Something decidedly *not* awesome

Galling Galla has apparently deleted her blog. :(

She was one of my favourite bloggers. I know she was getting a lot of shit from transphobic radfems, and if she felt she couldn't carry on blogging in the face of that kind of hostility, then, fair enough, her call, but still... the blogosphere is now one awesome anarchist Aspie trans woman (genuinely radical) feminist blogger poorer...

GG, if you're out there and still reading blogs, I hope you do eventually feel up to blogging again, and if not, that you keep commenting on other blogs, because I always admire what you have to say.

You will be missed...

Recent Links of Awesome

Trying to ease myself back into blogging (LOADS of posts i want to write, but having trouble with inertia in actually writing them). I think more and shorter posts is going to be my aim for a while, and possibly doing this sort of link-posting thing reasonably frequently...

Anyway, some cool stuff i have just found or caught up with...

This post is almost a year old, but i only found it (via random link-clickage) this week... and it makes a fucking brilliant point, as well as giving me something to link to every time i want to say "just because it's a social construct, doesn't mean it's not real". I must remember to blogroll Fetch Me My Axe...

This is even older, but i really, really like it... and this is definitely awesome (and i really want to do it)... ;)

Lindsay of Autist's Corner and Mik of Coffee and Gender have both recently written posts that i really strongly identify with bits of, and need to comment on, but need to put loads of thought into my responses to:

Gender Variance in Autism: How much of it is just sensory?

Gender, Sexuality and the Fluidity of Identity

At ScienceBlogs (on a blog whose usual content is anti-creationism and cephalopods) there was a really good post and comment thread on intersex conditions and nonconsensual surgery on children here...

Also, i found it a month or 2 ago, but i can't remember whether or not i have linked to Eli Clare's website yet. Eli Clare is, IMO, one of the most awesome people in the known universe :)

There are probably more, but these are all the ones i can think of right now...

Some anarchist/libertarian links

Some good posts on anarchism/libertarianism that i have found recently:

Polycentric Order: Resolving Anarchist Conflict

Conflict between the socialist oriented and market oriented camps within anarchism can get very tedious. Many anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists appear to emphatically claim that market anarchism isn't truly anarchism, that opposition to private property and capitalism is a requirement for one to be an anarchist, conflate currently existing political and economic systems with a free market and sometimes even defend welfare states as if take the edges off of the alleged evils of capitalism. Some anarcho-capitalists appear to get baited into functioning as vulgar libertarians or they generally associate themselves too closely with contemporary conservatism and therefore end up defending currently existing corporatism as if it is the result of a free market, claim that all forms of socialism are statist political systems, defend paleoconservative positions on issues such as immigration and romantisize feudalism and colonial America...

I am really pleased (coming more from the anarcho-communist side myself) that someone coming from the "market anarchist" side of things has said "it is of course true that non-state institutions may sometimes qualify as examples of rulership."

Ze also makes a good distinction regarding "private property":

Market anarchists tend to define private property in terms that should actually appeal to a socialist, which is that legitimate private property is the product of labor - a labor theory of property aquisition. How can a socialist oppose labor when that is supposed to be their forte? If consistant to their principles, the market anarchist does not support all legal private property titles, for they have an independant standard of justice in property aquisition that would delegitimize currently existing conditions. In short, they oppose the currently existing legal construct. The vulgar libertarian, however, does fall into the trap of defending all or some illegitimate portion of currently existing private property titles and buisiness arrangements.

I think there would be a lot less shitty argument going on between "market" and "socialist" anarchists if this was more widely understood. (Of course, part of the problem is people who are really more accurately described as "vulgar libertarians" calling themselves "market anarchists".)

Perpetual use is an absurd criteria for ownership, for it would imply that as soon as one parks their car somewhere then it is no longer theirs and therefore someone else may expropriate the car for themselves. In short, it would justify theft.

I have to disagree somewhat with this bit, as i don't think any anarcho-communist believes in a standard of perpetual use. (This is similar to Mike's comment on my last post, where he says "Carried to its extreme conclusion, it seems we would have to admit that the hotel guest gains indefinite title to his room immediately upon check-in, and should never be evicted even if he doesn't pay the lodging fee.") I think nearly everyone would recognise that a hotel is something different from a home that one permanently lives in, and that "perpetual use" is unrealistic - but i think that a condition of general use, as brought up a couple of paragraphs down, is realistic as a criterion for rightful ownership: a house that someone lives in for 10 months out of a year is, IMO, rightfully owned by a person, but a house that someone lives in 4 months of the year isn't. (I'm reminded of the ridiculous argument often used against squatters that "they could move into your house while you are on holiday".) Similarly, if someone "owns" a whole fleet of cars that they never use, but just keep in their front garden as a symbol of how ostentatiously rich they are, then i think "stealing" one would be fully justified, if you really needed a car to get somewhere, and couldn't afford one - but stealing a car that was just parked outside someone's house, but that was their only car and they used it every day to take the kids to school definitely wouldn't be justified...

An interesting cunundrum to present a social anarchist with is, "I want to be a wage slave, I want to work for a boss, so what do you do if I truly do choose to enter into a contractual relationship with someone for wages in exchange for my labor? Why can't I rent out the products of my labor if I sincerely want to? What if I want to opt out of the worker's collective and look for an employer?". If an individual is truly autonamous, then noone may legitimately force them out of this personal association or force them to remain in a particular association, whether it is a single individual or "the majority" or "community".

I think i still have to think a bit more about this, but i think i have to agree with it - largely, in fact, because of how much it reminds me of the radfem-versus-sex-pos arguments about BDSM relationships - which, while some of which are (arguably) IMO problematic in terms of power relations, i would unhesitatingly defend the right of people to engage in (as long as, it should go without saying, everyone is consenting). I have to take the same stance on non-sexual interpersonal relationships as i do on sexual ones...

Anarcho at Anarchist Writers: Quoting Marxo-capitalists out of context?

I haven't read Rothbard, but this is still a nice deconstruction of the "anarcho-capitalist" position.

"Even worse, the possibility that private property can result in worse violations of individual freedom (at least of workers) than the state of its citizens was implicitly acknowledged by Rothbard. He uses as a hypothetical example a country whose King is threatened by a rising “libertarian” movement. The King responses by “employ[ing] a cunning stratagem,” namely he “proclaims his government to be dissolved, but just before doing so he arbitrarily parcels out the entire land area of his kingdom to the ‘ownership’ of himself and his relatives.” Rather than taxes, his subjects now pay rent and he can “regulate to regulate the lives of all the people who presume to live on” his property as he sees fit."

Shagya Blog: More On Those Pesky Social Services

This post pretty much sums up my ambiguous feelings on the "welfare state":

The reason why social anarchists assert the need for positive freedoms is that in the real world we can't wait around until the perfect stateless – and therefore classless - society comes into being. In the real world people have needs and these must be met, if they cannot be not through mutual aid due through state-enforced economic inequality, then through government. To destroy social welfare – as well as protective legislation like the 8 hour day, or vacation time – and leave the rest of the state – and therefore class society with all its vast inequalities intact is to condemn the vast majority of the people to Third World misery.

(although i would query the bit about "protective legislation"... but i think that's for another post...)

It also needs to be pointed out that even in an anarchist society a significant minority of the population will have to be subsidized or supported in some manner think of the aged, sick, those with mental health problems etc. In a free society – and therefore one without the present vast inequality of wealth, and the resulting culture of narcissism and sociopathology – this could be done by mutual aid. In the meantime, and I have been discussing this for years, we can work to democratize, mutualize (de-state) existing social welfare measures. For example, Unemployment insurance should be run not by the state but be set up as a cooperative along the lines of a credit union. All workers become members of this coop and elect a board of directors for their city or region. Hospitals should be taken back by the community and run by elected boards representing the user population and the work force etc.

This is really heartening to read as well - and reminds me that i really, really need to fully write up my thoughts on the employer/employee relationship inherent in the current independent living movement model of personal assistance (which i am now actually living on the PA side... more on that in future posts), and how that can be squared with an anarchist philosophy... not so sure about the "unemployment insurance" bit, but the idea of democratising hospitals... wow. That would certainly stop shit like this (or this, or this, etc, etc, etc) happening...

And Werner in the comments saying that "vulgar libertarians" "mirror certain Marxist delusions"... hell yes - how many times does it need to be reiterated that the whole equating "socialism" with state authority and equating "liberty" with capitalism thing that both groups do almost as a matter of pseudo-religious dogma is complete bollocks...

Ok, this one is from 2 years ago, and from a blogger who seemingly hasn't posted since December 2006, but it's still very much worth reading, on the same subject:

Lady Aster: libertarianism: the music of a people who will not be slaves again?

(I'm not sure if this is the same Aster who used to comment, but recently stopped due to an argument about abortion rights, on Charles Johnson's Rad Geek blog... if Aster sees this, i'd like to say to her that i always liked and admired what she had to say there...)

I know plenty of people dependent in one way or another on the state. None of them like the system, and most resent its control over and its indifference to their lives. They support the system, tepidly, because they know of no other practical alternative- and because they know the Republicans who represent the 'free market' in their eyes would gladly leave them to die. Some of them take benefits from the system more or less for granted, true. But this is because because they've given up hope functioning as individuals, and this is turn is usually only because various systems of oppression (statism included) have painted them into a psychic and economic corner.

...

Protest first not wealth transfers but the controls the welfare state enforces on people. Libertarians should rise in anger when government largesse is used to control peoples' lives or serf-farm them out to corporations as 'workfare'. Don't tell the poor that they are lazy if they don't want to work in humiliating jobs at starvation wages- show how our crony capitalist system is at fault for offering them nothing but humiliation and starvation wages. Show how the spirit of liberty is the same spirit which could empower them against everyone who wants to run their lives- whether that be the state, corporate bosses, welfare bureaucrats, criminal gangs, or abusive parents and husbands.

Don't act like the poor are your natural enemies and the rich are your natural friends. Don't act like corporatism, rife with privilege and racism, in equivalent to your ideal. Don't act like the middle class or 'productive citizens' are better than the poor, are your first priority, or retain their positions because of merit or special virtue in a state capitalist world where the real mechanism of a free market has marginal play. Talk to people. Invite them your meetings. Reach out and understand their concerns and show that libertarianism will help them, not how morality shows that they should help you.

...

Extend your notion of liberty to something more than formal noncoercion. When someone speaks of the tyranny of their boss or workplace, don't tell them the relationship is 'voluntary' and thus the tyranny isn't real- tell them instead how statism makes possible social and economic relations that always feel like heirarchy and tyranny. If you don't feel this, maybe you need to learn to rebel against the boss yourslef. And it just might be the reason you don't feel this, and they do, is because you are bribed well for your corporate serfdom and they are bribed poorly. In which case it is your love of freedom for its own sake that has been dampened, and theirs which still flares. In a certain sense a poor person who reaches for the state to fight corporate tyranny deeply resented is more libertarian than the libertarian with perfect theory who meekly submits to the 'just' control of bosses micromanaging their lives.

(I'm not sure that i agree with some of the more market-oriented bits in between those 3 quotes, like the bit about "how life would be if they could start their own businesses", which i think is a bit ambiguous - does it mean start non-hierarchical co-ops, which i would thoroughly approve of, or become entrepreneurs within the capitalist framework, which i wouldn't? - but, if market-oriented libertarians generally followed this post's advice, i certainly wouldn't be anywhere near so frustrated and pissed off with them... and they might have something meaningful to offer the disability rights movement...)

Lady Aster also has a really good post on the same site about sex-positive feminism and libertarianism...

OK, that got to be a bit more than just link-and-quote. Never mind...

Edit to add: apparently, this is my 100th post. Woot. I hadn't thought that it would take me over a year to reach 100 posts, but so it goes... i was interrupted by a lot of stuff. (And it's fucking weird that i've had this blog for over a year... i somehow missed the anniversary of it, too...) Maybe my goal should be to reach 200 by the end of 2008...

Hugely frustrating communication issues, and inadvertently hurting other people.

(This isn't anywhere near as coherent as I want it to be, and a large part of me is certain that posting it will actually exacerbate, rather than clear up, some if not all of the situations it describes. But I'm going to post it as it stands anyway, and maybe edit it later, because I feel a strong need to put it out there...)

I'm really upset and frustrated with this discussion.

This is something that keeps happening to me – I post something in response to something written by someone who (usually) I like and admire, which that person (or someone else) disagrees with part of, or asks me to explain further. I try to explain further, and somehow compound the disagreement, or don't quite express myself clearly enough, with the result that what I said gets misinterpreted, or gets things inferred from it that I didn't intend to imply. I then try to set out my views more clearly, but the compounding of disagreement gets worse, and starts to get interpreted as a personal attack. From then on, my every attempt to correct and clarify – usually with the intention to aim for agreement, since that's nearly always my aim in discussion (and maybe that's something problematic? I dunno) – can only make things worse...

(here and here are other examples, and too many threads on Barbelith, before I gave up posting there, to count...)

The thing that particularly gets me is that, in nearly all of these cases, I really don't want to “attack” or to offend the other person(s) involved – usually, my desire to clarify my views and to get them to, if not agree with them, then at least to see them as reasonable, is so strong because they are people who I like and admire and who have said things that I agree with and find true and inspiring. Unintentionally offending people who I admire is very upsetting for me, and it makes me feel a genuine, heartfelt desire to apologise, to tell them I don't want to make them angry or upset, and that that wasn't my intent.

However, I then get caught in a worse double-bind, because, apparently, it isn't legitimate to apologise to someone for offending them, rather than for what you said - which I also really don't understand. I have always passionately believed that retracting something you have said, if you still believe in it, because you caused offence to someone by saying it, is the height of hypocrisy (which is why it infuriates and disgusts me when politicians do it, as they seem to do all the time, particularly when what they said in the first place was something I agreed with, or that exposed the hypocrisy of other politicians). But I also genuinely feel ashamed and guilty for offending people I like when my intention was not to cause offence - but, then, it seems I am not allowed to attempt to make any kind of reparations for the offence, without retracting what I said - so I really don't know what to say or do when in this kind of situation, especially when it seems not to be the content of what I said, but the "style" of "how" I said it, that has caused the offence (since it is content that I pay attention to, and style, to me, is irrelevant).

In some of these cases, it seems that my writing style is the cause of the offence, as much if not more than the content of my views. This seems to be tied into some concept of "appropriateness" (which is a concept I always struggle with) - that some writing/speaking styles are appropriate for some topics, but not for others, and that this somehow depends on how "personal" the topics are -
which is a completely incomprehensible dividing line for me, as the dichotomy between the "personal" and the "political" (or sociological, or philosophical, or whatever) is one that has never meaningfully existed for me.

Also, it seems that the issues which I feel the most passion about are the issues which I'm most likely to get accused of being offensively “dispassionate” about, and the topics which I have the most personally invested in are the ones on which I'm most likely to be accused of “treating this as if it's just an interesting topic of conversation” - and I really can't work out why this is - although, I'm getting some sort of impression that, for maybe most people, emotional involvement in something and intellectual rigour about it are mutually exclusive (or perhaps that the application of someone else's attempts at intellectual rigour to something that is emotionally important for them is unwelcome) - whereas, for me, the more "personal", the more emotional and directly-relevant-to-me something is, the more I want and need intellectual rigour in thinking about it.

I get the strong feeling that, if I was having some of these conversations face-to-face, I wouldn't get regarded as taking such a “combative” attitude as I do on the internet. Tentatively, I wonder if that might be to do with the size of the “chunks” of conversation in those respective media – in a real-time conversation, people tend to speak in short sentences, with a much quicker back-and-forth rate, whereas on online discussion threads people tend to make longer statements at a time, trying to set out more of a comprehensive position in each one. I don't know if that has something to do with it. I'm fairly sure that, in my case, it can't be the commonly-cited presence or absence of non-verbal in addition to verbal communication, because I basically don't do non-verbal communication in any circumstance, and tend to find online interchanges easier to accurately state my views in as a result of that.

(I also think that I probably come across as more "sure of myself" on the internet than I do in face-to-face conversations, more definitive and authoritative in my views, which might contribute to it. I always thought that was a good thing, but... maybe not...)

This post isn't just to ask “where am I going wrong?” - it's to express my genuine bewilderment at what happens to me in these sorts of interchanges. I am really, utterly clueless as to what I am doing here that seems, repeatedly, to be so offensive – and yet, saying so seems to merely compound the offence. Frankly, this sort of thing makes me want to give up communicating with people altogether (although, of course, I know that that's not what I really want, it's just how hopeless and despairing it makes me feel – that literally whatever I say in an attempt to clear up an accidental offence I've caused to someone by stating my views will inevitably make it worse, but so will saying nothing).

And this, which I sought out in order to try to make some sense of this and see where I am going wrong, actually makes me feel worse, because, according to those rules, with my communication impairments I will *never* be capable of "civil discourse". And I'm not quite sure whether the things that Ballastexistenz talks about in this post (and the other posts that she links to in it) are the reasons why I get this, because that would seem to absolve me of "guilt" for what happens in these kinds of interactions, and I keenly feel that guilt (whether it's rational to or not).

Have any other autistic people encountered this? If so, what tactics have you found to be helpful in dealing with it? I'm really, really not sure if this is an autistic thing, or if tentatively seeing it as an autistic thing is just making excuses for being an asshole (even though I don't want, and am not trying, to be an asshole).

Any responses whatsoever are welcome. I'm not trying to be disingenuous or feign ignorance of anything here. I genuinely am ignorant of whatever social values I'm transgressing. And i know this is going to come across to people as whiny, self-obsessed, passive-agressive and all kinds of other things that i don't intend to be, but always seem to get accused of being (to the extent that i have to conclude that the accusations are accurate, because if everyone other than me thinks that i am something, then the only logical conclusion i can come to is that everyone else is right and i am wrong). But i want to not be those things... which is why i'm, rather pathetically and probably hopelessly, asking for advice...

Guess who sent me a postcard...

SQUEE!!!



:) :) :)

Not being very verbal today (uncharacteristically for me). But, Elizabeth, if i haven't said it already (and i probably have), you are awesome...

As well as the painting, there is also a rather nice looking sticker of an Anime style, androgynous goth character in a top hat and what looks like an ink stamp of a heron on the other side (which i haven't scanned in, because, obviously, my "real world" address is on it). And impressively neat handwriting, in my opinion... apart from a capital G which looked a lot like a Y, and really confused me for a bit... but i think that may be one of those transatlantic language issues...

So, for Beth, another squirrel from the other day:



(this one caught my eye because it was a kind of reddish colour, although that doesn't actually come out too well in the photograph... nowhere near as red as a real red squirrel, of course, but noticeably redder, especially on its tail, than most of the other grey squirrels around)

and a crow, in fact the closest i have managed to get a photo of one from:



(note that it has a white spot just about visible on its breast - as i've noted before, a lot of crows around Birmingham seem to have some white on them. Also, i'm quite pleased with the pose on top of the pine (fir?) tree there.)

Hmmmm. Beth is probably going to think i have some strange association between her and wildlife photography in my head...

Anyway, that postcard made my day :)

(LOADS of stuff i've been reading and wanting to post about, particularly on the feminism/sexuality/queer theory side of things, but i seem to be stuck in "read everything, but can't write anything" mode ATM. Oh well, that generally lasts a few days to a week, so hopefully some more posts soon...)

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...

For Elizabeth

So, while i was offline, the very very awesome Elizabeth McClung (if you haven't heard of her, GO READ HER BLOG. NOW.) and her partner Linda had a weekend where they asked readers to go out and send photos of the places they had been to (which is a really crap description, cos i'm not being very good with words tonight, but go here...)

At the time i couldn't get online, so i didn't know about, but coincidentally, on the same weekend i ended up going on a ridiculously epic walk (of about, er, 8 hours), the intent of which was to break in a new pair of boots*, but which was considerably over the top for that purpose, and resulted in more like the boots breaking in my feet. Which, come to think of it, was a somewhat Elizabeth-ish thing to do, so maybe i was slightly channeling her in some way...

* I always wear steel toe-cap boots. The fact that i started wearing them after having a relationship with a partially sighted powerchair user is, er, entirely coincidental... ;)

Anyway, on the walk i discovered an old village churchyard, and in it was this gravestone featuring a rather gothic crip angel:



[photo shows a kinda Victorian/Gothic style family monument, consisting of a winged, female-looking angel bowing down on one knee, on top of a large block of stone with the family's names on it, in a graveyard with other, plainer gravestones and ivy-covered trees in the background. The angel's left arm is broken off at the elbow, and her right hand is broken off at the wrist. She's also missing part of her left wing. One of the names just visible at the bottom of the gravestone is "Elizabeth".)

Unfortunately, altho i saw several crows, i didn't get photos of any of them, since i clearly don't have Elizabeth's rapport with them - in fact, all members of the Corvidae seem to be extremely opposed to having their photographs taken, at least by me, as, almost without exception, they seem to let me get as close as i want without a camera in my hand, but as soon as i get it out, they fly off. (I wanted to get one of a magpie i saw today that was entirely missing its tail feathers, which is surely disabled by magpie standards, but it was even more camera-wary than they usually are. The only crow i have managed to photograph is this one.)

I did, however, get some photos of squirrels, including this rather demonic-looking one:



and this one, which i'm quite pleased with in terms of both pose and composition:



Of course, none of this compares with the photos of the place Elizabeth herself went the other day, but... well, she is sending me a postcard from Japan from Canada (er... i think you know what i mean), so i had to do something in return...

(Boo to Blogger for not letting me upload my pics last night. They're here now...)

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...)

Most Excellent

So, last week i was honoured to be given the Rated E For Excellent award by Last Crazy Horn... and so, I have to pass it on to 10 other bloggers.

This is a somewhat difficult task, because Last Crazy Horn picked Miss Crip Chick, who i was going to pick, and one of the other bloggers she picked picked Sweet Perdition, who i was also going to pick, and then Sweet Perdition picked... most of the other bloggers i was going to pick, namely Abnormaldiversity, Ballastexistenz, Chewing The Fat, The Gimp Parade (who i'm a little worried about actually, as she hasn't posted since March 22nd, which is rare for her), Questioning Transphobia, and Asperger Square 8... so, those i have picked are picked from the set of blogs i read not including that list... listing is strictly alphabetical and does not indicate any sort of order of preference (as if that was even possible between diverse individuals) (also excluded are group blogs or strictly-news blogs, so sorry BBC Ouch and F.R.I.D.A.)...

Andrea's Buzzing About blogs on neurodiversity, education (from both the "educator" and "educatee" standpoints), and the fight against pseudoscience... as well as insects and other creepy creatures. She combines simultaneously impassioned and rational defence of difference with devastating deconstruction of curebies and other nonsense-peddling quacks and hysteria merchants... and she also makes absolutely hilarious Dadaist poetry out of bizarre Google search terms ;)

(She also gave me a blog award back in December, so it's nice to be able to reciprocate the honour)

Emi Koyama's Eminism is more of a website than a blog really, but does contain a blog (even if it isn't posted to often), and needs inclusion simply because of the awesome way that ze interconnects discourses on transsexual, transgender and intersex issues, disability issues, fat acceptance, postcolonial economics, and feminist sex education (among other things i've probably forgotten) into a complete, consistent and fully intersectional radical libertarian approach to embodiment. Cutting edge in every sense.

Larry Arnold aka Laurentius Rex is, AFAIK, the only other autism or disability rights blogger who i've actually met in real, 3-dimensional space. If i live to his age, then i would be very, very satisfied if at his age i am anything like him.

No Designation hasn't been posted to much recently, but is one of the better blogs i've managed to find on queer and/or trans issues that manages to intelligently yet readably write about the distinctions and interactions between gender and sexuality, while arguing for the abolition of all forms of gender- and sexuality-based discrimination, both overt and subtle.

Charles Johnson aka Rad Geek is about the only US-based political blog i can stand to read, and also probably the best defender i know of of the true meaning of libertarianism. There are issues (particularly economic ones) that i disagree with him on, but 90% of the time he writes incredibly powerful and passionate commentary that expresses my views far better than i could. And he's one of the very few non-disabled blogger/activists i can think of who care about disability issues.

Elizabeth McClung's blog Screw Bronze! is one of the most raw, powerful and moving blogs out there, while getting wickedly dark humour out of even the most harrowing of situations... and she writes posts averaging over 100 words every day, even while on an awesome culture-packed trip to Japan. She has made me laugh, she has made me cry, and, generally, she fucking rocks.

Trinity at The Strangest Alchemy blogs on subjects as diverse as BDSM, disability rights and sex-positive feminism, and manages to tie them all together with a passion for freedom and autonomy that is both highly intelligent and very sexy. If only we lived on the same continent... :( I also have to give props to her blog for being on LiveJournal and still looking better than those of many WordPress users ;)

Joel Smith's site This Way Of Life, including the blog NTs Are Weird, is one of many great autism advocacy sites. One of the things he is best at is connecting autism advocacy to the wider disability rights movement, and demolishing hierarchies of "functioning level" or diagnostic label within the autistic community, He's also one of very few Americans who properly understand, and both believe in and practice, the social model of disability, and one of the best at explaining it.

The brilliantly named Autistic Bitch From Hell's blog Whose Planet Is It Anyway? is another passionate, no-bullshit autism advocacy blog. There are things i disagree with her on (such as her support for Barack Obama), but she destroys curebie-ism and other forms of bigotry, and exposes the hypocrisy of much of the so-called "autism awareness movement", with devastating effectiveness...

(This list took me far longer to put together than i thought possible...)

Anyway. You are all Most Excellent. Now go name some other excellent blogs that i haven't yet heard of...

Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy #1

The first Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy is here. Absolutely loads of awesome posts (many of which i know i agree with, a few i know i disagree with, and quite a lot that i need to think a whole lot more about) - i haven't even read through them all yet, but they cover topics like sex work, porn and anti-porn, BDSM, sexual orientation and presumptions about it, transsexuality, and more... there are loads on topics (such as the relationship between radical feminism, sex work, and Marxist concepts of exploitation) that i need to write about, if and when i can get my writing head together enough to do so...

(I'd love to write something bringing disability into it for the second one, if there is going to be a second one...)

Monsters and the Monstrous: Call for Papers 2008

Found via Cryptomundo:

6th Global Conference - Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil

Monday 22nd September - Thursday 25th September 2008
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to investigate and explore the enduring influence and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human culture throughout history. In particular, the project will have a dual focus with the intention of examining specific ‘monsters’ as well as assessing the role, function and consequences of persons, actions or events identified as ‘monstrous’. The history and contemporary cultural influences of monsters and monstrous metaphors will also be examined.

Perspectives are sought from those engaged in the fields of literature, media studies, cultural studies, history, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, health and theology. Ideas are welcomed from those involved in academic study, fictional explorations, and applied areas (e.g. youth work, criminology and medicine).

Papers, reports, work-in-progress and workshops are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

- The “monster” through history
- Civilization, monsters and the monstrous
- Children, childhood, stories and monsters; monsters and parents
- Comedy: funny monsters and/or making fun of monsters (e.g. Monsters Inc, the Addams Family)
- Making monsters; monstrous births
- Mutants and mutations
- Technologies of the monstrous
- Horror, fear and scare
- Do monsters kill because they are monstrous or are they monstrous because they kill?
- How critical to the definition of “monster” is death or the threat of death?
- Human ‘monsters’ and ‘monstrous’ acts? e.g, perverts, paedophiles and serial killers
- The monstrous and gender
- Revolution and monsters; the monstrous and politics; enemies (political/social/military) and monsters
- Iconography of the monstrous
- The popularity of the modern monsters; the Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein, Vampires
- The monster in literature
- The monstrous in popular culture: film, television, theatre, radio, print, internet. The monstrous and journalism
- Religious depictions of the monstrous; the monstrous and the supernatural
- Metaphors and the monstrous
- The monstrous and war, war reportage/propaganda
- Monsters, the monstrous and the internet; monstrous virtualities
- Monsters, gaming and on-line communities

Papers will be accepted which deal solely with specific monsters. We also welcome proposals for pre-formed panels which specifically explore the themes of hybridity or themes of monstrous parents and families. In addition, papers which examine the theme of hope in relations to monsters (for joint sessions with the Hope project running at the same time) are wlecome.

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 9th May 2008. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 8th August 2008.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order: author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
Project Co-Leader
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
mailto: iheartvampires@gmail.com

Rob Fisher
Network Founder & Leader Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire
United Kingdom
mailto: m6@inter-disciplinary.net

Stephen Morris
Project Co-Leader
Independent Scholar
New York, USA
mailto: smmorris58@yahoo.com

The conference is part of the ‘At the Interface’ series of programmes organised by ID.Net. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers will be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume.

[end quote]

I think this whole conference sounds awesome, and with the potential to bring all kinds of things together. I have bolded the topics in the list that i think sound particularly exciting...

It would be utterly awesome if some Disability Studies people submitted papers for this. I know i'm not up to it at the moment (and not (yet) being within the hallowed halls of academia, probably wouldn't be eligible), but there have to be some people who would be well into this out there...

A few topics that i can think of offhand that could potentially fit into this from a disability studies perspective: changelings, freak shows in fiction and reality, representations of disabled people as monsters or villains in horror films (see this post at Sweet Perdition, discovered through the latest Disability Blog Carnival... another one i need to add to my blogroll), the Neanderthal hybrid theory of neurodiversity, the use of disabled actors to play monsters or non-human characters (eg in Doctor Who)... shit, there's fucking loads of stuff...

(I think i'm going to have to spam about a couple of dozen blogs with this...)

oh, and a couple of classic blog posts which i think are relevant to this:

Little Light: the seam of skin and scales
Boots (of Makezine): Monster Trans
Ballastexistenz: I'm the monster you met on the Internet

edit: archives of the previous 5 conferences in this project can be found here...

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...

Some thoughts on BIID and "transabled" identity...

Trinity recently posted a link to an interview with a man who voluntarily amputated his hand, claiming to have Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID). This post started as a comment to Trinity's post, but, because a) it got ridiculously too long and b) I can't comment directly to her blog because I don't have a LiveJournal, so would have had to email the comment to her, I decided to expand it into a full blog post...

Trinity fairly unambiguously found this unproblematic. While as a libertarian there is obviously absolutely no way I would claim to have the right to condemn it (in the "it shouldn't be allowed" sense), I'm a little more conflicted...

Elizabeth McClung posted back in December on this issue, with some strong criticisms of "wannabes", and in the comments there is some discussion of possible parallels with gender dysphoria, and some discussion of models of disability as well. Lisa describes the "transabled" as "trying to cling to the coattails of "Gender Identity Disorder" to legitimise their own thing, which may or may not be a legitimate thing". Elizabeth also makes the good point that the particular types of impairments that BIID/transabled people want tend not to be things that people are born with, but ones that exist as a result of medical science.

BIID or "wannabes" are often associated or bracketed together with "pretenders" (people who pretend to be disabled, whether as a sexual fetish or not) and "devotees" (those who are sexually attracted to disability in others), but I'm not sure about that - I mean, if "wanting to become X" was the same thing as "finding X sexually attractive", then a heterosexual man would be the same thing as a trans woman, and if "wanting to become X" was the same thing as "liking to pretend to be X", then a trans woman would be the same thing as a transvestite or "female impersonator", and both of those are patently not true...

I suppose Jason's experience could be argued to support the social model, by showing that an impairment in itself isn't necessarily "disabling", and that in fact a person can be more "disabled" without an impairment than with it... but then, if BIID is itself an impairment, it's not so much going from unimpaired to impaired, as "trading" one impairment for another - and I'm not sure whether it's social model to claim that it's the impaired person's own attitude (rather than that of those around them) that determines how disabling the impairment is... it does, however, remind me of the debate over whether it's "against" the social model to regard impairments themselves as negative (which I've touched on elsewhere, i think, but probably need to make the main focus of a post... I'd say it's not, and cite feminist authors whose work focuses on embodiment, but others' positions may vary...)

There's possible relevance here to the effect of the origin of disabled people's impairments (congenital vs. acquired) on how easy it is for them to accept the social model, with people's reactions to something like this - i can see how those who acquired a (very much unwanted) impairment could be angered or disgusted at someone choosing to acquire an impairment, while those with congenital impairments, whose desire is perhaps more likely simply to be accepted for who they are, perhaps more likely to be accepting of it...

Nightingale of Samarkand said in the comments on Trinity's blog: "It doesn't bother me either.

Maybe because I spent all those years thinking about disability long before I was diagnosed with one? Either I had a touch of BIID myself or I just somehow subconsciously knew, from the age of 4?"

This has incredibly close parallels with my own life - I had a perseverative interest in disability from the age of about 12 or so, including fantasising about having various different impairments (I didn't, at the time, grasp the difference between impairment and disability), staring at disabled people in the street, desperately wanting to get to know disabled people, etc. (I got involved in volunteering with some very patronising and medical-model projects in my later teens, mainly because I simply wanted to meet disabled people... although, at the time, I kind of felt like that was somehow an invalid or "creepy" or "wrong" reason, and tried to make up other "justifications"...)

Actually finding out that I was disabled made all that make sense, and massively lessened the guilt and feelings of "creepiness" I had had about it - I could explain it in terms of having always known on a subconscious level that I was both impaired and disabled in the sense of socially excluded (even if neither I nor others around me knew of my impairment), and disabled people really were "my people" - that I could now identify with them in the intense way I did without feeling like I was hijacking or appropriating someone else's identity (although, because of my impairment being invisible and having spent most of my life undiagnosed, I do still quite often feel like that, but I can fight it) - however, BIID/"transabled" clearly doesn't fit me, as it involves wanting/needing to have a particular impairment, whereas for me it was and is all about the social/identity side of disability...

A lot of people don't understand my desire to identify as "disabled", to be "labelled" with what they see as a negative thing, or as "limiting myself" - so in that sense I can sort of identify with someone whose desire was to actually become disabled - but then, I'm still conflicted, because I can understand the desire to have "disabled" as a social identity if you already have an impairment, but I can't quite understand the desire to actually acquire an impairment. Then again, I can't intuitively understand what it is to have an inborn gender identity, and feel the need to change your body to match it, either - but of course I will support and defend that...

There's definitely a really close similarity between Jason's narrative and the narratives of very many transsexual people (particularly those transsexuals who felt gender dysphoria from an early age as a "having the wrong body" thing). Some people in the comment thread to the BMEZine article talked about whether BIID could be regarded as neurological in origin, due to a "faulty" neural map, which would make it arguably part of neurodiversity, and went into the blurry distinction between neurology and psychology, which is also a point of debate among trans* circles - some, if not all, trans* people seem to have a "mismatch" between the body they were born with and their neural map of their genital area.

However, something that does strike me as a definite distinction, even if the neural map theory is true, is that, for transsexuals at least, there's very strong evidence that it's primarily their hormone balance which doesn't "match" with their neurology - and, AFAIK, there is no hormonal effect caused by loss or paralysis of a limb...

One interesting thing i did find is this response to Elizabeth's post by Holly, who is a person with BIID who wants to be blind, and is also physically disabled already, with an undiagnosed but probably neurological condition. I couldn't find anything on her blog directly considering the possibility of there being a link between her BIID and her other impairments, but, interestingly, she mentions here that she actually has some vision loss, of possibly neurological origin - which could be evidence for a "neural map" hypothesis - but, i don't know, I'm obviously not an expert on the physical side of neurology...

Again in the BMEZine comment thread, the webmaster of tra