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capri0mniMake regular posts on Disability History
To get ready, I made this header, today, so that they’ll be easy to spot on your reading page:
[Image description: A digital rendering of the Disability Pride Flag (five parallel lightning bolt lines [blue, gold, green, red, and purple] running diagonally across a black field) flying at the top of a flagpole, with a partially sunny/partially cloudy sky in the background. The flag is flying above the words: “This Month in Disability History” in dark purple letters. Description Ends]
Things that will have high priority for this project:
What will be of lower priority:
To get ready, I made this header, today, so that they’ll be easy to spot on your reading page:
[Image description: A digital rendering of the Disability Pride Flag (five parallel lightning bolt lines [blue, gold, green, red, and purple] running diagonally across a black field) flying at the top of a flagpole, with a partially sunny/partially cloudy sky in the background. The flag is flying above the words: “This Month in Disability History” in dark purple letters. Description Ends]
Things that will have high priority for this project:
- Notable Disabled people’s birthdays, when they are known.
- Their death days, when birthdays are not known.
- Important events in Disability History -- that impacted, for good or ill, the lives of disabled people from then on.
What will be of lower priority:
- The history of normate people who’ve done things for disabled people, as philanthropy or charity (yes, I’m looking at you, Jerry Lewis, ya bastard)
I was originally planning on making it “This Week in Disability History,” but my Internet searches came up with historical “dates” that only got as specific as month, so... Yeah.
I'm also posting this here to ask for your help: Because I'm Web searching from the U.S., U.S. history is getting top billing in the results. And I don't know what I don't know. If you're in a country outside the U.S., and know of a person or event that should be in this calendar, let me know -- either in comments or by P.M. Please and Thank You!
(And yes, I'm including mental illness as a disability)
Also, signal boost this. The reason I'm doing this is because disability history is so little known, most people (including many disabled people) don't even know it's a thing.
Go you!
Date: 2017-12-28 02:00 am (UTC)One of my outside-US favorites is Galvarino.
What would you think about doing some pieces on disability in literature? I'm not the only person writing about characters with disabilities, and while representation is still low, it's getting better. Lois McMaster Bujold is brilliant and fearless at it. And I've got that post about identity literature too.
Re: Go you!
Date: 2017-12-28 11:19 am (UTC)I'll think about it. But this year, I'm going to focus my attention on nonfictional representation -- so when disabled people do show up in fiction, it will be easier to debunk the complaint that their mere presence is "unrealistic."
In the meantime, you might be interested in this short-lived blog I created around 2011-2012, dedicated to depictions of disability in folklore, myth, and literature Before World War 1 (I had to pick a cutoff date for "modern era," and it seemed like the Great War was an event that radically shook our expectations regarding humanity's relationship to Fate): Plato's Nightmare/Aesop's Dream.
It was short-lived, because I kept running into the same depressing tropes. And I ran out of two things almost simultaneously: ways to stop repeating myself, and emotional spoons for dealing with the bigotry.
(I'm fairly confident that the world's supply of real-life disabled people will have much more diversity and creativity) ;-)
yay!
Date: 2017-12-28 03:01 am (UTC)Re: yay!
Date: 2017-12-28 11:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-29 12:43 am (UTC)Just In case you haven’t stumbled on Andrew Pulrang before, check out his blog
http://disabilitythinking.com/about/
Which has monthly blogger roundups, some of them outside the US.
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Date: 2017-12-29 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 09:50 pm (UTC)(Stroppy pilot who lost both legs in an air crash in the 1930s, insisted on returning to flying and became a famous air ace and then high-ranking RAF officer during the war.)
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Date: 2018-01-02 10:45 pm (UTC)I was looking for a seed around which to build my February calendar!
*Reads bio at your link*
... Well! He's certainly a counterpoint to the Tiny Tim image of disability that a great many people have, isn't he? ;-)
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Date: 2018-01-02 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 11:59 pm (UTC)I don't agree with his claim that once you can live independently, you no longer count as "disabled," and I certainly don't agree with his support of Apartheid in South Africa.
I probably would dislike having him as a dinner companion at a party.
But this history calendar isn't just for people I admire. The whole point is to show the breadth and depth of disability as part of the human experience. ...And that disabled people have always been among us as more than either charity cases or outcasts.
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Date: 2018-01-03 01:36 am (UTC)Have you got Horatio Nelson? ;-)
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Date: 2018-01-03 03:41 am (UTC)I didn't even know he was in a wheelchair until it was mentioned to me, as I'd only ever heard his voice from recordings. i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnbiVw_1FNs ...
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Date: 2018-01-03 11:08 am (UTC)And people who are famous as disabled people (such as Helen Keller) don't get any of their other accomplishments recognized (I finally downloaded an ebook of her collected political writings: Out of the Dark: Essays, lectures, and addresses on physical and social vision-- it's pretty fabulous, so far).
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Date: 2018-01-03 05:16 pm (UTC)It's not as if he exactly kept it quiet anyway; I learned that he was in a wheelchair when someone explained one of the jokes in his act (about using a 'fork lift' to enter an aeroplane via the galley hatch -- passengers were expected to climb the steps) to me. But at that age there were quite a lot of other jokes I didn't get...
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Date: 2018-01-03 06:08 pm (UTC)Disability is, by definition, never "tacked on." It's how we live in and move through a world which is not made for us.
It has at least as much influence as a person's parentage or place of birth, on who who they turn out to out to be...
As for why you should know the status of Michael Flanders's legs -- why shouldn't you? Why should you even know the years in which he lived, or what cities he traveled to most when he and Swann performed? Why know anything about him at all?
Or, put another way: Why shouldn't you know the status of his legs?
Why, of all the details about a person's life, should their disability be considered either "a private matter" or "irrelevant"?
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Date: 2018-01-03 06:58 pm (UTC)Not sure if I'd consider those private matters, but I don't actually know them ;-)
(Well, I'm assuming he was middle-aged from the sound of his voice, and I looked up the tour dates to tell you...)
I certainly don't know anything about his parentage or place of birth! Basically, I know him as a voice on a couple of records and the author to whom some famous songs are credited; I don't know how he became disabled (polio rings a faint bell) -- though I'm sure the Web would tell me in a instant -- because that doesn't affect the way he intersects with my life, and I'm not sure it ought to. It's never occurred to me to worry about how he got into the bath, or how he put his shoes on, or exactly how paralysed he was -- that really is a private matter. Presumably one that affected him a lot, but not one that enters into the relationship between him and his audience.
(Oddly enough, we actually had a family connection with Donald Swann, although I don't know anything to speak of about his life either...)
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Date: 2018-01-03 11:12 am (UTC)