This isn't the post i wanted it to be, because what was supposed to be a relaxed few days in between Autscape and the Climate Camp was somewht ruined by my computer crashing completely, and me spending £50 on a new hard drive, only to have something else go wrong (i don't know what, presumably a hardware tihng) and for it to work for a day, and then become unable even to turn on. :( (I am now at a friend's house, typing this on his incredibly sticky keyboard, hence the many typos...)
So, the well-thought-out write-up of my Autscape experience hasn't happened, and of necessity won't happen for another couple of weeks, as i'm off to Climate Camp tomorrow... but I wanted to write a bit about it while it was still fairly fresh in my mind...
I had built my expectations up for being around a large number of autistic people, and in a majority-autistic environment for the first time, to be a very emotional, possibly even overwhelming experience. Actually, it wasn't that great a leap - in fact, the thing that struck me most strongly about it was how easy it felt to interact with the rest of the people there, and how "naturally" it felt like i fitted among them - people didn't mind me not looking at them while talking to them, not necessarily feeling like talking to them every time i passed by them, etc, and it was incredibly quick and easy to just fall into that, because it felt, well, natural to my own nature - which i don't often get in the mainstream world...
I definitely felt more able to do "autistc things" like rocking, other stimmy movements, etc - to feel able to rock in public without embarrassment was definitely a big thing (in fact, i felt positively encouraged to do so). I think the experience was definitely a positive one in terms of feeling able to be my autistic self, without apology and without compromise, and probably gave me more cofidence to be "out" in future social situations (although the whole "passing" thing is still, and probably always will be, a problematic area for me). Talking to people in a context where autism-specific things could simply be referred to without further explanation, rather than having to be given a whole conversation just to explain them, was also really good, and quite liberating (it made me realise just how easy it is when talking to non-autistic people, even when the non-autistic people in question are good friends, to feel the need to be a "self-narrating zoo exhibit")...
There was definitely something about other autistic people that made them easier even than non-autistic disabled people (who make up the majority of my "real life" friends) to relate to and communicate with, even if i didn't get time to explore that as far as i wanted to, and it made it very easy for me to think of them, on a very personal level, as "my people", even though on a political level i still prefer to think of all oppressed peoples as "my people". It made me think a lot about the need for both (impairment-specific) "autistic community" and a wider "disability community", and whether a stronger identification with either one weakens one's membership of the other. (I think it doesn't necessarily, but that "juggling" them is still an issue of importance in my life...)
I think i had a sort of "delayed response" after coming back from Autscae into the "NT world", when i was struck by just how overwhelmingly noisy, crowded, etc it was, and by how much greater my anxiety levels were walking aroud Birminham than they were at Autscape - although, of course, that was probably also partly down to the objctive difference between a city like Birmingham and a rural area like the Yorkshire Dales, as well as being exacerbated by the stress of all the shit with my computer.
Te Yorkshire Dales scenery was incredibly beautiful, and made me really want to go back there (almost as soon as i got back, i called a friend who, like myself, had memories of visiting that area as a kid, and suggested going on a hiking holiday there next year). I took loads of photos, but due to nt having a functional computer to upload them to, posting them here will have to wait... :(
(edit: Katja, another of the presenters, took some photos that can be seen here)
I don't know quite how representative of autistic people as a whole the people who came to Autscape were - my first impression was that it was dominated by people who fit reasonaly well the very verbal, "geeky Aspie" stereotype (which very much includes myself), and that it would have been good to have some more people who looked more like the supposed "lower-functioning end" of the spetrum (note that i don't think "end of the spectrum" is actually a meaningful phrase, as i don't think that "the autistic spectrum" (which, of course, is a metaphor) is literally a unilinear thing like the electromagnetic spectrum, but i'm using the phrase stereotypically), and, in fact, on the first night i felt no different from how i would have felt among a crowd of fairly geeky NTs (it felt much like being at university, actually)... but, as it went on, i noticed that many people, including myself, showed their "autistic mannerisms" more, which made me think abut just how much i do, even subconsciously, in order to "blend in" to the mainsream world (without actually even having the intention to "blend in", but just semi-automatically acting like the people around me, perhaps picking up NT-ish mannerisms in a mostly-NT environment and autistic mannerisms in a mostly-autistic environment in the same way that i tend to pick up the accent and vocabulary of whoever i'm speakng to)...
Of course, apart from those who, like myself, were presenters and got their fees paid for them, everyone there was able to pay at least £155 to go to Autscape (not couting travel costs), which probably in itself made them not demographically representative of autistic people in the UK (and probaly even less so for those who travelled to Autscape from abroad - there were people there from the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Israel and probably other countries i can't remember - the people with US and Canadian accents were, ithink, currently living in the UK, tho some people talked about also having gone to Autreat in the US).
The venue could have been a lot more physically accessible, but the organisers did everyuthing within their power to improve access - unfortunately, there wasn't really anything that could be done about the actual buildings, or the long distances and steep slopes between them. It did piss me off that one friend and activist (who is both autistic and physically impaired) was unable to come because of insufficient accessibility, tho, and a couple of other people who had "hidden" physical impairments in addition to autism tld me that they did less than they wanted to because of the long uphill walk between the accomodation and the presentation room. AFAIK, it's not yet known whether Autscape will be in the same or a different venue next year...
The presentations i saw (other than my own) were all highly interesting, although i didn't get to see all the ones i wanted to beause of my own disorganisation. I missed the first half of the introductory one on inertia, but the second half had a lot of very relevant-to-my-life stuff in it (probably the subject of future posts). The LARM-UK and Autreach presentation also made me feel very inspired about the growth of autism rights activism in the UK, and contacts made as a result of that presentation and my preesntation may start a regularly meeting autism/neurodiversity group in my area. Alexis, who was giving the LARM presentation, showed this video, made by a 12 year old "non-verbal" autistic kid, which made me cry (in a good way) :)
I probably didn't have quite as many conversations about personal experience (of the "compare-contrast-empathise" kind) as i expected/wanted to, but i did have some good ones, as well as very inspiring ones about more political issues, including gender identity and sexuality as well as disability rights. Particularly interesting was the conversation about polyamory with a couple, both on the spectrum and one a trans woman, who were also in a network of poly relationships - i am going to try to write up my own thoughts abut polyamory fairly soon, but i definitely feel that it provides a very powerful framework for thinking about gender/sexual liberation, and has some particular insights for disability and relationships too...
I definitely want to keep in touch with several of the people i met there. It makes me really happy that i actually seem to be succeeding at putting people with similar or overlapping concerns and identities in touch with each other at the moment... :)
Anyway, this is nowhere near complete, but i have to go home and pack for tomorrow (and typing on this keyboard is making it really hard to be coherent, because it's so sticky and slow). I will blog about the Camp for Climate Action when i return from it (and for my posts from it last year, see the relevant category, and for a short video about last year's camp from someone who was also at Autscape, see here)...
Showing posts with label activism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label activism. Show all posts
Monday, August 4, 2008
Thursday, July 31, 2008
My first conference presentation! (Autscape live blogging part II)
Well, today i gave my presentation...
I think it actually went surprisingly well. The time slot allotted was 1 1/2 hours, and i started a bit late as i was waiting for people to come in, but the room soon filled up - the majority of people there were interested. I thought my talk would take 20-30 minutes, and it ended up taking over an hour, partly because of questions and interruptions (coughLaurentiuscough ;) ) and partly because of me going a bit rambly and remembering things i needed to say that i had forgotten to include on the handout.
I didn't conclude as conclusively as i wanted to, but then, that's always a problem for me (as those who read this blog may well have noticed). My conclusion was essentially that there is a need and a place for impairment-specific groups and organising, but that impairment-specific groups need to recognise that they are part of a wider disability movement (and an even wider pro-diversity/anti-discrimination movement).
The discussion afterwards, although shorter than i wanted it to be, was also really good. I was surprised and flattered by the several people who told me how good they thought my presentation was - i was really nervous at first, but presenting to an autistic audience massively helped - i knew i wouldn't be judged for the little style things that a predominantly NT audience would probably have judged it negatively for, like sitting down and standing up again multiple times while speaking, pausing/trailing off a few times to shuffle my notes, having to run out halfway through to get a glass of water because my throat was so dried out from talking loud enough for a room full of people to hear me, frequently not looking at the audience, etc...
I think i actually managed to influence a few people's views in favour of the social model of disability, which is very very cool :)
It was pretty knackering, though (and my throat is now feeling raw)... but, i am kind of elated...
There's a discussion on alternative sexualities later this evening, which sounds awesome. Have met one trans person and several people in poly relationships here.
Pissed down with rain today, but the scenery is still inspiring. Swifts and swallows flying around in massive flocks all over the place.
Mozart and the Whale was... interesting, but i'm not sure if either of the leads came across as genuinely Aspie-like to me. More coherent thoughts on it in a future post (probably).
Off to collapse for an hour or so now...
I think it actually went surprisingly well. The time slot allotted was 1 1/2 hours, and i started a bit late as i was waiting for people to come in, but the room soon filled up - the majority of people there were interested. I thought my talk would take 20-30 minutes, and it ended up taking over an hour, partly because of questions and interruptions (coughLaurentiuscough ;) ) and partly because of me going a bit rambly and remembering things i needed to say that i had forgotten to include on the handout.
I didn't conclude as conclusively as i wanted to, but then, that's always a problem for me (as those who read this blog may well have noticed). My conclusion was essentially that there is a need and a place for impairment-specific groups and organising, but that impairment-specific groups need to recognise that they are part of a wider disability movement (and an even wider pro-diversity/anti-discrimination movement).
The discussion afterwards, although shorter than i wanted it to be, was also really good. I was surprised and flattered by the several people who told me how good they thought my presentation was - i was really nervous at first, but presenting to an autistic audience massively helped - i knew i wouldn't be judged for the little style things that a predominantly NT audience would probably have judged it negatively for, like sitting down and standing up again multiple times while speaking, pausing/trailing off a few times to shuffle my notes, having to run out halfway through to get a glass of water because my throat was so dried out from talking loud enough for a room full of people to hear me, frequently not looking at the audience, etc...
I think i actually managed to influence a few people's views in favour of the social model of disability, which is very very cool :)
It was pretty knackering, though (and my throat is now feeling raw)... but, i am kind of elated...
There's a discussion on alternative sexualities later this evening, which sounds awesome. Have met one trans person and several people in poly relationships here.
Pissed down with rain today, but the scenery is still inspiring. Swifts and swallows flying around in massive flocks all over the place.
Mozart and the Whale was... interesting, but i'm not sure if either of the leads came across as genuinely Aspie-like to me. More coherent thoughts on it in a future post (probably).
Off to collapse for an hour or so now...
Sunday, July 27, 2008
My presentation for Autscape
I thought people who read this blog might be interested in the presentation that I am giving at Autscape on Thursday...
I haven't decided exactly what I am going to say yet, but this is a loose outline. It's more intended as a handout for people who want to come to the presentation (hence the links, intended as stuff to look at if people want to look further into the topics touched on), and i'm going to start by talking a bit more generally about the disability rights movement, ascertaining how much the people there know about it.
Then, after talking for a bit, i'm going to turn it into a discussion (i decided to do a bit of a "hybrid" between a lecture-style presentation and a semi-presenter-led discussion). Hopefully some interesting and challenging views will come out of it...
(I was meant to finish this about a week ago, but only just finished it. I'm off tomorrow morning, to see some friends in Manchester, who i'm staying over with tomorrow night, then going from there to Autscape on Tuesday...)
Anyway, here it is (links ain't hyperlinks cos it's a printed document):
The Social Model of Disability is a major part of the ideological groundwork of the disability rights movement. Put simply, the Social Model states that there is a difference between impairment (a physical or psychological difference from the human "norm" - e.g. autism, deafness, blindness, a missing or paralysed limb) and disability (the social disadvantage experienced by people with impairments). Thus, according to the Social Model, people are not "disabled" by having an impairment, but by society's failure to accommodate the different access needs that they have as a result of having an impairment. "Disability is injustice, not tragedy; unequal treatment, not inherent inequality" - Cal Montgomery, "Critic Of The Dawn" in Ragged Edge Magazine, http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0501/0501cov.htm
(There are debates about whether the Social Model, stated simply, ignores the reality of impairments and/or regards them as irrelevant, and if this is a bad thing or not. These are beyond the scope of this short presentation, but recommended reading is Liz Crow's essay "Including All Of Our Lives: Renewing The Social Model Of Disability", which can be found in the book "Encounters With Strangers: Feminism and Disability", edited by Jenny Morris, or at http://www.disability-archive.leeds.ac.uk/authors_list.asp?AuthorID=49&author_name=Crow%2C+Liz)
It is easy to see how the Social Model applies with regard to people with physical impairments - a wheelchair user is disabled by steps into buildings, tables at heights that hir wheelchair cannot get under, etc. But how well does it apply to autism? The accommodations needed not to disable autistic people may be subtler or less obvious - e.g. changing assumptions about verbal and non-verbal communication, what constitutes "rudeness" or "politeness", etc. Autscape badges are arguably an example.
Experiences of autistics within the Disability Rights Movement: has the Disability Rights Movement accepted and accommodated autistic people?
Some autistics (along with other people with "hidden" impairments/disabilities) have felt alienated by the Disability Rights Movement, claiming that it has been mainly focused on the needs and rights of people with physical impairments, and that those with other types of impairments have been neglected or even not regarded as a valid part of the movement. An example of this is Sarah Triano's account of her experience at a national ADAPT action: http://www.disabledandproud.com/movement.htm (scroll down to the section titled "AN ALIEN WITHIN MY OWN COMMUNITY"). See also the experiences of Cal Montgomery (who is both autistic and physically impaired) with her local CIL in this article: http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/reviews/ckmontfoucault0905.html
Some argue that there is a "hierarchy of impairment" within the DRM - with either some impairments being regarded as "more disabling" than others, and thus people with those other impairments as "not really disabled", or people with physical impairments being regarded as capable of self-organising, whereas people with mental impairments are regarded as incapable of self-organising, and thus not deserving of a place in the disability movement. However, writers and activists such as Cal Montgomery and Amanda Baggs have challenged this, with a lot of success, and many people with neurodiverse impairments have played major roles in the disability movement (for example in DAN).
Disability (as a term) and the Autistic Rights Movement: There have been mixed attitudes in the autistic rights/autism acceptance/ neurodiversity/etc. movements towards the term "disability" and towards associating with non-autistic disabled people and their struggles. Some have enthusiastically embraced the social model of disability and considered themselves to be a part of a pan-impairment disability rights movement, while others have tried to argue that autism "is not a disability". For a very good example of this debate, see the following blog posts:
Welcome to the Disability Community by Joel Smith: http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=287
This post is mainly for three sorts of people... by Amanda Baggs (Ballastexistenz): http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=480
Not just about barriers by ABFH: http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2008/01/not-just-about-barriers.html
Is this based on ignorance or misunderstanding of the social model, and the difference between impairment and disability? Parallels with the Deaf movement, many of whom see themselves not as "disabled" but as a "linguistic minority"?
(Disability activist blogger Kay Olson (http://thegimpparade.blogspot.com) said, in a comment on my blog post asking for input for this presentation, "This is where I think the disability rights movement could often gain from being understood or more explicitly promoted as a "difference" rights movement.")
Is there a role for impairment-specific organisations within the disability movement?
Many activists within the disability rights movement have argued against impairment-specific organisations, saying that the DRM should cover disabled people of all impairments, and that impairment-specific groups go against the social model, by dividing disabled people against each other by impairment groups, as charities (e.g. RNIB, RNID, Scope (formerly Spastics Society), Autism Speaks, etc.) and the medical establishment do.
However, according to the principle of "Nothing About Us Without Us", if there are specific issues relating to a particular impairment (which might not affect other categories of disabled people), then people with that impairment have the right to self-organise to deal with those issues. Disability activists who are physically impaired but neurotypical, for example, may not recognise some of the issues faced by autistic people (but also vice versa).
My blog (Biodiverse Resistance): http://biodiverseresistance.blogspot.com
Some notable autistic blogs:
Ballastexistenz (Amanda Baggs): http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org
This Way Of Life (Joel Smith): http://thiswayoflife.org/blog
Asperger Square 8 (Bev Harper): http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com
The Autistic Bitch From Hell (Whose Planet Is It Anyway?): http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com
Some other notable disability blogs:
Chewing The Fat (Dave Hingsburger): http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com
Crip Power (Miss Crip Chick's Blog): http://crip-power.com
The Gimp Parade (Kay Olson): http://thegimpparade.blogspot.com
F.R.I.D.A. (Feminist Response In Disability Activism): http://fridanow.blogspot.com
I haven't decided exactly what I am going to say yet, but this is a loose outline. It's more intended as a handout for people who want to come to the presentation (hence the links, intended as stuff to look at if people want to look further into the topics touched on), and i'm going to start by talking a bit more generally about the disability rights movement, ascertaining how much the people there know about it.
Then, after talking for a bit, i'm going to turn it into a discussion (i decided to do a bit of a "hybrid" between a lecture-style presentation and a semi-presenter-led discussion). Hopefully some interesting and challenging views will come out of it...
(I was meant to finish this about a week ago, but only just finished it. I'm off tomorrow morning, to see some friends in Manchester, who i'm staying over with tomorrow night, then going from there to Autscape on Tuesday...)
Anyway, here it is (links ain't hyperlinks cos it's a printed document):
The Social Model of Disability is a major part of the ideological groundwork of the disability rights movement. Put simply, the Social Model states that there is a difference between impairment (a physical or psychological difference from the human "norm" - e.g. autism, deafness, blindness, a missing or paralysed limb) and disability (the social disadvantage experienced by people with impairments). Thus, according to the Social Model, people are not "disabled" by having an impairment, but by society's failure to accommodate the different access needs that they have as a result of having an impairment. "Disability is injustice, not tragedy; unequal treatment, not inherent inequality" - Cal Montgomery, "Critic Of The Dawn" in Ragged Edge Magazine, http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0501/0501cov.htm
(There are debates about whether the Social Model, stated simply, ignores the reality of impairments and/or regards them as irrelevant, and if this is a bad thing or not. These are beyond the scope of this short presentation, but recommended reading is Liz Crow's essay "Including All Of Our Lives: Renewing The Social Model Of Disability", which can be found in the book "Encounters With Strangers: Feminism and Disability", edited by Jenny Morris, or at http://www.disability-archive.leeds.ac.uk/authors_list.asp?AuthorID=49&author_name=Crow%2C+Liz)
It is easy to see how the Social Model applies with regard to people with physical impairments - a wheelchair user is disabled by steps into buildings, tables at heights that hir wheelchair cannot get under, etc. But how well does it apply to autism? The accommodations needed not to disable autistic people may be subtler or less obvious - e.g. changing assumptions about verbal and non-verbal communication, what constitutes "rudeness" or "politeness", etc. Autscape badges are arguably an example.
Experiences of autistics within the Disability Rights Movement: has the Disability Rights Movement accepted and accommodated autistic people?
Some autistics (along with other people with "hidden" impairments/disabilities) have felt alienated by the Disability Rights Movement, claiming that it has been mainly focused on the needs and rights of people with physical impairments, and that those with other types of impairments have been neglected or even not regarded as a valid part of the movement. An example of this is Sarah Triano's account of her experience at a national ADAPT action: http://www.disabledandproud.com/movement.htm (scroll down to the section titled "AN ALIEN WITHIN MY OWN COMMUNITY"). See also the experiences of Cal Montgomery (who is both autistic and physically impaired) with her local CIL in this article: http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/reviews/ckmontfoucault0905.html
Some argue that there is a "hierarchy of impairment" within the DRM - with either some impairments being regarded as "more disabling" than others, and thus people with those other impairments as "not really disabled", or people with physical impairments being regarded as capable of self-organising, whereas people with mental impairments are regarded as incapable of self-organising, and thus not deserving of a place in the disability movement. However, writers and activists such as Cal Montgomery and Amanda Baggs have challenged this, with a lot of success, and many people with neurodiverse impairments have played major roles in the disability movement (for example in DAN).
Disability (as a term) and the Autistic Rights Movement: There have been mixed attitudes in the autistic rights/autism acceptance/ neurodiversity/etc. movements towards the term "disability" and towards associating with non-autistic disabled people and their struggles. Some have enthusiastically embraced the social model of disability and considered themselves to be a part of a pan-impairment disability rights movement, while others have tried to argue that autism "is not a disability". For a very good example of this debate, see the following blog posts:
Welcome to the Disability Community by Joel Smith: http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=287
This post is mainly for three sorts of people... by Amanda Baggs (Ballastexistenz): http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=480
Not just about barriers by ABFH: http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2008/01/not-just-about-barriers.html
Is this based on ignorance or misunderstanding of the social model, and the difference between impairment and disability? Parallels with the Deaf movement, many of whom see themselves not as "disabled" but as a "linguistic minority"?
(Disability activist blogger Kay Olson (http://thegimpparade.blogspot.com) said, in a comment on my blog post asking for input for this presentation, "This is where I think the disability rights movement could often gain from being understood or more explicitly promoted as a "difference" rights movement.")
Is there a role for impairment-specific organisations within the disability movement?
Many activists within the disability rights movement have argued against impairment-specific organisations, saying that the DRM should cover disabled people of all impairments, and that impairment-specific groups go against the social model, by dividing disabled people against each other by impairment groups, as charities (e.g. RNIB, RNID, Scope (formerly Spastics Society), Autism Speaks, etc.) and the medical establishment do.
However, according to the principle of "Nothing About Us Without Us", if there are specific issues relating to a particular impairment (which might not affect other categories of disabled people), then people with that impairment have the right to self-organise to deal with those issues. Disability activists who are physically impaired but neurotypical, for example, may not recognise some of the issues faced by autistic people (but also vice versa).
My blog (Biodiverse Resistance): http://biodiverseresistance.blogspot.com
Some notable autistic blogs:
Ballastexistenz (Amanda Baggs): http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org
This Way Of Life (Joel Smith): http://thiswayoflife.org/blog
Asperger Square 8 (Bev Harper): http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com
The Autistic Bitch From Hell (Whose Planet Is It Anyway?): http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com
Some other notable disability blogs:
Chewing The Fat (Dave Hingsburger): http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com
Crip Power (Miss Crip Chick's Blog): http://crip-power.com
The Gimp Parade (Kay Olson): http://thegimpparade.blogspot.com
F.R.I.D.A. (Feminist Response In Disability Activism): http://fridanow.blogspot.com
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Feminist Activist Forum on trans and intersex issues, London, 12th July
Via Foibey:
Feminist Activist Forum
A Transgender and Intersex Learning Exchange:
Feminism and Gender & Sex Diversity.
12- 6.30pm, Saturday 12th July, Lambeth Women's Project, 166a Stockwell Road, London SW9 9TQ. Nearest Tube: Brixton.
FAF are presenting a learning exchange on trans and intersex issues and their relationship to feminism. The relationship between feminism and transgender in particular has not been a smooth one in the history of feminist activism. This learning exchange is geared toward people who may be unsure of the importance or relevance of transgender to feminism, particularly from an intergenerational perspective.
This event has been organised by a collective of trans and non-trans feminists, and trans-people will be actively involved in the running of the day, including speaking at and facilitating sessions.
We want this to be a safe space for people from all backgrounds/feminist perspectives to come together, ask questions, exchange ideas, make mistakes, learn, create, and build alliances.
Schedule
12.15 Welcome to FAF and Safer Spaces Guidelines
12.30 PANEL: Everything you ever wanted to know about transgender issues but were afraid to ask
Speakers: Debbie, Col (film-maker), and Helen G (f-word blogger). Chair: Sophie.
An introduction to 'transgender' issues and the opportunity to listen to trans men and women's stories and experiences. This session will incorporate a Q&A session, where questions can be posed anonymously as well as openly, and a screening of the short-film 'The Jar'.
1.45 Lunch
Chance to have a natter and check out the artwork and resources.
2.15 PANEL: Second Wave Feminists talk out loud about transgender
Radical feminists have long known the benefits of organising autonomously from men in their grassroots activism. Facilitated by Gail (The Feminist Library), this panel sees Second Wave Feminists share their different experiences and ideas about women-only space and the question of transgender recognition. Speakers include Carol (a socialist-radical feminist).
3.45 WORKSHOP: Sex Diversity: The spectrum of sex beyond 'male' and 'female'
It is often taken for granted that there are only two sexes: male and female. This workshop, with Marcus and Daniel (a former biologist), explores the diversity of sexed experience. Come and learn about the spectrum of sexes and place yourself somewhere along the continuum.
5.15 DISCUSSION: Beyond the Binary: What are the feminist implications?
This session will ask: how have trans-gendered and gender variant people influenced feminism? What is feminism's relationship to binary structures- such as man/woman - - and how are binaries related to other hierarchical power structures in society? What are the links between trans-liberation struggles and the demands of the Women's Liberation Movement? Opportunities for creative responses and manifesto writing aplenty. Facilitated by diy activists Debi, Kris and Sherry.
6.30 Film Screening tbc
Please get in touch if you want to be involved- as a speaker, facilitator, film-maker, artist or if you wanna contribute something for our new trans-zine! If you are press please contact us for guidelines of the day (as part of FAF's safer spaces policy and the requests of some participants). This event is free and open to feminists of all genders. Lunch will be provided - food/money donations welcome.
Our venue is accessible by wheelchair but the toilet is not adapted and space is quite tight. We are endeavoring to find future spaces in London that are free/very cheap and fully accessible. If you have ideas please get in touch! Please contact us if you have creche needs or any other accessibility questions.
mail@feministactivistforum.org.uk
Solidarity Picnic
13th July, Hampstead Heath. Meet at 12pm, Hampstead Heath Station, South End Green, London
A picnic for feminists of all genders to come together, have fun, build friendship and community. Opportunities for football tournaments, pagan rituals, barbie-qs and skinny dipping, or just dipping. Please bring food/drinks/games to share! Not to be missed!
(hopefully corrected all the weird formatting that was in the cut and paste...)
Probably not going myself, but this sounds awesome. I hope it goes well...
(also a bit confused by the "second wave" bit - i thought "second wave" feminists mostly included the gender-deconstructionist radical feminist types, who are/were either opposed to transsexualism or denied its existence, and pro-trans feminism would generally be considered "third wave". Then again, i've never really got my head round all the so-called "waves" (which one are we on now? 4th? 5th?), and don't really find it useful terminology anyway - i just found the use of "second-wave" a bit confusing. Are the organisers of this event considering themselves to be "second wave", or is this meand to be a discourse between transfeminists and "second-wave" feminists? Regardless, it sounds like a really good debate, as long as outright transphobia isn't tolerated (which, in a trans-organised event, i'm sure it won't be)...)
Feminist Activist Forum
A Transgender and Intersex Learning Exchange:
Feminism and Gender & Sex Diversity.
12- 6.30pm, Saturday 12th July, Lambeth Women's Project, 166a Stockwell Road, London SW9 9TQ. Nearest Tube: Brixton.
FAF are presenting a learning exchange on trans and intersex issues and their relationship to feminism. The relationship between feminism and transgender in particular has not been a smooth one in the history of feminist activism. This learning exchange is geared toward people who may be unsure of the importance or relevance of transgender to feminism, particularly from an intergenerational perspective.
This event has been organised by a collective of trans and non-trans feminists, and trans-people will be actively involved in the running of the day, including speaking at and facilitating sessions.
We want this to be a safe space for people from all backgrounds/feminist perspectives to come together, ask questions, exchange ideas, make mistakes, learn, create, and build alliances.
Schedule
12.15 Welcome to FAF and Safer Spaces Guidelines
12.30 PANEL: Everything you ever wanted to know about transgender issues but were afraid to ask
Speakers: Debbie, Col (film-maker), and Helen G (f-word blogger). Chair: Sophie.
An introduction to 'transgender' issues and the opportunity to listen to trans men and women's stories and experiences. This session will incorporate a Q&A session, where questions can be posed anonymously as well as openly, and a screening of the short-film 'The Jar'.
1.45 Lunch
Chance to have a natter and check out the artwork and resources.
2.15 PANEL: Second Wave Feminists talk out loud about transgender
Radical feminists have long known the benefits of organising autonomously from men in their grassroots activism. Facilitated by Gail (The Feminist Library), this panel sees Second Wave Feminists share their different experiences and ideas about women-only space and the question of transgender recognition. Speakers include Carol (a socialist-radical feminist).
3.45 WORKSHOP: Sex Diversity: The spectrum of sex beyond 'male' and 'female'
It is often taken for granted that there are only two sexes: male and female. This workshop, with Marcus and Daniel (a former biologist), explores the diversity of sexed experience. Come and learn about the spectrum of sexes and place yourself somewhere along the continuum.
5.15 DISCUSSION: Beyond the Binary: What are the feminist implications?
This session will ask: how have trans-gendered and gender variant people influenced feminism? What is feminism's relationship to binary structures- such as man/woman - - and how are binaries related to other hierarchical power structures in society? What are the links between trans-liberation struggles and the demands of the Women's Liberation Movement? Opportunities for creative responses and manifesto writing aplenty. Facilitated by diy activists Debi, Kris and Sherry.
6.30 Film Screening tbc
Please get in touch if you want to be involved- as a speaker, facilitator, film-maker, artist or if you wanna contribute something for our new trans-zine! If you are press please contact us for guidelines of the day (as part of FAF's safer spaces policy and the requests of some participants). This event is free and open to feminists of all genders. Lunch will be provided - food/money donations welcome.
Our venue is accessible by wheelchair but the toilet is not adapted and space is quite tight. We are endeavoring to find future spaces in London that are free/very cheap and fully accessible. If you have ideas please get in touch! Please contact us if you have creche needs or any other accessibility questions.
mail@feministactivistforum.org.uk
Solidarity Picnic
13th July, Hampstead Heath. Meet at 12pm, Hampstead Heath Station, South End Green, London
A picnic for feminists of all genders to come together, have fun, build friendship and community. Opportunities for football tournaments, pagan rituals, barbie-qs and skinny dipping, or just dipping. Please bring food/drinks/games to share! Not to be missed!
(hopefully corrected all the weird formatting that was in the cut and paste...)
Probably not going myself, but this sounds awesome. I hope it goes well...
(also a bit confused by the "second wave" bit - i thought "second wave" feminists mostly included the gender-deconstructionist radical feminist types, who are/were either opposed to transsexualism or denied its existence, and pro-trans feminism would generally be considered "third wave". Then again, i've never really got my head round all the so-called "waves" (which one are we on now? 4th? 5th?), and don't really find it useful terminology anyway - i just found the use of "second-wave" a bit confusing. Are the organisers of this event considering themselves to be "second wave", or is this meand to be a discourse between transfeminists and "second-wave" feminists? Regardless, it sounds like a really good debate, as long as outright transphobia isn't tolerated (which, in a trans-organised event, i'm sure it won't be)...)
Monday, June 23, 2008
Autscape presentation: help wanted!
So, as i posted a while ago, i am going to Autscape 2008 at the end of July... and I am doing a "major presentation"!
(Yes, Biodiverse Resistance readers... I do have some readers, don't I? (*awaits response*)... you now get to know the crappy name that I was born with... and if anyone realises that they know me offline, please comment or email me, altho, apart from the couple of people who i know already read this, it's probably unlikely...)
The good thing about this is that I only had to pay £25 instead of £175, because Autscape got funding to pay attendance costs for presenters.
The bad thing about it is that... well, to be honest, i didn't think that my proposal for a presentation had much chance of being accepted, and i was quite surprised that it was... so, now, i have to think of a) the actual content of my presentation and b) how to structure it...
This is going to be the first time that i've ever given or led a presentation at any sort of conference, and also the first time i'm going to have been either a) at an organised event with autism as its primary focus or b) in a majority-autistic environment - which latter fact is, i strongly suspect, going to be a very emotionally "heavy", and possibly a bit overwhelming, experience in itself...
I believe my presentation's going to have an hour slot, with possibly some time afterwards for questions/discussion. (I'd probably quite like it to be mostly discussion, actually - i really don't like the very hierarchical, "lecture-like" sort of conference presentation...)
I'd like to have a handout with some references (most likely online articles) which are relevant to the subject. I'm very probably going to use writings by Amanda Baggs and Cal Montgomery (with their permission, if i can get it), and i'm probably going to use references from this debate, and this piece relating to prejudice against "invisibly" disabled people within the disability movement. But i would really like any other people's suggestions for articles that could be relevant...
Also, i'd just generally like to hear people's (especially autistic bloggers') views and thoughts on the topic. Do you think it's a valid one for discussion? Do you think that "autistic rights" is just naturally a subcategory of "disability rights", and therefore that the autistic rights movemnent is simply one part of a wider disability rights movement, or do you think that they are separate - and, if so, why?
What about the autistic rights advocates who express the view (for example, ABFH's post here) that autism "isn't a disability"?
Do you think that the paradigms of the social model of disability, as generally understood in the disability movement, accommodate autistic people and autistic spectrum impairments, or do you think that they need significant modification to do so? (Yes, i know that sounds like an MA dissertation question...)
For people who are actively involved in the disability rights movement, in the UK or abroad, do you think it's dominated by a particular impairment group, or that disabled people with all types of impairments get reasonably equal representation?
Any general tips on how to give presentations would also be welcome...
(Yes, Biodiverse Resistance readers... I do have some readers, don't I? (*awaits response*)... you now get to know the crappy name that I was born with... and if anyone realises that they know me offline, please comment or email me, altho, apart from the couple of people who i know already read this, it's probably unlikely...)
The good thing about this is that I only had to pay £25 instead of £175, because Autscape got funding to pay attendance costs for presenters.
The bad thing about it is that... well, to be honest, i didn't think that my proposal for a presentation had much chance of being accepted, and i was quite surprised that it was... so, now, i have to think of a) the actual content of my presentation and b) how to structure it...
This is going to be the first time that i've ever given or led a presentation at any sort of conference, and also the first time i'm going to have been either a) at an organised event with autism as its primary focus or b) in a majority-autistic environment - which latter fact is, i strongly suspect, going to be a very emotionally "heavy", and possibly a bit overwhelming, experience in itself...
I believe my presentation's going to have an hour slot, with possibly some time afterwards for questions/discussion. (I'd probably quite like it to be mostly discussion, actually - i really don't like the very hierarchical, "lecture-like" sort of conference presentation...)
I'd like to have a handout with some references (most likely online articles) which are relevant to the subject. I'm very probably going to use writings by Amanda Baggs and Cal Montgomery (with their permission, if i can get it), and i'm probably going to use references from this debate, and this piece relating to prejudice against "invisibly" disabled people within the disability movement. But i would really like any other people's suggestions for articles that could be relevant...
Also, i'd just generally like to hear people's (especially autistic bloggers') views and thoughts on the topic. Do you think it's a valid one for discussion? Do you think that "autistic rights" is just naturally a subcategory of "disability rights", and therefore that the autistic rights movemnent is simply one part of a wider disability rights movement, or do you think that they are separate - and, if so, why?
What about the autistic rights advocates who express the view (for example, ABFH's post here) that autism "isn't a disability"?
Do you think that the paradigms of the social model of disability, as generally understood in the disability movement, accommodate autistic people and autistic spectrum impairments, or do you think that they need significant modification to do so? (Yes, i know that sounds like an MA dissertation question...)
For people who are actively involved in the disability rights movement, in the UK or abroad, do you think it's dominated by a particular impairment group, or that disabled people with all types of impairments get reasonably equal representation?
Any general tips on how to give presentations would also be welcome...
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Passing, stealth and disability identity
This is a late response to Blogging Against Disablism Day. It’s also a (hopefully not too late) submission for the next Disability Blog Carnival, hosted by Miss Crip Chick, the theme of which is “Disability Identity”. It’s probably not as good a post as it could have been if I had internet access at home at the moment (I’ve been going to internet cafes, cutting and pasting the stuff I've wanted to link to or quote and saving it to a floppy disk, then back home to actually write this… so, sorry if it’s a bit sprawling or disjointed-seeming), but I didn’t want to leave it until too late to submit it for the carnival...
This post was, in part, inspired by Ballastexistenz’s (utterly awesome) post for BADD, “Excuses to be a jerk", which “passing” isn’t the primary subject of, but in which she does say the following about the subject:
In a person who is passing, there is also often tension between who they’re trying to appear to be, and who they are. It can look like the usual angstiness some people go through; after all, most people hide certain aspects of who they are in order to fit in. But passing as non-autistic is a bigger disconnect than pretending to like bands you really hate, or even than pretending to like people you really can’t stand, or to feel feelings different than the ones you know you have.
Passing can mean, in its most extreme forms of disconnect, having no or close to no understanding of most of the words one is using, most of the interactions one is engaging in, etc.
...
Be aware that when the above happens, the disconnect is on the level of a disabled person passing as non-disabled, not a whiny person who just doesn’t realize how much like everyone else they really are. Yes, there are things all humans have in common. No, that doesn’t solve the severity of depression, disconnect, and alienation that autistic people often experience when passing, particularly when the person they’re passing as (or being passed off as by others, since passing can be entirely in other people’s heads, too) understands things they don’t. It’s a lot closer to a deaf person passing for hearing (while entirely missing at least 80% of conversations as a result), or a blind person trying to drive a car without crashing it or letting on that they’re blind, or a person from one culture being thrown into a totally alien culture (where nobody’s ever even heard of one’s own culture) with no preparation and trying to pass as comprehending, than a person with certain abilities trying to pretend they are similar to someone with roughly the same set of abilities but a different personality. Not that that’s easy either, but there’s an order of magnitude or two here that needs to not be missed.
Of course, not all autistic people are in a situation where passing is possible, whether due to their own abilities, the expectations of those around them, or both. And passing has gradations, too. It’s not like there are those who pass and those who don’t pass. It’s more like there are those who pass to different degrees, as different things, and in different situations. Passing can also be wholly unintentional and unnoticed, but I’ll get into that later.
(There is so, so much else in that post that I identify with more strongly and deeply than I could put into words right now, and, in fact, huge sections of it perfectly describe me, but that would be spinning off well outside the subject of this post. Suffice to say that it’s one of the best pieces of writing about autism that I've ever read.)
The first place I encountered the term “passing” was in African-American historical literature (which was one of my perseverations during my teens), referring to light-skinned (but categorised as “black” under the segregationist laws of the time, and also culturally “black”) mixed-race people who passed as white in order to get all the social benefits that that status gave them in an openly racist society and legal system. (The main protagonists of such novels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were very often a young man or woman who passed as white and whose relationship with a white partner turned to tragedy when their “true” ethnicity was revealed.) The place I most often encounter it (and the related notion of “stealth”) now is in the online trans* community (there are very good posts about the subject by many trans* bloggers, including Questioning Transphobia, No Designation, Galling Galla and plenty of others), where there often seems to be a divide between those who do “pass” and those who don’t, with calls for solidarity and attempts to transcend that divide often frustrated.
While it’s not talked about so much, I believe the same is very often true in the disabled community. Nicola at the BBC Ouch blog recently posted about “hierarchies of impairment” and division between different impairment groups; I have often found that one big division, even if not necessarily talked about in those terms, is between those who have “passing privilege” and those who don’t.
One particularly striking example of this is in this article at the Disabled and Proud website (I believe this article has also been published in Ragged Edge magazine, but couldn’t find it there at first look), in which the author describes her experience at an ADAPT conference:
As we waited for the elevator at the San Francisco Muni station the morning of October 21, my friend, Laura, and I could barely contain our excitement. After a long journey from Chicago, we finally made it to San Francisco for our first national ADAPT action. Even though we had both been actively involved in Chicago ADAPT, and in the activities of the National Disabled Students Union, we couldn't wait to experience the "coming home" feeling that many people talk about after attending their first national ADAPT action. It was a typical foggy day in San Francisco, the type of day that makes it very difficult for someone with an immune system disability - like myself - to climb stairs, so Laura and I decided to wait for the elevator. As we were waiting, a voice from behind us said, "You know, you ABs should really take the stairs and leave the elevator for those of us who need and deserve it." After signing this message to Laura, who is Deaf, she and I turned around and found ourselves face to face with a white, middle-aged man in a wheelchair. "We have a new name for you ABs," a young woman in a chair beside him said to us. "We call you Walkie-Talkies." These were the welcoming words that greeted us when we arrived at our first national ADAPT action. Needless to say, the "coming home" experience for us was less than welcoming.
Technically, Laura and I are "walkies." But we are also young women who openly and proudly identify as people with disabilities - young, disabled women who experience disability discrimination in the wider society on a daily basis. When the discrimination comes from within your own community though, it hurts… it hurts really bad. It takes a lot for someone with a non-apparent disability to get to a place where they openly and proudly identify as disabled. The pressures for us to "pass" and deny our disability - and our community - are tremendous. But to finally get to that place of power and pride and then be called an AB or a "walkie-talkie" by someone who you consider to be your sister or brother is devastating.
I wish I could say that this was an isolated instance of ignorance - which is evident in every community, no matter how "progressive" - but I can't. Nor is this a defining characteristic of ADAPT. This "culture of internal exclusion" that we experienced at the national ADAPT action is something that we deal with all the time within the US disability rights movement as people who are not visibly disabled. Take, for example, the time when I shared an experience on the Berkeley disabled mailing listserv about the person who glue a sign to my car windshield that read, "Mentally Handicapped," only to receive the following response from one of my "brothers" with a disability: "Oh no, it's another one of those 'supposed' invisibly disabled people trying to jump on the disability bandwagon again."
The irony of this is that the disability movement (or at least certain sectors of it) has, deliberately or not, in effect constructed in response to wider society's demand for disabled people to pass as non-disabled, a requirement to pass as disabled - which is rather spectacularly missing the point...
(Thankfully, in DAN, the UK's equivalent to ADAPT, I haven't encountered much of the same attitude, and many of its key members have non-physical or non-visually-obvious impairments. I couldn't really guess as to whether there is a UK/US difference overall in this - certainly both the UK and US disability rights movements had their origins primarily in the struggles of people with obvious physical impairments.)
There is a lot of talk about “visible” and “invisible” impairments, which I find somewhat problematic terminology (see for example Cal Montgomery's article "A Hard Look At Invisible Disability", which puts it better than i could), but still often find myself using; also a popular phrase in the UK seems to be “hidden disability”, which I think is also a bit problematic (although I sometimes describe my own impairment as “hidden, but not very well hidden” ;) ). The trouble with the terms “invisible” and “hidden”, IMO, is that they suggest that the impairments in question are not noticeable at all, whereas the reality usually is that they might not be noticed or recognised by most people, but, by definition, an impairment is noticeable in the area that a person is impaired in (I have difficulty seeing how it could meaningfully be an impairment otherwise). (There's also the risk of confusion between "visibly impaired"/"visible impairment" and "visually impaired"/"visual impairment".) Therefore, I think that the terminology of "passing", as originated in the context of racial segregation in the US and South Africa, and repurposed and elaborated by the queer and trans* movements, is a more useful set of terms in which to talk about the issue...
The problem with “passing” and “stealth”, when it comes to liberation movements, is that it’s essentially an individualistic way of seeking one’s own safety, freedom or place in society by moving out of an oppressed or marginalized group, which inevitably compromises one’s ability to fight for the rights of that whole group. It also implicitly upholds the idea that that group does not deserve equal rights, by saying “the best way to get equal rights is to appear not to be a member of a minority” – rather than demanding equal rights without compromise. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that every person who uses “stealth” is working against the liberation of their minority group, or that they, as individuals, are to blame – it can be very legitimately motivated by personal safety, or the person may genuinely be trying to live as if disability, or gender identity, or whatever, didn’t matter – there is a good discussion in the comments here and here about stealth and trans* identity.)
The awkward thing about passing, when you do have a radical commitment to a minority group as a political identity, is it can actually be counterproductive personally, and that it can be very difficult to explain why you don't actually want to. (I remember posting about this over a year ago at the BBC Ouch message board, and encountering incredulity from several "non-passing" disabled people that I could envy the visibility of their impairments.) I have had responses from disabled people in the street to whom I have tried to hand out leaflets about disability rights campaigns that suggested they viewed me, as someone not obviously disabled at first glance, as a non-disabled "do-gooder" handing out propaganda for some charity or "cure"/"healing"-oriented organisation. (As an attempt to counter that, I have attempted to appear "more disabled" by trying to exaggerate my subtler autistic traits (including many of the things talked about in Ballastexistenz's post) to a level of fairly-obvious visibility, but then felt like a "pretender" or "fraud" for doing so.)
(This also serves to highlight the same problem from the other side - the disabled people to whom I hand leaflets about organisations of disabled people are those who I can tell are disabled, and in fact I have fairly often considered giving a leaflet to someone who looked possibly disabled, due to subtler factors such as slightly unusual movement or facial expressions, then decided against it because of the possible embarrassment of getting the response "but I'm not disabled", possibly accompanied by righteous indignation at having been perceived as such. I don't quite know how to outreach to disabled people who are not visibly impaired...)
This is one of those situations where I can recognise that it's problematic, but not really think of any solutions. Obviously there are things I could do, such as wear an item of clothing with a slogan like "Disabled and Proud", or something autism-related, on it, but that's not always practical, and, in any case, would probably still result in people responding by refusing to believe that I am disabled, or even just not connecting the slogan directly to me (after all, people wear T-shirts with all kinds of things written on them that don't actually describe themselves - even in the political sphere, you can, for instance, wear a "Free Tibet" or "Free Palestine" T-shirt without being Tibetan or Palestinian). I could attempt to cultivate a "more obviously autistic" style of moving, dressing or speaking, but that would seem just as "fake" and counterproductive as trying to move, dress or speak more like a neurotypical person, and just as against the entire goal of both the neurodiversity movement and the social model of disability - disabled people (and non-disabled people, for that matter), being accepted as the people they/we are, and society changing to fit us, rather than the other way round.
I do kind of think that people involved in disability activism, particularly in membership organisations of disabled people such as CILs, whose impairments are not obvious do have some sort of responsibility to declare those impairments, though I'm not sure exactly how far that responsibility goes (how much detail is acceptable, for instance) - which, to some extent, arguably goes against the social model principle that impairment isn't what matters in defining disability. I think, however, that this (and the "don't talk about impairment" attitude it engenders, in which for instance it's almost taboo to ask someone what their impairment is, being automatically seen as "medical model") is one of the weaknesses of the most simplistic form of the social model, and that "bringing impairment back in" to the social model is necessary - I've touched on this before here (near the bottom of the post), and am planning to return to it in more detail, but the work of feminist disability theorists such as Jenny Morris is, IMO, vital here. The taboo against talking about impairment has led, in some cases in the UK, to non-disabled people infiltrating and taking over disabled people's organisations by claiming to be disabled without disclosing an impairment.
On the other hand, this definitely needs to be approached with caution, as it could easily lead to the kind of hierarchy-impairment situation Nicola describes, in which "invisibly" impaired, but not "visibly" impaired, people have the onus placed on them to justify that they have a "real" disability. (Not to mention that, in a fully social model world, IMO there actually wouldn't be any real dividing line between an impaired and a non-impaired person...)
There are undoubtedly privileges associated with being able to pass as non-disabled (and these are proportional to the extent to which one can pass, as passing isn't a binary state) - and, when having or not having those privileges can have serious, even critical, effects on one's life chances, I don't think it's reasonable to insist that people who have access to them outright reject those privileges. It gets even more difficult when the passing is unintentional, as opposed to deliberate "stealth" - and, of course, there are all sorts of blurry areas between the two. Where is the line between simply not disclosing an impairment because it isn't relevant (for example, on a job application form where the impairment doesn't directly affect any of the tasks in the job), and deliberately deceiving people? (People have been dismissed over this issue.)
The thing is, passing is never complete - if a person could completely pass as non-disabled in every aspect of life, then they wouldn't be disabled. And not only do those who pass in some situations nearly always not pass in other situations, the same person can pass one day, but not the next day, in the same situation, because there is fluctuation in nearly all impairments, even most of those generally perceived as "stable" (Ballastexistenz explains this better and in more detail, too). To quote the title of one trans* activist's blog, "Nobody Passes, Darling". And I haven't even touched on the issue of undiagnosed impairments - with which people can, as I was for the majority of my life, be passing, or even not passing, without having any idea that they are doing so whatsoever.
In a truly liberated world, no one would need to “pass”, because there would be nothing to “pass” as – there would be no privileged group or class that it would benefit anyone to appear to be a member of. Therefore the concept of “stealth” would be irrelevant, because how much a person would choose to disclose about hirself in any area of life would be a free, individual choice. However, I don’t even really know exactly what that world would look like, let alone if there’s much chance of achieving it…
Edit for more relevant links: Trinity has also posted about “passing” for this carnival here, and Tera of Sweet Perdition posted about the problem with the “visible”/”invisible” dichotomy for a recent carnival here…
(I'll post links to the several other awesome blog carnivals I've read recently, when I can get online for long enough to find them all again...)
This post was, in part, inspired by Ballastexistenz’s (utterly awesome) post for BADD, “Excuses to be a jerk", which “passing” isn’t the primary subject of, but in which she does say the following about the subject:
In a person who is passing, there is also often tension between who they’re trying to appear to be, and who they are. It can look like the usual angstiness some people go through; after all, most people hide certain aspects of who they are in order to fit in. But passing as non-autistic is a bigger disconnect than pretending to like bands you really hate, or even than pretending to like people you really can’t stand, or to feel feelings different than the ones you know you have.
Passing can mean, in its most extreme forms of disconnect, having no or close to no understanding of most of the words one is using, most of the interactions one is engaging in, etc.
...
Be aware that when the above happens, the disconnect is on the level of a disabled person passing as non-disabled, not a whiny person who just doesn’t realize how much like everyone else they really are. Yes, there are things all humans have in common. No, that doesn’t solve the severity of depression, disconnect, and alienation that autistic people often experience when passing, particularly when the person they’re passing as (or being passed off as by others, since passing can be entirely in other people’s heads, too) understands things they don’t. It’s a lot closer to a deaf person passing for hearing (while entirely missing at least 80% of conversations as a result), or a blind person trying to drive a car without crashing it or letting on that they’re blind, or a person from one culture being thrown into a totally alien culture (where nobody’s ever even heard of one’s own culture) with no preparation and trying to pass as comprehending, than a person with certain abilities trying to pretend they are similar to someone with roughly the same set of abilities but a different personality. Not that that’s easy either, but there’s an order of magnitude or two here that needs to not be missed.
Of course, not all autistic people are in a situation where passing is possible, whether due to their own abilities, the expectations of those around them, or both. And passing has gradations, too. It’s not like there are those who pass and those who don’t pass. It’s more like there are those who pass to different degrees, as different things, and in different situations. Passing can also be wholly unintentional and unnoticed, but I’ll get into that later.
(There is so, so much else in that post that I identify with more strongly and deeply than I could put into words right now, and, in fact, huge sections of it perfectly describe me, but that would be spinning off well outside the subject of this post. Suffice to say that it’s one of the best pieces of writing about autism that I've ever read.)
The first place I encountered the term “passing” was in African-American historical literature (which was one of my perseverations during my teens), referring to light-skinned (but categorised as “black” under the segregationist laws of the time, and also culturally “black”) mixed-race people who passed as white in order to get all the social benefits that that status gave them in an openly racist society and legal system. (The main protagonists of such novels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were very often a young man or woman who passed as white and whose relationship with a white partner turned to tragedy when their “true” ethnicity was revealed.) The place I most often encounter it (and the related notion of “stealth”) now is in the online trans* community (there are very good posts about the subject by many trans* bloggers, including Questioning Transphobia, No Designation, Galling Galla and plenty of others), where there often seems to be a divide between those who do “pass” and those who don’t, with calls for solidarity and attempts to transcend that divide often frustrated.
While it’s not talked about so much, I believe the same is very often true in the disabled community. Nicola at the BBC Ouch blog recently posted about “hierarchies of impairment” and division between different impairment groups; I have often found that one big division, even if not necessarily talked about in those terms, is between those who have “passing privilege” and those who don’t.
One particularly striking example of this is in this article at the Disabled and Proud website (I believe this article has also been published in Ragged Edge magazine, but couldn’t find it there at first look), in which the author describes her experience at an ADAPT conference:
As we waited for the elevator at the San Francisco Muni station the morning of October 21, my friend, Laura, and I could barely contain our excitement. After a long journey from Chicago, we finally made it to San Francisco for our first national ADAPT action. Even though we had both been actively involved in Chicago ADAPT, and in the activities of the National Disabled Students Union, we couldn't wait to experience the "coming home" feeling that many people talk about after attending their first national ADAPT action. It was a typical foggy day in San Francisco, the type of day that makes it very difficult for someone with an immune system disability - like myself - to climb stairs, so Laura and I decided to wait for the elevator. As we were waiting, a voice from behind us said, "You know, you ABs should really take the stairs and leave the elevator for those of us who need and deserve it." After signing this message to Laura, who is Deaf, she and I turned around and found ourselves face to face with a white, middle-aged man in a wheelchair. "We have a new name for you ABs," a young woman in a chair beside him said to us. "We call you Walkie-Talkies." These were the welcoming words that greeted us when we arrived at our first national ADAPT action. Needless to say, the "coming home" experience for us was less than welcoming.
Technically, Laura and I are "walkies." But we are also young women who openly and proudly identify as people with disabilities - young, disabled women who experience disability discrimination in the wider society on a daily basis. When the discrimination comes from within your own community though, it hurts… it hurts really bad. It takes a lot for someone with a non-apparent disability to get to a place where they openly and proudly identify as disabled. The pressures for us to "pass" and deny our disability - and our community - are tremendous. But to finally get to that place of power and pride and then be called an AB or a "walkie-talkie" by someone who you consider to be your sister or brother is devastating.
I wish I could say that this was an isolated instance of ignorance - which is evident in every community, no matter how "progressive" - but I can't. Nor is this a defining characteristic of ADAPT. This "culture of internal exclusion" that we experienced at the national ADAPT action is something that we deal with all the time within the US disability rights movement as people who are not visibly disabled. Take, for example, the time when I shared an experience on the Berkeley disabled mailing listserv about the person who glue a sign to my car windshield that read, "Mentally Handicapped," only to receive the following response from one of my "brothers" with a disability: "Oh no, it's another one of those 'supposed' invisibly disabled people trying to jump on the disability bandwagon again."
The irony of this is that the disability movement (or at least certain sectors of it) has, deliberately or not, in effect constructed in response to wider society's demand for disabled people to pass as non-disabled, a requirement to pass as disabled - which is rather spectacularly missing the point...
(Thankfully, in DAN, the UK's equivalent to ADAPT, I haven't encountered much of the same attitude, and many of its key members have non-physical or non-visually-obvious impairments. I couldn't really guess as to whether there is a UK/US difference overall in this - certainly both the UK and US disability rights movements had their origins primarily in the struggles of people with obvious physical impairments.)
There is a lot of talk about “visible” and “invisible” impairments, which I find somewhat problematic terminology (see for example Cal Montgomery's article "A Hard Look At Invisible Disability", which puts it better than i could), but still often find myself using; also a popular phrase in the UK seems to be “hidden disability”, which I think is also a bit problematic (although I sometimes describe my own impairment as “hidden, but not very well hidden” ;) ). The trouble with the terms “invisible” and “hidden”, IMO, is that they suggest that the impairments in question are not noticeable at all, whereas the reality usually is that they might not be noticed or recognised by most people, but, by definition, an impairment is noticeable in the area that a person is impaired in (I have difficulty seeing how it could meaningfully be an impairment otherwise). (There's also the risk of confusion between "visibly impaired"/"visible impairment" and "visually impaired"/"visual impairment".) Therefore, I think that the terminology of "passing", as originated in the context of racial segregation in the US and South Africa, and repurposed and elaborated by the queer and trans* movements, is a more useful set of terms in which to talk about the issue...
The problem with “passing” and “stealth”, when it comes to liberation movements, is that it’s essentially an individualistic way of seeking one’s own safety, freedom or place in society by moving out of an oppressed or marginalized group, which inevitably compromises one’s ability to fight for the rights of that whole group. It also implicitly upholds the idea that that group does not deserve equal rights, by saying “the best way to get equal rights is to appear not to be a member of a minority” – rather than demanding equal rights without compromise. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that every person who uses “stealth” is working against the liberation of their minority group, or that they, as individuals, are to blame – it can be very legitimately motivated by personal safety, or the person may genuinely be trying to live as if disability, or gender identity, or whatever, didn’t matter – there is a good discussion in the comments here and here about stealth and trans* identity.)
The awkward thing about passing, when you do have a radical commitment to a minority group as a political identity, is it can actually be counterproductive personally, and that it can be very difficult to explain why you don't actually want to. (I remember posting about this over a year ago at the BBC Ouch message board, and encountering incredulity from several "non-passing" disabled people that I could envy the visibility of their impairments.) I have had responses from disabled people in the street to whom I have tried to hand out leaflets about disability rights campaigns that suggested they viewed me, as someone not obviously disabled at first glance, as a non-disabled "do-gooder" handing out propaganda for some charity or "cure"/"healing"-oriented organisation. (As an attempt to counter that, I have attempted to appear "more disabled" by trying to exaggerate my subtler autistic traits (including many of the things talked about in Ballastexistenz's post) to a level of fairly-obvious visibility, but then felt like a "pretender" or "fraud" for doing so.)
(This also serves to highlight the same problem from the other side - the disabled people to whom I hand leaflets about organisations of disabled people are those who I can tell are disabled, and in fact I have fairly often considered giving a leaflet to someone who looked possibly disabled, due to subtler factors such as slightly unusual movement or facial expressions, then decided against it because of the possible embarrassment of getting the response "but I'm not disabled", possibly accompanied by righteous indignation at having been perceived as such. I don't quite know how to outreach to disabled people who are not visibly impaired...)
This is one of those situations where I can recognise that it's problematic, but not really think of any solutions. Obviously there are things I could do, such as wear an item of clothing with a slogan like "Disabled and Proud", or something autism-related, on it, but that's not always practical, and, in any case, would probably still result in people responding by refusing to believe that I am disabled, or even just not connecting the slogan directly to me (after all, people wear T-shirts with all kinds of things written on them that don't actually describe themselves - even in the political sphere, you can, for instance, wear a "Free Tibet" or "Free Palestine" T-shirt without being Tibetan or Palestinian). I could attempt to cultivate a "more obviously autistic" style of moving, dressing or speaking, but that would seem just as "fake" and counterproductive as trying to move, dress or speak more like a neurotypical person, and just as against the entire goal of both the neurodiversity movement and the social model of disability - disabled people (and non-disabled people, for that matter), being accepted as the people they/we are, and society changing to fit us, rather than the other way round.
I do kind of think that people involved in disability activism, particularly in membership organisations of disabled people such as CILs, whose impairments are not obvious do have some sort of responsibility to declare those impairments, though I'm not sure exactly how far that responsibility goes (how much detail is acceptable, for instance) - which, to some extent, arguably goes against the social model principle that impairment isn't what matters in defining disability. I think, however, that this (and the "don't talk about impairment" attitude it engenders, in which for instance it's almost taboo to ask someone what their impairment is, being automatically seen as "medical model") is one of the weaknesses of the most simplistic form of the social model, and that "bringing impairment back in" to the social model is necessary - I've touched on this before here (near the bottom of the post), and am planning to return to it in more detail, but the work of feminist disability theorists such as Jenny Morris is, IMO, vital here. The taboo against talking about impairment has led, in some cases in the UK, to non-disabled people infiltrating and taking over disabled people's organisations by claiming to be disabled without disclosing an impairment.
On the other hand, this definitely needs to be approached with caution, as it could easily lead to the kind of hierarchy-impairment situation Nicola describes, in which "invisibly" impaired, but not "visibly" impaired, people have the onus placed on them to justify that they have a "real" disability. (Not to mention that, in a fully social model world, IMO there actually wouldn't be any real dividing line between an impaired and a non-impaired person...)
There are undoubtedly privileges associated with being able to pass as non-disabled (and these are proportional to the extent to which one can pass, as passing isn't a binary state) - and, when having or not having those privileges can have serious, even critical, effects on one's life chances, I don't think it's reasonable to insist that people who have access to them outright reject those privileges. It gets even more difficult when the passing is unintentional, as opposed to deliberate "stealth" - and, of course, there are all sorts of blurry areas between the two. Where is the line between simply not disclosing an impairment because it isn't relevant (for example, on a job application form where the impairment doesn't directly affect any of the tasks in the job), and deliberately deceiving people? (People have been dismissed over this issue.)
The thing is, passing is never complete - if a person could completely pass as non-disabled in every aspect of life, then they wouldn't be disabled. And not only do those who pass in some situations nearly always not pass in other situations, the same person can pass one day, but not the next day, in the same situation, because there is fluctuation in nearly all impairments, even most of those generally perceived as "stable" (Ballastexistenz explains this better and in more detail, too). To quote the title of one trans* activist's blog, "Nobody Passes, Darling". And I haven't even touched on the issue of undiagnosed impairments - with which people can, as I was for the majority of my life, be passing, or even not passing, without having any idea that they are doing so whatsoever.
In a truly liberated world, no one would need to “pass”, because there would be nothing to “pass” as – there would be no privileged group or class that it would benefit anyone to appear to be a member of. Therefore the concept of “stealth” would be irrelevant, because how much a person would choose to disclose about hirself in any area of life would be a free, individual choice. However, I don’t even really know exactly what that world would look like, let alone if there’s much chance of achieving it…
Edit for more relevant links: Trinity has also posted about “passing” for this carnival here, and Tera of Sweet Perdition posted about the problem with the “visible”/”invisible” dichotomy for a recent carnival here…
(I'll post links to the several other awesome blog carnivals I've read recently, when I can get online for long enough to find them all again...)
Monday, April 7, 2008
Autscape
Autscape is a three day conference organised by and for autistic people. There are workshops, leisure activities, social opportunities, and more, all specifically oriented to the needs and preferences of autistic people.
I really, really want to go to this conference. Just about everything about it looks utterly awesome. I really don't know if i will be able to afford £155 (which is the lowest rate, for people on state benefits or similar low incomes), tho...
I almost can't imagine what it would be like to be in an environment in which almost everyone is autistic. While i have met quite a lot of people on the spectrum in my life, and sort-of-know a few other autistic disability activists in the UK (one of whom is apparently one of the people behind this), and of course i "know" lots of autistic people online through blogs and forums, i don't in fact really know (at least not to actually regularly talk to or spend time with) any other autistic people in "real life", and it's a definite hole in my life.
(One of my closest friends, who might possibly also be going to Autscape, and who actually now works for the National Autistic Society, has some autistic/AS-like traits, but probably not enough for an actual diagnosis... although enough for her to "get" me in ways that nearly all neurotypical people don't - i suppose perhaps she fits into that "shadow syndrome" kind of category... or a "Half-Aspie" as i kind of jokingly call her, as her dad was, while undiagnosed, almost certainly an Aspie, but her mum seems to be pretty neurotypical... but she's still far, far more able to fit into the neurotypical world than i am, and i would really love to become closer friends with some other actually, unambiguously autistic people... the majority of the rest of my close friends have physical impairments, but i don't really know how coincidental or otherwise that is - while i definitely seek out disabled people, i don't think i particularly seek out those with physical impairments over those with mental...)
The deadline for submitting proposals for workshops or presentations is the 11th of April, which is this coming Friday... which is really annoying, because i would really love to propose one on the relationship between the (impairment-specific) autism rights movement and the wider (cross-impairment) disability rights movement... but i've got no chance of putting together a proposal by Friday, and in any case i don't know if i'd have the confidence, even in a primarily autistic environment (and i don't even know whether that would increase or decrease my confidence) to do a workshop/presentation myself... plus i'd probably want it to be something like a panel discussion type thing, which would involve others being involved in it as a collaboration... still, they have an email address and a discussion list for "if you are not interested in doing a presentation yourself, but have ideas for workshop or discussion topics", so i might email them...
I don't know whether to go to Autscape would be some sort of massive, emotional "homecoming" experience, or whether in a mostly-autistic environment i would have less communication/understanding problems than in a mostly-neurotypical one, or whether in fact they would remain the same... still, i'm quite unreasonably excited by how awesome, for example, the coloured badges idea is*, and the whole idea of spending a weekend somewhere where i'm the majority neurological type... while i'm not that into impairment-specific identity (i prefer to identify across impairment boundaries in solidarity with all disabled people), i think i still do have that attraction to the idea of being among "my kind", problematic as that concept is...
* I have a really vague idea that this might actually be an adaptation of something that originated from the gay club scene, and had to do with sexual availability... but i'm not sure... i think i remember an event held at my uni for something like HIV awareness called the "Traffic Light Ball" that was based on this idea... anyway, wherever it comes from, it's IMO a brilliant idea, and perfectly repurposed if it was repurposed...
The theme of "Inertia and Action" is one that is particularly appropriate for me right now as well, being all too familiar with the kind of inertia problems that Amanda (of Ballastexistenz) describes one type of very well here, but also believing passionately in the need for action (in all senses of the word!) for disability rights and liberation, as well as all other forms of radical social change...
Would be really interested to hear from anyone who went to Autscape last or a previous year, and what kind of experience they had...
I really, really want to go to this conference. Just about everything about it looks utterly awesome. I really don't know if i will be able to afford £155 (which is the lowest rate, for people on state benefits or similar low incomes), tho...
I almost can't imagine what it would be like to be in an environment in which almost everyone is autistic. While i have met quite a lot of people on the spectrum in my life, and sort-of-know a few other autistic disability activists in the UK (one of whom is apparently one of the people behind this), and of course i "know" lots of autistic people online through blogs and forums, i don't in fact really know (at least not to actually regularly talk to or spend time with) any other autistic people in "real life", and it's a definite hole in my life.
(One of my closest friends, who might possibly also be going to Autscape, and who actually now works for the National Autistic Society, has some autistic/AS-like traits, but probably not enough for an actual diagnosis... although enough for her to "get" me in ways that nearly all neurotypical people don't - i suppose perhaps she fits into that "shadow syndrome" kind of category... or a "Half-Aspie" as i kind of jokingly call her, as her dad was, while undiagnosed, almost certainly an Aspie, but her mum seems to be pretty neurotypical... but she's still far, far more able to fit into the neurotypical world than i am, and i would really love to become closer friends with some other actually, unambiguously autistic people... the majority of the rest of my close friends have physical impairments, but i don't really know how coincidental or otherwise that is - while i definitely seek out disabled people, i don't think i particularly seek out those with physical impairments over those with mental...)
The deadline for submitting proposals for workshops or presentations is the 11th of April, which is this coming Friday... which is really annoying, because i would really love to propose one on the relationship between the (impairment-specific) autism rights movement and the wider (cross-impairment) disability rights movement... but i've got no chance of putting together a proposal by Friday, and in any case i don't know if i'd have the confidence, even in a primarily autistic environment (and i don't even know whether that would increase or decrease my confidence) to do a workshop/presentation myself... plus i'd probably want it to be something like a panel discussion type thing, which would involve others being involved in it as a collaboration... still, they have an email address and a discussion list for "if you are not interested in doing a presentation yourself, but have ideas for workshop or discussion topics", so i might email them...
I don't know whether to go to Autscape would be some sort of massive, emotional "homecoming" experience, or whether in a mostly-autistic environment i would have less communication/understanding problems than in a mostly-neurotypical one, or whether in fact they would remain the same... still, i'm quite unreasonably excited by how awesome, for example, the coloured badges idea is*, and the whole idea of spending a weekend somewhere where i'm the majority neurological type... while i'm not that into impairment-specific identity (i prefer to identify across impairment boundaries in solidarity with all disabled people), i think i still do have that attraction to the idea of being among "my kind", problematic as that concept is...
* I have a really vague idea that this might actually be an adaptation of something that originated from the gay club scene, and had to do with sexual availability... but i'm not sure... i think i remember an event held at my uni for something like HIV awareness called the "Traffic Light Ball" that was based on this idea... anyway, wherever it comes from, it's IMO a brilliant idea, and perfectly repurposed if it was repurposed...
The theme of "Inertia and Action" is one that is particularly appropriate for me right now as well, being all too familiar with the kind of inertia problems that Amanda (of Ballastexistenz) describes one type of very well here, but also believing passionately in the need for action (in all senses of the word!) for disability rights and liberation, as well as all other forms of radical social change...
Would be really interested to hear from anyone who went to Autscape last or a previous year, and what kind of experience they had...
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Another awesome call for papers...
This one via Miss Crip Chick:
“Feminism For Freaks”
At its best, feminism offers an emancipatory potential from gendered oppression, inequality, and violence. At its worst, however, feminism can work to simply affirm the rights of middle-class, heterosexual, white women, and exclude the voices of already-marginalised groups such as women of colour, trans* women, sex workers and so on. Like Derrida’s democracy, a truly liberatory feminism is mostly a feminism to come.
Not un-coincidentally, those marginalised groups of women are often demonised by the dominant culture, rendered as monstrous - simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible, compelling and threatening, desirable and disgusting – and forever denied a voice of our own. The question of if and how monstrosity can be reclaimed or re-worked is a vexed one for feminists.
We therefore invite proposals that affirm the voices of socially excluded people, that seek to create new and exciting knowledge and address themselves to feminist theory and activism or the wider culture, on such topics including, but not limited to:
* Monstrous bodies and identities
* Social marginalisation and exclusions (for instance, borders, walls, and immigration laws, and the silencing of voices such as those of women of colour and transgendered people)
* Liberation/transformation/organisation
* sex work
* queer sexualities and genders
* BDSM
* Visible signs of difference (Muslim women wearing the veil, disabled bodies etc)
* religion and spirituality
* freaks in popular culture, body modification etc
* fat positivity
Academic, non-fiction and creative work will be considered–the call is broad, and we’re willing to accommodate new and interesting work by freaks of all kinds.
Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words by May 31st to estrangedcognition[at]hotmail.com and suzanmanuel[at]gmail.com
*Note - Given that some contributors may not feel safe or comfortable telling their stories in the public sphere, submissions under pseudonyms will be accepted.
“Feminism For Freaks”
At its best, feminism offers an emancipatory potential from gendered oppression, inequality, and violence. At its worst, however, feminism can work to simply affirm the rights of middle-class, heterosexual, white women, and exclude the voices of already-marginalised groups such as women of colour, trans* women, sex workers and so on. Like Derrida’s democracy, a truly liberatory feminism is mostly a feminism to come.
Not un-coincidentally, those marginalised groups of women are often demonised by the dominant culture, rendered as monstrous - simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible, compelling and threatening, desirable and disgusting – and forever denied a voice of our own. The question of if and how monstrosity can be reclaimed or re-worked is a vexed one for feminists.
We therefore invite proposals that affirm the voices of socially excluded people, that seek to create new and exciting knowledge and address themselves to feminist theory and activism or the wider culture, on such topics including, but not limited to:
* Monstrous bodies and identities
* Social marginalisation and exclusions (for instance, borders, walls, and immigration laws, and the silencing of voices such as those of women of colour and transgendered people)
* Liberation/transformation/organisation
* sex work
* queer sexualities and genders
* BDSM
* Visible signs of difference (Muslim women wearing the veil, disabled bodies etc)
* religion and spirituality
* freaks in popular culture, body modification etc
* fat positivity
Academic, non-fiction and creative work will be considered–the call is broad, and we’re willing to accommodate new and interesting work by freaks of all kinds.
Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words by May 31st to estrangedcognition[at]hotmail.com and suzanmanuel[at]gmail.com
*Note - Given that some contributors may not feel safe or comfortable telling their stories in the public sphere, submissions under pseudonyms will be accepted.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Stuff I have found recently
Haven't been feeling up to writing again recently. I have a huge list of posts i'm meaning to write (or maybe topics i'm meaning to write posts on), quite a few of which are ones i've said i would write to other people, which i really do intend to write soon (for a given value of "soon"), but it's going to have to be when i've got a more coherent head on.
I recently created a Livejournal account, for the intended purpose of being able to comment on Livejournal blogs (my actual blog posts are going to stay here), but it's also led me to browse LJ using some of its fairly nice networking functionality. I'm really not a "social networking site" kind of person, and not really inclined to do things like friends-locked posts, but i kind of like the thing LJ shares with Wikipedia of links leading all over the place to random stuff.
One awesome post i found which definitely deserves linking is Pro-Choice, But by thauts, which basically sums up my views and feelings on abortion and being (truly) "pro-choice" pretty exactly.
Also this report from the queer/trans demo in Manchester, and a link to the responses to it on Indymedia, the transphobic so-called-radical so-called feminist ones of which are just fucking depressing, altho i'm gratified to see that there are several people ably countering them...
edit: just seen this bullshit counter-attack from the radfems, claiming that the trans/queer bloc was a "protest against women only spaces"... ffs, i don't know if i can even be bothered to step into this...
further edit: Caz (in the comments) speaks TRUTH:
This paranoid ranting about "the queer lobby" is straight out of the conspiratorial pages of the hetero-supremacist Daily Mail, who use a similar strategy: play minority groups against each other - feminists vs Muslims, African-Caribbean Christians vs LGBT people, working class householders against travellers and so on. They can't stand any of these groups of course, but it suits their purposes to stir. Beware of the deliberate wrecking policies persued by the straight male left also: to some factions, feminism and queer politics have been a source of hostility for nigh-on 40 years now. Trying to pit female and gay activists against each other is an old CP style tactic which can only weaken the feminist and queer movements.
On a more theoretical tip, i came across this really awesome quote, which deconstructs corporate heirarchies while showing up the fundamental contradictions of both statist "socialism" and pro-capitalist "libertarianism" very nicely, here:
"These large corporations have the internal characteristics of a planned economy. Information flow is systematically distorted up the chain of command, by each rung in the hierarchy telling the next one up what it wants to hear. And each rung of management, based on nonsensical data (not to mention absolutely no direct knowledge of the production process) sends irrational and ass-brained decisions back down the chain of command. The only thing that keeps large, hierarchical organizations going is the fact that the productive laborers on the bottom actually know something about their own jobs, and have enough sense to ignore policy and lie about it so that production can stagger along despite the interference of the bosses.
When a senior manager decides to adopt a "reform" or to "improve" the process in some way, he typically bases his decision on the glowing recommendations of senior managers in other organizations who have adopted similar policies. Of course, those senior managers have no real knowledge themselves of the actual results of the policy, because their own information is based on filtered data from below. Not only does the senior management of an organization live in an imaginary world as a result of the distorted information from below; its imaginary world is further cut off from reality by the professional culture it shares with senior management everywhere else. “…in a rigid hierarchy, nobody questions orders that seem to come from above, and those at the very top are so isolated from the actual work situation that they never see what is going on below.”12
The root of the problem, in all such cases, is that individual human beings can only make optimally efficient decisions when they internalize all the costs and benefits of their own decisions. In a large hierarchy, the consequences of the irrational and misinformed decisions of the parasites at the top are borne by the people at the bottom who are actually doing the work. And the people doing the work, who both know what's going on and suffer the ill effects of decisions by those who don't know what's going on, have no direct control over the decision-making."
-Kevin Carson, Studies In Mutualist Political Economy (In print: page 322, online: http://www.mutualist.org/id88.html )
I really don't agree with the rest of the post it's quoted in, but don't really feel knowledgeable enough to jump into the comment thread (although it's really interesting).
Searching for Kevin Carson on Libcom found me this thread, which also... contains pretty fucking interesting ideas, but once again leaves me feeling like i would be flamed or laughed out of the thread if i tried to respond. When it comes to the subcategories of anarchism, i always seem to find myself stuck somewhere between the anarcho-communist/anarcho-syndicalist consensus at Libcom and the individualist, pro-market anarchism of people like Johnny Red or Rad Geek, with each "side" generally regarding me as the other.
I do really need to overcome my fear/inability of stepping into discussions without getting flamed and/or ridiculed by all sides, although every time i think i have, there seems to be another setback (this, for example). Or maybe i just need to stop letting it affect me so much... but then, maybe that line of thinking is internalised oppression from a lifetime of neurotypical people trivialising and ridiculing my serious emotional reactions to... just about everything. I don't know.
Anyway, hopefully some proper posts soon...
I recently created a Livejournal account, for the intended purpose of being able to comment on Livejournal blogs (my actual blog posts are going to stay here), but it's also led me to browse LJ using some of its fairly nice networking functionality. I'm really not a "social networking site" kind of person, and not really inclined to do things like friends-locked posts, but i kind of like the thing LJ shares with Wikipedia of links leading all over the place to random stuff.
One awesome post i found which definitely deserves linking is Pro-Choice, But by thauts, which basically sums up my views and feelings on abortion and being (truly) "pro-choice" pretty exactly.
Also this report from the queer/trans demo in Manchester, and a link to the responses to it on Indymedia, the transphobic so-called-radical so-called feminist ones of which are just fucking depressing, altho i'm gratified to see that there are several people ably countering them...
edit: just seen this bullshit counter-attack from the radfems, claiming that the trans/queer bloc was a "protest against women only spaces"... ffs, i don't know if i can even be bothered to step into this...
further edit: Caz (in the comments) speaks TRUTH:
This paranoid ranting about "the queer lobby" is straight out of the conspiratorial pages of the hetero-supremacist Daily Mail, who use a similar strategy: play minority groups against each other - feminists vs Muslims, African-Caribbean Christians vs LGBT people, working class householders against travellers and so on. They can't stand any of these groups of course, but it suits their purposes to stir. Beware of the deliberate wrecking policies persued by the straight male left also: to some factions, feminism and queer politics have been a source of hostility for nigh-on 40 years now. Trying to pit female and gay activists against each other is an old CP style tactic which can only weaken the feminist and queer movements.
On a more theoretical tip, i came across this really awesome quote, which deconstructs corporate heirarchies while showing up the fundamental contradictions of both statist "socialism" and pro-capitalist "libertarianism" very nicely, here:
"These large corporations have the internal characteristics of a planned economy. Information flow is systematically distorted up the chain of command, by each rung in the hierarchy telling the next one up what it wants to hear. And each rung of management, based on nonsensical data (not to mention absolutely no direct knowledge of the production process) sends irrational and ass-brained decisions back down the chain of command. The only thing that keeps large, hierarchical organizations going is the fact that the productive laborers on the bottom actually know something about their own jobs, and have enough sense to ignore policy and lie about it so that production can stagger along despite the interference of the bosses.
When a senior manager decides to adopt a "reform" or to "improve" the process in some way, he typically bases his decision on the glowing recommendations of senior managers in other organizations who have adopted similar policies. Of course, those senior managers have no real knowledge themselves of the actual results of the policy, because their own information is based on filtered data from below. Not only does the senior management of an organization live in an imaginary world as a result of the distorted information from below; its imaginary world is further cut off from reality by the professional culture it shares with senior management everywhere else. “…in a rigid hierarchy, nobody questions orders that seem to come from above, and those at the very top are so isolated from the actual work situation that they never see what is going on below.”12
The root of the problem, in all such cases, is that individual human beings can only make optimally efficient decisions when they internalize all the costs and benefits of their own decisions. In a large hierarchy, the consequences of the irrational and misinformed decisions of the parasites at the top are borne by the people at the bottom who are actually doing the work. And the people doing the work, who both know what's going on and suffer the ill effects of decisions by those who don't know what's going on, have no direct control over the decision-making."
-Kevin Carson, Studies In Mutualist Political Economy (In print: page 322, online: http://www.mutualist.org/id88.html )
I really don't agree with the rest of the post it's quoted in, but don't really feel knowledgeable enough to jump into the comment thread (although it's really interesting).
Searching for Kevin Carson on Libcom found me this thread, which also... contains pretty fucking interesting ideas, but once again leaves me feeling like i would be flamed or laughed out of the thread if i tried to respond. When it comes to the subcategories of anarchism, i always seem to find myself stuck somewhere between the anarcho-communist/anarcho-syndicalist consensus at Libcom and the individualist, pro-market anarchism of people like Johnny Red or Rad Geek, with each "side" generally regarding me as the other.
I do really need to overcome my fear/inability of stepping into discussions without getting flamed and/or ridiculed by all sides, although every time i think i have, there seems to be another setback (this, for example). Or maybe i just need to stop letting it affect me so much... but then, maybe that line of thinking is internalised oppression from a lifetime of neurotypical people trivialising and ridiculing my serious emotional reactions to... just about everything. I don't know.
Anyway, hopefully some proper posts soon...
Friday, February 29, 2008
Queer & Trans Demo, Manchester, tomorrow (Saturday)
Just got emailed this (kind of late because my email has been playing up). I know it's very short notice (I can't go, i don't have the money to get to Manchester tomorrow), but just on the off chance anyone from Manchester or thereabouts is reading this and hasn;t heard about it already...
Name: QUEER TRANS BLOCK! Reclaiming the night and our rights!
Tagline: 5:30pm Sat.1st March - All genders all sexualities all feminists march for liberation and human rights!
Host: Trans Youth Network
Type: Causes - Rally
Time and PlaceDate: Saturday, March 1, 2008
Time: 5:30pm - 11:00pm
Location: The Retro Bar
Street: 78 Sackville Street
City/Town: Manchester, United Kingdom
QUEER TRANS BLOCK!
Call out for show of trans queer solidarity!
All genders, all sexualities, all ages, all races and all backgrounds together -
Reclaiming the night, reclaiming our rights - and the streets!
When?
5:30pm onwards, Saturday 1st March 2008
Where?
5:30pm - Meet @ Retro Bar, 78 Sackville Street, Manchester, M1 3NJ
Map: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=The+Retro+Bar+M1+3NJ&ie=UTF8&ll=53.477345,-2.235761&spn=0.012132,0.029182&z=15&iwloc=A
6pm - Congregate to march @ Sackville Park, Sackville Street, Manchester City Centre. Look out for the giant pink 'QUEER TRANS BLOCK' banner!
7:30pm - All genders rally @ Sackville Street, Manchester City Centre.
Please note: QUEER TRANS BLOCK will share the same start and end points on Sackville Street as the "women" only and "men" only demos, but will be actively queering gender, space and separatism as an entirely unique protest accountable to itself.
Please bring any info/fliers/zines/free resources/vegan cake to hand out which are trans-positive, queer-positive, sex-positive, anti-oppressive and celebratory of biodiversity!
Why?
QUEER TRANS BLOCK is a transfeminist response to the separatism, erasure and censorship of transwomen, transmen, sex workers, gendervariant, genderqueer, non-gender-normative and intersex folk within the populist feminist movement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfeminism
QUEER TRANS BLOCK is called in memory of Sam Roberts, genderqueer human rights activist, eco-gender warrior and trans social worker/counsellor, who organised the mixed genders Reclaim The Night March and Rally in Ipswich, December 2006. This gender inclusive RTN rally gave a voice to everyone affected by the Ipswich sex workers' murders, especially the sex workers themselves:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/gender/
As a result of this progressive community-based approach to RTN, Sam received death threats from and was even labelled as a "paedophile" by London Feminist Network, who denounced Ipswich mixed genders RTN. Sam was reviled by separatist feminists until herm death in May 2007.
One example of anti-trans separatist feminist propaganda designed to cause divisions:
http://www.questioningtransgender.org/
Sam's friends will read out some of hir poetry and give their own first hand accounts of Ipwich mixed genders RTN to inspire and provoke debate around the future of political movements actively challenging all forms of oppression and separatism.
The NUS Women's Campaign have publicised Reclaim The Night NORTH as being "women only (including trans women)", although this definition has been edited, erased and left out of all the other publicity materials for this significant national feminist demo for some unexplained reason:
http://www.officeronline.co.uk/women/275060.aspx
Currently, trans people are not protected from discrimination in the provision of goods and services in the UK, transsexual people in Wales are refused healthcare and treatment from NHS Gender Clinics by NHS Wales and there are no legal/cultural protections for trans people under 18, genderqueers, intersex folk and anyone who doesn't fit within the binary gender system of "male" or "female"- Homeless trans people are left for dead on the streets by local authorities who cannot provide safe appropriate housing to any vulnerable minority group.
There are no "official" figures for the amount of trans people who have been abused, raped, assaulted, murdered, suffered transphobic violence, hate crime and discrimination in all areas of their lives because they are all undocumented cases ignored within a system for cisgendered "men" or "women" only.
Reports and feedback on this transfeminist action can be found on:
Manchester Indymedia:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/manchester/
Trans Youth Network:
http://www.transyouth.org
G7UK Blog:
http://www.g7uk.com/
Get Bent Manchester:
http://www.get-bent-manchester.com
Quit moochin' on't'interweb, we'll see you on the streets, lovely people of all genders XXX
Name: QUEER TRANS BLOCK! Reclaiming the night and our rights!
Tagline: 5:30pm Sat.1st March - All genders all sexualities all feminists march for liberation and human rights!
Host: Trans Youth Network
Type: Causes - Rally
Time and PlaceDate: Saturday, March 1, 2008
Time: 5:30pm - 11:00pm
Location: The Retro Bar
Street: 78 Sackville Street
City/Town: Manchester, United Kingdom
QUEER TRANS BLOCK!
Call out for show of trans queer solidarity!
All genders, all sexualities, all ages, all races and all backgrounds together -
Reclaiming the night, reclaiming our rights - and the streets!
When?
5:30pm onwards, Saturday 1st March 2008
Where?
5:30pm - Meet @ Retro Bar, 78 Sackville Street, Manchester, M1 3NJ
Map: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=The+Retro+Bar+M1+3NJ&ie=UTF8&ll=53.477345,-2.235761&spn=0.012132,0.029182&z=15&iwloc=A
6pm - Congregate to march @ Sackville Park, Sackville Street, Manchester City Centre. Look out for the giant pink 'QUEER TRANS BLOCK' banner!
7:30pm - All genders rally @ Sackville Street, Manchester City Centre.
Please note: QUEER TRANS BLOCK will share the same start and end points on Sackville Street as the "women" only and "men" only demos, but will be actively queering gender, space and separatism as an entirely unique protest accountable to itself.
Please bring any info/fliers/zines/free resources/vegan cake to hand out which are trans-positive, queer-positive, sex-positive, anti-oppressive and celebratory of biodiversity!
Why?
QUEER TRANS BLOCK is a transfeminist response to the separatism, erasure and censorship of transwomen, transmen, sex workers, gendervariant, genderqueer, non-gender-normative and intersex folk within the populist feminist movement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfeminism
QUEER TRANS BLOCK is called in memory of Sam Roberts, genderqueer human rights activist, eco-gender warrior and trans social worker/counsellor, who organised the mixed genders Reclaim The Night March and Rally in Ipswich, December 2006. This gender inclusive RTN rally gave a voice to everyone affected by the Ipswich sex workers' murders, especially the sex workers themselves:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/gender/
As a result of this progressive community-based approach to RTN, Sam received death threats from and was even labelled as a "paedophile" by London Feminist Network, who denounced Ipswich mixed genders RTN. Sam was reviled by separatist feminists until herm death in May 2007.
One example of anti-trans separatist feminist propaganda designed to cause divisions:
http://www.questioningtransgender.org/
Sam's friends will read out some of hir poetry and give their own first hand accounts of Ipwich mixed genders RTN to inspire and provoke debate around the future of political movements actively challenging all forms of oppression and separatism.
The NUS Women's Campaign have publicised Reclaim The Night NORTH as being "women only (including trans women)", although this definition has been edited, erased and left out of all the other publicity materials for this significant national feminist demo for some unexplained reason:
http://www.officeronline.co.uk/women/275060.aspx
Currently, trans people are not protected from discrimination in the provision of goods and services in the UK, transsexual people in Wales are refused healthcare and treatment from NHS Gender Clinics by NHS Wales and there are no legal/cultural protections for trans people under 18, genderqueers, intersex folk and anyone who doesn't fit within the binary gender system of "male" or "female"- Homeless trans people are left for dead on the streets by local authorities who cannot provide safe appropriate housing to any vulnerable minority group.
There are no "official" figures for the amount of trans people who have been abused, raped, assaulted, murdered, suffered transphobic violence, hate crime and discrimination in all areas of their lives because they are all undocumented cases ignored within a system for cisgendered "men" or "women" only.
Reports and feedback on this transfeminist action can be found on:
Manchester Indymedia:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/manchester/
Trans Youth Network:
http://www.transyouth.org
G7UK Blog:
http://www.g7uk.com/
Get Bent Manchester:
http://www.get-bent-manchester.com
Quit moochin' on't'interweb, we'll see you on the streets, lovely people of all genders XXX
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Blogging Against Aversives
OK, so i missed this on the day it was supposed to happen (as i always seem to end up doing with these kinds of blogswarms) because i had been busy with unrelated stuff and not checking blogs as often as usual in the previous week. But it's fucking important, so i'm collating the posts on it from other disability blogs, plus a bit of ranting of my own...
Blogging Against Aversives, hosted at Uppity Disability (a blog i hadn't known about before now), is in response to the, hopefully now fairly well-known, horrific treatment of autistic and otherwise disabled pupils/prisoners at the Judge Rotenberg Center. "Aversives" is a harmless-sounding euphemism for the torture of disabled children and young adults with such methods as electric shock devices, being tied up or handcuffed for periods of hours to days, and being forced to throw food away instead of eating it when hungry (although, as Amanda Baggs points out, the flagrant and "exotic" horror of the tortures at the JRC do not necessarily make it any worse than the hundreds if not thousands of other "total institutions" out there which torture disabled people in subtler ways).
Disability bloggers who have posted for BAA include (in no particular order):
Andrea's Buzzing About
Stirring The Pot
The Strangest Alchemy
The Gimp Parade
Last Crazy Horn
Big Noise
Growing Up With A Disability
Not Dead Yet
When i first heard about the JRC, the only parallels that sprung instantly to my mind were from fiction; i was reminded of Bolvangar from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, Larkhill from Alan Moore's graphic novel V For Vendetta, and of course the archetypal fictional depiction of a psychiatric total institution, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; the closest comparison, however, was probably the near-future slave plantation run by a fundamentalist Christian militia in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Talents. However, the JRC is all too real; we live in a world where reality is horrific enough that the response of many people when confronted with it is to refuse to accept it and to insist that it is lies or fiction.
(There is a huge thread on the JRC from 2006 here, and it was in the news recently for an incident in which 2 teenagers were punished with electric shock devices as a result of a prank call.)
The JRC is not unaware of the exposes of its atrocities all over the internet; either Matthew Israel himself, or some pro-JRC individual using his name, has been going round posting comments to anti-JRC posts on blogs directing people to a PDF on the JRC's website supposedly in response to bloggers writing about what goes on there - for example, on Last Crazy Horn's blog as linked above. He was doing this before the BAA blogswarm, as he posted the same comment (which i deleted, as i do all spam) to my post here.
Veralidaine at Stirring The Pot posted a response to his comment here. (I don't believe her post is going to get any kind of specific response, as Israel (or whoever he pays to trawl the web for criticism of his institution) seems to be essentially spamming, by posting the same "comment", or rather link to his PDF, to every blog that mentions the JRC.) My response, if i felt it was worth anything to post a response, would be nowhere near as polite.
If the things that are done to people in the JRC were done to prisoners of war, there would be an enormous international outcry about it, with headlines in every major newspaper in the world. If they were done to political dissidents by a "Third World" regime, there would be UN sanctions, calls for boycotts of that country's exports everywhere, high-profile campaigns by charities such as Amnesty International, and if that country contained natural resources that were potentially valuable to rich Western states or multinational corporations, and was withholding those resources from them, then it would be used as a pretext for a war against that country.
If I had an army, then i would invade the JRC with it, kill every member of staff without mercy ("Only Following Orders" is no excuse), and burn the entire place to the ground. Sadly, i don't have an army, and in any case "having an army" would probably corrupt me into something as bad as the JRC, so in reality, i probably wouldn't do any such thing, and so such fantasies are unltimately futile. And, of course, i'm opposed to the entire concept of "armies". Fictional solutions only work in fiction. Hell is another fiction as far as i'm concerned, but if it was real, then Matthew Israel would deserve to burn there right next to Josef Mengele.
There are online petitions and letter-writing campaigns to shut the JRC down. I don't generally believe in the effectiveness of such methods; I don't know, however, what actually will get the JRC shut down. Even the legal challenges happening now in the US courts, while they have a slim chance of actually achieving that aim, seem to have been prompted by bad publicity rather than by any actual principled opposition to the methods of, even less the fundamental ideology behind, the JRC. However, i think exposing the fucked-up shit that really happens in such places genuinely does have at least some effect, at least in terms of making people aware that this kind of thing doesn't just happen in dystopian fiction coming from dark or wild imaginations, but in reality, and that it being ostensibly "for their own good" in intention doesn't make it any less wrong - as C.S.Lewis said (i think the quote is from Mere Christianity, but it's about 10 years since i read it, so i'm not certain; i got it from Falling Off My Pedestal):
"Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
May the Judge Rotenberg Centre fall, whatever it takes for it to do so, and those in bondage within it become free.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Just sent an email I could and should have sent any time in the last 2 years
I have absolutely no idea whether it's a well-worded email. It almost certainly isn't exactly the email i wanted to send, or should have sent. But, fucking hell, after 2 years of procrastination and meaning-to-do-it, I finally went and sent it...
To: disability-studies@leeds.ac.uk
Subject: MA Disability Studies
Dear CDS Staff (apologies for not knowing exactly who to send this enquiry to)
I am interested in applying for the MA in Disability Studies, ideally for September 2008 entry. I would like to know what, if any, possibilities there are for obtaining funding from external sources to do this course, either as a one year full-time MA or as a part-time MA.
I am a self-identified disabled person, with a medical diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, and am involved in the disability rights movement as an activist and writer/advocate. One of my key interests is the relationship between impairments (particularly "hidden" impairments such as those on the neurodiversity spectrum) and the social model of disability, and one of the primary goals in my life is to forge closer links between disability activism and advocacy and the academic study of disability from social, economic and political perspectives.
I have a BA (Hons First Class) in Politics with International Studies from the University of Warwick, gained in 2005, but am currently unemployed due primarily to impairment-related issues. My experiences both of unemployment and of paid work have convinced me that academia would be my ideal life situation both in terms of my own satisfaction and of the good I would be able to do for the world and in particular for my fellow disabled people and disability theory and culture.
My other areas of academic interest include social ecology, libertarian socialism(s), gender and embodiment, and concepts of productive and non-productive work and the dichotomy between "work" and "non-work" activities. One of my long-term aims is to attempt to incorporate a disability perspective into an analysis of these issues.
I would like to visit the Centre for Disability Studies at the first convenient date to find out more details about the course and in particular to discuss funding possibilities. Could you let me know if and when this would be possible, and what opportunities too talk to CDS academics about the course might be available?
Yours
[my real name]
It's... possibly ironic that it took the recklessness of being in a near-suicidal* state to write it... but, i'm reminded of what Amanda Baggs said here:
“I’ve written things about the value of all people’s lives while wanting to kill myself, and seriously contemplating doing so. I’ve seen that Sue Rubin has spoken out about torture at the Judge Rotenberg Center while utterly loathing large parts of her brain and body. This does not make self-hatred and despair good things, it just means that even in those circumstances people can do important things, and that waiting around to not experience those things might mean leaving important things left undone.”
*well, not actually suicidal, because i don't think i'm capable of actually wanting to die - death is something i literally cannot think about without lapsing into utter, abject teror and inability to comprehend my own non-existence - but, right now, i feel like i don't deserve to live, like i'm a complete fucking parasite, a monstrous, irredeemable creature that can only take from the Earth and from humanity and never, no matter how hard i try, give... like i am a creature whose needs and desires are so utterly, fundamentally unfair and unreasonable to the rest of the universe that the only good thing i could possibly do for this world is get the fuck off it; and, to cap it all, too much of an utter coward to even do that one potentially-redeeming thing.
But i don't want to die... because of the vital, amazing, awesome movements that i've only just discovered (that i might, possibly, even be instrumental in the rebirth and re-evolution of)... because of all the ideas swirling around in my head that i so urgently feel the need (and simultaneously the inability) to pull together - some of those ideas ones where i feel like i might be the first person ever to have thought of putting them together (of course i'm probably not, given the infinity of human imagination, but still that's what it feels like sometimes)...
What do you do when dying isn't an option, but living doesn't feel like one either?
Nevertheless, what Amanda said holds; and, of course, i'm confronted with the paradox that, if anyone else i knew found themselves in the situation that i'm now in, i wouldn't hesitate to leap to their defence, to tell them they were utterly within their rights and treated unfairly, that they didn't deserve any of the shit being said about them, that they were being discriminated against, that there were all kinds of positive and love-worthy and redeeming things about them, etc, etc, etc... and yet, when it's me, absolutely none of that stuff holds, and when a friend says it to me, i try to disprove it because i know in my heart of hearts that it's not true, that i am wrong in every aspect of my existence, the thing that should not live...
How the hell do i integrate this with talk about "activism" and "advocacy" and all the rest of it?
I am a doubleplusgood doublethinker. Which, probably, is doubleplusbad... ;)
Anyway, i sent the email... waiting for the reply is, i guess, one more thing to live for...
To: disability-studies@leeds.ac.uk
Subject: MA Disability Studies
Dear CDS Staff (apologies for not knowing exactly who to send this enquiry to)
I am interested in applying for the MA in Disability Studies, ideally for September 2008 entry. I would like to know what, if any, possibilities there are for obtaining funding from external sources to do this course, either as a one year full-time MA or as a part-time MA.
I am a self-identified disabled person, with a medical diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, and am involved in the disability rights movement as an activist and writer/advocate. One of my key interests is the relationship between impairments (particularly "hidden" impairments such as those on the neurodiversity spectrum) and the social model of disability, and one of the primary goals in my life is to forge closer links between disability activism and advocacy and the academic study of disability from social, economic and political perspectives.
I have a BA (Hons First Class) in Politics with International Studies from the University of Warwick, gained in 2005, but am currently unemployed due primarily to impairment-related issues. My experiences both of unemployment and of paid work have convinced me that academia would be my ideal life situation both in terms of my own satisfaction and of the good I would be able to do for the world and in particular for my fellow disabled people and disability theory and culture.
My other areas of academic interest include social ecology, libertarian socialism(s), gender and embodiment, and concepts of productive and non-productive work and the dichotomy between "work" and "non-work" activities. One of my long-term aims is to attempt to incorporate a disability perspective into an analysis of these issues.
I would like to visit the Centre for Disability Studies at the first convenient date to find out more details about the course and in particular to discuss funding possibilities. Could you let me know if and when this would be possible, and what opportunities too talk to CDS academics about the course might be available?
Yours
[my real name]
It's... possibly ironic that it took the recklessness of being in a near-suicidal* state to write it... but, i'm reminded of what Amanda Baggs said here:
“I’ve written things about the value of all people’s lives while wanting to kill myself, and seriously contemplating doing so. I’ve seen that Sue Rubin has spoken out about torture at the Judge Rotenberg Center while utterly loathing large parts of her brain and body. This does not make self-hatred and despair good things, it just means that even in those circumstances people can do important things, and that waiting around to not experience those things might mean leaving important things left undone.”
*well, not actually suicidal, because i don't think i'm capable of actually wanting to die - death is something i literally cannot think about without lapsing into utter, abject teror and inability to comprehend my own non-existence - but, right now, i feel like i don't deserve to live, like i'm a complete fucking parasite, a monstrous, irredeemable creature that can only take from the Earth and from humanity and never, no matter how hard i try, give... like i am a creature whose needs and desires are so utterly, fundamentally unfair and unreasonable to the rest of the universe that the only good thing i could possibly do for this world is get the fuck off it; and, to cap it all, too much of an utter coward to even do that one potentially-redeeming thing.
But i don't want to die... because of the vital, amazing, awesome movements that i've only just discovered (that i might, possibly, even be instrumental in the rebirth and re-evolution of)... because of all the ideas swirling around in my head that i so urgently feel the need (and simultaneously the inability) to pull together - some of those ideas ones where i feel like i might be the first person ever to have thought of putting them together (of course i'm probably not, given the infinity of human imagination, but still that's what it feels like sometimes)...
What do you do when dying isn't an option, but living doesn't feel like one either?
Nevertheless, what Amanda said holds; and, of course, i'm confronted with the paradox that, if anyone else i knew found themselves in the situation that i'm now in, i wouldn't hesitate to leap to their defence, to tell them they were utterly within their rights and treated unfairly, that they didn't deserve any of the shit being said about them, that they were being discriminated against, that there were all kinds of positive and love-worthy and redeeming things about them, etc, etc, etc... and yet, when it's me, absolutely none of that stuff holds, and when a friend says it to me, i try to disprove it because i know in my heart of hearts that it's not true, that i am wrong in every aspect of my existence, the thing that should not live...
How the hell do i integrate this with talk about "activism" and "advocacy" and all the rest of it?
I am a doubleplusgood doublethinker. Which, probably, is doubleplusbad... ;)
Anyway, i sent the email... waiting for the reply is, i guess, one more thing to live for...
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Word power: communication difficulties (with digressions into climate change and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)
(this was originally going to be a comment on Bev's blog, but as i don't feel like i've been posting enough about autism as such on my own blog, i decided to expand it into a post proper...)
Bev at Asperger Square 8 has been saying a lot of good stuff about speech and communication recently that i strongly identify with, even though i've nearly always been regarded (by myself and others) as a very verbal person.
As I have mentioned before, writing is easy for me. I can tell you much more in an e-mail than I can in person. Telephone calls are the hardest method of communication.
This is incredibly true of me. I really, really suck at telephone calls with people i don't know well. Calling someone i need to contact but have never spoken to before can be such a daunting task that it can take me literally months to get round to it. (It was September of last year, at a protests against the Labour Party conference in Manchester, when i first met and got the phone number of a fellow disability rights activist here in Birmingham - it was at least November before i phoned him... and then the phone call was an utter nightmare because i couldn't understand his accent. I still haven't called the number of someone who could help with my screwed up benefit claim that i was given at least 2 months ago.)
On the other hand, there are emails to people that i have procrastinated for as long or longer about sending... but in those cases, the reasons for the procrastination are somewhat different. One particular problem i have is when sending emails in "formal" contexts (job applications, enquiries about postgrad courses, etc) is how formal a writing style to use - the normal email style of "Hi" or no salutation whatsoever doesn't feel right, but old fashioned "formal letter" style feels somehow wrong for an email as well - as if i'm some anachronistic luddite who still thinks he's using a fountain pen. (Although, to be fair, i actually am the latter in many respects...) Generally, though, i'm a shitload more fluent in writing than i am in spoken conversation...
(and, when i'm speaking, especially about technical or theoretical subjects, i tend to use the same parenthetical, multi-clause-sentences, uni-essay-like style that i use when writing... which has been known to confuse or infuriate some people...)
(you know you're hyperlexic when you wish you could speak commas, semicolons, quotation marks, ellipses, parentheses, and even, since i've started blogging... HTML links ;o )
I do the drawing/doodling to focus attention while listening thing too, and remember being told off by teachers for it (one weird thing when i first self-diagnosed as Asperger's is that the first book i found about AS had a design on its front cover almost identical to my doodlings in the margins of my school books... i can't remember the exact title or author of the book, but it was an orange and black cover...).
(EDIT: I found the book through the comments to Bev's blog entry - and it is, in fact, a doodle by an actual Aspie! Maybe there is some kind of... shared style, or something? That's actually a bit spooky...)
And another common experience at school was being told off for "not listening", when in fact i was listening, i just wasn't looking... one thing i always want to say is "I can either look at you or listen to you, but not both". Even as a child, it seemed deeply illogical to me that, to be percieved as "listening", one had to be looking in the direction of the person or thing one was supposed to be listening to - after all, humans (unlike many other species of mammals) have eyes on the front of our heads, and ears on the sides of our heads...
~Don’t jump to conclusions based on body language. I have often had people interpret my posture or facial expressions to mean something far from what I was thinking or feeling. If you know someone is autistic, be aware that that person’s fa
Bev at Asperger Square 8 has been saying a lot of good stuff about speech and communication recently that i strongly identify with, even though i've nearly always been regarded (by myself and others) as a very verbal person.
As I have mentioned before, writing is easy for me. I can tell you much more in an e-mail than I can in person. Telephone calls are the hardest method of communication.
This is incredibly true of me. I really, really suck at telephone calls with people i don't know well. Calling someone i need to contact but have never spoken to before can be such a daunting task that it can take me literally months to get round to it. (It was September of last year, at a protests against the Labour Party conference in Manchester, when i first met and got the phone number of a fellow disability rights activist here in Birmingham - it was at least November before i phoned him... and then the phone call was an utter nightmare because i couldn't understand his accent. I still haven't called the number of someone who could help with my screwed up benefit claim that i was given at least 2 months ago.)
On the other hand, there are emails to people that i have procrastinated for as long or longer about sending... but in those cases, the reasons for the procrastination are somewhat different. One particular problem i have is when sending emails in "formal" contexts (job applications, enquiries about postgrad courses, etc) is how formal a writing style to use - the normal email style of "Hi" or no salutation whatsoever doesn't feel right, but old fashioned "formal letter" style feels somehow wrong for an email as well - as if i'm some anachronistic luddite who still thinks he's using a fountain pen. (Although, to be fair, i actually am the latter in many respects...) Generally, though, i'm a shitload more fluent in writing than i am in spoken conversation...
(and, when i'm speaking, especially about technical or theoretical subjects, i tend to use the same parenthetical, multi-clause-sentences, uni-essay-like style that i use when writing... which has been known to confuse or infuriate some people...)
(you know you're hyperlexic when you wish you could speak commas, semicolons, quotation marks, ellipses, parentheses, and even, since i've started blogging... HTML links ;o )
I do the drawing/doodling to focus attention while listening thing too, and remember being told off by teachers for it (one weird thing when i first self-diagnosed as Asperger's is that the first book i found about AS had a design on its front cover almost identical to my doodlings in the margins of my school books... i can't remember the exact title or author of the book, but it was an orange and black cover...).
(EDIT: I found the book through the comments to Bev's blog entry - and it is, in fact, a doodle by an actual Aspie! Maybe there is some kind of... shared style, or something? That's actually a bit spooky...)
And another common experience at school was being told off for "not listening", when in fact i was listening, i just wasn't looking... one thing i always want to say is "I can either look at you or listen to you, but not both". Even as a child, it seemed deeply illogical to me that, to be percieved as "listening", one had to be looking in the direction of the person or thing one was supposed to be listening to - after all, humans (unlike many other species of mammals) have eyes on the front of our heads, and ears on the sides of our heads...
~Don’t jump to conclusions based on body language. I have often had people interpret my posture or facial expressions to mean something far from what I was thinking or feeling. If you know someone is autistic, be aware that that person’s fa