Eyes on whose prize
I want to speak my own truth, and honor the words of others when they speak theirs. I want to be an ally, but I don't want to get in the way. I want to make the connections between my experiences and other people's in ways that broaden my understanding and avoid the narrowing of concerns into little camps of people struggling for recognition. I want to interject disability issues into conversations where they seem unspoken or invisible, and I don't want to feel selfish for doing it. And I want other people to do the same, so I can see where I've centered my own concerns and marginalized someone else's. I want to see how the whole big mess fits together.
Wanting so much usually keeps me rather quiet, outside of the small community of disability blogs that have become a comfort zone for me. And the comfort has been needed lately when the Ashley Treatment -- a story so fundamentally about attitudes on bodily and mental difference and disability -- continues to be debated everywhere. Only on sites dedicated to bodily and mental difference specifically, have I seen any real re-centering of that debate away from ableist tendencies to make allowances for behavior or words that dehumanize the less than normal body. I've felt myself turning in protectively to my dis or dis-cool friends: Penny, Connie and Steve, WCD, Amanda, I'mFunnyToo, David. . . .
It's no coincidence I feel safest among those who also have an obvious stake in whether or not physical or mental ability is used to determine how we treat people. It's no coincidence that our widely disparate experiences of disability arrive at the same political sympathies. And I suppose it's no coincidence that when we're discounted as irrelevant or fanatical about the topic at hand, we're all discounted together.
And today, Kevin at Slant Truth reminds me that this is how the system of oppressions works, and that it's happening elsewhere and isolation isn't the right response:
I will come out proud and say that I am supportive of the Trans community and will work from here on out for their full personhood. The hate I have seen lately is beyond my comprehension. I reject it all. Fuck you if you aren’t down.Oh, I've more to say on this, now that I've resolved to begin. But I wanted to get this much out there now.
13 comments:
hmmmm. yes something to think about and to explore. good luck on your endevor for finding what you seek to find
I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Janet
I've noticed now that a large part of my life is not able to be spoken about on the blog (nothing employment related no how no way..seen too many lose jobs etc if they blogged about them)...I feel even more bolstered by the things I read amongst you all.
We're here!
WCD
This is a great post, thankyou for it. Powerful stuff - and the quotation from Kevin is excellent.
Wishing you well
b
If we're going to be mocked, ignored, and dismissed, at least we've got good company, eh?
I know what you mean about wanting to see how the whole big mess fits together -- I've been trying to find coherence between quite a few of my own ethical notions lately, and it has definitely been exhausting at times.
I see disability advocacy as part of civil rights, of course, but also as part of a philosophical position that puts morphological (and cognitive) liberty at the forefront of basic rights.
One of the primary complexifying factors in this whole discussion space is technology -- how it is used, who uses it, and when it is applied to particular circumstances.
In the "old days", many people with disabilities, particularly severe ones, did not live beyond infancy or for an appreciable number of years (following receipt of an acquired disability)-- now medical technology has the capacity to save more lives (and kinds of lives) than ever.
This technological advancement, combined with increased public visibility of disabled persons, seems to be prompting a sort of reactionary response in some (unfortunately large) segments of the public.
People are seeing more and more other people who look "less normal" and who require different kinds of accomodations to live (and EVERYONE is accomodated in some ways; culture itself is prosthetic).
And some are having a reactionary response to this -- one that tends to reveal a bizarre kind of entitlement complex (e.g., "Those People are using my tax dollars!") coupled with a kind of hostility toward the very idea that some people can live and function in nonstandard ways.
Nevertheless, I am actually somewhat optimistic that the pervasive disability prejudice in society will wane at some point, but a lot of that depends on maintaining visibility.
So, yes, please, come out and interject what needs to be said where it needs to be said!
Hi, this is Kevin de-lurking.
I guess it's obvious that I'm wholeheartedly with you on this, but I want to say so personally nonetheless.
When I started doing the whole "political" blogging thing, I labeled myself as an "anti-oppression" blogger. Little did I know what that term really entailed at the time, but damnit if I'm not glad that I've chosen the path that I have. Folks like you have taught me so much. I find myself depressed a lot, but I also find myself learning so much more and applying what I'm learning to my activist life.
So thank you for that. And remember that we are all learning as we try to get this whole big mess to fit together.
Zilari: "Morphological liberty." I like that very much.
"This technological advancement, combined with increased public visibility of disabled persons, seems to be prompting a sort of reactionary response in some (unfortunately large) segments of the public."
I agree with this. I've been reading an old essay from Hypatia by philosopher Anita Silvers about the problem of the morality of justice when using equality and also when using a feminist ethic of care that privileges difference. She notes that disability "appears to have a prima facie impact on interpersonal relating. Here than is a dilemma triggered by difference. Disability tests to the limit whether the irreducability of difference is central to morality or whether even for the disabled equality eclipses alterity. Disability tests as well which paradigm of justice best resists marginalization or repression attendant on the negative consequences of difference."
Pretty dense reading, but it jibes with what I learned in a grad school psych class on prejudice, discrimination and difference, and I think it probably also applies to the increasing visibility of gender queer folk as well.
Oh. Link to a .pdf file of the Silvers article. It's a poor pdf file, I think, not accessible to everyone.
Nevertheless: http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/engl111-05/handouts/silvers.pdf
Thin Black Duke: I find myself depressed a lot, but I also find myself learning so much more and applying what I'm learning to my activist life.
Me too, and while being depressed about it has been predominant lately, I have also been exhilarated sometimes by what I learn and how it's all the same stuff dressed up differently.
Thanks to you too.
Oh cool! I actually met Anita Silvers last year, at a sort of ethics conference thing. She gave a really smart presentation on difference, disability, and social attitudes surrounding such things. One of the things I remember her mentioning was the idea of people being banned from competitions (such as Olympic events) on the basis that they were using, say, an artificial foot that actually gave them an *advantage* over someone with a more standard configuration. Disability isn't just about "not being able to do certain things", but sometimes it's about having different sets of opportunities entirely. But people don't see that. They just see something that doesn't look standard, and respond with a visceral, "Eeeew!", and try to distance themselves from it. While not realizing that the whole idea of a "standard" body (or brain, for that matter) is a myth.
At this same conference I learned that there actually used to be laws in some areas of the country that were referred to as "Ugly Laws" that prohibited people with "visible deformities" from appearing in public. I'd had no idea about that, but it definitely seems as if differently-configured people (when we weren't killed or neglected) were, in the past, frequently just hidden away so that the normals could go around pretending that the world was theirs alone.
Sorry for going on and on on your page, but I am fairly fascinated with this area of discourse (yay for autistic focus!) and I think it's important to keep engaging with it.
Hey, don't apologize for saying interesting things!
I think someone was cited under an ugly law as recently as he mid-'70s, though I don't know the status of those laws now. And I heard several crips pre-ADA tell stories of when they had been told to move at a restaurant because their presence was disturbing the other clients.
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