Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

(This post is cross-posted to queerly_beloved)

Preface:

Back in 2012, when I was first exploring the cultural link between concepts of the monstrous, and cultural attitudes toward disability (and queerness), spiralsheep (no longer online) pointed me to a Master's thesis: "When a Knight meets a Dragon Maiden:
Human Identity and the Monstrous Animal Other," by Lydia Zeldenrust, and published online at Academia.Edu. Quote:

In general, the dragon maidens can be divided into two groups: the first is a rather large group in which the dragon maiden is waiting to be freed from her spell by means of a Perilous Kiss and then turns back into a human, the second group deals with a woman who turns into a half-dragon or serpent at specific times and is not to be seen by her husband in this state, but when this does happen she eventually becomes the animal.

And this was living in my head for several years before it clicked that all of the royal frog-man stories are basically gender-flipped versions of the Dragon Maiden tales.

The whole point of these encounters, according to Zeldenrust, was for the knight to recognize the human that is trapped inside the dragon form, and not to be confused into thinking its an actual dragon that needs to be killed. This is how they prove their right to the Divinely Ordained Social Privilege, somewhere between kings and angels.

(When I read that, all those encounters I'd had, where normate people said: "Oh, but I don't see you as Disabled, I see you as Human!" -- while I'm sitting in front of them in my wheelchair -- suddenly made sense: They're all white-knight wannabes, reassuring themselves that they've earned their normate privileges)

The problem with the Grimm Brothers' version of the story, though, is that the princess never recognizes the frog king as human until after he loses his frog-shaped body, and therefore (according to chivalric tradition) doesn't deserve her happy ending.

So I tweaked the spell, just a bit, so that it's reciprocity between human beings that breaks the spell, rather than simply sharing physical space with the most beautiful person ever.

Where we left off:

As if struck by a sudden thought, he turned to the frog tucked under the princess's arm, and said, with a grand sweep of his arm: "It would be a great honor to me, Sir Frog, if you would stay, and be my daughter's special guest at dinner, tonight."

Her two elder sisters, bringing up the rear of their little parade, giggled behind their hands.

The frog shifted his weight under her arm and opened his mouth as if to speak. But in the end, said nothing.

Galantha was ready to object on his behalf, and her own. But her father looked her in the eye with a frown, daring her to disobey his wishes a second time that day.

She dropped her gaze to the floor. "Yes. Of course it would be my honor. Please, be my guest."

No sooner were those words out of her mouth than the strange, horrid, feeling strengthened once more, spreading from the frog like ink from a tipped bottle. She fought to keep from hurling him to the floor that very instant.

( Under the Linden Tree: part 2 (1,420 words) )

(Back to Part One)

This started as an "Aha!" moment, almost exactly four years ago, when I reread the story The Frog King, or: Iron Heinrich (English translation by D.L. Ashlimann, (C) 1999-2002), looking for a clue as to what the king had done to piss off the witch, and get turned into a frog, in the first place, only to be gobsmacked by three realizations:

1. The sexual overtones mixed with paternalism and suggestions of pedophilia
   
   
2. The potential for disability metaphors from start to finish (The frog makes no demands for token demonstrations of love, only of access to spaces associated with human dignity: a place at the table, and a soft place to sleep), and
   
   
3. There is No Witch in the entire story!

(not even at the very end, when the witch would ordinarily be punished for her evildoing, in order to provide the denouement)

And that last one really cemented the disability metaphors in the story, for me. The unspoken assumption that it "must have been a witch" ties into the Just-World Fallacy that people get faced with when they become disabled: They must have eaten the wrong foods, or exercised too little (or too much, or the wrong way), or they had too many negative thoughts, etc., etc.. When in reality, there is often nothing-- and no one-- to blame. Sometimes, disability just happens.

So -- last November, for NaNoWriMo, I wanted a place in the forest for the queen to make a wish at a magical body of water, so I decided to make an allusion to the well and linden tree in "The Frog King." Now that it's the spring session of Camp NaNoWriMo, I decided to polish and finish my November Novel ... And uhm... my brief allusion/backstory turned into a full-on retelling of the original (with my protagonist princess made older, and given more agency when it comes to setting physical boundaries, 'cause having her be a little girl was just creepy)

( 'The Frog King' retold (3523 words) )

[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]

Edited to add: 8 January, 1942: (Birthday) Stephen Hawking, Theoretical Physicist, Cosmologist, Author. Living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) Professor Hawking is a wheelchair user and uses a speech synthesizer to communicate. [Wikipedia Article about him]

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Happy Birthday, Professor Stephen Hawking!

You know, my aide (who is also an aide to a school-age boy who is a non-verbal wheelchair user, and gets to see how American public schools treat their “Special Ed” students up close every day) once commented that if Stephen Hawking’s disability had begun when he was a child, instead of when he was in his 20s, teachers and therapists would spend the rest of his life trying to teach him to tie his shoes, before they even tried to teach him anything else.

I think she’s right.

And I can’t help but wonder how many potentially brilliant children are never given the chance to discover their brilliance simply because our society has an inflexible and ableist attitude toward communication modes.

This is a "chat" I posted to my Tumblr, today. And I'm posting it now, in response to This story segment from dialecticdreamer, and the ensuing discussion.

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Disabled Person: I need a wheelchair.

Wheelchair Manufacturer: We won't sell you one unless Medicare will pay for it*

Disabled Person: I need a wheelchair.

Medicare: Can you walk 20 feet?

Disabled Person: It's 40 feet from my front door to my bedroom...

Medicare: Can you walk 20 feet?

Disabled Person: I can, but it's excruciatingly painful, my balance is terrible, and I risk falling at every step.

Medicare: Then No.

Disabled Person: Why not?

( Read more... )

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*Footnote: Even if you are wealthy enough to purchase a wheelchair out-of-pocket, many suppliers still require proof of insurance. And even private insurers copy Medicare's policies when it comes medical equipment and mobility aids.

In his recent book Disability Rhetoric (Critical Perspectives on Disability), Jay Timothy Dolmage makes the following distinction between disablism and ableism:

Disablism, broadly conceived, negatively constructs both the values and the material circumstances around people with disabilities. Ableism, on the other hand, positively values and makes able-bodiedness compulsory.*

Disablism, in other words, is what leads to sympathetic treatment in the media of parents who murder their own disabled children, because of course, they were too heavy a burden to care for. And ableism is what leads to Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) – which forces autistic children mimic neorotypical people (often through electric shock and withholding food) – to be considered “therapy” rather than torture. Like the filling and bread of a sandwich, the two ideas are not exactly the same, but neither can they exist in isolation.

From here on, I’ll be focusing that second aspect of ableism as Dolmage defines it: the idea that [full ability] is, in our societies, “compulsory.” At first glance, it may seem absurd – the hyperbole of a bleeding-heart radical. After all, for many, “a sound mind in a sound body” is impossible, and can’t be enforced. But what can be (and has been) enforced is full access to the rights, privileges, and protections of human society. Come up with an arbitrary standard of abilities that “everybody” has, and you have a means to measure the quality of any person’s humanity. Once you have that, you can claim a rational, (supposedly) justifiable, reason to write laws against them.

Bigotry is the bedrock of nearly all social injustice. And ableism is the toxic sludge poisoning the ground in which human societies are rooted, allowing a wide range of oppression to flourish. And, as long as ableism remains unacknowledged and unchallenged, it also weakens our fight against it.

There are two main misconceptions about bigotry that get in the way of people recognizing both the reality of ableism and the harm it causes.

The first is that bigotry is nothing more than a prejudiced, mistaken idea about someone, based on their perceived identity (“All white people love mayonnaise”). But in actuality, bigotry is the systematic combination of belief and policy used in order to enforce the status quo for the privileged classes and deny others their rights. No white person has ever been denied a job because of their preferred condiments. On the other hand, the belief that women are both more irrational, and less able to control their impulses than men, led to policies allowing banks to deny women the right to open their own checking account without their fathers’ or husbands’ permission (source).

The second misconception is that, in order to be “bigoted,” an idea must be false (“All black people are less intelligent than whites”). This forces marginalized people to spend their time debunking lies, focusing all our energies on trying to prove we’re smarter, stronger, and more capable than our oppressors say we are (“Do twice as much, twice as well, for none of the credit”), instead of focusing our attention on changing the actual laws and policies that are used against us.

And it’s this second misconception that makes ableism – the idea that a measure of a person’s ability is a valid reason to deny the value of a person’s humanity – that makes it such an insidious force against our fight for universal justice. Because disability exists in every community. Some women are frail. Some blacks are intellectually disabled. And so these are the people shunned by their own communities (and it’s often our elders who bear the worst of this). Ableism allows our oppressors to “Divide and conquer.” And because every person who’s alive is at risk of becoming disabled, it plants the seed of doubt in the back of the mind: “What if ‘they’ are right – what if I am too weak, or not smart enough?” undermining the strength of our convictions.

But if we can, collectively, recognize ableism for the false and arbitrary standard that it is, then bigotry will no longer have the power to distract and divide us:

Whether or not I measure up to your standards is irrelevant. I do not need to be as strong, or as smart, as you claim I must be I am still a human being. And my life matters. My humanity is valid. And I – we – deserve justice.



[Image description: A black and white tabloid sized poster in the style of an educational diagram, showing a tree and its root system, combined with text.

At the bedrock level: "BIGOTRY: Beliefs and policies which work to exclude people from full membership in human society."

In the root system: "ABLEISM: Judging the value of a person's humanity on the basis of ability."

The trunk has two forks; the left-hand fork is labeled "RACISM:" and leads to an example racist belief in its cluster of leaves: "Blacks are Less Intelligent than Whites, but they are More Athletic"

The right-hand fork is labeled "SEXISM:" and leads to two clusters of leaves. The main cluster reads: "Women are Weaker, & Less Rational than Men;" the secondary cluster reads: "Gays are effeminate. Lesbians are emasculating."

The top cluster of leaves centered between these two branches, with a freely curving arrow pointing down to each half, reads: "Claims about Ability used to Pass Judgment on People's Humanity (This is ABLEISM)"

Description ends.]

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*(Kindle Locations 504-506). Syracuse University Press. Kindle Edition (copyright 2014)

( Content warning for discussion of filicide and murder of the Disabled )

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?").

[Image description: a block of text, divided into four sections. The base of this box is bright yellow, with black text that reads: “Ableism: The belief that the value of a human life is best judged by a Measure of Ability.”

Above that, reading left to right, are three blocks titled “Racism:”, “Sexism:”, and “Homophobia:”.

The “Racism:” block is brick red, and reads (in white text): “Blacks are natural thugs because they’re not as smart as Whites, and they can’t control their emotions.” A yellow arrow points to this from the box defining “Ableism,” and yellow text reads: “That’s ABLEISM.”

The “Sexism:” block is dark teal, and reads (in white text): “Women are better off married to men, because they are weaker, and are less rational.” A yellow arrow points to this from the box defining “Ableism,” and yellow text reads: “and that’s ABLEISM, too.”

The “Homophobia:” box is lavender, and embedded in the upper right corner of the sexism block; it reads (in white text): “Gay men are corrupting our culture by being effeminate and undermining healthy Masculine Values.” An arrow with a teal point and yellow shaft points to this from the box defining “Ableism,” and text (in teal and yellow) reads: “That’s SEXISM, which is ABLEISM.”

Description ends.]

Created in response to this article, by Mel Baggs: There is Ableism Somewhere at the Heart of Your Oppression, no Matter What that Oppression Might Be (published May 1, 2016)

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Now that I have working scanner/printer again, I want to illustrate it with something more organic and hand drawn; I'm thinking each of the -isms as trees, with their roots in in "Ableism" (maybe with homophobia growing as an epiphyte on a branch of sexism?).

And I really want to rewrite that definition of ableism, to echo, paraphrase, and draw on this definition from Jay Timothy Dolmage:

Ableism, on the other hand, positively values and makes compulsory able-bodiedness.

Disability Rhetoric, Syracuse University Press, first paperback edition 2016, page 22.

And I'm trying to decide where the balance lies between my ideas and my ability.

News article from the BBC (26 July, 2016 ~05:00, UCT) -- TRIGGER WARNINGS abound.

From what little I’ve seen (the largest mass killing in Japan since World War II, and I’ve seen a total of three print news stories about it), this is getting spun as yet another “lone killer with mental illness” story. ...

Yeah.

I am highly skeptical of any claim that all acts of hate must be “crazy” just because they are extreme. In fact, I think that assumption is exploited by bigots, who deliberately perform the expected symptoms of mental illness leading up to their (very rational, carefully planned) attacks, so that they can literally get away with murder.

But:

Even if that were true in this case: The shape of an individual’s mental illness is strongly influenced by the dominant schema of the culture they’re living in.

Four hundred years ago, the fears people were obsessed with were witches, demons, and “fairies.”

Today, it’s germs, extraterrestrials, immigrants, women, people of color, and the disabled.

No way, no how, should anyone foist the responsibility for these horrors onto isolated loners, whose ‘crazy’ beliefs just pop, fully formed, into their minds.

It’s time to stop asking: “How can we fix those people?”
We need to ask: “What’s wrong with us? How can we change for the better?”

So now, I'm ready to tackle "The Ugly Duckling."

[Edited -- put more words in my rant, and then put it behind a cut, in case you just want to skip to the fluffiness]

That means it's time to embark on an image search, so I know how the heck to describe my main character. Three photos in, and I'm overwhelmed with the urge to kill you all with an Overdose of Cute.

( The usual rant behind this cut )

(You may want to wear some cuteness-filtering glasses. Don't say I didn't warn you):

1) http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/ca/d9/f7/cad9f7899ff8cd3a050786113775df7a.jpg

2) http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/9d/b3/22/9db322a1a2b53461fdb289431b474912.jpg

3) http://www.fotothing.com/photos/af9/af9f10d875c63a142338bbed14053823.jpg

4) http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/08/03/article-1203971-05EEE05F000005DC-611_964x684.jpg

5) https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/91/264807734_489ced7d99_z.jpg (Okay, so adolescents are awkward. But that's true regardless of species).

This is a follow-up to this post about the privilege-awareness exercise called "Walking the privilege line," where a group of workshop participants step forward or back depending on how they identify with statements about their lives.

The first version is heavily U.S. focused, and gives only token acknowledgement of disability as a target of bigotry; it has 35 questions.

Imagine a number line from -35 to +35, and starting at 0. I'll answer every question as honestly as I can, at face value, without any "Well, actually..." or "Yeah, but..." hedging (which, I think, will highlight faulty assumptions on the part of statement writer(s?); I'll mark those answers with a caret (^), and follow up with clarification, but the numbers will be unaltered.

( The 'original' list, from the BuzzFeed video )

Final tally: 9/35. Well ... I got into the double-digits for a moment, there...

Now, here's my version. Because the main point of the exercise is to get people to think about what they take for granted, I tried to avoid using the word "Disability," and instead, focused on specific, common, consequences of being diagnosed with a disability -- which can differ quite a lot, based on what the disability is, and which most people without a disability never even see. I also tried to write statements that give people from marginalized groups an opportunity to step forward (including those privileges for PoC that Christina Torres suggested in this article). Statements based on my personal experiences with the Disability Community are emphasized. There are 39 questions in this one:

( My version: )

Final tally: 10/39 -- actually a tiny smidge ahead of where I ended up before.

What I'm wondering about now is how rephrasing statements to shift the balance between the steps forward and back would change the outcome (Taking a step back when you do worry about a dinner invitation, for example, rather than taking a step forward when you don't).