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capri0mni March 1 is the International Disability Day of Mourning -- a day set aside to remember those disabled people who are murdered by their caregivers.
It's a relatively new "holiday" -- and nowhere near as widely known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day -- but you have to start somewhere.
We have to push back against the Pity Narrative -- the one that insists that "the poor dears are in a better place, now." -- the narrative that has more sympathy for the caregivers, "who cracked under the burden," than the for they human beings they killed.
We have to make it known that, yes, Ableism really is that bad. And there's more to it than just using the wrong words.
This site started in 2014, and is dedicated to recording the names of people around the world who have been victims of filicide because of their disability, and includes mental and cognitive disabilities as well as physical ones.
The records go back to 1988 [Correction: 1980], and new listings are added every few days.
http://disability-memorial.org/
And that's only those people who make it into the news.
In America, too, March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month ("Awareness" Months/Weeks/Days, as a rule, generally frame whatever they focus on as a bad and scary threat: "Psst! Were you aware of the monster under your bed?").
It's a relatively new "holiday" -- and nowhere near as widely known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day -- but you have to start somewhere.
We have to push back against the Pity Narrative -- the one that insists that "the poor dears are in a better place, now." -- the narrative that has more sympathy for the caregivers, "who cracked under the burden," than the for they human beings they killed.
We have to make it known that, yes, Ableism really is that bad. And there's more to it than just using the wrong words.
This site started in 2014, and is dedicated to recording the names of people around the world who have been victims of filicide because of their disability, and includes mental and cognitive disabilities as well as physical ones.
The records go back to 1988 [Correction: 1980], and new listings are added every few days.
http://disability-memorial.org/
And that's only those people who make it into the news.
In America, too, March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month ("Awareness" Months/Weeks/Days, as a rule, generally frame whatever they focus on as a bad and scary threat: "Psst! Were you aware of the monster under your bed?").
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 01:18 pm (UTC)It's one of the things I'm conflicted about, actually, because "Spastic" is also a descriptive word for which there is no adequate alternative (it's a term for a very specific way skeletal muscles interact with signals from the brain in certain physical conditions -- including, but not limited to, cerebral palsy). And I hate that a word describing a physical reality of my existence has been corrupted into something obscene.
My body is not obscene, thank you very much!
On the other hand, I do understand that the hateful way the word has been used to bully others and incite both physical and social violence is obscene, and the word does, therefore, cause very real harm to people who are on the receiving end.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 02:34 pm (UTC)As I understand it (feel free to correct me, or fill in the blanks), the pejorative, cruel, use of the word spiked in schoolyards after the Year of the Disabled, when Blue Peter had a repeat guest with cerebral palsy, whom they introduced as "a 'spastic'," and focused on how difficult his life was, because of his condition....
In my experience, being on the receiving end of that all my life, if you tell kids how to feel about someone -- particularly if you tell them that someone needs extra special kindness -- they're gonna push back with more force (Forget Newton's laws of motion).
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 03:02 pm (UTC)What I know of it I only know through following trends in Disability Culture.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 03:40 pm (UTC)"Care" also means worry/trouble/anxiety/sorrow, and certainly, for the disabled, "caregiver" often has a threatening, double-edged meaning.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 04:50 pm (UTC)...The way one does.