This is a post about a bit of a blow-up during my guest posting at Feministe. I am already emotionally exhausted from this, so I will not cross-post this at Feministe.

***

Allow me to indulge in a little bit of inside-hockey.

Hockey is a very physical sport. Part of this sport is “checking” or “hitting” – basically running into an opposing player in order to tie him up for some time so he can’t be out there making productive plays for his team. (Brooks Orpik demonstrates here, making four hits in a fifteen-second timespan in what has been called “The Shift.”)

And there is a concept in hockey we call “taking the hit to make the play.” This happens when a team is trying to set up an offensive play to get the puck to the net. A player on one team will let the other team’s defenseman hit him as he passes the puck to one of his other teammates so that, in a reverse-psychology sort of move, that defenseman is tied up in finishing his check, instead of out there defending the puck from his teammates.

So basically, you are accepting that physical hit because you know it will increase your offensive chances.

***

Things got a little out of hand in the comment thread on my post about the painkiller ban proposal.

I am still adapting to writing for a larger site. It is important to me that PWD feel safe commenting with their experiences. IME, they are much less likely to contribute if they have to carefully moderate their tone and make sure not to offend anyone who has privilege over them. They need to be able to speak candidly about what is going on in their lives without modifying their framing to be acceptable to the masses. And, as has been often discussed on Feministe, while “diplomacy” and 101 education are valuable things to do, if we allow it in every thread, it makes it impossible to take our discussion to a more advanced level.

I focus on making space for PWD. People who are currently not disabled are welcome as long as they realize that they are not the focus in this space. They, their needs, their ideas, their conceptions, are not the center in this space. They get every other space in the world for that. Every other space in the world is specifically built to suit them. If they are willing to relinquish that focus for a time, to listen to PWD, to do their due diligence in educating themselves on the background issues, and treating PWD with respect and accepting when PWD say they are doing something wrong or harmful — then they are welcome.

If they would rather insist that their ideas are more important, more valuable, more reasonable — if they would rather argue with PWD, if they would rather assert their understanding of the issues as clearly better/more reasonable/more in-touch/more important — if they will not listen to what PWD are telling them, accept criticism, and bite their tongue for one minute in their entire life to give deference to how PWD define their space and their experiences — then they are not welcome.

I am sure most of you are familiar with this framework. This is a feminist site. If we were speaking about men and women, rather than abled and disabled, would not most of you advocate the exact same definition of space?

Yesterday, we saw a lot of the latter comments in a thread where people with chronic pain were very clearly communicating the effect this policy would have on them. We saw comments that explained why the policy was being considered — as though the “why” hadn’t been laid out in the original post, reasonably, without argument from emotion.

And I responded angrily. The development already had me quite upset. PWD have to jump through so many hoops just to get barely-adequate care in this society. There are new restrictions every time you turn around. Commonly, you have to go through a dozen steps to get a product or service that’s watered-down and half the quality of what an abled person can access in one step. This is the second shift for the sick. It is very hard for many abled people to understand exactly how much we take on when we become disabled. The onus of access lies with the disabled person to correctly maneuver all the complicated and sometimes contradictory regulations, to take all the necessary steps in the right order at the right time, without mistake, because — like those long math problems in second grade — if you screw up one tiny thing, everything else might come tumbling down with you.

We had commenters “helpfully” inform us that we could just get a script for the narcotic agent alone and take Tylenol with it — and then come back defensively when PWD responded by saying but that puts an unfair burden on us when we are carrying such a heavy burden already.

I wish I’d had the energy to moderate that thread calmly, evenly, without emotion. To carefully explain to people why I believe what I do, why certain things are harmful even if they don’t seem so from the outside, why this regulation would be wrong and discriminatory, and why it is evidence of a larger problem in the structure of our society. To explain all of this in a measured, reasonable tone, with background and sourcing.

Academically.

I didn’t have that energy. I have chronic pain conditions. I am already pushing myself so hard to be able to write what I want to write while I’m guest blogging here, and handle the comments, on top of handling my life. Yeah, you know, I have one. I have to take my 14.5-lb feline leukemia positive cat into the vet for an exam and vaccinations to make sure he doesn’t catch some random infection and die. And take his 10lb sister in too to make sure she’s vaccinated, so she doesn’t end up catching it from him and getting sick herself. I have to help my husband prepare dinner. I have to clean the filthy bathroom. I have to take a shower, something that is enormously taxing on me. I have to run household errands. And, you know, visit with the in-laws for the holiday. All these things sap my energy.

And when my energy is not tip-top, my coherence suffers too. I have trouble putting words together. I get flustered.

So I’m not going to be able to respond reasonably every single time. Them’s the breaks.

Anger. Anger is a feminist issue. The anger argument is a tactic that the privileged party uses to shut down complaints from those lacking privilege. We recognize this when it is a man telling a woman she is too angry, hysterical, hostile, harridan/harpy/banshee/we all know the slurs. It is wrong. It is a way to simply dismiss the woman without having to actually pay attention to what she’s saying. It is taking advantage of the privilege you have over her.

I don’t give a flying shit whether that’s what you intend to do when you pull the anger argument on someone — anyone — a person of color, a disabled person, a queer person. This is well recognized in feminist theory; the argument that the unprivileged person is “too angry” and that people would be more receptive to their arguments if only they would state them sweetly, “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar” –

Don’t tell me you don’t recognize what bullshit that is when the non-privileged person is complaining about something that harms them, and the privileged person cries that they just can’t listen to you until you put it in such a way that soothes their ego.

Oops, I’m getting angry and unreasonable again, aren’t I?

So I responded angrily, mockingly, to comments that I thought were unproductive. I’ll give you a tip right now: last year I made sure to be calm and patient with a set of difficult commenters on one of my guest posts, and it went on for a hundred or so comments, before he gave up and began saying that I and other posters must just be depressed because we disagreed with him.

It did me a lot of good to engage patiently with that guy, mm? He walked away with respect for my argument, did he? No. He didn’t. He walked away the same as the opposing commenters walked away on yesterday’s post.

Anger is valid. Anger is a rational emotion in response to a world that is unjust. And to deny a person anger is to deny their humanity. It denies them the full range of human experience. It denies them the ability to process events in a natural, human way.

I wish I had been well enough to comment calm and patiently on yesterday’s post. I am being honest here. I wish I had been able to just explain diplomatically why I see things the way I do. Because that can be a valuable thing to do.

However, doing so can also transform that commenting space to one that – again – centers around the privileged person’s conception of the world. It forces other commenters to carefully frame their comments in a way that is palatable to the privileged person. And thus it completely shuts the door on a more advanced conversation about the issues affecting them.

No offense, but I’d rather shut the door on the privileged people’s protestations than on PWD’s ability to explore political theory relating to them. Sorry.

Oh: and pandas are cute.

***

My writing is, as a commenter described at one point, is a messy marriage of personal and political.

I write from a personal perspective, but I draw political conclusions from my experiences and observations, and those of other people like me.

It may not be a style of writing that appeals to everyone. It may not be palatable to the masses.But it is important.

I entertain abstract, academic style discussions. But I connect them to reality on the ground. This is vital. We can have as many cute little reasonable debates as we like, but if we never stop to pay attention to what people are actually experiencing in this world, what fucking good are we doing?

We all have different roles. And I know mine.

I bring my personal experience to the table. And there is a reason for it. And I am reminded of it every time a reader comments or emails me to tell me how similar their experiences are, and that they’ve never heard anyone affirm them before. They have never read something in a political context – and make no mistake, feminism is a political theory – that addresses their life.

People with disabilities are largely segregated from wider society. Institutionalization is alive and well today. And barriers to access keep many PWD stuck at home, unable to participate in all different aspects of society.

And many of us are out there, mixed among the wider population — but invisible. Our disibilities are not readily apparent. And therefore our experiences are invisible as well.

My writing aims to make those experiences visible. To expose them to the rest of the world. To force them in the faces of able-privileged folk. So they see that we exist. So they can no longer walk around under the impression that we are not among them.

When our experiences are invisible, our needs are not addressed. Society is already built around the needs of the currently able, to the exclusion of the rest of us. We have made some strides, but there’s still a long way to go. And part of that is making the rest of society realize that people with disabilities are all sorts. We are in wheelchairs and walkers, we use canes. We use medication and TENS units you can’t see. We use braces. We are on bed rest. We have assistant, we walk alone. There may be a visible physical difference or a noticeable behavioral difference. Or we may look and act just like an abled person.

Most of society has trouble recognizing this wide range of disability. When disability is recognized at all, it is within the narrow narratives that PWD have come to recognize: the pitiful/tragedic story, how awful it must be to be “half a person“, or the inspirational/supercrip story, watch in amazement as sie overcomes hir disability! There really isn’t room for any other kind of story in wider society — and yet our stories are so diverse. And so important.

That is why I tell my story. It is only one story. But there are many people like me – and they’re out there writing too. And I want to make sure our stories are visible. And my goal is to make them so visible that they can no longer be ignored.

Everybody needs to be exposed to the reality of living with a disability. Everyone needs to be exposed to what actually happens, in practice, in our lives. All the theoretical discussions in the world aren’t worth shit if we’re still left to die on the streets in large numbers.

Unfortunately, able-privileged spaces (that is to say, almost every space in the world) tend to entertain only those theoretical discussions. The academic, the abstract. To the exclusion of what is happening on the ground. Because that’s messy and hard to reconcile cleanly in a calm, level, reasonable way.

That’s why I tell my personal stories. Because there are lessons to be drawn from them.

The thing is, when I tell my personal stories, I expose myself to a society that is ignorant at best, actively hostile at worst. I expose myself to all the biases contained therein. I expose my self to the public, and everything it can bring.

I take the hit to make the play.

***

I handled yesterday’s thread imperfectly. And it exposed me to a set of people who took offense at my anger – yet found it completely appropriate to make insinuations about my character, my state of mind, and even my sobriety – in one case stating “…this kind of vehement, angry response in a discussion that is relevant to one’s ability to obtain an addictive substance seems eerily familiar to me, as someone who has lived with an addict for nine years. When a rational person suddenly behaves irrationally when his supply is threatened…”

You can find the discussion yourself, at the web site of one of the key commenters in that thread. Right now, I’m just hurting. I tried. I messed up. But fucking hell, I am putting myself on the line in hopes that maybe, in some small way, I can advance the conversation on this issue so that other people currently harmed by certain attitudes might some day see a better world — and maybe find a way to cope in the meantime.

And it hurts.

I’ll leave you with the words of Cara and Abby Jean.

The thing is

The thing is, most of us feminists know well enough that when an anti-choice man comes into a pro-choice woman’s space and tell her that she’s wrong on the subject of her own reproductive rights, there is, no matter his phrasing, nothing “polite” or “reasoned” about what he is doing.  Most of us feminists know perfectly well that the man is still arguing that the woman, the woman to whom he is speaking as well as all women, does not have a right to make decisions about her own body.  Most of us feminists know that when that man gets a negative response, and he counters with an argument about how the woman shouldn’t take it so personally, he is displaying privilege.  Most of us feminists know that there is nothing “abstract” about a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, and that it affects real women’s lives.  It’s not generally lost on us that most of those who spend time treating the “abortion debate” as an excuse to show off fancy rhetorical skills are men.  We generally know that when women point out that hey, this actually affects our lives, we are shot down with the admonishment to not be so “emotional” on the subject.  And we generally know that this is wrong, and hugely misogynistic.

But ah, it’s called “privilege” for a reason, isn’t it?  And so for many, many feminists, these simple, basic understandings that we lament so many men not getting, go out the window when talking about a different oppressed group.  And white feminists will tell women of color to stop being so emotional about the “objective” debate regarding whether or not something is racist.  And cis feminists will tell trans women to stop being so emotional about the “objective” discussion of whether or not their gender identities are legitimate.

And temporarily able-bodied feminists will tell women with disabilities to stop being so emotional about the “objective” discussion on whether or not their experiences are valid, and whether or not there is real reason for their concerns about decreased access to needed services.

And then they will fail to see why what they’re doing is wrong.  Because, well, that anti-choice guy, he’s an outsider.  But us, we’re all feminists around here!  And no other identity could possibly matter!  So we’re all friends!  And how could you dare treat the privileged, ignorant, sticking her foot in her mouth “friend,” the same way that you treat the privileged, ignorant, sticking his foot in his mouth “enemy”?  It’s so unreasonable!  They were just making a reasoned argument and demonstrating their rhetorical skills on this fascinating matter!  STOP BEING SO IRRATIONAL.

I am a person who is privileged in virtually every way other than her sex.  And this is exhausting, infuriating, and wildly depressing to me.  I can’t even begin to imagine the feelings of those women facing further oppressions, who are the actual objects of these patronizing diatribes about reason and logic, from supposed “friends” who know enough to know better.

it is so hard…

it is so hard for women to talk about their own lives and experiences without being attacked. even sharing those things with an audience expected to be mostly sypmathetic, or at least expected not to fashion the author’s own words into a weapon to attack the author herself, is a risky and sometimes very dangerous act.

a lot of these problems seem to stem from a reluctance to give any deference to the person’s own account of their lives and experiences. we think that our academic skills, our research and our logic, can give us full and complete insight into and understanding of an issue – regardless of whether it is something that could ever affect our lives.

but there are things that you cannot understand until you have lived them, cannot learn unless you are taught by people who have lived them. whether it be the amount of hassle and difficulty caused by adding another separate medication to an already complicated pain management regiment for a person with a disability, or how the timing of bus transportation can dramatically increase child care costs for working single mothers – these things are learned most effectively from those who have experienced them.

so to enter a space where a person is talking about their own experiences and to tell them they are wrong, that they will not be affected that way, that it is not that big a deal, and that you know so because of your research or your logic – that is the opposite of learning. that is affirmatively shutting down discussions which could lead to learning. and it makes it much less likely that the person with experience – the person without whom you cannot learn the essential details of the issue – will be willing to participate in such a discussion in the future.