I do it on a regular basis.

I’ve said and done things that hurt friends, hurt enemies, hurt people I don’t even know. And no matter who it is, it matters.

I just want to acknowledge that yes, I have heard your criticisms. And yes, people have made a lot of important points in response to my mistakes. And yes, I am trying my best to listen, to take it to heart, and incorporate these perspectives into my work and interactions going forward.

I won’t always do it perfectly, but dammit. I want to try.

These things sit on my shoulders for a long time. I don’t want to keep doing the same fucked-up things over and over again. If I have to do them at all, I’d at least like to use them as a kick to my own ass to actively improve my approach to writing and conversing and criticizing and playing and living.

I appreciate it that people feel comfortable enough, and see value in, raising objections or even just offering refinements. It makes our community more vibrant and our work more just.

I’ll keep trying to be better and I hope you’ll keep working with me.

For the purposes of this post, I would like to remind everyone that the range of disability includes people who are mentally ill, paralyzed, Blind, Deaf, permanently injured, autistic, physically disfigured, with compromised immune systems or disordered speech or chronic pain or cognitive impairments, and many, many others. Disabilities may be fatal or not, may be degenerative or not, may be apparent or not. Being painful, fatal, stigmatized, or poorly understood does not mean that life is not worth living, and I will not tolerate any attempts to enforce a hierarchy of disability; there is no category of Especially Bad Disability that destroys any chance of worthy life.

Blog for Choice Day 2010

Have you ever participated in the stigmatizing of pregnncy, childbirth and childrearing when the parent, child, or both have, or could have or obtain, disabilities?

Have you ever participated in the cultural narratives that say:

• Older women should not have children because their children are more likely to have a disability
• Women with disabilities should avoid having children because their children might also have a disability, and it would be wrong, unjust and cruel to give birth to a child that is not in perfect health
• Women with disabilities should avoid having children because only temporarily-abled women can properly parent a child, or being a mother with a disability would somehow deprive the child of necessary experiences or put a burden on the child
• Women with disabilities should avoid having children because they are more likely to be poor and need public assistance, and their children would also be more likely to use public assistance in the future, resulting in a drain on temporarily-abled taxpayers
• Women with disabilities would be selfish to have children, and to do so would contribute to environmental destruction, economic decline, and even degradation of the human species, and they and their children would be less valuable members of society because of their lack of perfect health
• It would be a tragedy to have a disabled child, disabled children are less desirable than temporarily-abled children
• Life with a disability is inherently worse than life without one; life without a disability is the baseline by which all life should be measured, so of course to have a disability would be a negative and would make a person’s life worse
• Disabled children are a burden on their temporarily abled parents, more so than any other child would be, and this is because of the child’s disability rather than because of the lack of support and affirmation throughout all levels of society for PWD and their loved ones
• Of course it is more desirable for a child to be perfectly healthy than to have some sort of medical imperfection, and those medical imperfections are a big stress and hassle on the temporarily abled people around the child, and there is something wrong with the child for failing to meet an impossible standard of perfection
• Health and ability are objective concepts and our current cultural wisdom on them are completely right and the medical industry that puts them forth is infallible; our ideas about health and ability are the only right way to look at things and can be universally applied
• To violate those cultural ideas means that you are inherently flawed
• The answer to all of this is to go to excessive lengths to avoid ever having, or being around someone who has, health problems, up to and including letting the least healthy die off or be terminated before they can live at all

You know what? I’ll bet you’ve all done it. Even the most radical disability activist has participated in some of these cultural tropes at some point in their lives.

But I’ll bet the vast majority of people “blogging for choice” would never think of disability as related to “choice” issues, and if they did, it would be for the right of temporarily-abled higher-class white Western women to terminate a pregnancy that has a more-than-minute chance of resulting in a less-than-perfectly-healthy child.

This is why the “choice” framework fails. It fails all of us, but it particularly fails those of us who fail to meet society’s idea of the optimal person: the pale, thin, beautiful, and financially comfortable picture of perfect health. The person who never relies on others (no!), is “self-sufficient,” and isn’t likely to end up a burden on the important people.

The rest of us can “choose” to stop existing.

Do you really trust women? Or are you perfectly willing to override their choices if you feel they threaten your comfortable position in society?

And you expect me to think you’re any better for my rights and needs than pro-lifers, why?

(Cross-posted at FWD/Forward.)

I have been on the Internet for a full half of my life. I was twelve when I got my first computer. I am days from turning twenty-four.

I more-or-less grew up on the internet. I’ve been part of a variety of online communities. You definitely start to notice some commonalities. I think I’ve pegged the median life of an internet community around three years: after that time, drifting sets in, or conflicts create divisions, or original members have moved on and it feels like the essence of the community went with them, and so on. And there’s often one or two people from the group that you keep contact with over the long run.

I’ve gained so much from my time online. I’ve connected with some amazing people. I’ve made lasting friends. I’ve had space to grow, to explore. Making those connections online as a young teen actually helped me learn to socialize offline (contrary to the panic of traditional-media sorts as new media grows more prominent and the new generations make use of the technology available to them). I still had access to a network of support when I found myself unable to leave the home or socialize in-person. And access to information, the opportunity to learn things that might never have been in my reach otherwise — from sexual education to photography and design concepts to politics and social awareness. And I needn’t go into detail, I think, for most of my readers to understand the value of activism no matter where it happens.

For all the internet has to offer, it can also be a dangerous place. And I’ve watched it happen in a number of communities I was a part of. There are all kinds of people out there, and not all of them with a sense of understanding or respect for boundaries. And it only takes one person, out of hundred or thousands, to change the shape of the community they target.

It can happen in many ways. Some of you might remember that I met my husband online. The community we met in was a close-knit group of friends. Every year we planned a meeting, choosing a place close to some percentage of the group, and would go out together to museums, restaurants, theme parks, local/historical points of interest, and so on. We associated with one another with our real identities, for the most part. As far as we knew. Until one member faked his own death to us, for reasons unknown, and several people who had grown very close to him fell out of the community as a result.

There was another community, a much larger one, where members sorted themselves into sub-groups of friends. And one group was dominated by this particular woman. She made a point to be as inflammatory as possible. She wanted to see drama. And she would target any individual who raised her ire (whether they spoke against her or just happened to be in her way at the moment). Target with harsh words, target with customized insults, target with twisted stories or speculations about the person, designed to exploit their vulnerabilities, displaying knowledge of the target and hir situation — she had done her research — that was as much a personal violation as the infectious lies that she weaved into her attacks.

I’ve seen this happen in multiple communities. These toxic individuals who strongarm their way into prominence. In the beginning they are boisterous but nonthreatening. But their loud, commanding style immediately sets them into a dominant position, no matter how few people know them at first. They use their dominant position to reward people who make a show of flattering them. They make connections early, carefully cultivating supporters, rewarding them with insider status if they show themselves willing to play by the dominator’s rules.

This toxic person begins to gain prominence, in part because sie begins to sew conflict. Sometimes it is subtle, not overt or obviously conflict-seeking, but rather setting hirself up to be wronged, or finding a sensitive issue to exploit. But sometimes it is blatant: outright picking a fight with other people, seeking out enemies. Either way, sie becomes a person that no one can any longer ignore. Sie forces hir way into a place of importance and relevance to all community members; they have to pay attention, because otherwise they might stumble in hir path, or break one of hir rules inadvertantly, and suddenly find themselves in the middle of a shitstorm.

This is the point at which the shape of the community changes: this person is terrorizing the community. Hir supporters are no longer simply part of another sub-group of friends, but now become enforcers. They cannot believe that anyone would speak ill of this person who has treated them so well, and they make sure that anyone who does so is promptly punished. They make sure that no one breaks the dominator’s rules; they pick fights with others in an attempt to prove their loyalty to the dominator.

The really disturbing part is when the big fights break out: anyone who speaks out against this toxic person is swarmed. The toxic person may or may not be personally involved. Sometimes, sie sits back as hir supporters do the work of harassing the dissident, picking at all their flaws, manufacturing them if need be. But sometimes, sie will get involved — seeking this person’s greatest vulnerabilities, and exposing to all observers — knowing that sie does not need to say the nastiest things — someone else will step in and do the dirty work for hir.

And people get the message. It only takes one time, although it may happen well more than just once. People see what the consequences are for speaking out against abuse. And people, quite rightly, would rather protect themselves — even if they feel brave enough to speak up, they can see already that it’s not enough to make it stop. They might have seen a great many people speak out against the abuse, and each of them individually targeted for attack, and the dominator keeping hir place of influence in the aftermath. People may not be happy, anymore, but sie still holds this power.

This is highly damaging in any community. I’ve watched it happen, watched how the dynamics of the community change, observed the consequences of pushback. In one particularly extreme incident, the bully actually researched the real-life identity of an enemy and called around to anyone she could find, including the target’s in-laws and boss, with a fabricated story that was just plausible enough to sew seeds of doubt, and the target actually saw consequences at work because of it.

But even when the abuse is confined to the online community, it can have real effect. I’m not a person who believes that the internet is a somehow less-important space than physical proximity. We are all real people, and we are having real interactions and making real connections, medium regardless. Harmful behavior is harmful behavior, no matter how it is facilitated. And abuse is no less abuse because the abuser isn’t sitting in front of you.

To the contrary: the invasion of space, the assault on a person’s autonomy and integrity, the violation of a person’s freedom of association, are just as real when they happen over a data line. These spaces are important. They might be the only space you can interact with distant friends. They might be the only space you can interact at all, because you are dealing with disability or poverty that makes leaving the house (or bed) and socializing in person difficult or impossible. (Which is why it’s frustrating when people dismiss online spaces as somehow not-as-real or not-as-important.)

When I’m part of a community that houses one of these bullies, I live in fear of the person ever being clued in to my existence, knowing that I could not handle being targeted like that. I have had to leave communities I cared deeply about because I couldn’t keep subjecting myself to those conditions. I have had to break connections with people I cared deeply about because they had some connection to the abuser.

And not just with online friends.

After I moved to Pittsburgh three years ago, I lost contact with every friend I had in California, my closest, deepest soul-mates (in a BFF sense). You see, my mother started stalking me online, seeking out every social media account she could find, invading every space she could find me in. So I left them. All of them. For two straight years I never logged in to my Myspace or Facebook accounts because she would be able to see that I had; certainly I couldn’t have interacted with anybody on them because she would find out. The friends whose emails I didn’t have before, I lost contact with. The friends whose other contact information I did have were the ones in my home-town social circle — the social circle my mother had infiltrated. So now, 2500 miles away in a place I’d never lived, knowing no one but my husband and his immediate family, I was completely isolated from the only support system I had.

Abuse has real ramifications. On real people. No matter where it is carried out.

When it comes to online spaces, some people may not see much of a problem. It doesn’t feel threatening to them. Annoying, maybe. But not threatening. And they don’t see why people can’t just ignore it. It’s not that hard to get past, for them.

But there are some people who can’t just ignore it. People who have been through this before. People who have been primed by previous abusers, primed to respond to certain tactics. For these people, even if they are not the center of a conflict, just being exposed to those same dynamics again can be incredibly harmful. It might not be the same person, the same place, the same situation — but the same patterns are playing out, and it’s not just that you have flash-backs to previous events; it’s the way you return to the state of mind you were in during the previous abuse, the way your patterns of thought go back to how they were then, the way you react to things restored to its previous setting. You might find yourself becoming highly self-critical, questioning your own experience of things, doubting your knowledge of yourself and what happened. You might find the same problems with self-loathing come rushing back. You might be wondering whether you really deserve it. You might start to see yourself as a burden again, highly aware of all the ways you drag other people down.

You can’t just ignore it away. You can’t just Think Positive your way out of it. You can’t just tell yourself that all these thoughts are untrue; no matter how well you understand something intellectually, there is something about the human psyche that still follows those same self-destructive emotional patterns when exposed to the same kind of situation that originally set them in place.

Just because you don’t actually feel like the community bully is going to find you at your workplace doesn’t mean hir actions aren’t having real effect on you — no matter how much you fight it.

Survivors of abuse are everywhere. And they are not always known as such. They are often invisible. And the consequences they suffer are not always apparent to outside observers.

What disturbs me as I watch this play out in yet another community I care about deeply is that this community is different. It’s not just about making friends or sharpening your debate skills or sharing memes with each other. This is a community with a purpose, and it has real effect. Real change is happening because of the conversations that we have with one another, puzzling out the direction of a movement, examining systems and learning how to change them, working with one another to advance the theory behind the movement, to find relevance, to find need, and to fill it. A lot of people have been introduced to concepts they might never have encountered without a thriving network of communities dedicated to common purposes. And, as a believer in bottom-up change, I fully believe that the influence of this community will spread.

And maybe it’s naive of me to expect better, but I rather do expect that groups of people centered around advocacy and activism would have some measure of awareness of abuse, how it works, how devastating it can be to the person/people targeted. I would definitely expect many of these communities to know that the abuser has often made sure to become in some way valuable or indispensable to the larger community, doing good things for other people, even as they do such harm to others. How often do people rally around an accused rapist and close in on the accuser, because they know what a good person the accused is and what good they are doing in [other area], so there’s no way they could be capable of something so heinous, and anybody who suggests something so patently ridiculous must have some sort of insidious motive…

You will see similar narratives play out in online communities — often without even the precept of an accusation. It is not the target who (publicly) initiates the conflict, in this case — the target may have been minding hir own business — but the abuser. All the abuser needs is a slightly modified version of reality — just plausible enough that supporters/enforcers and passers-by don’t bother to check for accuracy, but instead go on the abuser’s version of events — but just twisted enough to set up the target for harassment and humiliation, just something enough to suggest salacious details (real or manufactured) that a motivated supporter might dig up about the target, and just set up in such a way that any way the target might defend hirself would only create more embarrassment or incite escalation.

This is called manipulation.

What is most frustrating is that there are people who know that something is wrong here, people who are seeing red flags, but rather than choosing to back out of the whole conflict, they step in to question the target. Because maybe there are personal issues between the abuser and the target, they figure, but on the merits (as posited by the abuser), doesn’t the bully have a point? And then they unquestioningly accept the abuser’s terms of engagement, imposing those terms on the larger conversation, forcing the target to either engage on the abuser’s terms or not at all — which, of course, sets the target up for failure. And the conversation may not have proceeded on the abuser’s terms without the intervener’s assistance.

This is called enabling.

These people are willingly being used as tools. They are allowing themselves to be manipulated, for what reason I can only guess: sometimes, for the approval of the dominating person, for the points they win by staying on the right side of the conflict (“right” as in most dominant), or maybe they’ve had conflict with the target before too. Maybe there are other reasons, reasons I don’t understand right now, that aren’t as malignant in nature, even as they have a negative effect.

But it’s especially awful, when it happens that way — because it hurts so much worse coming from the innocent bystander, the person who had previously been a friend — it cuts so much deeper when it is coming from a person who generally acts in good faith, a person who generally acts with respect.

The target, then, is isolated: the people who see what is going on are too afraid to speak up, knowing that the consequences of showing any support for the target are having some of that scrutiny diverted their way. And it is understandable to protect oneself in that case, especially when past incidents have shown that even a great many people speaking up against the abuse cannot break down the power structure that the abuser has built.

And that is why the enforcers (whether willing or oblivious) are so frustrating. Because they are the ones who are defending that power structure. They are the ones who are making sure that even when the vast majority of the community is unhappy with the state of things, they cannot wrest back control of their space. The abuser, by hirself, could not win against an entire community that is sick and tired of hir actions. But when the abuser “has a point” — “does so much good” — when people would rather stay willfully ignorant to the structure they are reinforcing as they use it for their own benefit, because any position of influence is worth it because they would use it for good things –

And the system forges on.

How many voices have been silenced by this system we so casually reinforce?

How many people have been intimidated out of writing, building, working within the community?

The answer isn’t zero.

I’ve watched enough of these conflicts now to have lost count of the people who did speak up, who bore the consequences of doing so, and whose voices disappeared entirely after the storm passed. I’ve lost count of the people who became targets, and the campaign was a success, the person humiliated, and even when attention turned elsewhere they were too scared, too depressed or burned out, questioning whether they could ever contribute anything valuable — their voices quieted.

And there is no way to count the people who were observing silently, who might have joined the community, adding their voice to the conversation, contributing valuable perspectives and insights — no matter how small their circle of influence — who were too scared, having witnessed what can happen if they inadvertently step in the path of the wrong person — who decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

Again, this is devastating in any community. But particularly in this one — a community where we want people to use their voices — we want a diversity of perspective — we want a high degree of participation. This is a community where the entire point is to listen to these voices, and to engage with one another, to build upon each other — and no matter how small the voice, no matter how unknown the contribution — it still matters. A great diversity of small contributions makes a stronger, more stable foundation for a movement.

Every little bit is just as important as the next. And the higher degree of participation you have within a group — whatever commonality they share — the more likely the movement is to actually better their position in society, in life. The more you discourage participation, the more the movement becomes dominated by a few competing leaders. And the fewer people participating, the less relevant the movement becomes, for lack of a diversity of knowledge and perspective. The fewer people participating, the more the faults of the few leaders matter. And the more likely the movement is to eat itself inside out.

I don’t trust that it will make much of a difference, just me writing on my little blog. Especially when I am too fucking scared to name names. Especially when I already spent two days suicidal last week, and still don’t know whether I feel up to meaningful participation in this community going forward. Especially if that scrutiny comes back. I’m being fairly risky, writing about it outright like this. And it’s my own safety that I’m risking. And if I find myself targeted again, I might have to pull out of yet another community because of it.

But I will mourn this one a fair bit more. Because it’s more than friends lost.

It’s purpose.

(Optional background: my previous post and this comment to it.)

Yeah. I can be. I get angry.

I never used to. Ask my best friend. He’ll tell you. I was an appeaser. I was someone who was always sweet, always accommodating, always ready to be the mediator in a conflict, trying to reason with both sides, trying to placate the opposite party, making sure I never, ever said anything rudely, shortly, bruskly, or in any way that might put off the other party.

I still do that sometimes. When I have the time, energy and inclination.

But I don’t have time or energy anymore. Period. I have twenty things to do every day and only enough spoons for four of them. And that’s the basics: shower, prepare food, work (oh God, work), feed the cats, pay the bills, get ready for bed.

I participate in this community to varying extents at different times, depending on my time, energy and inclination. Sometimes I spend “spoons” here when I should be spending them watching hockey with my husband, or getting that extra half hour of sleep so I won’t fall over at work tomorrow. Sometimes I just have spare time and this is where I choose to spend it.

I feel like I can learn something here and also teach something here. I can do something. Make something happen. Be effective. Even if I only affect three people. Three is more than I would affect watching daytime court TV shows.

I don’t have much to spend here. I never do. What I want to be able to do is spend time researching, considering, organizing, compiling, refining, presenting. I want to be able to do more neutral-tone, resourced, annotated type posts.

I want to be able to profile the CCA. To explain what its goals are and why it is needed. To explain what is happening with it (currently, it’s dead because the current session of Congress is almost over) and what we can do to move it forward (right now, the first thing we can do is raise awareness of it so that more people can push for it because it will continue to go nowhere if the only grassroots support it has is from the likes of ADAPT).

Right now? I do not have the energy for that. Or the time. No matter how much inclination I have.

In the meantime, I watch the way things go in this community that I am a part of. And sometimes, the way things go makes me angry, as I watch it and it continues, over and over, to follow the same patterns, even as people raise their voice and point out the problems — and sometimes get shouted down for it — even as people demonstrate how it might go differently — and are summarily ignored by the people who hold the power in this community — and basically consigned to their corner, where they will continue to do the hard work they are dedicated to (and sometimes burn out because there is so much to be done and so little support) while nobody knows about it, because of a combination of a) the people with the power/audience don’t see fit to tell anyone or direct anyone their way or hell, maybe pick up and help out with some of that workload themselves? and b) the audience themselves don’t have the inclination to seek out the cornered-folks themselves, if they even have the inkling that they exist (because nobody is omniscient).

And you know what? That does make me angry.

So maybe I profile the CCA. And people who care about disability already learn about it (if they didn’t already know). And, because it isn’t “a women’s issue,” or because it doesn’t affect them directly so they don’t quite feel the same urgency, or because the culture is such that non-abled priorities are devalued so it ends up so far down the list of things to get to that it will never get gotten-to … feminist bloggers don’t say anything about it.

And … ?

So I get angry, and I wish that those bigger feminist bloggers would pick up on it, because it is a women’s issue, it does affect a great many people quite seriously, and it is something that they could make a serious difference with if they were to pick up on it, because it quite desparately needs a wider base of support.

And maybe I go the plaintive, appeasing, email-or-post-with-a-”Please-will-you-address-this?”-plea. Because that would be less offensive. (More effective? I don’t think so. I don’t think either way is more effective than the other, in the end: maybe you get people angry at you when you show anger with them, but maybe you’re also quite likely to be completely overlooked if you don’t get someone’s attention — because the whole problem is that they aren’t paying attention to you as you’re doing things the “right” way!)

Or maybe, it is an injustice that this issue ends up ignored by abled-feminist leaders, and it is legitimate to be angry about that, and it is legitimate to call them out on it.

Maybe, they didn’t know about it. That’s just how life goes. But maybe, the reason they don’t know about it is because of the systemic devaluation of non-dominant priorities. Maybe, the reason they don’t know about it is because they are continuing to — sometimes unconsciously, sometimes consciously — value their concerns over the concerns of people not like them. And passing over articles that detail issues that profoundly affect women because they don’t affect women like them. Don’t kid yourself and say that’s not why: they didn’t sit there and think to themselves while curling their moustaches, “Ha ha! These women are not like me, so they can go jump in a river for all I care! Stupak is more important!” But they just didn’t see the relevance — because our culture devalues disabled concerns!

That is what I am trying to change!

And one way to do that is to point out to people when they make those value judgments! Even in error! Even unintentionally! Because intentional or not, women are still being forced into institutions because of it!

Can I get a little angry about that sometimes?

Don’t you think it points out the root problem fairly effectively to point out that subconscious devaluation rather than just profiling the legislation at issue? Isn’t that also a valid problem to point out?

In general: when I’m short on time and energy, I’m a lot likelier to be short in response, too. I’m a lot likelier to just spit out my point rather than trying to go back, pad things with explanations of why and disclaimers about how I know you aren’t a Bad Person and reaching out my hand to hold yours through the process. Sometimes I feel like doing that. Sometimes that’s a valuable thing to do.

But it’s not always the most effective thing to do. And either way, it’s not what should be required of someone — I am a woman with a disability, remember — before they can point out that someone’s stepped on their toes.

Sometimes I’m mean.

I wish I weren’t mean as often as I am. And sometimes I slip up.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s never acceptable, or effective, to be mean. That sometimes, being mean isn’t what is merited given the situation.

I will continue to engage with this community to the extent and in the manner that I choose. If you don’t like my style, that’s OK. Not every person is required to be compatible with every other person’s style of communication. There are other people doing similar work without my sometimes-rude bent on it. I encourage you to seek them out. You are entitled to engage to the extent and in the manner you choose.

But please do not try to attack the legitimacy of this style altogether. Because it is a valid style, a sometimes effective style, and a needed style. We need all sorts of people to make this movement work. We need all sorts of tactics. We need people who are willing to kick a few people in the ass. And we need people who are willing to hold hands and guide gently. And we need people who can explain the simple facts. And we need people who can pull those facts apart and figure out what they might mean.

We’ve all got different roles. This is mine. If you are not comfortable engaging with this style, OK. Engage elsewhere. But don’t tell me to stop engaging. Because I refuse, absolutely refuse to dial back on calling people out for doing shit that is ultimately harmful.

There are some very important tasks at hand, and I’m willing to do some of the work. The work that I can do. It might not be much work, or the most effective work, but it’s what I can do, and it’s still something to help get these very important things done.

Don’t downplay the importance of that. Don’t even.

Feministe. Feministing. Shakesville. Bitch. Kate Harding, Jezebel and Broadsheet.

Every big feminist-inclined blogger who has shown such urgency and import about Stupak and abortion-within-healthcare-reform. Every feminist blogger who has used their standing, their wide audience, to urge people to do something to change this bad thing that is going to happen to people like us.

You’ve been there for all the women with functional reproductive capacity.

Where have you been for all the women stuck in nursing homes and institutions and all the women who are managing to live independently who will have their services taken back from them and be forced to move into nursing homes and modern institutions?

Because this is just as urgent an issue. And just as timely: it is being considered in the current health-care reform package. This one. This same one with Stupak (or analog). This same one you are fighting to improve for the sake of women.

Where have you been for years on the Community Choice Act?

We are talking about policy that is cheaper than subsidizing the cost of placing someone in a modern institution (nursing home, “senior living,” “care home” and the like), that allows women to have independence, autonomy, and self-determination. We are talking about a policy that gives women control over their bodies and the direction of their lives.

Just like access to affordable abortion.

We are talking about policy that lets disabled and elderly people live out in their own communities, with home services that allow them to get by on their own.

We are talking about fighting modern institutionalization, which is alive and well and still just as horrific as the stories from those old abandoned state buildings you’ve all heard about.

We are talking about saving people from being corralled, shepherded, and treated like livestock. Saving people from abusive situations, from sexual assault, from neglect and starvation.

This affects women.

Why aren’t you there with them?

Why don’t I see this addressed with nearly the same frequency or urgency? Nearly the same sense of importance, immediacy?

Because it is quite immediate to quite a lot of people. People who do not have the power you hold in our political system. (Oh, you may hold less than your male-identified young, abled, financially-privileged counterparts. But you still hold a great amount of power compared to many who are not in such a position.) People who need allies to fight with them. Let me spell that for you: N-E-E-D. They cannot see progress for as long as their younger, more abled peers continue to ignore them.

This is your chance to do something that makes an enormous difference.

If you aren’t familiar with this issue, I suggest you make yourself familiar with it. Learn about ADAPT. Read about the CCA and the arguments for it. Look into your local Independent Living center and see about opportunities for volunteering. Whether it’s high-minded political activism or low-status work doing the caring and cleaning and cooking.

Read up about disability activism, and read up about today’s institutions. Force yourself to confront reality.

And, maybe, use that platform you’ve got to share your new knowledge with others.

We need you.

So many people have complained that it is asking too much of abled people to stop using words they consider trivial: crazy, insane, lunatic, idiot, moron, dumb, blind, etc.

I beg to differ.

You know what is really damn easy? Erasing these words from your vocabulary. All you have to do is stop saying them.

You know what is really hard?

Confronting people on their use of same language.

We aren’t even asking you to do the hard work. We aren’t asking you to tell other people to stop using that language. We aren’t asking you to confront other people on their use of that language. We aren’t asking you to explain why it is problematic, to answer people’s questions, to deal with their redirection tactics, or to handle the attacks on and harassment of the people negatively affected by that language that such confrontations always seem to draw.

You don’t have to take the brunt of it. You don’t have to deal with the negative consequences. You don’t have to face employment discrimination, street harassment, caretaker abuse, and other people’s general cluelessness about our lives. You get to sit tight in your privilege, enjoying it without even realizing you’re doing it.

All you have to do is cut a few words out of your speaking and/or writing vocabulary. That’s it.

We’re the ones who are putting our safety on the line trying to change the cultural system that oppresses us.

Two seconds to reconsidering what you’re really trying to say? Easy.

Changing other people’s deep-seated attitudes? Really damn hard.

How do you think we feel when you complain that two seconds is just tooooo haaaaard for you to take on?

(Cross-posted at FWD.)

the scene: mid-morning on a wednesday. the north end of the ground floor of our building. i sit at my open-cubicle desk next to the scan/print station, barcoding applications. my coworker stands at the station, waiting for a fax to come through before she can use the copy machine.

both are silent. the sky is darkly overcast and the climate system whirrs loudly.

after several moments, she declares: “i wish…”

pause.

“i wish i could use the system.”

i look up.

at the moment, our intranet is down. i am assuming she means “i wish i could do my work.” but she continues.

“i wish i could get something. everybody seems to get something out of it. when we’re just trying to get by on our own, you know. they get something for free. i wish i could get something.”

and now i know what she’s talking about. i take a breath and try to maintain a conversational tone.

“i actually grew up on welfare. and it’s pretty hard. there’s so much you have to keep up with. it’s much better when you can make it on your own and don’t need that help.”

pause.

“when i was little, we actually got our food from food banks. you know, stale cheese and cans of evaporated milk, that was all we had. it was more trouble. i like it much better when i can do things for myself and don’t have to rely on that stuff. struggling with all that. it’s not easy at all.”

silence.

her copies are finished and she returns to her desk. i go back to my applications.

***

edited to add: if you want more on the things poor people are put through to get a few crumbs worth of help, read this old post from kactus, a poor single disabled mother whose presence on the internet I miss very much. um… in fact (looking at my comment there), it looks like it was but a few days before I started this blog!

Oct 28, 2009 NOTE FOR NEW VISITORS: Please visit this post first (it’s short). Thanks.

***

[The amazing abbyjean sent me annotations. Annotations! So now: Open Letter To Feministing With Links. We proceed.]

This includes the contributors and the commentariat.

We have a problem. We have had a problem for a long, long time.

You traffick in ableism. Your entire site reeks of it. I have spoken with many disabled feminists who find it impossible to read and participate in your community. They feel excluded. The culture is thick with unexamined ableism. We encounter common slurs and problematic cultural concepts at every turn, and are met with hostility when we bring it up. Some people have wasted energy on emailing you, requesting that you address it, so that they might safely participate in the community. You never bothered to respond. To any of them.

You’ve lost a lot of readers this way. But I’m sure, because that’s the way it usually goes, you lose less readers due to ableism than you gain due to same — because you never challenge their privilege, in fact defend it, passively and actively.

That’s nice for you and all, but the rest of us would, at best, like to play too. As for the worst — we would deeply appreciate it if you would stop deliberately (and don’t you dare say otherwise, you have heard our complaints and ignored them, making your actions deliberate) reinforcing a culture which marginalizes us, leaves us vulnerable to violence (including sexual violence), ostracization, institutionalization and death.¹

I viewed enough of this happening at your site — (years ago, when I was just getting into the feminist blogosphere; disappointingly, you haven’t changed a single bit in the intervening years) — that I never even bothered trying with your site. I’d love to have been able to. But your site has never felt like a safe space for me. Ever. Exactly the opposite. Your site has felt like a hostile and scary place to myself and other women.

W-O-M-E-N.

You can read, right? Spell it with me.

You cannot claim to care about my condition as a woman if you refuse to address the discrimination I face as a disabled woman.

As far as “what issues affect women”: I am a woman. Presumably, feminists care about the oppression women face.

But you cannot address the oppression I, a woman, face, without addressing the oppression so graciously given me on the basis of my disability.

For example, I face discrimination in the workplace. But if we are only to address the male-female pay gap, and ignore the obstacles I face because I am disabled, then you are not helping me as a woman. I am still left behind, still oppressed, as a woman. All you have done is alleviated the issues which affect you. Which means you aren’t helping women; you are helping healthy, abled women exclusively.

This is the basic framework I work from in my feminism. I am not helping women if I am not also out there addressing classism, transphobia, racism, homophobia, and all of the other oppressions that women face.

The reason “Sean Bell is a feminist issue” is because you must address the oppression which killed him to be able to address the oppression of women. If you cannot address that oppression — even though it affected a man this time — you cannot help the women who are also facing that oppression.

And if feminists are ok with not helping women on that level, then feminism isn’t about helping women, it is about helping white women. (me@tumblr)

And I am sick and fucking tired of having to explain this to the likes of all of you. If you are not there to help me in the problems I face because of my disability, you are not helping me as a woman. I am a whole person, not fragmented little bits. You have to help all of me to help any of me.

And if you aren’t all-in, for helping ALL of me, you are therefore declaring that you are only interested in helping ABLED WOMEN. You can cut out this bullshit about being “feminist,” as though you are working on behalf of “women.” Because you aren’t, at that point, working on the basis of gender: you are working on the basis of women with a certain ability status. Period.

A few days ago, meloukhia at this ain’t livin’ heard us complaining, and got sick of it herself. So she posted her Open Letter to Feministing and began promoting it. And it got some attention.

Apparently, Courtney has emailed her back, as of this writing. They are “in the generalities stage.”

I have absolutely zero interest in personally emailing with any of you, but I want to make sure people know that we — disabled feminists — aren’t stupid enough to be placated with a generic private apology. And I want you to know this. What it is that I, one particular disabled feminist, want from you.

1. Just posting about ableism-in-general, while a huge step for you (considering you never engage with disability in even a token capacity), IS NOT ENOUGH.²

2. Feminists have a long history of only ever speaking the dreaded d-word when it comes to reproductive rights, particularly (almost exclusively) the right to an abortion. Yeah, I know, you thought this would be easy. THAT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH.

3. As far as I’m concerned, you are dead to the cause if you never put up a post addressing your own ableism. Not ableism-in-general. THOSE POSTS ARE STILL NECESSARY. BUT THEY ARE NOT ENOUGH TO ANSWER OUR CRIES. You must put up a post examining your own personal ableism, and particularly the ableism you deliberately condone in your comments section.

In your comments section, a few disgusting, prejudiced, DANGEROUS memes are repeated with not an ounce of pushback:

* that health can be obtained by Doing The Right Things (eating right, exercising, being upper-class privileged enough to live the perfect little high-class life that is correlated with that definition of “health”) and that if you don’t Do The Right Things, any conditions that come up are Your Own Damn Fault, Don’t Come Crying To Us For Help

* attitudes expressed that fat people, smokers, and sick people should be paying more for healthcare because their illness is dragging the abled world down

* that disability is an awful tragedy and disabled people deserve only your pity, never your respect, and who knows why disabled people are segregated away in decrepit institutions, it couldn’t be connected to the way we regard disability as the end of meaningful life as we know it, nuh uh

* that having a disabled child would be such an abomination they must be screened out at all costs, and there is nothing at all problematic with this oh no oh no (DISCLAIMER, FOR GOD’S SAKE, I DO NOT PROPOSE LIMITING WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM, BUT I DO THINK YOUR PRIVILEGED ASSES NEED TO CONSIDER YOUR COMPLICITY IN OTHER PEOPLE’S SUFFERING) ³

* that Disability Is Objectively Bad, everyone knows that, duh, who would ever want a disability, of course life is going to be worse with one, and that is just because disability is (of course) inherently awful, and could never (of course) be because we make it worse by the way we treat disability[4.
* Even more frightening, the number of women who are on antidepressants ... why the hell are they having children anyway ... fuck if you can't cope with life, how the hell does one expect to raise a child! http://www.feministing.com/archives/005359.html#comment-47387

* I do think that for the sake of society, people who's severe disability roots from their genes should be prevented from reproduction. I'm not sure what that means, and I know the slippery slope that kind of thought can lead to, but I think somehow it's the most utilitarian thing to do. Not to put a blow against the I Am Sam or anything, but I think some people really don't have the capacity to raise their kids (certainly there are plenty of non-disabled parents who fit this description), but my main concern is that the children are more likely to have those same disabilities. I think society's attitude should be to respect and accept the disabled but not to encourage its increase. Certainly we don't want to always be making decisions for people who can't make them for themselves, right? http://www.feministing.com/archives/007889.html#comment-107733]

* words like “lame” and “retard” and “cripple” and “crazy” are totally ok to use — and their conceptual meanings as well — because disability is objectively bad so it makes sense to use something objectively bad to say that something else is bad, or because no one ever uses that word that way anymore (that I hear, because I as an abled person am the ultimate arbiter of how often certain things are said to certain people, the vast majority of whom I never encounter because they are segregated away from me) and it has lost its derogatory connotation, or that I have a cousin who’s retarded and I love him to death so that means I’m allowed to use the word because that totally eliminates my abled privilege, or it’s just too much of an imposition to change my language and have to lose that one concept to express that is based on harmful prejudice, or or…[5.
LAME

* God. Jennifer's body looks soooo lame. The stupidity dripping from the trailers is so overwhelming, I can't even imagine too many dumb and sexist stereotypical males going to see it. http://www.feministing.com/archives/017815.html#comment-298306

* lame. So fucking lame. http://www.feministing.com/archives/011318.html#comment-182734

* Samhita, 11/07: “Forget immigration, reproductive rights, health care or any other issue we feminists are reading up on for the upcoming election. It is all about getting a hot chick in the white house as first lady. Does that not count potential first dude, Bill? Forget you men.style.com, you are totally lame.

In that thread, someone raises the problem, and another commenter dismisses: “It's been so long since "lame" was used for people with disabilties that I really don't think it's an issue anymore. Besids, it's used as a synonym for "loser", not "defective" (which also isn't a synonym for people with disabilities anymore).” http://www.feministing.com/archives/008086.html#comment-114144

* 1/07, Courtney headlines an article “Can I Get a L-A-M-E”. again, someone calls it out in comments but no response from mods, although mods respond to other posts. http://www.feministing.com/archives/006368.html

* “LAME. Excuse me while I barf in the corner.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/015410.html

someone calls it out in comments and response: “Please don't spread prescriptivist poppycock on any site.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/015410.html#comment-257102

* “Lame-ass beer ads are a dime a dozen.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017741.html

RETARDED

* Victoria Beckham is so retarded, I think she almost belongs in that shopping bag. http://www.feministing.com/archives/008985.html#comment-144542

* Commenter asks “Am I retarded, or can't you reverse a tubal ligation?”http://www.feministing.com/archives/007454.html#comment-93573

response is “No, you're not retarded. There are two types of ligations…” later in thread, commenter raises, no mod response though mods active in thread.

* One commenter uses the term: “It's like when you try to control a teenager and shelter them from reality - when they go into the real world, they often rebel and make a lot of retarded decisions.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/014575.html#comment-239116,
only response is another commenter pre-ridiculing any response: “Uh-oh, you said "retarded!" Get ready to duck the flying tomatoes! :P” http://www.feministing.com/archives/014575.html#comment-239125

* “Lindsay Lohan doesn't have curves like Marilyn Monroe did so to even do this shoot was a retarded idea in the first place.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/008637.html

* “So still being able to marry but being offended by something has the same impact as two gay people not being able to marry? What are they, retarded?” http://www.feministing.com/archives/011095.html#comment-179668

CRIPPLE

* “but the idea of marriage cripples my aspirations in life.”  http://community.feministing.com/2009/07/what-to-do-when-you-want-to-ma.html#comment-282211

* “When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it’s profoundly vulgar. It is like kicking a cripple.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/006861.html#comment-73327

* Canadian reactions are a little different from American ones, very negative or hostile actions can really ruin you (Do not make fun of a cripple, or call someone a Kitten Eater, for instance). http://community.feministing.com/2009/04/women-prefer-polite-politician.html#comment-244108

* “I'm not sure this guy built a robot just to sexually abuse. I think he's an emotionally crippled individual who can't relate to the opposite sex.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/012670.html

CRAZY

* Jessica titles post “Fun with feminist flickr (crazy billboard edition)” http://www.feministing.com/archives/006229.html

* Vanessa titles post “Randall Terry’s Crazy Road Show” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017413.html

* Vanessa titles post “Sen. Tom Coburn's chief of staff reaches new level of crazy” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017876.html

* Jessica titles post “What Double Standards Drive you Crazy?” http://www.feministing.com/archives/007551.html

* “I would be all for the feminists for life if they weren't so schizophrenic about their positions. They won't take a position on birth control but they don't want women to have abortions.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/002804.html#comment-13883

(amandaw's note: good Lord, I can only imagine what you'd find if you searched for "insane" "loony/loonytunes/etc." "unhinged" "psycho" and so forth - again, it's not just the word that's the problem)]

* that if one person, especially a person who has a disability, says something isn’t hurtful or problematic, you can call the whole thing off, because all those other people who DO have a problem with it and have suffered the consequences of it just cease to exist, poof!

* the sense of supremacy over others because you are (choose any or none, thin, abled, upper class, pretty, educated) and fully abled, which makes you totes better than everyone else, but you never CONSCIOUSLY think that so it’s totally ok that you still avoid Those People whenever possible because they scare you or squick you out, almost like they make you uncomfortable realizing your position in life is never as certain as you like to pretend it is? — nah, couldn’t be, just because they’re weird and gross and like, different and stuff

That’s just to start.

This is all shit that goes down in your comments regularly. And it makes women (spell it with me, W-O-M-E-N) feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, especially when they speak up and have other people jump back defending the exclusionary language and concepts, stating that they don’t have a problem with it and therefore there is no problem with it, saying or implying that the challenger must be oversensitive, have an agenda, looking for things to get angry about, or just doesn’t understand that the person committing the exclusionary behavior is a Good Person and that should be good enough.

Well. It’s not good enough. You are not good enough. Your whole site is not good enough. It is going to take some major changes. You are going to have to put yourself on the line, do some serious reading, reflecting, digesting, and actually change how you think and act (and not just by saying “I believe it now!” — we aren’t stupid, we can tell when there has been a true change). You are going to have to criticize yourself and your fellow writers. And –  this is the fun part –

4. you are going to have to change your comment section. You will moderate and fight back against ableism (which you will recognize, because you have actually been making an effort to learn more than you do now, right?) from your own commenters. You will delete offensive comments and tell commenters to stay the fuck in line. And not just once. Every time. EVERY FUCKING TIME.

And don’t you dare cry that it takes up so much time. Because you’re already spending that time watching your space to protect the abled women in it.

We would love it if you would give us the same fucking courtesy.

See also: meloukhia: Open Letter to Feministing; Anna: Dear Feministing: Answer your email; Annaham: Confessions of a Reluctant Young White Feminist; Anna again: Anti-Oppression Linkspam; Chally: Feminism that doesn’t advance women is no feminism at all.

All annotations abbyjean’s except where noted in parenthesis.

Melissa wrote “The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck,” which resonated deeply with many in the feminist blogosphere:

Not every man does all of these things, or even most of them, and certainly not all the time. But it only takes one, randomly and occasionally, exploding in a shower of cartoon stars like an unexpected punch in the nose, to send me staggering sideways, wondering what just happened.

Well. I certainly didn’t see that coming…

These things, they are not the habits of deliberately, connivingly cruel men. They are, in fact, the habits of the men in this world I love quite a lot.

All of whom have given me reason to mistrust them, to use my distrust as a self-protection mechanism, as an essential tool to get through every day, because I never know when I might next get knocked off-kilter with something that puts me in the position, once again, of choosing between my dignity and the serenity of our relationship.

Swallow shit, or ruin the entire afternoon?

Now a couple months later, she has followed with a clarifying piece, “The Bargain, and Its Alternative.” And this post struck me much more deeply than the first, because in this one, Liss turns around to the other side of the bargain — the behavior of the privileged person in question. And remember, here, that Liss is speaking mainly about men she loves, men who are important to her; her husband, father, closest friends — not about some random jerk who presumably “doesn’t matter” when he treats her poorly — but those closest men who on occasion say or do something that really stings, that brings to mind the power imbalance hovering over them:

Even though, intellectually, he knows I’m not accusing him of deliberate maliciousness, and knows I understand he doesn’t intend to hurt me, and knows I’m telling him because I want to be able to trust him, and because I already do, and knows down to his very bones that I wouldn’t even bother if I didn’t already believe and know him to be decent and good and capable of even more, despite all that, being challenged on his male privilege, when it’s such a rare occurrence, makes him viscerally defensive.

And it’s taken a good long time for him to wrap his head around the fact that another part of that privilege is having control over which direction we go when he says/does something sexist and I point it out to him.

There are infinite possibilities of how to react: He could be defensive. He could refuse to hear me. He could try to insist I judge him on his intent, rather than the actual effect of his words/actions. He could accuse me of imagining things. He could imply that I’m crazy. He could turn it around on me. He could behave belligerently, childishly, furiously. He could storm out. He could stand in one place and stomp his feet. He could shout. He could demand a divorce. He could buy a one-way ticket to Rio. He could throw spaghetti. He could challenge me to a duel.

Or he can listen. Take on board what I’m saying and acknowledge how I feel. And then we can get on with the day.

It is a privilege that he gets to decide. And it is a privilege I recognize, because it is also operative for me, when my privilege is challenged—my white privilege, my straight privilege, my cis privilege. I have the same privilege, just in different situations.

Listen, or ruin the entire afternoon?

Here, it is not the unprivileged person’s responsibility; it is not on hir shoulders to decide whether to speak out, and if so, how. It is, instead, the privileged person’s responsibility to decide how sie will react to the challenge — no matter how phrased or presented, whether meek or forceful, whether diplomatic or accusatory — it is on hir shoulders to determine the course of the rest of the afternoon. It is hir privilege to decide.

Until our focus in a conflict turns first to the nature of the privileged party’s reaction and not the unprivileged party’s challenge, we are going to have a very difficult time righting this unjust world.