic” disabled people “inspiring” audiences with their “bravery”–and and have often fanned the flames of pity with its charity-model fundraising. Even the name Special Olympics sets up a charity-model context, rather than a social-justice-model context. I believe that an organization that frames disabled people as inspirational and/or objects of pity is also setting the stage for the unquestioned use of retard. If the Special Olympics is serious about its r-word campaign, it has a lot of internal work to do.
And, of course, here the patronising and paternalistic nature of the "protect the vulnerable disabled people from hate speech by eradicating words, even if not what lies behind them" campaign makes perfect sense, because the Special Olympics is a fundamentally patronising and paternalistic organisation.
I believe that there is an unexamined but deep-seated disablist ideology behind even the "non-special" Olympics, and in fact all competitive sport, but i don't have time to go into that here. However, in its relative (if not absolute) uncompetitiveness, and emphasis on "develop[ing] self-confidence, social skills and a sense of personal accomplishment", another level of patronising disablism is revealed - whether in the idea that cognitively disabled people "can't take" losing and thus need to be protected from it, or that they don't have a realistic chance of winning in a genuinely competitive environment. (It's also noteworthy that the Paralympics - which has the same unashamedly competitive outlook as the "normal" Olympics - does not allow "intellectually disabled" athletes to take part, whereas the Special Olympics is solely for those with cognitive/intellectual impairments, reinforcing divide-and-rule segregation by impairment and encouraging "we might be impaired in X, but that doesn't mean we're impaired in Y, like them" attitudes on both "sides"...)
I believe that comparing disabled people's oppression to other oppressed groups' oppression in order to make people realise that it is oppression does have its value and its place (see my comments to cripchick's posts here and here, for example) - but this is an example of spectacularly missing the point... an advertising campaign aimed at combating hate speech which, for many people - even arguably including the very group it's meant to oppose hate speech against - is hate speech. Pointing out oppression that most people are unaware of is shocking - arguably, if you aren't shocking people, you aren't doing it right. But doing it in ways that hurt the oppressed more than the privileged is not cool at all.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Best post on adult AS diagnosis ever?
Via hexpletive, an utterly amazingly awesome post on adult AS diagnosis and neurodiversity and other anti-oppression activism by a blogger i wasn't previously aware of, feminist and fat acceptance activist Meowser (who i may have to add to my blogroll)...
I don't really know what else to say about the post except READ IT, really... except that, despite being a different sex and a couple of decades younger than Meowser, practically everything in that post is almost word-for-word true of me.
A few choice quotes:
"Asperger syndrome?" I said. "No, I don't think so. I like affection. I'm not a slave to routine. I'm SO not into straightening and tidying things. I don't care all that much about computers."
...
Couldn't catch or hold a ball to save my life? Check.
Had no idea when it was okay to bend the rules, even for something trivial like chewing gum in class, and when it wasn't, because I was always positive I'd be the one to get caught, try to swallow my gum, and puke it up in front of everyone? Check.
Had a bedroom that looked like Axl Rose and the Tasmanian Devil were roommates in it, except for a record collection that was always carefully organized not just in alphabetical order by artist, but arranged by dates of release when I had more than one album by the same artist? Check.
Was almost comically uncoordinated and dropped things and banged into shit and knocked over glasses full of liquid like a 1-year-old? Check, check, checkerooski.
...
I'd lost friend after friend. Job after job. Roommate after roommate. Lover after lover. Just lost them and lost them and lost them, in ugly ugly ugly ways, even though I tried so hard to be good. Once in a while, when they could bring themselves to, they'd tell me why I was losing them.
Lisa said you were staring into space for ten whole minutes and not doing any work. I'm going to have to write you up.
Didn't you see me look at you? Couldn't you tell you were annoying the crap out of me with all that blathering about your issues?
You call this clean? Did wolves teach you how to wash dishes?
The way you stare at me, it's just so weird, I can't take it.
Error after error for which I could never be forgiven, even after apologizing and apologizing and apologizing and busting my ass to do better. Once people decide to wash their hands of you, that you're just too odd to be worth the effort, that's pretty much it.
But mostly they wouldn't even tell me. I'd just be frozen out, without another word.
God, if only I had known, I could have told people, could have told myself. They and I would have had at least a few clues ahead of time about what to expect. I wouldn't have kept trying to fit where I didn't fit, do what I couldn't do, make it okay when it never would be, tell myself I could make it work, everybody else does, I have no excuse.
...
The "treatment" I was to undertake now, under Jane's tutelage, consisted of understanding that this was the brain I had, it was what it was, and learning how to explain myself to people when the situation called for it and stop expecting myself to function like a neurotypical (NT) person -- that is, someone not at all autistic. Because I'm not like them, and no amount of TRY HARDER HARDER HARDER was going to make me become like them. And of course, learn to appreciate the unique and special ways in which my mind did work, and understand that I was not a failure, that I had been discriminated against for this for decades and not only didn't I know it, but the people who instinctively recoiled from me didn't even know why they were doing it, for the most part.
... but, please do read the whole thing - it's long, but it's worth it...
(and there is stuff in there, especially towards the end when she talks about privilege, that is so me i'm not even sure i'm able to coherently talk about it - tho i want to, and perhaps at some point i will, tho i've tried to write about the same stuff many times and never even got close to putting it into words which i felt reflected my actual thoughts and feelings... blah. Maybe one day.)
Proper posts from me... soon, honest. Have been stupidly busy... and will be for the next week as well, as i'm going to this conference (primarily to run a DAN stall), but i really will start posting more frequently, as soon as i have a couple of days with time to blog in a row...
I don't really know what else to say about the post except READ IT, really... except that, despite being a different sex and a couple of decades younger than Meowser, practically everything in that post is almost word-for-word true of me.
A few choice quotes:
"Asperger syndrome?" I said. "No, I don't think so. I like affection. I'm not a slave to routine. I'm SO not into straightening and tidying things. I don't care all that much about computers."
...
Couldn't catch or hold a ball to save my life? Check.
Had no idea when it was okay to bend the rules, even for something trivial like chewing gum in class, and when it wasn't, because I was always positive I'd be the one to get caught, try to swallow my gum, and puke it up in front of everyone? Check.
Had a bedroom that looked like Axl Rose and the Tasmanian Devil were roommates in it, except for a record collection that was always carefully organized not just in alphabetical order by artist, but arranged by dates of release when I had more than one album by the same artist? Check.
Was almost comically uncoordinated and dropped things and banged into shit and knocked over glasses full of liquid like a 1-year-old? Check, check, checkerooski.
...
I'd lost friend after friend. Job after job. Roommate after roommate. Lover after lover. Just lost them and lost them and lost them, in ugly ugly ugly ways, even though I tried so hard to be good. Once in a while, when they could bring themselves to, they'd tell me why I was losing them.
Lisa said you were staring into space for ten whole minutes and not doing any work. I'm going to have to write you up.
Didn't you see me look at you? Couldn't you tell you were annoying the crap out of me with all that blathering about your issues?
You call this clean? Did wolves teach you how to wash dishes?
The way you stare at me, it's just so weird, I can't take it.
Error after error for which I could never be forgiven, even after apologizing and apologizing and apologizing and busting my ass to do better. Once people decide to wash their hands of you, that you're just too odd to be worth the effort, that's pretty much it.
But mostly they wouldn't even tell me. I'd just be frozen out, without another word.
God, if only I had known, I could have told people, could have told myself. They and I would have had at least a few clues ahead of time about what to expect. I wouldn't have kept trying to fit where I didn't fit, do what I couldn't do, make it okay when it never would be, tell myself I could make it work, everybody else does, I have no excuse.
...
The "treatment" I was to undertake now, under Jane's tutelage, consisted of understanding that this was the brain I had, it was what it was, and learning how to explain myself to people when the situation called for it and stop expecting myself to function like a neurotypical (NT) person -- that is, someone not at all autistic. Because I'm not like them, and no amount of TRY HARDER HARDER HARDER was going to make me become like them. And of course, learn to appreciate the unique and special ways in which my mind did work, and understand that I was not a failure, that I had been discriminated against for this for decades and not only didn't I know it, but the people who instinctively recoiled from me didn't even know why they were doing it, for the most part.
... but, please do read the whole thing - it's long, but it's worth it...
(and there is stuff in there, especially towards the end when she talks about privilege, that is so me i'm not even sure i'm able to coherently talk about it - tho i want to, and perhaps at some point i will, tho i've tried to write about the same stuff many times and never even got close to putting it into words which i felt reflected my actual thoughts and feelings... blah. Maybe one day.)
Proper posts from me... soon, honest. Have been stupidly busy... and will be for the next week as well, as i'm going to this conference (primarily to run a DAN stall), but i really will start posting more frequently, as soon as i have a couple of days with time to blog in a row...
Monday, April 6, 2009
Biodiversity in the City #1: Crow
I realised recently that i haven't a) posted any of my own photos recently, and b) haven't posted anywhere as near as many posts of my own photos overall as i intended to when i started this blog. So, as i got a new camera recently (well, at Christmas) which is quite a bit superior to my old one (10x zoom and 8 megapixels as opposed to 4 and 5 respectively), i thought i'd start a series of wildlife photo posts (it's also a bit of a respite from intellectually and emotionally heavy disability-identity-politics type posts)...
However, being me, i can't help linking things together, and i've noticed a synchronicity in my recent photo-taking walks of one of my perennial interests: animals that are visually unusual for their species (I blame all the Jack London and Herman Melville i read at a very early age... with a bit of awareness of my own atypicality mixed in there too) - hence my "Biodiversity in the City" posts will focus on that...
I've posted before on the crows in Birmingham that often have some white in their normally black plumage. With my new camera, i recently got some photos of one that were much clearer than the blurry photos i got with my old camera back in 2007 (it's also a different crow, as you can tell both from the different pattern of white feathers and it being on the other side of Birmingham to the other one):
OK, they are still a bit blurry. Much better at comparable distance than my old camera, tho...
(and my random Wiki-surfing has found an extinct subspecies of raven with a fascinating similarity to my observations of crows in Birmingham - the pattern of the type specimen is remarkably similar to my 2007 crow (although i know that one was a Carrion Crow). Could the conditions in a city cause a similar "genetic drift" phenomenon to those on a small island? All sorts of incredibly interesting thoughts about genetics, evolution and diversity there... damn, i wish my biology was less rusty... maybe some day i'll write the out-there fusion of biology, ecology and sociology that i have somewhere in the back of my mind about human and nonhuman biodiversity in urban environments...)
Anyway. Darren Naish and Loren Coleman probably also deserve inspiration credit for this. Coming up: diversity in pigeons, ducks, geese and coots...
However, being me, i can't help linking things together, and i've noticed a synchronicity in my recent photo-taking walks of one of my perennial interests: animals that are visually unusual for their species (I blame all the Jack London and Herman Melville i read at a very early age... with a bit of awareness of my own atypicality mixed in there too) - hence my "Biodiversity in the City" posts will focus on that...
I've posted before on the crows in Birmingham that often have some white in their normally black plumage. With my new camera, i recently got some photos of one that were much clearer than the blurry photos i got with my old camera back in 2007 (it's also a different crow, as you can tell both from the different pattern of white feathers and it being on the other side of Birmingham to the other one):
OK, they are still a bit blurry. Much better at comparable distance than my old camera, tho...
(and my random Wiki-surfing has found an extinct subspecies of raven with a fascinating similarity to my observations of crows in Birmingham - the pattern of the type specimen is remarkably similar to my 2007 crow (although i know that one was a Carrion Crow). Could the conditions in a city cause a similar "genetic drift" phenomenon to those on a small island? All sorts of incredibly interesting thoughts about genetics, evolution and diversity there... damn, i wish my biology was less rusty... maybe some day i'll write the out-there fusion of biology, ecology and sociology that i have somewhere in the back of my mind about human and nonhuman biodiversity in urban environments...)
Anyway. Darren Naish and Loren Coleman probably also deserve inspiration credit for this. Coming up: diversity in pigeons, ducks, geese and coots...
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Massachusetts... WTF???
When i first read this, i thought it had to be an April Fool's joke (albeit a somewhat offensive one... but one that i would possibly have found funny) - but confirmation from several other sources (such as Body Impolitic and Trinity) has proved to me that it is in fact true:
Massachusetts State Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein (I'm not totally up-to-date on US legislative stuff, but i'm presuming she is an elected member of the state (as opposed to federal) legislature) has proposed a state-level bill banning distribution of any naked images of any disabled person or any person over 60 - and which explicitly equates any such images with child pornography.
The implications of this are horrific - it implies that any person over 60 or any person with "a permanent or long-term physical or mental impairment that prevents or restricts the individual’s ability to provide for his or her own care or protection" is equivalent to a child in being inherently incapable of consenting to sex or to being photographed naked. This would even apply to disabled people or people over 60 distributing naked images of themselves.
Now, i have spoken to several USians who have assured me that this bill is almost certainly federally unconstitutional and therefore could never be passed (or, if it was, would be struck down by federal authority overriding state authority, or something like that... again, not very sure of US politics here. Yes, i did this stuff at uni. No, i don't remember it...) But the fact that it even got to the stage of being put before the legislature - and, apparently, with the approval of Massachussetts-based disability organisations - is horrific enough.
According to this report, the bill was prompted by a series of cases of nonconsensual sexual exploitation of disabled people, involving nonconsensual photography. However, these kinds of sexual abuse are already crimes, and criminalising consensual images will almost certainly have no effect on them. Equating all sexual images of disabled people with nonconsensual abuse removes all agency from disabled people, and fits right into the insidious (and all the more oppressive for its not being percieved by the general public as oppressive) paradigm of disabled people as inherently "vulnerable", and therefore in need of "protection" that overrides our own choices and wishes - one of the nastiest forms of paternalism. This proves that, in the minds of people in powerful positions like state legislators, disabled people are not fully adult, not fully human.
(This bill would make Sins Invalid illegal in Massachusetts, and much of the work of Mat Fraser, and so many more incredibly awesome, vital, powerful works of the disability arts and disability culture movements... not even to mention the many mainstream films which have featured naked scenes by actors over 60...)
This is why i am a supporter of the Consenting Adult Action Network - not because i am particularly "pro-porn" (in fact, i'm pretty much entirely indifferent to porn - although i can certainly aesthetically appreciate nude or erotic images of attractive people, watching other people actually doing sexual acts is something that i'm simply not at all interested in - if anything, the only effect it has on me is envy at my own lack of opportunity for such activity) - but because anti-porn laws not only restrict free speech, but (much more importantly for me) deny people agency over what they do with their own images and, ultimately, their own bodies. This is one of the most fundamental freedoms that all human beings have - and a law specifically denying it to disabled (and older) people is nothing more and nothing less than institutionalised discrimination and hatred.
(For how hatred of disabled people can differ superficially from hatred of other minorities in ways that can prevent it from being seen as the hatred it is, see this previous post on hate crime.)
For these reasons, it's no surprise at all to me that disabled people and disability activists are extremely prominent in the movement for sexual freedom and autonomy (both in online discourses - e.g. on blogs such as let them eat pro-sm feminist safe spaces and SexAbility - and in offline activism such as CAAN) - fighting against paternalism and for bodily autonomy and acceptance of all adult human beings as capable of being fully consenting agents is completely central to the disability rights movement.
(The Sexual Freedom Coalition is also IMO worth linking here...)
Disabled people are routinely denied any kind of sexual agency or recognition as sexual beings whatsoever (see Dave Hingsburger's blog for far too many examples). I'm not going to try to address the thorny question of whether sex (defined as involving sexual interaction with another person) is a "right", as i really have no idea how to answer the questions of whether something that requires the consent of someone else can be a right, or of whether it's possible for something to be a need but not a right - but sexual expression undoubtedly is a fundamental freedom, in the same way that any other kind of self-expression that doesn't harm others (and no, offence is not harm) is.
I'm glad that this law is unlikely to be passed, but, to my knowledge, if such a bill was to be proposed in the UK (which does not have a Constitution like that of the US to protect "free speech"), there could well be nothing stopping it from being passed here. (The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which banned "extreme porn" in the UK, would very probably have been unconstitutional in the US on the same grounds as this Massachusetts bill.) This is our fight, whether or not we want to see it as such...
Massachusetts State Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein (I'm not totally up-to-date on US legislative stuff, but i'm presuming she is an elected member of the state (as opposed to federal) legislature) has proposed a state-level bill banning distribution of any naked images of any disabled person or any person over 60 - and which explicitly equates any such images with child pornography.
The implications of this are horrific - it implies that any person over 60 or any person with "a permanent or long-term physical or mental impairment that prevents or restricts the individual’s ability to provide for his or her own care or protection" is equivalent to a child in being inherently incapable of consenting to sex or to being photographed naked. This would even apply to disabled people or people over 60 distributing naked images of themselves.
Now, i have spoken to several USians who have assured me that this bill is almost certainly federally unconstitutional and therefore could never be passed (or, if it was, would be struck down by federal authority overriding state authority, or something like that... again, not very sure of US politics here. Yes, i did this stuff at uni. No, i don't remember it...) But the fact that it even got to the stage of being put before the legislature - and, apparently, with the approval of Massachussetts-based disability organisations - is horrific enough.
According to this report, the bill was prompted by a series of cases of nonconsensual sexual exploitation of disabled people, involving nonconsensual photography. However, these kinds of sexual abuse are already crimes, and criminalising consensual images will almost certainly have no effect on them. Equating all sexual images of disabled people with nonconsensual abuse removes all agency from disabled people, and fits right into the insidious (and all the more oppressive for its not being percieved by the general public as oppressive) paradigm of disabled people as inherently "vulnerable", and therefore in need of "protection" that overrides our own choices and wishes - one of the nastiest forms of paternalism. This proves that, in the minds of people in powerful positions like state legislators, disabled people are not fully adult, not fully human.
(This bill would make Sins Invalid illegal in Massachusetts, and much of the work of Mat Fraser, and so many more incredibly awesome, vital, powerful works of the disability arts and disability culture movements... not even to mention the many mainstream films which have featured naked scenes by actors over 60...)
This is why i am a supporter of the Consenting Adult Action Network - not because i am particularly "pro-porn" (in fact, i'm pretty much entirely indifferent to porn - although i can certainly aesthetically appreciate nude or erotic images of attractive people, watching other people actually doing sexual acts is something that i'm simply not at all interested in - if anything, the only effect it has on me is envy at my own lack of opportunity for such activity) - but because anti-porn laws not only restrict free speech, but (much more importantly for me) deny people agency over what they do with their own images and, ultimately, their own bodies. This is one of the most fundamental freedoms that all human beings have - and a law specifically denying it to disabled (and older) people is nothing more and nothing less than institutionalised discrimination and hatred.
(For how hatred of disabled people can differ superficially from hatred of other minorities in ways that can prevent it from being seen as the hatred it is, see this previous post on hate crime.)
For these reasons, it's no surprise at all to me that disabled people and disability activists are extremely prominent in the movement for sexual freedom and autonomy (both in online discourses - e.g. on blogs such as let them eat pro-sm feminist safe spaces and SexAbility - and in offline activism such as CAAN) - fighting against paternalism and for bodily autonomy and acceptance of all adult human beings as capable of being fully consenting agents is completely central to the disability rights movement.
(The Sexual Freedom Coalition is also IMO worth linking here...)
Disabled people are routinely denied any kind of sexual agency or recognition as sexual beings whatsoever (see Dave Hingsburger's blog for far too many examples). I'm not going to try to address the thorny question of whether sex (defined as involving sexual interaction with another person) is a "right", as i really have no idea how to answer the questions of whether something that requires the consent of someone else can be a right, or of whether it's possible for something to be a need but not a right - but sexual expression undoubtedly is a fundamental freedom, in the same way that any other kind of self-expression that doesn't harm others (and no, offence is not harm) is.
I'm glad that this law is unlikely to be passed, but, to my knowledge, if such a bill was to be proposed in the UK (which does not have a Constitution like that of the US to protect "free speech"), there could well be nothing stopping it from being passed here. (The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which banned "extreme porn" in the UK, would very probably have been unconstitutional in the US on the same grounds as this Massachusetts bill.) This is our fight, whether or not we want to see it as such...
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The reason i haven't been blogging much recently ;)
(the difference from my usual writing style is due to the fact that i wrote this for Indymedia...)
Yesterday (Monday March 30th) the Disabled People's Direct Action Network (DAN) occupied the main entrance of Louisa Ryland House (Birmingham City Council's main housing and social services office) over the way that disabled people are treated by the council.
Around 20 activists, who had come from as far afield as London, Leeds and Manchester, marched from the city centre (pausing only for a photo opportunity outside the Council House) at 1pm, chanting slogans such as "What do we want? Freedom! When do we want it? Now!" and "I'd rather go to jail than die in a nursing home". Despite the fact that an article about the action had already appeared in that morning's Birmingham Mail, Louisa Ryland House were totally unprepared for the invasion, with not even security guards initially present when DAN entered, chanting "Business as usual - ain't gonna happen!"
We occupied the lobby and blockaded the entrance with 2 wheelchairs chained together (with banners and people handing out leaflets to both council workers and passers-by outside in the street) for about 2 hours before any police turned up - initially it was a pair of "Community Support Officers" who essentially said they agreed with us and walked away, then about half an hour later the actual West Midlands Police came, but were very clearly totally unprepared to arrest a group of disabled people, repeatedly warning us that we were breaking the law (er, we knew that) and that if we stayed we would be arrested... however, they didn't seem to want to get round to it...
(One officer did tell us that it would be "zero tolerance" if we did it again... not quite sure if that's believable! Also amusing was the guy with a huge pair of bolt-cutters who BCC security called in, who essentially took one look at the small and flimsy-looking yet effective chain and left proclaiming it not worth calling him out for...)
At around 4pm, after the police had told him about our protest, BCC's Director of Health and Social Care Peter Hay actually came out to meet us (the other councillors and executives we addressed our demands to were apparently still in their "important meetings"... presumably deciding just how little of their 2009 budget they could get away with doling out to disabled people), and after some negotiation we secured a meeting with him and other representatives of his department on Friday 3rd April, as a result of which we decided collectively to call the occupation off and retire happily to a local accessible pub.
DAN's demands in Birmingham are for accessible, affordable housing for all disabled people (in ordinary streets and communities, not in the ghetto-like "Extra Care" housing developments that BCC is currently building, which will give disabled people living in them "in-house" staff as their only option for providing personal care needs, making them essentially no more than nursing homes under another name), Direct Payments to employ personal assistants (PAs) to be granted to all disabled people who need personal assistance (which it is a legal obligation for all local authorities to offer to all disabled people meeting the eligibility criteria - yet despite this number being in the tens of thousands in Birmingham, only 482 disabled people in the whole city currently get them), and an end to the unjust "care" charging policies which require the poorest disabled people to pay most towards their own "care", driving them even further into poverty.
Birmingham DAN know many disabled people who are literally unable to leave their houses (if they are lucky enough to be housed at all) and living in squalor and hopelessness without the assistance needed for the most basic of daily tasks (such as cooking, housework, and in some cases even dressing and showering) and, even when supposedly having "independent living", lacking any meaningful choice and control over our own lives. We demand true independent living (as defined according to the Social Model of Disability, meaning not "doing everything for oneself" but "having control over one's own life") and self-determination for all disabled people under the principle of "Nothing About Us Without Us"!
The Birmingham Post and Mail (2 local papers owned by the same company) both covered us, with slightly different photos and stories, but the latter printed the ludicrous claim on behalf of Birmingham City Council that “We’ve always maintained we are happy to meet with DAN representatives and discuss their concerns.” - well, if that was the case, we wouldn't have had to take direct action, would we?
BCC also exposed just how far they are from reality by openly admitting to the press that "the average waiting time for priority [housing] adaptations is 58 weeks" (yes, over a YEAR), as if that was something to be proud of... what planet are they on?
It remains to be seen what, if anything, will come of the meeting between DAN and Birmingham City Council on Friday, but we will assure them in no uncertain terms that if they continue to fail to meet their legal obligations to accessibly house and grant Direct Payments to disabled people, we will be back!
These issues are not just present in Birmingham but nationwide. After a relative absence for the last few years, DAN is rising up again to highlight and bring to an end these injustices. "When we are under attack - disabled people fight back!" Councils, charities and any other organisations which oppress disabled people around the country - watch out for forthcoming DAN actions near you...
Another report by a friend and comrade is here (some different photos).
There's also a video on YouTube by another friend and comrade (and another one, with captions, in the process of being edited, which will probably be uploaded to YouTube in the next couple of days).
The local paper coverage, including a short video, is here (and, yes, they did misspell my surname... as well as quoting me as having said something i definitely don't remember saying in those exact words - but that's commercial media for you...)
Edit to add - another activist-made video is now on Youtube here...
Yesterday (Monday March 30th) the Disabled People's Direct Action Network (DAN) occupied the main entrance of Louisa Ryland House (Birmingham City Council's main housing and social services office) over the way that disabled people are treated by the council.
Around 20 activists, who had come from as far afield as London, Leeds and Manchester, marched from the city centre (pausing only for a photo opportunity outside the Council House) at 1pm, chanting slogans such as "What do we want? Freedom! When do we want it? Now!" and "I'd rather go to jail than die in a nursing home". Despite the fact that an article about the action had already appeared in that morning's Birmingham Mail, Louisa Ryland House were totally unprepared for the invasion, with not even security guards initially present when DAN entered, chanting "Business as usual - ain't gonna happen!"
We occupied the lobby and blockaded the entrance with 2 wheelchairs chained together (with banners and people handing out leaflets to both council workers and passers-by outside in the street) for about 2 hours before any police turned up - initially it was a pair of "Community Support Officers" who essentially said they agreed with us and walked away, then about half an hour later the actual West Midlands Police came, but were very clearly totally unprepared to arrest a group of disabled people, repeatedly warning us that we were breaking the law (er, we knew that) and that if we stayed we would be arrested... however, they didn't seem to want to get round to it...
(One officer did tell us that it would be "zero tolerance" if we did it again... not quite sure if that's believable! Also amusing was the guy with a huge pair of bolt-cutters who BCC security called in, who essentially took one look at the small and flimsy-looking yet effective chain and left proclaiming it not worth calling him out for...)
At around 4pm, after the police had told him about our protest, BCC's Director of Health and Social Care Peter Hay actually came out to meet us (the other councillors and executives we addressed our demands to were apparently still in their "important meetings"... presumably deciding just how little of their 2009 budget they could get away with doling out to disabled people), and after some negotiation we secured a meeting with him and other representatives of his department on Friday 3rd April, as a result of which we decided collectively to call the occupation off and retire happily to a local accessible pub.
DAN's demands in Birmingham are for accessible, affordable housing for all disabled people (in ordinary streets and communities, not in the ghetto-like "Extra Care" housing developments that BCC is currently building, which will give disabled people living in them "in-house" staff as their only option for providing personal care needs, making them essentially no more than nursing homes under another name), Direct Payments to employ personal assistants (PAs) to be granted to all disabled people who need personal assistance (which it is a legal obligation for all local authorities to offer to all disabled people meeting the eligibility criteria - yet despite this number being in the tens of thousands in Birmingham, only 482 disabled people in the whole city currently get them), and an end to the unjust "care" charging policies which require the poorest disabled people to pay most towards their own "care", driving them even further into poverty.
Birmingham DAN know many disabled people who are literally unable to leave their houses (if they are lucky enough to be housed at all) and living in squalor and hopelessness without the assistance needed for the most basic of daily tasks (such as cooking, housework, and in some cases even dressing and showering) and, even when supposedly having "independent living", lacking any meaningful choice and control over our own lives. We demand true independent living (as defined according to the Social Model of Disability, meaning not "doing everything for oneself" but "having control over one's own life") and self-determination for all disabled people under the principle of "Nothing About Us Without Us"!
The Birmingham Post and Mail (2 local papers owned by the same company) both covered us, with slightly different photos and stories, but the latter printed the ludicrous claim on behalf of Birmingham City Council that “We’ve always maintained we are happy to meet with DAN representatives and discuss their concerns.” - well, if that was the case, we wouldn't have had to take direct action, would we?
BCC also exposed just how far they are from reality by openly admitting to the press that "the average waiting time for priority [housing] adaptations is 58 weeks" (yes, over a YEAR), as if that was something to be proud of... what planet are they on?
It remains to be seen what, if anything, will come of the meeting between DAN and Birmingham City Council on Friday, but we will assure them in no uncertain terms that if they continue to fail to meet their legal obligations to accessibly house and grant Direct Payments to disabled people, we will be back!
These issues are not just present in Birmingham but nationwide. After a relative absence for the last few years, DAN is rising up again to highlight and bring to an end these injustices. "When we are under attack - disabled people fight back!" Councils, charities and any other organisations which oppress disabled people around the country - watch out for forthcoming DAN actions near you...
Another report by a friend and comrade is here (some different photos).
There's also a video on YouTube by another friend and comrade (and another one, with captions, in the process of being edited, which will probably be uploaded to YouTube in the next couple of days).
The local paper coverage, including a short video, is here (and, yes, they did misspell my surname... as well as quoting me as having said something i definitely don't remember saying in those exact words - but that's commercial media for you...)
Edit to add - another activist-made video is now on Youtube here...
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