Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

As I'm growing older, the issue of Disability Rights has been of deepening importance to me.

Ever since I attended the local "celebration" of the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2010, only to find disappointment that the celebration was confined to the basement and grounds of the regional Independent Living Center, instead of out in the public, I've wanted a Disability Pride Flag.

After the massacre at the Tsukui Yamayuri En care home in Sagamihara, Japan, six years later, when nineteen disabled inmates were murdered and twenty-six injured (because they were disabled, by the killer's own confession), I was driven to design an actual flag, instead of just wishing we had one.

This is the design I've come up with, and this morning (4 June, 2019) I have officially waived all copyright claims to this flag, and registered it under International Public Domain (right click to copy or save -- same with the how-to images).

Here's the version for more comfortable use on backlit screens:

Update! Important! (13 October, 2021)

Early in July, 2021 it came to my attention that, even with desaturated colors, The zigzag design can, when viewed online (especially while scrolling), create a strobe effect, and pose a risk for people with epilepsy, and migraine sufferers.

Therefore, several people in the Disability community on Tumblr, collaborated and came to a consensus on a new design, shown below:



[Image description: a “Straight Diagonal” version of the Disability Pride Flag: A charcoal grey flag with a diagonal band from the top left to bottom right corner, made up of five parallel stripes in red, gold, pale grey, blue, and green Description ends]

Visually Safe Disability Pride Flag by Ann Magill is marked with CC0 1.0

Along with simplifying the central motif to straight lines, the colors have been rearranged so that the warm colors (red and gold) and cool colors (blue and green) are grouped together. And the brightness of the colors have also been edited so that they radiate more evenly from brightest at the center toward darker in the outside stripes.

Although the earlier version of the flag, with the zigzag motif, still exists, and is still in the public domain (and is therefore free for anyone to use and/or adapt), I believe it is better for communication and awareness that we focus on one version of the flag. I have therefore removed the earlier zigzag design from my image gallery.

Thank you for understanding.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to incorporate the Disability Pride Flag as a motif in some Pridely art.

(I have an idea for a Disabled Disability Pride Dragon*, but the image in my head can’t break through my lack of spoons and patience, right now).

I decided to make this, instead:

[Image description: a Raised Fist (Anti-Fascist Fist) with a vertically-oriented disability pride flag on the forearm (description of flag provided in the link, above), and the colors of the flag's central motif on each of the fingers: Blue thumb, yellow index finger, white middle finger, red ring finger, green pinkie.

In a circle around the fist are the words: “Remembrance, Creativity, Solidarity, Survival.” A text box below the forearm reads: “Disability Pride Making Our Way Through a World Built to Exclude Us.” Description ends]

---

*I figure, considering how many “Battles to the Death” dragons have to fight with every foolish dudebro in the seven surrounding kingdoms, combined with their near-immortality, a disabled dragon has got to be fairly common, all things considered, especially since a disability means you’ve survived hardship.

[Image description: A black flag diagonally crossed from the top of the hoist to the bottom of the fly by a five parallel “Lightning bolt” stripes of light blue, gold, green, red, and purple, with narrow borders of black between them. Description ends]

(And yes, it's the same as my icon).

I actually came up with it a couple of years ago, but I spent yesterday and today taking it apart and putting it together again, so I could be precise about its proportions, instead of just winging it, and saying to myself: "Yeah, that looks about right."

(I'm still figuring out the how-to instructions, so they'll be short and easy to follow)

I also went onto the Creative Commons Website, and officially registered this into the public domain. So I'm actually hoping people will "steal" it and use it on stuff in their Etsy shops, or whatever... (hint, hint). [CC0 -- Free to use, Free to remix, Free to sell, without attribution]

Here's what the symbols mean:

The Black Field: Mourning for all those who’ve suffered abuse and violence, because of ableism, also the connection to the pirates’ Jolly Roger flag, and general rebellion.

The five colors: the wide variety of types of disability: Mental illness, Intellectual disability, Sensory disability, Physical Disability, and Invisible or Undiagnosed Disability

The zigzag shape: how disabled people have to always navigate barriers in the normate world & and the creative problem solving we do every day.

The parallel nature of the stripes represent Disability Solidarity, even though our individual needs and experiences are different.

You like?

(A longer post is likely coming about why I felt the need for a disability pride flag, and why I think Disability is inherently Queer)

...I've X-posted this to queerly_beloved

---

Short version of the how-to:

1) The slope of the "lightning bolts" is 1/2 of the total length of the flag by 1/3 the height.

2) The width of each stripe is 1/10 the total length of the flag, minus the width of the black bands between them.

3) The width of the black bands are 1/5 of that (1/50 the total length)

So the example I posted here is ~15 cm high by ~25 cm. long. I made each stripe 2.5 cm. wide. And then I pasted the .5 cm dividing lines over the joins between them (Which just happened to be double MS Paint's fattest preset line width).

I wanted to come up with a design with undefined overall dimensions, so anyone wanting to use it in a protest or parade could use whatever size cloth or recycled cardboard they have to hand, and also that it would be easy to work out the shape of the lightning bolt more or less by eye (and also make the stripes in colors common to duct tape, these days).

This is the original one, I came up with last year:


( Image description )

( Symbolism )

A while after I posted it I posted it to Tumblr, someone asked that I put a fifth stripe in, to represent invisible illnesses (which I had folded in with both mental illness and physical disability, but she pointed out that people with invisible disabilities are often made to feel that they don't count, or are "faking," and being specifically acknowledged would help break that stigma, and as she is someone with an invisible disability, I took her word for it.

Well, yesterday, I was in the mood to work on something visual, so decided to take a bit of time to tweak this... Half a day later, I got this:


( Image description )

And, because I forgot to write this down the first time, and had to figure out how to do it again from scratch:

( Method of construction )

[Image description: A black flag diagonally crossed from the top of the hoist to the bottom of the fly by a four-color "Lightning bolt" in stripes of blue, gold, green and red (three long sections running from hoist to fly, alternating with two short sections from fly to hoist), Description ends]

My “Artist’s Statement” about this Flag:

1) The black field:

Black has three significant meanings:

First: the color of mourning for all those disabled people who have been murdered in the name of “mercy.”

Second: the color of the pirates’ “Jolly Roger” flag, representing our determination to steal our lives back from those public (and private) ‘authorities,’ who use their power in an attempt keep us marginalized.

Third: A reference to the Nazi Black Triangle badge, which was used to identify those whom the Nazis considered “antisocial“ and which has been adopted in Britain to protest the government’s austerity measures against the Disabled.

2) The “Lightning Bolt” motif:

Diagonal lines have been traditionally used in the flags of former colonies, to represent breaking free from colonial powers (empire nations tend to have flags dominated by horizontal and vertical lines). And Disabled people’s lives have long been ‘colonized’ by the medical, religious, and educational establishments.

The zigzag shape represents how the Disabled people must continually navigate around the structural and attitudinal barriers erected throughout normate society, and also the creative, ‘lateral,’ thinking we have to use to solve problems each day.

3) The individual colors represent broad categories of disabilities:

Blue: mental illness disabilities

Yellow: Cognitive and intellectual disabilities

Green: Sensory perception disabilities

Red: Physical disabilities

---
So -- would you fly this flag? I really am curious.

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.co.uk/p/blogging-against-disablism-day-2016.html

A Web-Wide festival, every First of May (this coming Sunday), for generating new content (not reposts or reblogs) fighting the evils of Ableism and Disablism. This will be it's ELEVENTH YEAR. And all previous ten years are archived, and accessible through this link.

Signal Boosting (while my blog bunnies are making whoopee -- I wonder what idea to post will pop out on that day...).

In the meantime, if you’ve ever been stumped trying to explain “Ableism” or “Disablism” to clueless kith and kin, take a meander through the archives. You’re bound to find something useful.

I'll probably be posting something over on my new Tumblr blog, as I'm busy constructing that as a Disability-Identity centric space (with fandom and silliness at the edges). That can be found here: https://aegipanomnicorn.tumblr.com

I've made a new tee-shirt design and posted it to my Store at Zazzle.com. You can see it, here:

http://www.zazzle.com/diversity_tee-235301749949289862

(It's a "Message Tee" with the slogan: NATURE Adores Diversity)

Detailed description here for those with screen readers

The word "nature" is in a bright floral colored camouflage (like) pattern against black. The letters in "Diversity" are a diverse set of fonts; the "v" is replaced by a LGBTA-Pride striped heart, and the "e" is turned into the wheel on a blue "Wheelchair Access" symbol.

The text is in two lines, and is positioned high on the chest, so it can be more easily read when the wearer is sitting in a wheelchair.
(Description ends)

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.")

This is precisely what I've been trying to say to everyone in my life, and I keep getting (what seem to be) blank stares in response (hard to tell, in text-space). So I may be spamming my email address book with this, today... I haven't decided yet.

The latest entry from Dave Hingsburger's Blog (June 4, 2014):

The Conversation, Implication, and the Danish

Denmark has stated that they will be Down Syndrome free by 2030 and the announcement was made as if they have achieved some kind of great accomplishment. The eradication of Down Syndrome is made possible by ignorance about Down Syndrome and about Disability. I am thinking of this as [the] young man is speaking to me. A young man full of life who wants more life. A young man who doesn't, as the geneticists may think, mourn his own birth.

Do you think I will have Down Syndrome in heaven? he asks me. I asked why he was asking the question and he said that he'd been told that there wasn't any disability in heaven. As I believe that in heaven the common language isn't Danish, I told him, I think we will all be who we are, really are, when we get to heaven.

Good, he said.

It'a a combination word puzzle and a Disability Awareness Exercise, and I know folks in my circle who enjoy both, so:

[Begin Quote]
I have always believed that those, 'ride around in a chair for an hour to experience how hard it is to be a disabled person' kind of exercises are both patronising and counter-productive. You cannot take a 'tourist' approach to difference. I believe asking someone to write a paragraph without using the letter 'e' is a much better exercise. I know I've written about this before, but I want to revisit this. The whole time the pen is in hand the mind is thinking and evaluating, options - that's life with a disability.

Try it now. Translate this sentence into one that doesn't use the letter 'e':

My home is my castle where I eat and sleep.
[End Quote]

(and yes, I'm trying it -- haven't gotten there yet).

[ETA: ( This cut is hiding my solution )]