I went digging through my drafts just now, and I stumbled upon this fragment — all I had saved of a small sketch I was working on.

It is fitting that I would wake myself early and haul my tired fat deposits out the door for a doctor appointment that is scheduled, actually, for tomorrow. So I found myself outside a little after nine in the morning, all dressed up (in jeans, dirty worn men’s sandals, bed hair, and an oversized Penguins hoodie) and nowhere to go.

It was, as I recounted to my husband, cool and quiet and full of yet-to-be. There was a grey cover on the skies and a touch of misting here and there. The roads yawned wide and empty. Light was diffuse but intense. The clock tower at the courthouse

The next morning, I found out. About it. And instantly my world came crashing down… the world I had only just finished rebuilding.

The day before.

I have to get back into this. I have to push myself. I’ll never get it back if I don’t. I’ll never get my life back. And, God, I want it back — please. I’m almost there. We’re almost there. We’ve been working hard. I’m only just starting to feel it. Please, this time, let me wake up not to a creation crumbling around me, but to a potential I can fill.

There is no thing in life I want more. I want what I had — but it was flawed. And I understand now: I don’t just want to keep it and correct its wrongs. I want, instead, to make something, something new, something better, something stronger. That space, that potential never realized. I see it now. I want to fill it.

Please.

“yes we are going to Food 4 Less they built one on North Court, you can only go there in the daylight, too many shootings”

mmmm, home.

i work in an office now dealing with those same people, those people everyone is so afraid of. the poor people. and especially those who are racial minorities (well, actually racial pluralities where i grew up). you know, the trashy people, the ghetto people, the gang members, the baby mamas and welfare queens.

when i moved out on my own in 2004, a four hour drive from anyone with whom i had even acquaintance, i was warned profusely about the dangers of being a young, single girl out on her own. in public or in my home - no matter, it’s all dangerous. really i shouldn’t be going at all, because you never know what could happen to you, you know, around them.

living in orange county i found in my college peers a strange aversion to using the free-for-students bus system to get around. the system was clean, safe, with good frequency and practically no point at which there wasn’t a stop within a mile at most. but these kids just couldn’t bring themselves to use it. my roommate was without her car for one day, just one day, and she skipped classes altogether rather than take the bus to school and back. my conversation with her made it quite clear why. she felt it was beneath her. and, my curiosity piqued, i found similar attitudes in many of my classmates through my time there.

why? what is it about the bus that makes it so untouchable? it’s not the bus system itself - again, impressively clean, incredibly easy to use, and free! throughout the entirefuckingcounty! no - it wasn’t a systemic problem. it was a problem of proximity. proximity to them.

and, ok, it annoys the shit out of me.

you aren’t going to die of the ghetto cooties if you find yourself within a couple yards of a poor person. they aren’t going to bite you. stop acting like you’re passing through the lion cage at the zoo.

this middle class obsession with “safety,” with where’s a “good” area to live, and especially where is an acceptable place to raise a child, with the very heavy implication that allowing a child contact (especially regular contact!) with the cooties-carrying poor folk is tantamount to abuse - it drives me absolutely upthefuckingwall.

i’m just tired of it. look: i grew up with Those People. hell: i grew up being part of Those People. and though i am mostly comfortable financially now (it’s nice, having a husband who can work full time, not having to rely on anemic disability benefits) we still live surrounded mostly by Those People. Those People are my people.

and i say this as a moderately conventionally-attractive skinny young white chick who dresses and behaves like a solid member of the middle class (trust me, i learned how to “pass”) - all the things which supposedly make contact with Them so dangerous - as long as you aren’t stupid (you know, the old flashing-your-cash cliche), you can walk among Them and make it out alive. because really, when you get down to it - look: They are the same species you are. you can even breed with one and produce fertile offspring! (well, i guess that’s not that much of a revolution - it seemed to be about the only purpose the higher classes [that's you too, mr. middle man] had for direct contact with Them throughout history…)

anyway - if you understand these people as people, and learn a little common sense (that is, not limited to “stay away altogether”) you’ll do just fine. even if you’re white. even if you’re middle class. even if you’re a chick. even if you’re all of the above!

and maybe if more of “Us” started treating “Them” as, well, us (and not in that fakey feel-good liberal way) maybe we’d find out that there’d be much less reason to stay away from Them than we thought.

I think I’m glad this is a limited-term job; I am still debating myself over whether I can really handle this. But for the time being, well, I will. It’s who I am. And honestly, I love it. I only wish my body allowed me the option of doing anything else too.

So this is what I have been doing. I’m doing my best to restore, slowly and deliberately, a careful balance to my life. Come say hello.

amandaw on tumblr — for quotes, short thoughts, and other collections.

The store includes neck/shoulder warmers and scarflettes, keypad and wrist rests and drink cozies. The store and item descriptions indicate that they drew inspiration from the needs of their mother(-in-law) who has fibromyalgia.

The items seem, to this trained eye* to be quality-made, and made with the needs of the users close at heart. They aren’t the standard, mass-produced designs. The neck/shoulder warmer looks absolutely perfect for my own needs — moist heat to loosen and relax the tight, tense neck and shoulder muscles, but not too heavy, as the weight only exacerbates the exact problem I’d be trying to correct! And it’s shaped perfectly to cover precisely the area I need, as opposed to the traditional sorts which are simple oblong shapes meant to maybe cover a few-inch-wide area of the neck. And I’d love the wrist rests at work.

Every person’s needs are different, but if yours are similar to mine, this is definitely worth a look around.

The Ferris Wheels

A shot of the current front page

***

For those who aren’t familiar with Etsy, it is a site dedicated to handmade items, where anyone can open up their own shop and start selling. The wonderful thing about it is that the prices are very reasonable, for the most part (it costs about as much to shop at Etsy as at Amazon and other low-price retailers), there’s a much wider range of taste and style available, and almost every seller is open to customization — whether you’d like the same item with that cute little penguin fabric or you want to add a couple pockets there or you need a different size, or… I’ve worked with a range of sellers on Etsy on custom items and they’ve all been excellent, and I’ve been very happy with the products I end up with.

Other etsy sellers worth a perusal (I’ll mark those with whom I have experience):

utilitywear (there will be a post of its own for this one- purchase experience)
florspace (purchase)
umeblossom (custom purchase)
leapinglizards (custom purchase)
danielleloporto (I have had people stop me in the store asking about these wonderful little things - they save me a lot of time and energy and they’re also cute as hell!)
seabreezestudio (custom purchase, VERY easy to work with, quality stuff!)
bagonebagshop
simbiosisbyjulia
jpatpurses
oktak
charmdesign
jennalou06
oladesign
tahirih
lingglass
lobbyloucrafts
cutecumber
borsabella
happykatbags
heatherrlange

Take a look around — the links above are just the stores I’ve stumbled across that fit my personal taste (to varying extents) — there are many more items and styles available.

***

* Over my lifetime I have used so many different assistive items, in these categories and many others, that I can fairly accurately predict the comfort, quality and efficacy of an item for my needs based on its appearance and description (and occasionally on a tactile test, but I’ve found anymore I don’t even need that). Keep in mind that I have not purchased from this seller (yet!) but I feel very safe and confident in recommending the items even without that.

Our focus is often (and should be) on the women targeted by this hate, the women who suffer under this stream of threat and this actuality of violence. It should be focused on the actors and co-conspirators as well. Aside from those who take direct part in that hate or violence, another important piece of this is the effects of this misogyny upon the male in general. What misogyny does to the male identity and psyche and sense of peace and self-love. After all, the Female is not hated in a vacuum. So, too, is the Feminine, entire. And that cannot be walled off to one gender. This loathing, this hatred points back to what we know to be part of our natural being.

Men (as boys) are “asked” to join the oppression (under great threat of both social humiliation and physical violence and over and over, too) and to do this of course, we must snuff out/suppress the Feminine in ourselves. This is, of course, a great pain and loss to a human. And as this loss cannot be mourned by implied decree, this pain becomes a bitter, perverse mess that is blind to itself. And so men not only join the hate against women, but they then envy women for their freedom (to still be allowed) to be expressive, emotive, beautiful, affectionate, relaxed, vulnerable. And the loathing to self-loathing ties to envy ties to sorrow and loss and is given ground, and men are emotionally insane when modeled as instructed. And they act out this insanity even when they don’t know why. It is because they have too often been prevented from even knowing who they are to begin with.

…

For if a man cannot love the feminine aspect of himself, nor can he love a woman. And if he is hiding from that half of himself, he cannot fully see a woman. And if he would abdicate half his power, he is weak to the point of failing.

…

Because Colonization (and Patriarchy, too) are about control. And thus, Prop H8. And thus stiff collars and the Western Modes of acceptable and authoritative dress. And thus stark unforgivable lines. And thus dichotomized stances and laws that no person lives under comfortably and organically, unless they crave unnatural and aggravating wires strapping them down to the earth, making up for all the strength they have abdicated and would have used to guide and know themselves otherwise….

OTOH, I would love to expand my reading on the subjects of race and disability in particular. Feminist/womanist blogs welcome. I’m looking to deepen my knowledge in fields I feel I don’t understand well enough.

What are your favorites? Recommend some good posts if you feel like digging them up.

It’s been a long five months, stutteringly under-employed, thrown off balance by Uncle Eddie’s decision to freeze state hiring for the budget year (and he’s talking now of cuts yet to come), which ended my chances of procuring a state clerk job. I was hoping to be employed with the state (or county, who works off the same civil service test result list) for several reasons — good pay, great benefits, and most of all, security and stability. Working with a disability can be a realizing experience or a crushing one, depending almost entirely on the environment in which you work: your co-workers, your supervisors, company policy. With the state, I would know one thing: there is a very low likelihood of running into any trouble, and if I do, I can be reasonably confident that it will be taken seriously in the upper levels.

This job was approved ahead of time; it is temporary, until early spring, processing energy assistance applications. I may be eligible for unemployment when I am laid off, which may actually be an ideal situation considering my disability: work one third of the year, rest the remaining two, then start again next winter. I may also be eligible for transfer to any of the various positions for which I was being considered when the hiring freeze came down. Regardless, I will have opportunity even when this position ends.

We can now pay off our maxed-out credit cards (which have borne our living expenses while I was without income) as well as some other debt (for instance, the car I totaled last December). I now have a predictable weekly schedule around which I can plan my medication, my laundry shifts, my showers (I have already decided: Saturday mornings and Tuesday nights). I will be able to afford the little things I have put off during these five months — a memory-foam bed topper (down, surprisingly, is not nearly so good for my body as one might think) (and though this item seems like a luxury, keep in mind my stress, pain and fatigue throughout the day stems directly from my insufficiently-restful sleep), a new shower chair, comfortable layering pieces for wintertime. And the particular job also solves a couple major problems in my personal life in ways too complicated to explain here.

2008 has not been kind to me. Things I never imagined could happen to me, things I have constructed an identity around avoiding, have happened. My late June vacation was the one bright spot in my rear view mirror, but some very bad news broke soon after and dampened any remnant joy I may have had from it. (I still have not processed those four thousand pictures; until recently, it was too emotionally painful.)

But finally, now, something has gone right. And recent weeks have been, on the whole, positive. The stability I have been chasing for so long, it seems, has finally arrived. And I couldn’t be happier.

even after death
they stuff our bodies into boxes …

– mscripchick

(Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Click through for a short summary of those dead whose stories are known.)

I don’t know how you have a conversation with people for whom “because it’s right” is not enough of a reason to do something. I really don’t.

– commenter Isabel

… arguing with a doctor about weight is like arguing with a priest about whether you should be a Christian.

– commenter Eve

They’re waiting for the self-disclosure that explains why someone who seems so “normal” would identify with the disability community. They’re waiting to find out exactly why the friend who spoke up isn’t just like everyone else after all: The excuse that allows them to continue ignoring disability identity and culture. They’re waiting to be able to explain to each other, later, that:

“I don’t know anyone with Down’s. How was I supposed to know her sister had it?” [...]

The reason an able-bodied or able-looking person needs a reason to be a disability advocate is simple: So everybody else has a reason not to be. It’s “not their dog.” [...]

Disability culture (Deaf-Side debate notwithstanding) doesn’t require that you show your crip card, or your sister’s, mother’s, or brother’s, to be in favor of that which is right.

– Veralidaine

I write from San Francisco, where, in the months leading up the election, I saw a massive mobilization within the queer spaces in which I spend time to get people to vote no on 8, but I saw little or no public discourse among LGBT people about very important state propositions: 5, 6, and 9—all of which potentially impacted things like funding for prisons, drug crime sentencing, or the trying of minors as adults in this state….

– Adele Carpenter

Just take the other day. I was exiting a building in a stream of white people who had been able to afford the ticket to the show we had just seen. I was pushed off the path by two couples and a what looked like a father with his arm around his daughter. Wizard righted me. No one else came to help. They were too busy talking about the awesome Obama victory. Then, father ran down, literally, a poor black homeless woman who was trying to walk upstream. She kept saying “excuse me, excuse me.” Father pushed her aside; the white people on either side flooded around her. She was entirely invisible. I looked her in the eye and exchanged words with her. No one else seemed to see her. The Obama victory, you know.

– Wheelchair Dancer

Many accessibility solutions are structural; they require collective action — constructing spaces such that wheelchairs can be used within them; hiring interpreters and providing caption services… these are not actions that can be undertaken by a single person.

What is unfortunate about this, though, is that it relieves the fully-abled individual of hir responsibility to hir disabled counterparts. It means the fully-abled individual can safely get away with never thinking about disability, and the connection between societal access and hir actions specifically, at all. Sie never has to consider how her attitudes and behaviors very really shape the environment of hir peers. Sie never has to stop and think, how does what I am doing affect those around me, and how can I change that to make things better for them?

When all solutions are collective, your own actions become invisible. Your contribution to the world around you becomes invisible. The power you hold over other people becomes invisible. Your status as part of the problem becomes invisible.

So let’s be clear — YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. And there is no instant solution, no magic words that can make that “go away.”

But what can you do?

I thought of what I think is an illustrative example the other day.

When I was attending college, I had a lot of walking to do — at least a mile from my dorm to each class, and of course the walking in between. It was exhausting, and it was one of the major factors that led me to drop out the first time.

One of my classes was on the sixth floor of the humanities building. Another was on the fifth floor of the math and science building. And I had several choices on how to reach those points:

1. The elevator.

2. The escalator (in the math building).

3. The stairs.

Here’s the irony: the only accessible solution was the stairs.

I have a physical disability. That disability is also invisible. I can climb stairs, but when I do it precludes any remotely physical activity (up to and including sitting upright) for a couple days, compounded the more flights I have to climb.

This was not teneble, not when I had to do this three times a week, and that doesn’t even include the energy required to walk to the building in the first place, to sit in the hard uncomfortable chair for an hour taking notes, and the energy I needed to do the home assignments, projects, and studying necessary for the class. And that doesn’t account for my four other classes!

So: Why couldn’t I use the elevator?

Well, because everyone else was using the elevator — so many people that there was a long line and usually a 15-20 minute wait before you could step foot in one.

Again, I have an invisible disability. I could have pushed to the front of the crowd every day, jostling my way through dozens of people to weasel my way in the door. And that would have made me kind of an asshole, you know?

So what do I say? “EXCUSE ME, I’M DISABLED, I NEED TO GET IN.” And everybody would turn to look at my lanky eighteen year old body, with no visible deformities, no mobility aids or other assistive devices or personal aide or caretakers, having walked in the front door just fine. And then everybody would be thinking that I was kind of really an asshole.

Complicating things is that at the time, my severe anxiety was undiagnosed and untreated. There was no way I could have even squeaked out a humble “excuse me,” much less forced my way through the crowd, much less shouted for all to hear that they needed to get out of my way and give me “special treatment.” Oooh, how I loathed special treatment. It made me feel like I was, you know. Disabled. Not normal.

Anyway.

This crowd existed in front of every elevator in every building on campus. Not all of the people waiting at that elevator were healthy enough to take the stairs. There were surely others with invisible illnesses like me, and others yet who just weren’t in the greatest shape, and so on. But the majority of those folks took the elevator because it was there. And those folks are the ones who made my life, and my participation in society, that much harder back then.

So: Why couldn’t I use the escalator?

Here’s a different problem. A lot of kids used the escalator. An escalator, as you know, is basically a revolving set of stairs that moves upward, so that you don’t have to do any climbing to get up to the next floor.

But here’s the problem. Everyone who took the escalator? Walked up it.

Everyone.

Now, if I wasn’t going to be climbing the stairs, why the hell would I go and climb the escalator? The entire point is to spare me that climb, right?

But I couldn’t use it that way. If I stood still on a single step, that would clog up the line of kids studiously climbing, climbing. They were narrow enough for two small people to stand side by side, but then not everyone is small, and we also had to carry our bulky book bags and such with us. So if one person stays still, there is a bottleneck effect — only a trickle of people can squeeze through, and everyone else gets stuck behind you standing still.

Assuming everyone in that crowd is healthy, someone who stands like that and creates that kind of jam is, again, kind of an asshole — right? So what was I supposed to say? “I’m disabled, sorry.” While everyone stares at the back of my entirely healthy-looking body for the next few minutes.

Right.

So: what was I left with? Well. The stairs were pretty free. Maybe I could have started to carry a cane, just to visually signal to people that I was sick. Even though I didn’t need that cane and wouldn’t know what to do with it. Do I hunch myself over, tousle my hair and do my best to act like I’m ninety years old and barely hanging on? Just so people would maybe, just maybe, believe me?

Or maybe… maybe everyone else involved could have stopped and thought about how their actions were affecting other people. Because I sure as hell wasn’t the only one facing this dilemma.

Just because the elevators and escalators existed did not mean they were therefore accessible to the people who needed them. Because accessibility is more than structural. It also counts on the actions of each individual.

Yes, you are part of the problem. There are times where you are in the way, where your actions are creating difficulties in someone else’s life. And you probably can’t even see it. But, you know — maybe you would — if you started looking.

Dear Matthew,

Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop using large-size portrait photography to illustrate your blog posts.

I sit at my computer, for the most part, either casually or barely dressed. And though I am safe at home, my lizard-brain is still always at ready for potential offenders. So when I see sixty-five kilopixels of Bobby Jindal staring at me from my computer screen, I squirm in extreme discomfort. There is a creepy man staring wide-eyed into my face. (…if I’m lucky) It skeeves me out.

Your posts are good enough to stand alone. If you must employ graphical illustration, there are plenty of other photographs of Bobby Jindal that do not stare intently at my body from behind my LCD. If you must use mug shot style portraits, at least make them small enough (a hundred pixels length tops?) that my lizard brain does not mistake them for potential real, live persons who may be paying me undue attention.

As it is, I usually have to skip the posts, or at least enough of the posts to scroll down far enough to hide the offending eyes, which bear these illustrations. This does not serve your interests, does it?

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Signed,

A Long-Time Fan Who Has Finally Had Enough, Dammit

P.S. I do kind of get a kick out of the Hoover pixxxxx. Subtle and snappy way of making your point. Kudos.

My job situation is still shitty, and I’m currently part-timing at a retail pharmacy as a cashier. (Sample day: Mid-20s white guy “discretely” [read:blatantly] takes a picture of me on his cell phone as I am kneeling down assembling a battery display; someone shits in the toilet paper aisle [seriously! a person! took the time to unbutton their pants and all!]; I set alarm off while fetching pushcart from back room.) “The injustices of retail,” I said to my coworker, as I nursed the scratch on my finger from pushing that toothpick in a little too hard.

But honestly, I still do, and always have, appreciated working with the public. It’s the kind of thing that reeks a little too much of bullshit to say in an interview (”Really! I love when people show visible surprise at the revelation that I can do third-grade math!”) but, well, it’s true. I like people. I am, fundamentally, the kind of person who likes spending time with people (though my severe social anxiety always masked it). I’m not a butterfly by any means — good God, I can’t stand parties, pubs, or the mall at Christmastime, and I always need time to recharge after any extended social time — but I do enjoy interacting with a variety of different people, and there are days I go home smiling because of it.

Today I met a man named Robert. He stopped by to ask how long a sale price on a can of Folgers was supposed to last, and we ended up chatting for a good ten or fifteen minutes — the line piled up behind me, but I didn’t give a damn. Robert was in a wheelchair, for whatever reason, and was there to pick up his medication, whatever it was. He got his “paycheck” on the third of every month, and only the third (read “paycheck,” there, as Social Security disability check) but right now he was fighting with Verizon, who apparently shorted him half a hundred dollars worth of minutes on his phone, and he was going back-and-forth with them to get the situation righted, and anyway he wouldn’t be able to come back for his coffee til then. I was nodding and exclaiming the whole time as he was describing how much fighting he had to do — to get his transportation to the doctor, to work, to the grocery store; to get his medicine filled correctly and on time; to keep his welfare benefits flowing smoothly (there is apparently a very common mistake that gets made on his account every couple months, and he then has to make a dozen calls here and there to get things patched up, and then a few weeks later some new worker makes the same mistake again, and…) etc. etc. etc.

God did I identify, and I didn’t have to deal with the half of what he did. The fatigue and the worry and the energy and the stress and the wasted time — and when I related as much to him (having by this point unfolded my stool and sat down over the counter) he laughed it off — “Oh hell, I’m used to it by now — doesn’t bother me.”

I hope I never get to that point. No one should ever have to get to that fucking point. No one should ever have to spend half their waking hours, no fucking exaggeration, correcting other people’s mistakes just to keep the basic necessities of life covered — and then getting attitude from those same people for being a pain in the ass to deal with.

This is a serious time sink for the ill and disabled. It is time that could be spend — you know, maybe working? bootstraps and all — could be spent writing, could be spent playing board games, or taking a bath, or spending time with loved ones, or going out to eat — or any number of other things that are totally productive, constructive, positive things to do — which, to varying effect, do make contribution to wider society.

And it’s a lot of time. This is why I call it the second shift: much like the second shift of professional women, who arrive home from work to do the domestic work their husbands do not do: this is a disproportionately larger share of time spent fighting, always fighting, pushing determinedly (or tiredly) through near-constant resistance.

Resistance — truly the best word for it — it is as though “normal,” “healthy” folk are able to move throughout the world uninhibited, like pushing your hand into thin air — but sick people, disabled people must move through a world which is set up to prohibit their full participation — like pushing your hand into a thick heavy bog.

That is privilege. The ability to swim through your sea with nary a care, completely obliviously unaware of the freedom of movement you are so fortunate to have, while the rest of us have sand bags tied to our limbs, anchors roped round our waists, our feet set in cement blocks… and to look back at us and ask, “What’s taking you so long?”

It’s exhausting. I cannot convey in words how exhausting the fight is. Always on the defensive, always saddled with the knowledge that your basic needs require a struggle, while everyone else’s basic needs are pretty much a given so long as they put in at least a half-assed drop of effort. It’s not even just time spent, it’s energy.

Look at it this way. How do you build muscle? You subject your muscles to resistance, just enough to create thousands of tiny little tears in your tissue, which your body then, with rest and nutrition, repairs — which leaves you stronger.

But this does not mean that all resistance therefore makes you stronger. Because the more you pile on, the more tiny little tears you make. And the less time you have to rest, to eat and drink well, to tend to your bodily health, the less of those tiny little tears get repaired. And you find yourself, now, with millions of tiny little tears, and not enough time or fortitude to repair even only the thousands you had before this overload.

Which means you don’t get stronger. You get weaker.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” What unadulterated bullshit. And it has the bonus effect of implying that those who do not feel stronger after a difficult incident, those who feel fatigued and despondent, those who see themselves as in a worse place than they were when they started — it implies that those people are choosing their fate. It implies that those people get something out of their misery.

Say, all you sick people out there: does any of this sound familiar?

What’s taking you so long back there?
I get it –you must just get off on being a victim.

Robert and I wrapped up our chat — turns out he lived in Anaheim for awhile, and also attended Cal State Fullerton; what a small world! — and I moved on to the next customer, affecting the smile and the sing-song customer service voice. Hi! Do you have your [Pharmacy Name] card with you today?

But it was nice, if only for a moment, to connect with someone. To, prompted by the unspoken invitation of a new friend, reach down into myself, and connect with the real person deep inside.

Maybe our struggles make us stronger; maybe they make us weaker. It doesn’t matter. We work with the tools we are given, and we still make something whole and beautiful, something worthy, something satisfying. Why do we have to come out of every fight bigger and “better”? Why can’t we be broken and hurt? Why can’t we cry, why can’t we curse, why can’t we be angry and disappointed and let down sometimes?

Right — because we wouldn’t want to make the rest of you face up to the damage you do to our lives. We wouldn’t want to “burden” you, wouldn’t want you to have to do anything to maybe reduce a little bit the fighting we have to do to live our lives. We wouldn’t want to make you have to think about how your actions and attitudes affect other people — wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.

When we are allowed to be angry, to be sad, to be bitter and disappointed, we are allowed to be human. When we are denied these emotions, we are denied our humanity. We are denied the full range of human experience.

It is fundamentally unfair — to weigh a person down disproportionately — to pile more and more shit atop their back — and then to grow indignant when that person lets out a sigh under the pressure — much less looks straight at you and lets rest the responsibility where it belongs. But this is how we treat each other — immigrants, queer folk, the disabled, those of color, the poor and disadvantaged — because we are fundamentally uncomfortable owning up to our own power.

Life would be so much better if we realized how much power we all have over each other — and how much power everyone else has over us — our interdependency. It is the concept out of which disability grows. And life would be so much better if we could look at this fact and see, not

scary,

or

unknown,

but

opportunity.

Congratulations, all.

I am not a starry-eyed optimist. I can’t stand “inspirational” kitsch. I don’t fall for glurge stories. But dammit, people, tomorrow we are going to make history together.

I am so, so proud of the efforts I have seen from my community. It’s incredible, and humbling, to be a part of.

I’m going to be working as a poll watcher, addressing voter suppression/intimidation, so I’ll be out of touch all day. I’m going to go fucking nuts, people. There at 6:30 and polls close at 8, but whoever’s in line at that time gets to stay. So who knows how long it’ll be. I’m gonna try to last the whole day. We’ll see how well that effort goes.

I’ve never been excited about politics like this. I always cared — but I cared about changing things that weren’t right. Now? I’m happy. Truly happy. It just puts a smile on my face to think about it. We’re going to do it. We’re going to do it, all of us.

I’ll meet you Wednesday morning, my friends — morning in America.

The eligibility requirements for Social Security Disability, in a nutshell:

• Have a medical condition (mental or physical), or any combination of multiple conditions, which
• Impairs your ability to work for pay, such that
• You cannot pull Substantial Gainful Activity, which is currently (for 2009, non-blind) defined as
• $980/mo.

Do the math: that comes out to a yearly wage of $11,760 before taxes. That doesn’t have a whole lot of buying power, even in flyover country.

I applied for disability, and was approved, in 2005. At the time, SGA was defined as $830/mo. At the same time, I was seeking residence in Orange County, California.* The cheapest place I could find (with access to a reasonable bus route to my university) without rooming with strangers was $860. That was for a “bachelor” apartment without so much as a kitchen.

My disability payment — as a Disabled Adult Child (what an unfortunate name!), it was based on my mother’s work record — was calculated to be, if I remember correctly, $844. That was a California payment — the federal payment at the time was (iirc) $579.

So, my disability payment didn’t so much as cover rent. It didn’t help that my old buddy Gov. Schwarzenegger kept cutting the cost-of-living adjustments for the blind and disabled, in order to balance the budget shortfalls created by his tax cuts for the wealthy. Priorities, people!

Anyhow. SSDI recipients are eligible for Medicare coverage beginning their 24th month of benefits. Which is nice and all, but it meant two years of paying out-of-pocket for the drugs I needed to be well enough to leave the house for more than five minutes at a time. Expensive drugs, needless to say, which had no cheap generic alternatives.

But time passed, and as of February 2007, I became eligible for Medicare. Finally! I was able to seek full treatment for my medical condition, no longer doing the bare minimum to get by.

But as things improved, I faced a conundrum: With the treatment Medicare paid for, I found myself better able to work… enough to earn something approaching SGA… and my condition was only improving. This would have resulted in the loss of my disability benefits, which would also mean the loss of my Medicare coverage. But the private market refused to insure me. Which means I would no longer have been able to afford the treatment that allowed me to work. So my condition would have deteriorated, rendering me, again, disabled. At which point I would be eligible for Medicare… and…

A vexing situation, in my case “solved” by my loss of benefits upon marriage (a feature of the DAC program). Were it not for that — or if I fail to remain married for the rest of my life — I would be back in the same endless circle.

And I know I’m not alone.

- - - - -

*Spare me the “Well, you could have moved somewhere cheaper!” Most people can’t simply pick up and move sight-unseen. Especially the poor and disabled, who can’t exactly hop on a plane and just count on reliable residence and employment being available for them. For the most part, people who do not enjoy considerable economic privilege are geographically immobile. If they haven’t already lived there and they don’t happen to have family there, chances are it isn’t going to be a smart move for them to move there. The ability to research a new area, conduct a job search from afar, and pick up the pieces after the move (you’re going to have to find new: furniture, vehicle, auto and home insurance, health insurance, family doctor, specialists, etc. — the latter which are a huge burden [do you have any idea how hard it is for the health-challenged to find a good, communicative, knowledgeable, effective practitioner to treat their ills?]) is a privilege, and no person should be judged for lack of it.

It was an interesting exercise in not voicing my opinion about, well, anything. Which was difficult, especially when people would persist in trying to talk politics with me. I fell back on talking about how exciting and important this election was, and how awesome it is that so many people are starting to engage with the political process, and how for whatever reason, this election has a lot of people getting up and taking action, which is a Good Thing.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that almost everyone I approached was not only registered, and not only voting (and always for Barack!), but was taking active measure get the people they knew involved, too. We visited a couple African Methodist Episcopal churches (I browsed through a book on women and global poverty at one, which was excellent), where there was naught an unregistered adult to be found. I spent a lot of time in front of the Christian Outreach and doing some door-to-door in the majority-minority parts of town. It was a genuinely exciting job to do, and incredible to see so many people inspired to take action themselves. I took a huge hit for my efforts physically, but I’ll never regret it.

I did notice, however, that while every black person I encountered supported Barack, there were still a considerable amount of them who were adamant that they were not going to vote. And there was only ever one reason they gave for that decision.

“Someone’s going to take him out.”

A lot of people expressed fear, or resigned certainty, that a President Obama would be swiftly assassinated. And you know what? I just don’t know what to say to that. It just makes me profoundly sad.

One day my husband is dragging me (who likes to play sports, but has no skill at playing sports, and had zero interest in pro sports whatsoever) along to a playoff game, the next thing we know I’m a rabid Penguins fan. I “accidentally” bought a six-game mini-plan last season (long story), which didn’t help matters. I got to watch Malkin step up the points race while Sid was down with a high ankle sprain. I developed a quick appreciation for Marc Andre Fleury, the deft and nimble crosseyed French-Canadian crack monkey, my one and only celebrity crush (seriously, watch that man move — the splits, the dives, the spins, the full-getup-and-skates hops — and watch his dark eyes dart around behind his face mask, always searching — and tell me that isn’t impressive as hell). I got to be a part of the incredible energy in Mellon Arena during the final games of the season. It’s a drug. And I got hooked.

I don’t know what it is about the game that draws me. It’s not for a lack of other sports in the household — hubby is a baseball stats geek, and also watches football, basketball, and NASCAR — none of which interest me much. (Surprisingly, the most tolerable of those four is the last one.) But for whatever reason, now, the sound of skates on ice, and the silly epic-sounding Penguins intro music, gets me in that same giddy mood children get in on Christmas morning.

One of the things I appreciate most about hockey is that it didn’t seem to have the exclusive atmosphere of, say, your football or basketball. There are no cheerleading squads or “dancers,” and the ads during the TV broadcasts tend to be pretty mild. No soft porn, GoDaddy, macho-man robots, local radio-sponsored hot babe contests, and the like. There is an element of performed masculinity, as in just about any mainstream pro sport. I mean, fighting is pretty much a central tenet to the game. But — and I’m having trouble articulating the distinction here — while there is definitely quite a bit of feminist analysis to be done on the game, the players, the culture, the advertising, and so on — there isn’t quite the same constant reminder to women that this isn’t for you.

It’s hard to watch football and not be bombarded with messages that are explicitly and enthusiastically geared for men. Not men as humans, but men as men. And not even men as men, in an affirmative, appreciative way — but men as not-women, in a taunting, exclusionary way. It is telegraphed quite clearly that women’s only place in the game is for men’s consumption.

I never much got that sense in hockey — or NASCAR, surprisingly, as I said. The culture was definitely geared toward men, but it didn’t shut the door on women. And I appreciated that. “Honorary man” still isn’t good enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than “man’s property.”

In football, women are a part of the game as bikini-clad cheerleaders. In racing, women are part of the game as on-the-ground reporters. And while the latter sport is hardly innocent (trust me, I’ve hardly a lack of criticism for the sport), that difference does send a message to the fans at home.

All of this is a lengthy introduction to my home team’s latest marketing project: Hockey ‘n Heels.

I mean, the program itself doesn’t sound so bad, right?

One (1) game ticket in the Club Level Seating for three (3) games which includes event ticket, event premium item and buffet dinner

Locker Room Tour

On-Ice Demonstrations with the opportunity to sit in the Penalty Box/Player Bench

Attend a morning skate

Meet and greet with players after the morning skate

Limited Edition Framed Art Piece

Sounds pretty cool. And really, I don’t see how this would appeal any differently to women than to men, or children, or hockey-lovin’ aliens from outer space. At least it isn’t a hot stone massage and black-and-gold manis and pedis. It’s cool, exciting, relevant stuff. Actually hockey-related. Nothing any female hockey fan wouldn’t love.

Why, then, the stupidass name?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never seen anyone standing in line to get in to Mellon Arena wearing four-inch Manolos. Pretty much everybody comes wearing some sort of Penguins jersey, shirt, jacket or sweater, possible a Penguins baseball cap or beanie. Most people are in jeans or shorts. The women who wear Pens gear tend to wear oversized men’s sizes. They look frumpy. They look “ghetto.” And they don’t give a shit! They’re showing team spirit, dammit.

I have seen a couple men in business suits, but I haven’t seen a single pencil skirt yet. And I’d say it’s somewhat impractical to mount the steep steps up to your seat inside the arena if you’re wearing shoes that double as an assault weapon.

OK, there’s nothing wrong with heels. I understand a lot of women love them. I love my skirts. I wear makeup (sometimes). I like getting all dressed up. I’m pretty cool with flowers and I like to bake. Hell, I actually like doing the laundry! All of which are trappings of femininity, some of those things perfectly harmless were they not bound to gender roles. And I don’t think it’s really feasible for most women to completely eschew anything that could possibly be “tainted” by the patriarchy. So this isn’t a criticism of heels themselves.

It’s just out of place, is all. I see a hell of a lot of women in those stands. Most of them are jumping and screaming and enjoying a beer just as much as the men.

But they needed a clever name that would capture female fans. Thus, heels.

When I see or hear an advertisement for this program, it just reminds me that I’m not a “real” fan. I’m not “supposed” to be making a damn fool of myself, shouting criticism from the sidelines, quoting stats in conversation with my husband, biting my lip when the game gets particularly tense, and jumping to my feet every time the horn sounds for a goal. That’s what men do. Women sit pretty, toss their hair, and giggle politely when men do something stupid. They’re not supposed to enjoy the game, because women don’t like sports for sports’ sake. They just get dragged along by their husbands. The only way to get them interested is to appeal to the girly things they actually like to do. Don’t cha know.

Ugh. I don’t know what else to say. I’m disappointed. If I had money to throw around, maybe I’d offer them a considerable sum just to change the fucking name. It’s patronizing. Shame.

“He shares our values…”

“Family values”

“American values”

“Traditional values”

If nothing else, this election season makes one thing quite clear: in a sociopolitical context, the word “values” is nothing more than a code word for “white.”

Purified water? Iced tea? Crisp fujis? Low-fat yogurt? Soda cans? No innocence is left unspoiled. Beware the cold-soaked onion, my friends.