for Christmas, i sent my mother a gift card for a local grocery store (she was already in awful shape financially — add in a ballooning ARM and a serious recession and things get pretty bad). i asked if the locations were any good (there were takeovers going on when i was moving two years ago). her reply,

“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.

This has been a rather curious endeavor, working at a state office that provides assistance to several disadvantaged groups — and being able to see things on the other side of that reinforced wall. It is an interesting perspective. And I think having a background (however limited) in disability rights and other issues of social justice helps me understand far better what is going on. I’m not sure about you, but I can hold two opposing ideas in my head at the same time and manage to see the truth in both of them. I am large; I contain multitudes. There are honestly many things that are beyond our ability to fix, address, or really do anything other than acknowledge, if that. Sometimes, there is nothing we can do. And yet — and yet. Are the way things are the way things have to be? When the way things are means our rights cannot be fulfilled, must we abdicate them? Are our minds, our worlds, so limited?

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.

behold:

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….

Yet more bad news for the upper-class white liberals who are perpetually Concerned About Your Health(TM). Go figure.

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

Access is an all-consuming endeavor in a disabled person’s life. I love that the disability community learned to frame it that way: it emphasizes that the problem is not the person, their body or their condition; the problem is society’s indifference.

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.

I had always meant to expand upon this topic, but never found the right words for it, succinct and meaningful. But, well, that’s not exactly my style either.

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.

Your progressive media, folks.

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.

My writing has fallen to the side as we go through something of a personal crisis. I hate declaring hiatus; closing off a door, any door, leaves me feeling cramped and constrained. But, yes, things are in a bit of upheaval at current time, and my participation in this amazing community will be limited for a time.

my body, and everything i use to take care of it.

Tomorrow is Love Your Body Day. The boundaries defining NOW, the sponsoring organization, are widely known to be drawn (conveniently) around the Western ideal of the financially privileged white life. But, much like feminism as a whole, I feel there is something of value at the core, something of use to all of us.

I find little use in campaigns and projects claiming to sprout from a respect and appreciation of the human body, which decry an unfair media ideal, but whose aim seems to be — not to deconstruct that ideal in an attempt to destroy any ideal whatsoever — but to deconstruct that ideal so as to replace it with one more conveniently molded to their own experience.

I do not want to replace the size zero ideal with a size six ideal. I do not want to look at the impossibly tiny waists and replace them with well-defined waists always significantly thinner than their accompanying hips and bosom. I don’t want to look at the airbrushed, overtanned, bleached blonde ideal and replace it with an ideal that includes pores and a range of hair color, but only on caucasian and white-skinned bodies, which are still skinny and perfectly toned, with smooth caucasian hair that’s allowed to be stick straight to a little wavy, and always the bright open eyes and blinding smile, always a smile.

Instead of an ideal, instead of merely shifted expectations — we need to blow that ideal to pieces, and in its place, put a purposeful lack of expectation, put a willingness to consider, put a confident knowledge that one may be faced with anything, anything, and put a curiosity, a sense of wonder, an ability to find beauty, rather than have it delivered.

Bodies, bodies, bodies. When we tell one person her body is beautiful because it is not this, or that, or that other thing, we tell another person whose body is one of those things that her body is not beautiful. When we tell one person her body is what we should be celebrating, we tell every other person whose body is different that they are still deficient — only in a different way.

(And as an aside: when we tell one person that real beauty is natural beauty, no modifications, no adaptations, no change whatsoever — we tell every other person on earth, every person who ever does any single thing to change their body, how it looks, what it does, how it feels — we tell them that they are not only deficient — they are committing a grave moral sin. Do you use mascara? Have you ever cut your hair? Why do you eat what you eat? Have you ever taken any sort of medication, for anything from a cold to cancer? Ever visited a doctor, therapist, or other practicioner? Ever injured yourself, and applied an antibiotic and bandage, or a set and cast, to make your body do something it would otherwise not do on its own? Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? Do you wear shoes? Do you shave? Well then.)

Instead, we should tell each person: you are a full, whole, valuable person. Look into yourself. Curl up deep within yourself, forsaking the outside world. And look around. What do you like? What feels good? What does good? What is it about your physical self that makes your life a little bit better?

Maybe it is how your body looks. Maybe it is what your body does. Maybe it is how your body feels. Maybe it is not any of these things. Maybe it is something else.

Look at your body, look at it, every day, look at it and think to yourself, and seek out that which is good. Good. Not good for them. Good for you.

What do you delight in?

What will you?

Body image is a question not only for just-under-average-sized upper class white girls and women. Body issue is a question for all of us. Women and men alike. People of color, mixed races, different cultures with different values. The fully abled, the disabled, the deformed, the deficient. Every one of us, as human beings, has to deal with the reality of our bodies as they are and how that conflicts with the expectations the rest of our society has of us. This is expressed in different ways for different persons and different society. But not one of us, not one, is unaffected.

So I invited everyone, even those who know they are not NOW’s target demographic — I invite you all to participate tomorrow. Seek peace with your body. After all, you can never escape it. But your body is not your adversary. Your body is you.

Love yourself.

Amanda flags a great post by Anne C at Existence is Wonderful, which catalogues “three different ways of looking at autism — in terms of neurological structure, in terms of lived experience, and in terms of outward behavior.”  And Anne does such wonderful things with this delineation. Click through to read the whole post, which addresses attitudes toward autism in particular, but I think Anne hit on something that can be safely generalized outward — her three approaches toward autism can also, in fact, be three approaches toward disability.

Some highlights, all emphasis mine.

My guess is that there are probably multiple underlying structural variations that can produce “autistic phenotypes”, and it will be interesting to see how this pans out, but at any rate, one important aspect of how I presently conceptualize autism is the fact that some structural differences do seem to really exist. And if the difference does indeed go “all the way down” to the brain, as it appears to, then it makes very little sense to (as some seem to) view autism as some kind of disruptive “module” overlaid upon a typical brain.

This is significant both in the cognitive science and the ethics realm, as it indicates (a) that experiments presuming autistic brains to be “broken versions of normal brains” are likely useless, and (b) that the best ways to help autistic people learn and develop functional skills are those which acknowledge an underlying and pervasive difference as opposed to those which presume that autism can be “removed” or “trained out” by simply eliminating surface behaviors.

Yes! Autism, or any disability, is not a case of “a normal brain gone wrong.” It is not a defect or even a modification of a “normal” brain. It is, simply put, variation. We will never overcome society’s confusion and mistreatment toward pwd as long as we think there is any such thing as a “normal” brain (or body) at all. Is any one color or pattern of a cat’s coat a “normal” one? Or are there many varieties, none inherently better or more-important than the others?

At heart of society’s approach toward disability is the assumption that there is a standard template for the human body, and if any one body turns out to be different, it is a deviation from that standard. As such, the solution to any problems resulting from said differences is to attempt to make up for that “deviation,” to attempt to make the “defective” body more like the standard template in whatever way possible.

Put this way, it is obvious that this approach is misguided at best. The solution is not to change the individual body to fit the narrow, faulty expectations, but to adjust those expectations to include the range and diversity of the human experience.

Similarly:

Mind you, none of this is meant to imply that I (or the researchers engaging in the experiments demonstrating visual-spatial trends in autistic persons) believe that autistic people cannot be disabled. Certainly, “uneven” development (which may include significant delays alongside “advanced” skill acquisition in some individuals), communication difficulties, and consequent social, educational, and occupational issues are very real. However, the existence of real disabilities and difficulties need not imply that the “whole person” is somehow diminished by the fact of being autistic, or that one cannot have attributes which exist as both strength and weakness depending upon the context.

This is where Anne comes back around to detail the third approach (outwardly knowable traits). She observes:

The orange column on the right of the diagram summarizes what most people probably think of as “autism” — that is, the externally-visible things that generally get people suspected of being, or identified as being, autistic in the first place.

This is where we see such things as diagnostic checklists, observations about a person’s developmental milestones (and when/if they meet certain expected ones), outward actions, language use, body language, tone of voice, social/educational/occupational success (or lack thereof) in the absence of modifying factors, etc.

What is interesting, and perhaps a bit unnerving, is that this category is at once the one people tend to put the most stock in (in terms of identifying autistics, in terms of determining what educational supports we might need, etc.) and the one most subject to cultural biases, personal biases, misinformation, and the ever-changing social lens through which different kinds of people are generally viewed.

…which, honestly, is a bit scary and unsettling for those of us who are going to be the ones to bear the consequences of any such things.

This is a sign on the side of PA Route 19 heading south. First, an advertisement for McDonald’s desperate attempt to create a new product out of the same old ingredients. It is a considerable improvement over the ad formerly in that spot, featuring a giant cup of their lightly tea-flavored high fructose corn syrup water excuse me, sweet tea, which made me instinctively reach for the car door handle to spare myself the clean-up job when I vomited at the thought.

Second, a pair of legs. Legs that are: skinny, hairless, devoid of blemishes, white, shiny, and posed in an awkward and uncomfortable position. Oh, and don’t forget, as the photo doesn’t do the picture justice: airbrushed. Very much along the lines of something like this. (Or, of course, this.)

It’s hard for me to put into words exactly what the problem is with this billboard. Maybe it’s because varicose veins are used against women far more often than men. On a man, it is what it is, and who cares if it is? What’s it to you? Was he put on this good earth to make you feel a little wet? No, he exists for his own purposes, and if you have a problem with that you can kindly go fuck yourself.

But it’s understandable why a person would want treatment for them, much as I still wish I could get braces. I’ve had veins pop out on my hands at various times in my life, and it was always uncomfortable for me, and ultimately reinforced my sense of fragility — I was always afraid of how easily my bones might snap, or my veins ruptured severely by an otherwise mild cut or scrape. And, yeah, I was self-conscious.

But really: think of how you might possibly choose to advertise such a service. It’s not hard. We are positively soaked in marketing. Our economy exists on the back of advertisement. You’ve seen ads for similar services before. Stock photos don’t even need to come into the picture.

But they do. And what is the message it sends when this is the photo that is chosen?

Your legs should look this way.

But they don’t. Your calves have actual muscle to them. Or even fat. There is stubble, or considerable hair growth, which might be fine and downy and light, or might be red, or dark, coarse, frizzy, curly. Maybe your closest shave still leaves that slightly mottled look. Of course skin is not a single color; there is some mottling and mingling of different hues and shades; I can see a little blue and purple mixed in with a decidedly peachy color, but yours might trend more toward olive or plum. I have moles all over like freckles, little and flat, but dark and brown. Right now there are very deep red marks in about five places from shaving cuts over the last six months or so (my skin takes a long time to heal) and lines imprinted from the chair my leg was resting against — low circulation, low blood pressure will do that to do — and my bones stick out. My calves are rather skinny, but they’ve always been; even now that I have settled in at 175, my calves and forearms are like toothpicks — my wrist measurement is still 5″ rounded up. But there’s no muscle tone, so I still fall short of the photoshop standard.

So do you.

And when you look at that picture, you are keenly aware of this fact. You might not consciously think: “I don’t look like that.” But our minds are much more than what we consciously think. You are completely, mundanely aware of the fact that what you look like and what the ideal looks like are in two totally different realms.

You know that if you have varicose veins, and you receive treatment for them, and they subside, your legs will still not look like that. You may think they look better, but they aren’t going to look like that. Ever.

And that is the message you take away. You are not made of the right stuff for beauty. You are a totally different animal. You are fundamentally unfit. It doesn’t matter what you do. And that is a failure not of the standard, but of you, personally. You owe it to society to fit that standard. And because you don’t, you are personally slighting every person you ever come into contact with. Ever.

Catblogging will return on Friday.

***

My body is mine.

There are seven tumors in my breasts. They are benign.

Two of them are palpable on the surface at one o’clock on my left breast. The size of ping pong balls.

I don’t bother to self-exam anymore. I know they’re there. I don’t want to be reminded.

***

You know the slur idiot-savant?

I know its counterpart. They are called parent-saints.

There is a reverence simply unparalleled in this society (with the possible exception of professional athletes) reserved for these people.

What earns them such a status? They didn’t terminate the pregnancy instantly upon learning of the disability.

There are no standards beyond that. I do not exaggerate. It does not matter how a parent treats a disabled child. They might even beat them, and their actions will be excused because after all: they are dealing with a heavy burden, so who are you to judge?

And that’s it. Upon knowledge that a child has a disability, that child is no longer a child. Sie becomes a burden. In familiar words: dead weight. Hir humanity is erased altogether. Sie has no curiosity, no sense of mystery or delight, no joy or sadness, no hurt or relief. Sie learns nothing, hir growth only physical. There is no sentience.

And so the relevant facts about hir have nothing to do with how hir environment affects hir. They have entirely to do with how sie affects her environment.

Which is why “choosing” to keep a disabled child is cast as such: an active choice. Because the default assumption is that such a child is not worth keeping.

After all, no one wants to be saddled a dead weight.

The attitude toward those sainted persons is summed up thusly: “I don’t know how they do it; I wouldn’t be able to. There has to be a special place in heaven reserved for them.”

It is such a drag on a person’s life to deal with any person with a disability, any person who does so must have supernatural patience. Love is not an issue, of course; love requires more than one person.

Parents of children with autism, muscular dystrophy, Down’s syndrome, and others. Anything that requires assistive equipment any more complicated than a pair of glasses, and anything that renders a child unable to speak clearly and “articulately” in their region’s preferred language. It is not limited to these, but these are conditions that earn a parent a sympathetic eye.

Do not leave these assumptions unquestioned. Sarah Palin’s refusal to terminate her Down’s child will be invoked as a shorthand for her upstanding moral character. Don’t buy it. She did not do so out of respect for the disabled as equal persons of equal worth. She did so out of allegiance to a philosophy that would deny women the ability to make their own choice to carry to term and keep a child with a disability or to safely terminate a pregnancy likely to result in disability. On that note, even those in feminist circles will frame Palin’s circumstance pretty much exclusively as a question of awoman’srighttochoose. DON’T BUY IT. For better or worse, with a few but only a few exceptions, the only time disability issues are picked up on mainstream feminism’s radar screen is when it involves a disabled woman who becomes pregnant in questionable circumstances. Sometimes it is a case of rape, and sometimes it is a case of upper-class white abled feminists plowing right past said woman’s agency to insist she must have been raped and/or coerced because of her “diminished mental capacity” (whether or not her disability is mental in nature, and even then, whether or not her “capacity” is “diminished,” and even then, whether it has any bearing whatsoever on her right to control the direction of her own life). DON’T BUY THAT EITHER. Women are damn well entitled to a well-defended and highly-accessible right to reproductive justice. That includes disabled women, and that includes any woman’s right to choose to continue or cease a pregnancy likely to result in a disabled child, depending on that woman’s own personal considerations. THAT IS NOT THE ONLY ISSUE AT STAKE, and GODDAMMIT, THAT IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE! Why the HELL is a woman who does not faint at the idea of a disabled child someone who deserves a Goddamn crumb of praise?

It’s like people see the ideas “disabled child” “pregnancy” “conservative politician” together and obviously the issue at hand is every woman’s right to be free of a dependent with any sort of “defect.” Just like every woman’s right to kill a mosquito that lands on her arm.

Don’t let this opportunity pass. “Liberal” men and “feminist” women, consider your privileged asses called out. You should know better. And I, we, any person with a shred of human decency, should expect better of you.

***

I was enjoying some much needed heat therapy and electrical stim at therapy today, lying on my back on the you-call-this-padded? exam table in a room of about eight others, all of us closed off individually behind hospital curtains. Usually I am one of two or three people in the room, but I came at a busy time today and that was the last table.

My physical therapy office shares space with an acupuncture/holistic therapy group. And, um, they had a rather loud patient in the curtain-cube across from mine. She was screaming at length about how her doctor put her on some medication for an infection but she’s going to taper herself off of it, medication don’t do nuthin, etc. etc.

When I laughed and told my therapist — quietly — “I think most people would be scared when they saw my medicine spinner” — she reacted negatively to my twelve-pills-a-day and Ol’ Screamer caught wind and bellowed louder and more defensively. THATSTUFFISNOGOODFORYOUDON’TYOUKNOW and so on.

I’m kinna’ tired of it. My therapist has been amazing but I was let down a little by her reaction. Look, I know I pretty much funnel 75% of my paycheck to Big Pharma. I know most people are only accustomed to the occasional Z-Pack. But most people don’t live every day in my body. And damn it all, I know the difference between my-body-now and my-body-then. I took about a third of the medication I currently take a couple years ago, and I couldn’t work any more than 8-10 hours a week, tops. Then when I got on my current regimen, I was able to up that to 20-30 hours in a retail environment. And back when I took none of it? Oh yeah, that time in my life, you know, the time I almost failed out of high school and had to drop out of college (whether fifteen units or five) twice, all within a span of 18 months?

Yeahhh, that.

I’m sick of placating. So, to those people, kindly accept my Gayest Look.

This public service announcement was brought to you by … oh hell, I’m going to bed.

You kept me afloat financially for my first adult years in California, and you kept my husband and I out of debt for our first year and a half in Pennsylvania.

Dealing with you was always frustrating, but damned if I’m going to let anybody deliberately starve you to death.

I think people would do well to remember that what they pay in FICA goes into a pool of money that funds not only retirement benefits but also benefits for the blind and disabled. If Social Security were reconfigured to be mandatory individual IRA accounts rather than the rolling system it is now, the blind and disabled would be shit out of luck.

People would also do well to remember that they might become disabled any day.

Finally, people would do well to remember that in reality, almost no one has a cohesive nuclear family with money and bed space to spare for a person permanently unable to contribute financially. Very few people have a savings of more than a couple hundred dollars. Not every city has a homeless shelter. Not every person has good will with wealthy benefactors; not every person has friends in good places. Not every family is functional, or even intact. Not every country, state or county invests in a strong set of public welfare programs. I could go on.

The debate around Social Security always rests on the assumption that the SSA is simply a retirement fund. It is not so.

Without Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income and the Medicare benefits I still had to wait two years for, I would have to have remained living with my (mentally ill and emotionally abusive) mother, and my disabilities untreated. Between those two things, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I would not be where I am today.

I would have killed myself.

Cheers.

an AMEN?

Sometimes I read things — the whole of which I may not endorse, but which I still feel merit more attention — to which I have nothing to add. So…

shah8 on historical trends:

One of the things that I have noticed about big F feminism, and this may not be an accurate perception, so feel free to correct me, is that there is a much lower appreciation among women that enlightenment and oppression happens in cycles. Ever greater progression in civil rights is not typically the rule, especially beyond a generation or so.

On a whim, one year ago today, I entered this heady world of blogging. I was in want of an intellectual dumping grounds, figuring that even if no one was listening to me, I’d have my place to externalize and work through my cognitive mess — sparing those around me from my ever-running critical commentary — to improve my own understanding of my social environment and perhaps even aid others in understanding the world from my perspective.

525,600 minutes, two jobs, twenty pounds, a tripling of my daily pills to pop, one lumpy lefty, countless visits to various doctors’ offices, and three new diagnoses later, here I am. I guess, if you felt like a good stretch, you could say my life has been enriched. I would say, wanna trade?

Disability as a condition is not a negative thing. Much like my physical appearance, my body image in the realm of disability is a complicated thing. But I find it patronizing to hear ostensibly abled people try to paint over my struggles by calling it character building or pretending such experiences bestow a higher consciousness, an otherworldly wisdom to the experiencer, or other attempts to neutralize a person’s regret or frustration with hir life as a result of hir condition.

It’s one thing for one person with mental illness to say, “it makes my life interesting” or “life’s no fun if you’re not crazy” and so forth. Those comments acknowledge the complex effects a person’s disability has on their life, making things difficult in some areas, providing positive meaning in others. It’s a dark humor. “Character building,” on the other hand, is an attempt at erasure. Don’t make me uncomfortable.

I’m not quite sure how I got to that subject, but there you are. Welcome to my brain. My brain wants sleep, so it will bid adieu for now.

Thanks to Lauredhel for my first major link, to annaham for being my first blogfriend, cripchick and nezua for the encouragement, Melissa for a front page link, and Feministe for inviting me to guest-blog (I start next week), and the people I am sure I’m forgetting (see aforementioned brain). I appreciate all of that, more than I can say.

Y-you mean… the handicapped have… sex?!???!

BFP touched on it in her post, but I wanted to emphasize the cultural reaction to a person with a disability* being at all intimate with a fully-abled person. Not only sex, but also intimate relationships. They reel. They gag. They wonder what must be wrong with the abled person for wanting to have anything to do with that… thing.

Who would want to fuck a cripple, after all? Why would anyone stay in a long term relationship with someone who is disabled? How can it possibly be a relationship of equals?

And that’s just it, isn’t it? The disabled person is not a full person — sie is inferior.

And who would want to deal with, you know, the wheelchair, or the medications, or the panic episodes, or the whatever… dealing with the disability would be too much of a burden, you know. And someone has got to be crazy to be willing to take that on. What could they possibly see in a cripple to make up for that extra load to carry?

I’m a far different person than I was five years ago, when Matt and I became “official.” Five years ago, I hated myself — in the way that the sun is kinda hot, or the Pirates aren’t too good at that baseball thing — that is, severe understatement. And I had quite the complex of why the fuck this young man would have any fucking interest in me, because clearly I wasn’t worth the trouble. This was fed by my mother’s Issues(tm) about men (she never knew anything but abuse, so she had nothing else to teach me) but it was also connected to my disability. I was only just learning that my life was going to be completely different because of it, and coming to terms with the fact that it was real and I was not normal and I couldn’t just breeze along through life as though I were normal anymore. So I was very, very insecure. And here’s this slightly older kid who struck up a friendship with me a year or two ago, and we connect pretty well and everything, and waitasecond he’s actually interested in me?…

My first thought wasn’t “WOW!” or “AWESOME!” or “*squeal**gurgle**lovestruck*” or “OMG I have to go tell my girlfriends!” — my first thought was: “WHY?” Why would this awesome guy have any interest in ME? I’m useless, and ugly, and worthless, and I’d be a huge burden, being sick all the time, and dragging him down, and why? Why?

I didn’t get a “honeymoon period.” I spent the first two years of our relationship, every time he would compliment me or say he loved me, explaining to him why I was undeserving of his consideration — or just asking him “why?”

And you better damn well bet that just about every pwd out there has jumped through those same hoops at some point…

*I hesitated in using the word “disability” to describe Troyer’s condition but really, that’s the class of people we’re talking about — people whose bodies/minds are just different and who have multiple obstacles to free, unrestrained participation in society. And the objection to using the word “disability” for this condition or that condition comes in part from a fear of the pejorative sense connected to the word “disability” — the negative connotation, the feeling that it makes a person deficient, less than. And folks, that’s what disability activism is devoted to fighting. I know there is fair disagreement among the disability community but, for lack of a more serviceable word, I’m going to try to own this one.

* The fact that The American Prospect has a “Religious Right Watch.” Sarah Posner’s work has all the substance of a celebrity gossip blog. There is palpable disdain toward the groups religiosity — which is distinct from their political involvement. I don’t talk much about religion here, mainly because it is a private matter and it doesn’t come into play with most of the stuff I write about. But when I see the “latest update” I feel like a rat in a cage, looked down upon, my every movement tracked and reported as though it is of great importance to the outside world. But is it? I feel like the figures in question are monitored not for their danger to progressive policy, but for their religion, full stop. Isn’t it just so funny?

* The language that is used to Other the disabled. Sweet Machine highlights the work of Susan Sontag, examining how “grave, incurable illnesses (particularly cancer in the 20th century and TB in the 19th) get appropriated as metaphors for moral conditions, political events, and the like — and then the negative connotations associated with those metaphors are extended back onto the people who actually suffer from the disease.” Considering the recent discussion at Feministe about the use of words like “crazy,” “insane,” “psycho,” “demented” etc. I think this is an important point to make. For the vast majority of people in our society, the only model they have to reference when they come into contact with a pwd is the concept of that disability, or disability in general, that has been built up in their minds. And that’s where our “ironic”/”sarcastic”/”irreverent” use of these words comes into play — we associate “crazy” with, say, the religious right, which means that they are Irrational, and Silly, and Dangerous, all at once, and those associations are reflected back onto the people who actually live with the condition at hand. It is not a conscious process, but again, it happens, and the more we use these words as a shorthand for all these negative traits, the further we reinforce a structure that contributes to the oppression of the disabled every day. Maybe it doesn’t really feel offensive when someone uses the word “crazy” around me, but that doesn’t mean that these tropes aren’t being steadily fed even right this very moment. And it’s not limited to mental illness, as SM explains; it also applies to fat — and to “gay,” and “retard,” and “gyp,” etc…

* When issues that are deeply important to millions of people in this country are glossed over because they might also be expedient to someone else with an agenda. See my sputtering below about Jezebel, fibromyalgia, drug therapies and Big Pharma; see Mindy’s guest post at Hoyden About Town on advertising companies and women’s products; see TAP’s Dana Goldstein wax political about Obama’s campaign actually centering women’s rights as an issue that includes more than simply white middle class women’s access to safe abortions. Those are just the examples off the top of my (very cluttered) head. Sometimes, people’s actual lives don’t fit neatly into your ideological narrative. And if you really want to be a friend to those people, you’ll turn off the “irreverent” macro and listen to their actual concerns. (Can you tell I’m really pissed off about this stuff?)

* The fact that my emails to my husband at work keep getting bounced back to me, and I can’t shake this anxiety, the trembling and heart racing and shortness of breath that comes with certain triggers, one of which is confronting people who beat upon the “fibromyalgia is bullshit” (still the leading search term to this blog) drum in service to their own egos. Usually, rambling at him helps me settle down, but I can’t really fit the jumbled contents of my brain into a 160-character SMS.

* My continued unemployment, which is going to screw up our finances so hard. I am looking around but I worry about the insecurity, the fact that I didn’t have much choice in quitting because of my disability, and the fact that my prospects are severely limited because of same — which means I’m likelier-than-not to remain unemployed for the foreseeable future. It’s unsettling.

* Pantyhose.

Hmmm.

What Vague Pharmaceutical Industry-Invented Malady Do You Have?
Fibromyalgia. It sounds so daunting — like angina! which also sounds like vagina, or chlamydia. And if the pharmaceutical industry’s multibillion-dollar marketing machine has any sort of pathway into your consuming psyche, you’re probably aware of this hot new disease. Hasn’t the industry gotten so much better at naming new maladies since the whole dubious “restless leg syndrome” thing? Anyway, here’s fibromyalgia in brief: it affects primarily women around their middle ages — potentially 10 million of them in this country according to advocacy group, which means something like one in five. You’ll know you have it if you start to feel “chronic, widespread pain of unknown origin.” The pain won’t respond to anti-inflammatories, and no one knows where it comes from really, so instead of trying to sell you on something to soothe the pain, the pharmaceutical companies — namely Pfizer — is trying to soothe your brain’s perception of pain. Clever! Okay, so here’s the shocker: some people think fibromyalgia is a bit, you know, fictionyalgia. And “some people” includes the doctor who named it in the first place.

Why invent a disease? Well, if you’ve got a drug with a limited market — like Pfizer’s Lyrica, originally developed for seizures, it’s pretty genius business to make up a mysterious new ailment that a lot of people could potentially have or be scared they have. Where do you think ADD came from? What about “bipolar disorder”? “Irritable bowel syndrome”? Oh sure, those diseases affect one in 1.5 Americans, and we have them too, but:

…Those figures are sharply disputed by those doctors who do not consider fibromyalgia a medically recognizable illness and who say that diagnosing the condition actually worsens suffering by causing patients to obsess over aches that other people simply tolerate.

But why tolerate when you can obsess? And speaking of obsessing, did you know ADD makes people obsessive? I should be done with this post already but I didn’t have enough amphetamines today. What about you?

Moe, the post’s author, later “apologized,” saying:

Which brings me back to an important part I was trying to make when I posted insensitively about fibromyalgia the other day… We like to think we make rational purchasing decisions borne of a thorough survey of all the available options — or that at the very least, we are creatures of our own innate needs and desires. I can only assume that this is why a lot of you got so defensive when I joked that fibromyalgia was a “vague pharmaceutical industry invented malady.” A few of you turn out to have fibromyalgia — and “restless leg syndrome”, and whatever else I treated with my signature careless disdain. I’m sorry guys; I made my point less thoughtfully than I maybe should have. We all have health problems. But right now the most highly -capitalized, influential and consumer-savvy source of all that we know and learn about those problems — the developers of the drugs, the sponsors and publishers of their studies, the sources of continuing education to your doctors — is the pharmaceutical industry, and the pharmaceutical industry exists to convince us that our problems are “syndromes” necessitating a pill you take once a day.

Yeah, OK, that sounded totally sincere — NOT!! Haha, look, I’m being irreverent!

No, what you’re doing is telling me that the pain that has caused me to nearly fail out of high school in my final semester, drop out of college and remain bedridden for weeks and housebound for months afterward, drop out of college again a year and a half later, quit work, quit work again, and quit work again all within the past 14 months, is an invention of the Big Bad Evil Medical Industry, and that the medication that pulled me out of my houseboundedness and allowed me to even go to college that second time (during which I actually completed five classes, the only ones on my record to this day) is nothing more than snake oil.

To which I extend a hearty fuck you.

As I pointed out the other day at Hoyden About Town, a lot of people seem to get a huge kick out of declaring helpful products useless, and the people who use them brainwashed