capri0mni | Entries tagged with disability

Still Dithering in my head about creating an alternative writing challenge to NaNoWriMo. I mentioned on Tumblr that I'm thinking of starting a Dreamwidth community for it, and this week, that post is one of the ones that has gotten the most attention. So I hope that will bring fresh people here.
One of the new media I've been following, sideways-like, is the anime/manga One Piece, which I stumbled into though an English-Translation cover of one of the series's main diagetic songs. I still haven't watched a whole episode, or read any of the manga, proper. But I'm loving watching reviews and character critiques on YouTube. It's like auditing an English (and Japanese) literature class from half-way through the semester.
I recently checked the status of my poetry chapbook, The Monsters' Rhapsody: Disability, Culture, & Identity (2016), over on Lulu.com, and discovered that the default list price was too low to cover printing and shipping costs for international markets, so for the Canadian Dollar, Australian Dollar, British Pound, and Euro, I've set the price at 0.03 above the minimum; for the U.S., version, I've set it at 0.55 above the minimum. Watch this space for when it's available. (if I succeed in writing what's in my head during my NaNoWriMo alternative, which is prose fiction, instead of poetry, I may publish it through Lulu again).
I've been thinking about disability and parasocial relationships. (1) How Normate people in "mainstream society" have an automatic parasocial relationship with disabled people (visibly disabled people at least) because of how we are used as tropes in popular culture (especially around Halloween and Christmas), so when they see a disabled person in real life, they assume a familiarity that doesn't exist. (2) The relationship with a hired personal care aide is very intimate and very real, and actually social on one hand, but on the other, the person who is your aide can be fired by the parent agency -- or quit -- without any say from you. So is the relationship really what it seems to be?
October 1 was the 28th anniversary of me living in this house, and I still feel out of sync with the changing seasons in Virginia, vs. the seasons in northern New Jersey & southern New York. Maybe it's like a duckling imprinting on the first creature it sees upon hatching? That it's my first experiences of the seasons, as an infant, and young child that remains throughout my life? One thing I have noticed is that I'm craving sweet desserts more after dinner, than I did in the summer. Maybe that's a response to shorter days, and less light?

Current Mood: thoughtful

(Cross-Posted to

queerly_beloved)

Preface:

In that same, later, reread of the Grimm "House and Children's Tale" #1, where it dawned on me that the princess is both child-coded and objectified, I also noticed that (other than what the enchanted king says at the end) There. Is. No. Witch. in the Story. And, furthermore, what actually breaks the spell is access to human spaces, which the king cannot get for himself without help. It therefore works, for me, as a clear disability analog.

So, in this retelling, I've decided to make the lack of a witch explicit, to get away from the trope that Disability is always a punishment, or that there's always some specific person or event to "Blame" for it (hello, anti-vaxxers, I'm looking at you, and the toxic positivity people, you, too).

Where we left off:

No sooner were they back in the carriage than the coachman cracked his whip, and they sped off at an almost unnatural speed, the horses in full gallop before they even had taken three strides at a trot. The landscape outside the windows was nothing but a blur.

"Heinrich!" the young king called, "Must you drive with such haste?"

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty," his servant called back. "But if we do not pass through the Capital's gate by sunset, all is lost."

( Under the Linden Tree, Part 4/5 (1,492 words) )

(Back to part 3)

Back in 2005, I tried my hand at writing original, personalized, fairy tales on commission, and one of my first was for a young man with C.P.’s 21st birthday.

First, I met with him at his home, to talk about the story he wanted, and what kinds of themes he wanted. Then, I flailed for about a week trying to pin it down before I realized I could email him and ask for clarification.

This is the reply he sent back:

I think about being a normal hero named Michael. He needs clothes like
fionne. Be like Fionne* but be me with Zena the warrior princess as his
friend. There should be the Lost Boys from Neverland but by another name as his friends, too. No CP in fairy tales.

Xena should need me as a healer after fighting. she needs a friend like me,
too.

thanks.

Mike

And that No CP in Fairy Tales has haunted me, ever since.

I agreed with him, when I met up with him for that first conversation, because nothing stings worse than having that aspect of yourself that marks you apart being treated as “special” and your one defining feature.

But it wasn’t long after I finished that story, and sent it off to him, before I started wondering: Why the Hell can’t we have CP in Fairy Tales?

After all, fairy tales have shepherds, and shipwrights, and kings, and cobblers, and beggars, and merchants, and old women, and young girls, and fools, and wise men -- every class and creed of humanity. And people with (what will later be called) “Cerebral palsy” have been part of humanity since the beginning (it’s a congenital condition that has many causes, results in life-long disability, but is also -- often -- survivable. So there’s no reason for people with the condition to not be part of the world.**

So, a couple of NaNoWriMos ago, I set out to write an original fairy tale with a protagonist who had “C.P.” for myself -- but I never used that term, I just described her as a person: what she could do, what she couldn’t, how she and her family improvised adaptive tools for her, etc., with a healthy soak of genre-appropriate magic for a sauce.

The result was my par-for-the-course 50K word salad. But I think there’s a good story in there, somewhere, that actually works.

Back when I was working on that story, I told myself that I was avoiding the specific term “Cerebral Palsy” because my genre’s setting was vaguely medieval/Renaissance Europe, and the medical term wouldn’t have been coined for another few centuries.

Anyway, the other morning, I woke up with a realization:

But that’s not the reason the phrase “cerebral palsy” should stay the hell out of literary fairy tales, whichever milieu they’re set in.

It’s because “Cerebral Palsy” is a medical attribute. And the medical model of disability (and the medical model of everything, really) sets the individual apart from the world they live in, as broken exception, in need of being fixed. And in Fairy Tales, the characters (and especially the protagonists) are there to represent the human condition for everyone.

So it’s not so much: “No CP in fairy tales,” but “no medical diagnoses” in fairy tales.

But in other genres (particularly in modern forms of literature), where the story does rely on a finely detailed individual (Say, for example: in a "One vs. Society," story arc), actually naming their disability would be better than avoiding the name. Otherwise, it would feel like you're treating it as something shameful, that shouldn't be named.

(And now, I'm wondering if it's possible to write something that is clearly a fairy tale, but set in an industrial, or post industrial world like our own. It's a thought.

*That's Fionn, as in the Irish hero, Fionn MacCumhail, BTW

**In fact, I think the Anglo-Saxon word “crypel” was simply a descriptive term for those people -- like “short,” or “tall,” “fair,” or “dark”; it didn’t get used in an insulting way until the 1600s.

So this video, about a new typeface, designed by the Braille Institute of America, showed up in my YouTube recommendations this afternoon. And I was inspired enough to download it to my machine.

Watch on YouTube

I particularly like the Permissions and Conditions in their license:

PERMISSION & CONDITIONS

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the Font Software,
to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell modified and unmodified copies of
the Font Software, subject to the following conditions:

1) Neither the Font Software nor any of its individual components, in Original Version or Modified
Version, may be sold by itself.

2) The Original Version or Modified Version of the Font Software may be bundled, redistributed and/or sold with any other software, provided that each copy contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user

3) No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Typeface Name unless explicit
written permission is granted by Copyright Holder. This restriction only applies to the primary font name as presented to the users.

4) The name of Copyright Holder or the Author(s) of the Font Software shall not be used to promote,
endorse or advertise any Modified Version or any related software or other product, except:
(a) to acknowledge the contribution(s) of Copyright Holder and the Author(s); or
(b) with the prior written permission of Copyright Holder.

5) The Font Software, modified or unmodified, in part or in whole, must be distributed entirely under this license, and must not be distributed under any other license.

Any license that says: You may not profit from something people need for free, has got my support.

It was easy to install. and is now the default font of my journal.

Finalized a replacement wheelchair (via tele-health appointment) in September (August?) of 2020 (A process that began in January 2020); finally got confirmation that Medicare approved it in November. My old motor wheelchair died in January 2021. Spent two+ months in a rented, folding manual wheelchair. New Wheelchair arrived at the end of March. I did not learn until they were rolling it up my driveway (after I'd already paid the 20% co-pay) that the model of wheelchair I actually ordered had been discontinued, and nearly every detail of the design of this chair is different from the chair I thought I was getting.
I'm now fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The side effects were not so bad. But I'm still uneasy because of the Delta variant.
This year, after being in the public domain for over two years, the design I came up with for the Disability Pride flag suddenly got famous (someone made a Reddit post about it, I think). And at least a couple posts about it on Tumblr got over 10,000 notes each. With the increased sample size of eyeballs on it, enough people with visually-triggered epilepsy discovered that it created a flicker effect when they scrolled past it online, and some people had seizures because of that.

So much of July was spent redesigning the flag, with several people helping out. Most people (including some who were hurt by the original), were kind and helpful. And now the new design (in my new default icon) is also in the public domain.

So, yeah. I think that catches you up on all the big news from me.

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:

The sexual overtones mixed with paternalism and suggestions of pedophilia
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
There is No Witch in the entire story!

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) )

The question is: can I write a story that passes this test?

I did a journal search just a few minutes ago, and it looks like the last time I wrote about this was 2014, and the test has had minor tweaks since then. So here's a refresher:

1) There’s Disabled Character
2) Who’s an active participant in resolving their own conflict*
3) That conflict does not center on their disability.
4) They’re still alive and disabled at the end.

Now, back in 2005, I had a brief run at writing original Literary wonder tales (fairy tales) for people, on commission. And one of my first gigs was to write a story for a young man, for his 21st birthday; he too, had CP (cerebral palsy), and during my visit with him, to learn what sort of story he wanted, he told me that he did not want any characters in the story to have CP, and that "C.P. Doesn't belong in fairy tales."

And at the time, I agreed with him -- wholeheartedly. I mean, I've seen that kind of representation shoehorned into stories, and it never turns out well -- it oversimplifies the disability, and

But as the years have passed, I began to question that. After all, there are all sorts of people represented in fairy tales: butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, kings, and beggars, and shepherds and thieves, soldiers, sailors, old women, young girls, etc. Why should we exile ourselves from the genre?

So, for last year's NaNoWriMo, I set out to write a wonder tale with a protagonist with C.P. -- not naming it as such, but accurately describing C.P. (that she can't walk, that "her tongue is slow in her mouth," etc.). And, as usual, I got to the 50K mark, but did not end up with a finished story.

So Camp NaNoWriMo is starting in a couple of days, and I woke up this morning and just decided to try and write this story as a shorter 10K novella.

The thing is: the goal she wants (even if she can't articulate it to herself at the beginning) is to get her family (which by the end of the story. is just her sister and herself -- because their parents were elderly when they were born) out from under the oppression of the neighbors' ableism and superstition.

Part of me thinks that does pass point 3 of this test. But my Inner Critic thinks maybe it doesn't...

I'll keep you posted.

*[E.T.A.: Forgot the footnote to point 2: unlike, say: Tiny Tim, who's only there to inspire Scrooge to be better, or Stevie, from Malcolm in the Middle, who's only there to illustrate that Malcolm is cooler than the other kids, because he deigns to be Stevie's friend, etc.]

Sometimes being in a wheelchair has a side benefit, if there's a hill, or a ramp anywhere in sight, you've got a toy under your butt!

From here:http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-toy.html

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/782463.html

I know I've talked about this, here, before. But my recent decision to include the word "Spastic" in the title of this poem has brought the issue of how we talk about about cerebral palsy from my hippocampus to the front-left of my neocortex.

---

The following quote is the first sentence in the third paragraph on this page: Understanding Cerebral Palsy: Basic Information from WebMD.com-- a site which digests basic medical information for the lay public, and is thus often the first place many Americans go to learn about different medical conditions and symptoms.

In my Web searches regarding CP through the years, I've found this sentence quoted verbatim over and over (I swear: sometimes I think 90% of the Web is written by 12-year old boys, who think copying paragraphs out of their class textbooks = writing an essay). So that parents, on first hearing the diagnosis "Cerebral Palsy," anxious to educate themselves, and worried about their child's future will see this over and over:

(Quote)

Between 35% and 50% of all children with CP will have an accompanying seizure disorder and some level of mental retardation.

(End Quote)

But how does this enrage me? ( Let me count the ways (so MANY ways-- cut for length): )

And now, to my allusion to the Hippocratic Oath: Words are powerful. What they denote and connote shape our intellectual understanding and our gut reactions simultaneously. The passage I'm complaining about has only 21 words. These words were reviewed (and, I assume, approved) by a medical doctor [Reviewed by Neil Lava, MD on March 10, 2014]. But those words are sloppy, and are skewed toward a frightening interpretation of their subject. Many children will have to live with (And try to find coping mechanisms for dealing with) adults whose preconceptions are shaped by these very words. That is harmful. That is bad medical ethics.

...
At the very end of WebMD's two-page summary of cerebral palsy, two sources are cited for the information in the article, but there are no footnotes telling the reader which bits of information come from which source.

The first is openly available on the Web: United Cerebral Palsy Association.

The second is a professional handbook written for doctors: Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics: A handbook for primary care (link to the listing in Google Books; there's no ebook version available, and Google hasn't "found any reviews in the usual places.")

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/748400.html

The sound quality isn't that great; the gasps and comments from the audience nearly drown out the performer... And for some reason, the closed captioning isn't working for me (I see the text box background, but not the words ... Is it working for you?).* But it's still powerful.

Here's the comment I left on the video, when I rewatched it, a couple hours ago:

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this is the gasps of astonishment from the audience, representing all the history we are never taught, because the points of view are from those we consider "unimportant" (the disabled, those of a linguistic minority, women... all of the above...)

"" (Watch on YouTube)

[ETA: Okay -- Now, it's working. I wonder why it wasn't working on the YouTube page...]

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/738284.html

... between narrative ethical messages in pop culture ...

Rented How to Train Your Dragon through YouTube Thanksgiving night as a treat:

Bechtel Test: Fail

Animal Rights: Fail (beautiful, intelligent, complex, wild creatures make the coolest pets!)

Disability Culture: Massive, Surprising Win: this is the first story outside my own head where the protagonist ends up with a permanent disability, that's seen as a happy ending - proof of having survived a real challenge and proof of a character's maturity.

If only if could have been a trifecta ...

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/730998.html

A year ago this last May, here: More Geeking Out Over the Word "Geek" [...], I spelled out in a little more detail how I believe "Geek" is more an approach to thinking about our world and our place in it, thusly:

To a Geek, the sentence: "You're over-thinking this," is completely nonsensical. And --
A Geek tries to connect All the Ideas to the subject of the geek's passion (whatever that passion is).

Anyway, with YouTube's "geek week" special just ended (on Sunday), that brought up memories of older ideas, about how "mainstream culture" mistrusts intellectualism -- I mean, really mistrusts it... Remember John Kerry's presidential campaign? The Bush people were actually saying that he was too intellectual to be president... And around that same time, too, there was a show on NBC called The Pretender, about a genius child who was stolen from his family (maybe?) and trained, by a secret government organization, so that they could use his genius to kill people ... I think. The four seasons it was on spent a whole lot of time writing the idea of a Massive Conspiracy Cabal, without ever actually working out what the cabal actually was. ...It didn't make much sense, really. And even though the titular character was definitely A Good Guy, the point was continually made that super smart people are dangerous, and the really good ones are the rare exceptions... And I think the reason geeks (nerds) are mistrusted is that:

They are intellectual. And --
The things they are intellectual about are obscure, and private ...

So, it's like they're a stranger in our midst -- some sort of idea spy, maybe, sorta. You just never know.

This is, I think, the reason sports fans are more easily embraced by mainstream culture: They may be just as obsessive over details and history, and just as enthusiastic in their willingness to be a spectacle in honor of their passion. But at least the thing they're passionate about is a symbol of "Our Community" -- you know they're on "Our Side."

So, over the last couple of days, the idea came to me that the reason terms associated with mental and physical disabilities (nut [nerd], Gek, Spaz...) get appropriated by folks in the mainstream and used to tease the intellectually swift and socially awkward, is that both geeks and PWD make folks in the mainstream uncomfortable in similar, related ways:

Our very presence is evidence that mainstream culture is not the only way to live (or even best way) for all people. Our presence reveals the cracks in the "just world" fallacy that makes those who are comfortable in the mainstream comfortable...

I dunno... still working this out...

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/721205.html

Context: Yesterday, in reporting on the story of Jenny Hatch, Dave Hingsburger pointed out that people with disabilities are the only ones who have scientists with clipboards collecting data on them to prove, scientifically, that freedom is better than captivity.

...There was a lot of push-back against that. Generally along the lines of: "But lots of people still have to fight for freedom, and human rights!"

In today's post, he defended his statement, and the point that talking about what is unique about the discrimination different minorities face is valid, and does not mean that we're trying to outdo each other.

This is the reply I was prompted to make, and I thought folks here would be interested in reading it:

[Begin quote]

From my experience (as someone with a congenital disabling condition), I've come to the conclusion that the discrimination disabled folk face is psychologically and socially difficult in two unique ways:

1) More often then not, we're minorities within our own families, so we often experience oppression from those who should be protecting us from it (the stories of Eve and Jenny both illustrate this).

2) And, unlike gay and transgender people, who are also often isolated within their families (and therefore, are subject to cruelty and injustice, as well), very few people with disabilities are able to "pass" as either able-bodied or neurotypical for the sake of their own safety.

Even if a disabled kid is lucky, like I was, and wins the "supportive parents" lottery, being alone in your family means sometimes going without the emotional and practical support you need. My mother was fantastic with helping me deal with sexism, because she'd had experience with that herself, and had figured out ways to get through it. But if I came home from school complaining about how the newly-waxed hallways made it hard to get to class on my crutches (for example), she was at a loss.

And, while this wasn't always the case (and was, itself, the result of hard-won battles for social justice), it's now recognized that children in racial, ethnic, and religious minorities need some contact with adult role models from their own minority to help them grow and learn. I've yet to see that same recognition for children with disabilities.

[end quote]

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/720762.html

Two years and one month ago, I wrote the following in this space:

I was going to go on, and write further about geekery and disability. But this has taken up too much space-time already.

... and promptly forgot to post a follow-up. I only found it again because I was trying to remember what I'd said about hipsters vs. geeks. I've been puzzling till my puzzler is sore, trying to remember what I'd thought 25 months ago.

When I've had a thought and lost it, or a thought that's gone fuzzy, usually the best way to find it again is through poetry, rather than prose...

It's been a while since I've written a poem for a poem's sake...

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/719413.html

1) A wonderful piece of writing on sexual objectification, from

kestrel: For Sale: The Joy of being sexually objectified (content warning: sexual microagressions treated in a satirical manner)

2) Any time I buy raisins, the package always specifies that they are "Seedless"... I know seedless grapes are a (relatively) new thing, in the history of agriculture... But is it even possible to buy raisins with the seeds in, anymore?

3) Songs originally written for the Hearing, and translated into Sign for the Deaf often make me go "hrm," because a) it often comes from the assumption that the Deaf are "deprived" of music (music, like language, resides in the human mind, and Deaf have their own forms of [visual] music, thank-you-very-much), and b) the qualities of a song that make it musical to the ear are usually lost when translating the lyrics into Sign. But this video gives me all the feels. For one thing, the signers are, themselves, Deaf, and each of the performers has translated the meaning of the English lyrics in their own way -- showing the flexibility and nuance that's possible in Sign. And also, the message of the song itself:

(BTW, at the very last line, the final two performers are signing "We support you.")

4) Oh! The most recent "Inspector Lewis" episode on Masterpiece: Mystery! passed my Disability Test... The young brother-in-law of the murder victim was paraplegic, and a wheelchair user, and he wanted: to get free of his overbearing mother! \o/

5) Another bit of writing that's not from me, but I wanted to share... This time, from Dave Hingsburger: Red and white

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/714647.html

I have some quibbles with how the story's told, but, overall, I really liked this. It was posted 5 years ago, when YouTube's time limit was 10 minutes, and this is just a smidge over, so it's posted in two parts:

These versions are interpreted in BSL with English subtitles:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/713192.html

So -- the big television news for the coming season, here in the States, is that Michael J. Fox is coming back to television in a sitcom which is also writing for (I think), as a fictionalized account of his life since leaving television due to having Parkinson's.

On the one hand: yay! Disability as portrayed by someone who lives it, rather than fantasizes about it. On the other hand, I've been apprehensive, because the network it's airing on (NBC) has done some terrible shows, like The Apprentice and Biggest Loser.

But I saw the official trailer for the show last night, and I'm now more hopeful. For one thing, it looks like at least some of the jokes will be about "TABs say the darnedest things, don't they?" It also looks like it's both set, and filmed in NYC (Hollywood versions of New York are faker than Dick van Dyke's cockney accent).

Here's the trailer from YouTube:

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/711802.html

Listened to:
From WNYC's "RadioLab" -- A a segment from a show from December last. The first five and a half minutes or so of this 33 minute segment is about the joy of a man at the end of a three-month solo trek across Antarctica. And then, from then on, it's the story of a Holocaust survivor who tried to invent a new communication system that he hoped would end all war... That, it itself, would have been fascinating. I was not expecting it to end up revolving around children with cerebral palsy living in an institutional home/school/hospital in the 1970's in Ontario, Canada... but it did (Content note-- it ends on a fairly tragic, ironic note):

Mr. Bliss

For something completely different, also from "RadioLab": Liev Schreiber reads Italo Calvino's The Distance of the Moon; written in Italian in 1965, and translated into English in 1968... i.e., before we landed there...
(Content note-- one of the main characters is written as Deaf for metaphorical/symbolic reasons as a sort of Magic!wild-man/Innocent-Primitive)

Read:
Found by way of "Rolling around in my head": Reclaiming memory: Searching for Great-Aunt Sarah (Content note: institutional life and death in the early 20th century)

From "Rolling around in my head" Directly: The Better Way (content note: neither tragic nor ironic-- includes a crying baby)

Watched:
And a child shall lead them -- going-on-eleven year-old Stephanie leads a blue-grass band of adult white men... You can tell she's the leader in this particular set, because she sets the tempo for their playing, and signals the final chorus of the first song with a straight-leg kick (a standard signal in folk music):

(Content note-- precocious kid on stage and occasional out-of-focus camera).

This moved me not so much for the cuteness factor, but the aplomb and grace of one so young in front of an audience -- maybe that's her "un-cuteness"?

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/708374.html

Over at Rolling Around in my Head, Dave Hingsburger is asking a question that tickles that special lexicography geek place in my heart (It's another "What's a lexical gap in English that you would like to see filled?" discussion). And since I have people in my circles that identify with various forms of queer- and/or Disability Pride, I thought I'd share it here:

Begin Quote:

Several years ago George Hislop, who was a close friend, told me the difference between someone who was 'gay' and someone who was 'homosexual.' He said that a 'homosexual' was someone who had sex with others of the same gender but who did not identify with their sexuality, denied it as often and as loudly as they could and who did nothing to support the political movement regarding the rights for sexual minorities. A gay person, on the other hand, was someone who also had sex with others of the same gender but had an affiliation to the movement to the rights of others to love as they will that went beyond sex. Gay people, he said, identified with their sexuality and with their community. He saw the difference as the same as the difference between shade and sun.

[Snip]

Begin Quote:

Like the woman I spoke to in Maryland who wanted to talk to me about accessibility in Toronto. When this happened it reminded me of being in a gay bar in Milwaukee and being asked how safe it was to be gay in Toronto. In both cases, it was more than strangers asking strangers tourist advice ... both were experiences of the best of community. Where strangers aren't so strange, and where questions are understood at the deepest level of their asking. Community is community but community requires an entrance fee - identity.

So... while I'll be working on other things, today, this question will be running in the background of my thoughts... I'll probably have more to say about it later.

[ETA: Oops! forgot the link to the full post -- here: http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/04/take-notes-theres-quiz-at-end.html ]

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/707823.html

I meant to signal boost this. I failed. The Calender caught up with me. I intended to write something. I may, still. But at the moment, I am feeling speechless.

So I urge you to read this blog post from Dave Hingsburger instead:

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2013/01/1440-international-day-of-mourning-and.html

A quote:

In a graveyard, not far from where I type, 2011 people were laid to rest. Only 571 have names. A full one thousand four hundred and forty lay nameless and forgotten. Even if you knew them once, you'd never find them now.

How could this be?

The is a graveyard that lay on the lee side of institutional walls. That institution is now closed. No footsteps echo down the long corridors, the smells of human captivity are slowly fading, the tools of segregation are growing rusty in the dark corners of back wards. Many people who lived there are now free. Many are now finding their way as full citizens, part of the community that once rejected them. Many will never know a moments surety that citizenship is an irrevocable thing.

Murderers serve less time than people who committed the crime of difference.
(end quote)

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/700789.html

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Ann

February 2025

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5 things make a post
My own writing: A queered version of The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich (Part 4 / 5)
Thinking about fairy tales and disability for 16+ years
(As I've seen them say on Tumblr) Wake up, Babe. New typeface just dropped.
Getting back into the habit of posting on Dreamwidth with a short, bullet point, list
I just finished a retelling of the Grimm Bro.s' retelling of "The Frog King"
I've had a "Bechdel Style" Test in my head for Disability Rep. in my head for a whle, now.
Another "Rolling Around in my Head" paragraph, quoted for TRUTH:
"First, do no harm" Or: Why this ubiquitously quoted stat on C.P. enrages me
Woke up with the memory of this poem / video on my mind, this morning...
Just Once, I'd Like not to Have to Choose
Don't know if a poem is coming, but I'm still groping toward a Disability / Geek connection
Here's the comment I posted on today's entry in "Rolling Around in My Head"
Geek Culture and Disability Culture -- what's the connection?
5 things make a post
Not exactly a "Disability PSA" but a film short that makes its point well...
*fingers crossed* that this is actually going to be good...
An "Anthology Post": things I've, listened to, read, and watched, this past week that moved me
Food for thought:
Second Annual "International Day of Mourning and Memory"

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Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

The songs that are stuck in my head

Entries tagged with disability

5 things make a post

My own writing: A queered version of The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich (Part 4 / 5)

Thinking about fairy tales and disability for 16+ years

(As I've seen them say on Tumblr) Wake up, Babe. New typeface just dropped.

Getting back into the habit of posting on Dreamwidth with a short, bullet point, list

I just finished a retelling of the Grimm Bro.s' retelling of "The Frog King"

I've had a "Bechdel Style" Test in my head for Disability Rep. in my head for a whle, now.

Another "Rolling Around in my Head" paragraph, quoted for TRUTH:

"First, do no harm" Or: Why this ubiquitously quoted stat on C.P. enrages me

Woke up with the memory of this poem / video on my mind, this morning...

Just Once, I'd Like not to Have to Choose

Don't know if a poem is coming, but I'm still groping toward a Disability / Geek connection

Here's the comment I posted on today's entry in "Rolling Around in My Head"

Geek Culture and Disability Culture -- what's the connection?

5 things make a post

Not exactly a "Disability PSA" but a film short that makes its point well...

fingers crossed that this is actually going to be good...

An "Anthology Post": things I've, listened to, read, and watched, this past week that moved me

Food for thought:

Second Annual "International Day of Mourning and Memory"