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.)

Short background: Rush Limbaugh (link goes to Wikipedia article) is a US conservative radio talk show host who has risen to prominence in the US by inciting “controversy” after “controversy” with hateful rhetoric. He also went through an ordeal some time back for addiction to prescription painkillers, an incident that the US left likes to use against him. Recently he was rushed to the hospital again, which has spurred a new round of derision from US liberals.

Rush Limbaugh isn’t exactly a sympathetic character. His politics are vile and he makes a career out of escalating white male resentment into white male supremacy. And that causes real harm to real people who don’t meet the requirements to be part of Limbaugh’s He-Man Woman-Haterz Club.

How did he end up abusing prescription painkillers? I don’t know. Was he taking them for legitimate pain due to injury, surgery or a medical condition, and the usage got out of hand? Was he consciously using it as a recreational drug? I have to say I am still somewhat bitter about people who use the stuff I need to be able to get on with my daily life as a quick and easy “high,” ultimately making it harder to access needed medication. (But that is argument from emotion, mostly; I would posit that the real problem is a medical field and larger culture which does not take seriously the needs and concerns of chronic pain patients and is eager to punish people who step outside accepted boundaries.)

But even if he was just out for a high, I still feel unease when I see people use that angle to criticize him.

Because, here’s the thing… the same narrative that you are using to condemn this despicable figure is the narrative that is used to condemn me.

You are feeding, growing, reinforcing the same narrative that codes me as an abuser, that makes me out to be a good-for-nothing low-life, that makes it difficult for me to access the medication I need to be able to live my normal daily life.

When you laugh, joke, or rant about Limbaugh’s abuse of narcotics, you are lifting a page from the book of people who would call me a malingerer and interpret my behavior (frustration at barriers to access, agitation and self-advocacy to try to gain access) as signs of addiction. People who would, in the same breath, chastise me for “making it harder for the real sufferers.” (See why my bitterness about recreational use isn’t actually serving the right purpose, in the end?)

Maybe you don’t really think this way. But maybe the people laughing at your joke do.

And maybe, you just made them feel a little bit safer in their scaremongering about “addiction” and deliberate attempts to make life harder for us.

Scoffing at Limbaugh’s hypocrisy is one thing — but when your scoffing takes the form of a very common, quite harmful cultural prejudice — even when you don’t mean it to — it has real effects on real people’s lives. Sort of like that casual incitement that we hate Limbaugh for.

(Cross-posted at FWD/Forward.)

From the O-R: Khalil Young, 13, and his sisters Kiara, 9, and Khammeelah, 4, tend to their patch of tomatoes this afternoon at (the garden)… Khalil also is a garden guardian who waters all of the plants on a regular basis.

Look familiar? My thoughts are conflicted in that post, about the real root (so to speak) of our modern issues with connection to our earth, but make no mistake: this garden is an unequivocal positive for the people who use it, and it makes me inordinately happy that it is here.

---

Right-leaning media outfits are making a big deal out of this picture. “Who’s helping whom? Obama couldn’t care less”… Obama wasn’t being a “gentleman”…

There are two things going on here:

* Professor Gates, who has a cane so that he can move independently, could probably have made it down the stairs on his own. That’s not to say without pain or difficulty — but he wasn’t helpless. The reaction to this photo presupposes that the crippled man must be completely unable to help his own damn self, and that it is noble when the able-bodied officer presumes to “help” him. Do you see what this does? It removes Prof. Gates as an agent; it makes him, instead, an agency-less object, existing for the purpose of the able-bodied man: this time, as a signifier of character (taking on that noble burden).

* Speaking of noble burdens: the race of the men involved cannot be ignored. Sgt. Crowley is a white man helping a crippled man. In the right wing’s reading of this photo, Sgt. Crowley becomes a symbol of whiteness: an example of the way in which white men are Good, in which Good is defined as the way white men do things. Think boot straps: this fantastical myth is all about the inherent goodness of the white man, who does things the right way, in contrast with the minorities, who are too lazy, selfish, etc. to bother. Sgt. Crowley presuming to help Prof. Gates stands in contrast with President Obama, who is walking ahead, minding his own business. This shouldn’t be an issue, but it is seen directly in front of the white man taking on the noble burden, and thus becomes an indictment on the character of the shiftless, self-absorbed black man.

---

And speaking of that beer summit:

Who was it for?

Of course it was reported as a sort of reconciliation: a way to help Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crowley make up. But that wasn’t what it was.

To sum: Prof. Gates arrived home after a long and tiring flight, and couldn’t get in his house. Someone called the police, thinking that a stranger was breaking into his home. Police arrive when Prof. Gates was already in his home and calling a locksmith. Prof. Gates shows ID to Sgt. Crowley proving this is his home, may have been “belligerent” in doing so. Sgt. Crowley responds by luring him to his front porch, where he is handcuffed and arrested for disorderly conduct. Outrage ensues; charges are dropped. (Police insist the original caller reported that black men were breaking in; recordings prove that she said nothing about race at all.)

Journalist asks Obama about this during a health care press conference. Obama says a few predictable, innocuous things, then says that it is obvious that the police “acted stupidly” in arresting Prof. Gates in his own home for no crime committed, then makes a simple comment about the inarguable history of racial profiling in this country.

Sgt. Crowley objects loudly, saying the President is “way off base.” Sgt. Crowley is obviously very upset, and the police force is standing in solidarity with him. The country is beginning to criticize Obama for admitting the troublesome racial aspects of the story; the conventional wisdom is becoming that Obama bit off more than he could chew in “bringing race into this” — and white America will make sure that he is taken down a notch for it.

So Obama invites the two men to the White House for a beer. The country reacts with mild derision — but the attacks begin to fade. The issue is neutralized.

See what’s going on here? White man does something unfair to black man. Black man protests that this was unfair. White man’s sensibilities are offended at the accusation that he could ever be An Unfair-ist, makes this into an argument about whether or not he is a Good Man (being unfair would necessitate that he is a Bad Man). All his friends know that he is, in fact, a Good Man, and they stand up to say as much. Black man looks around, realizes that the numbers are not on his side. That everyone has ignored the unfair way he was treated, and his family and friends have been treated throughout history. That there is unrest among them, and he may face very real consequences if he presses the issue any further.

So the black man backs down. Makes conciliatory noises. To soothe the white man’s feelings. So that the white man won’t cause him any more trouble.

What was this beer summit about? Did Obama really think he was going to solve the issue of racial profiling and police officers behaving unethically by inviting two men out for a beer? Of course he didn’t. That wasn’t the purpose.

The purpose was to get the offended white man (and his white friends) to shut up and stop causing the black men trouble.

And I don’t blame him.

---

Quick, think of a disease or condition that affects only men and is considered by a large portion of the population to be fake, created by the pharmaceutical industry, or psychosomatic.  *Sound of crickets.*

An excellent look at the gendered construction of medical conditions at the Women’s Sports Blog.

Most of the language about credulous patients being duped by Big Pharma is directed at women and conditions they suffer from disproportionately.  Women are, after all, emotional and have the ability to create amazing physical symptoms solely from their minds.  At the same time, women’s bodies are considered to be in a constant state of abnormality relative to men’s bodies.  The word ‘hysteria’ is etymologically related to the Latin word for uterus, which was long considered to be the site of women’s mental health problems, and hence its removal is called a hysterectomy [...]

‘Just get out and exercise’ or ‘just change your diet’ is fairly lousy advice for anyone who hasn’t been able to get out of bed. But as a society we still maintain the illusion that changes in hormones, brain chemistry, or the like are failures of self-control or willpower.

She also discusses the disproportionate burden laid on mothers of disabled children. Read the whole thing.

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Why it’s important to make a concerted effort to promote historically-un(der)represented classes. You can’t flick a switch and have equality instantly turn on. Even if discrimination ceased to exist instantly, it would still take time to catch up — today’s chemistry-minded three-year-old girls aren’t going to reach the upper echelons of the field for at least another few decades yet. Of course, prejudice doesn’t instantly disappear simply because the law forbids certain manifestations of it in certain settings. So we reach a point where we’re looking to fill President Obama’s cabinet, but the levels from which such people would be pulled are still disproportionately dominant-class folk. This is where it does become worthwhile to pick Ms. Smith over Mr. Doe, even when they are very similarly qualified, simply for the fact that Ms. Smith is a woman.

What the bloggy left don’t understand about Obama’s approach to politics. It’s something I’ve always admired about his judgment. He will make a good-faith effort to work with his opposition to get done what needs done. But if that opposition responds to his good-faith effort with a bad faith effort, he will unapologetically move forward without them. Here’s one reason why this is a Good Thing: it’s a tactical investment. It builds trust in the broader community and fosters relationships with those members of the opposition who might be won over in the future. That’s a worthwhile investment to make, I think.

The consequences of our market-worship culture. What, exactly, makes a standard of living? Is it the fancy consumer goods we all have? A car for every person, a flat-screen TV in every house and a smartphone in every palm? Or is it something else? The security of a stable neighborhood, quality health care that isn’t a hassle, and a good education for your child even if you can’t afford the cost of living in the ritziest districts? These are things the private sector simply don’t excel at.

Self-care is essential. I do not use this word lightly. If these is anything my condition has taught me, it is the importance of learning one’s own boundaries and one’s own needs, and respectfully tending to them. Without this, you aren’t going to be any good to anybody else. You’re going to be more help to someone if you’re doing well yourself. If you’re rushed, stressed, overwhelmed with anxiety, severely lacking in sleep, seriously emotionally preoccupied, down with the flu, whatever — you’re allowed to stop and take care of yourself before you continue your work. Why do we insist that we push forward, always, through whatever challenges we may face? There can be virtue in that. But there can also be folly. I think this is a cultural force that could use some reflection.

After the reaction to a certain post of mine, I think this advice from Jill would be well-heeded in a variety of situations:

I understand that men are in an uncomfortable position when an abortion story is dropped into date conversation. Abortion is socially marked as taboo and horrible and universally emotionally difficult, so I understand why the first reaction is “You poor thing” or “You’re so strong.” I’ve never been in the same position as the author, but I have been on a first date where the guy dropped his almost-abortion story: His girlfriend got pregnant, they decided to terminate the pregnancy, and then she had a miscarriage. It’s not an easy story to respond to, so I fell back on How To Deal With An Awkward Conversation Topic 101: Mirror the other person’s reaction. He seemed like he was sad about the situation, so I think I said something along the lines of, “That sounds like it was really hard, I’m sorry.” And the conversation moved on. I also had a friend who once told me the story of his hugely swollen testicle — like, baseball-sized. In recounting the story, he was cracking himself up, so I laughed along. It’s really not all that hard to take your cues from the person who lived through the unpleasant ordeal. And I think that’s the author’s point: Not that men should universally think abortion is no big deal, but that they should take women as individuals who have varied responses to situations, and who very well may not be traumatized or upset at all — but who may nonetheless be highly annoyed and physically discomforted by a 30-day period. Or they may just be relieved. Or they may be sad, or even devasted. Or they may feel stupid for getting pregnant. Or they may have emotions that are mixed and that evolve. You know, like most human beings.

Read Kate take a righteous hammer to the bullshit that is how we, as a culture, introduce children to disability. Woo go Kate!

OK, this post might seem a bit out of place (and ignore the quick bit of gender-enforcing at the end). It’s just so deeply joyful to be a witness to another person reveling in wonder, over things big or small. Grapefruit isn’t my thing, but you find enjoyment in funny places.

This is why I love slacktivist.

Adam Serwer took all of three posts at TAPPED, I think, to become my favorite writer at the mag (and it’s not for my lack of appreciation for Klein). This kind of reflection is why.

Jindal and Obama could not be more different, and the contrasts begin but don’t end with the fact that one of them changed his name to fit in while the other carried his daddy’s “funny” African moniker all the way to the White House. Last night, the differences were clear: Where Jindal was awkward, Obama was confident. Obama has mastered his voice, Jindal sounded like he didn’t know how to give a speech. Obama had mastered a variety of tones and cadences early in his career, Jindal offered a forced folksiness to a sing-song tune. But perhaps the most telling part of Jindal’s response was his extended introduction of his family history. Until now, the GOP has allowed the press to make the Obama comparisons, last night, Jindal tried to make one himself, an act that was inadvertently self-diminishing.

You can’t find your voice by trying to become what everyone else is. You do that by trying to find what it is that makes you you. See also M’s musings on identity.

I’m off to bed, to dream of miniwheats in the morning.

A Desperate Plea to Mr. Matthew Yglesias

Dear Matthew,

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

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

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

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

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Signed,

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

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

Your progressive media, folks.

Quick hit today, out of CAPAF’s report on how McCain’s health plan would affect women — well worth a read on its own — noted without further comment.

… Sen. McCain’s plan would encourage insurers to eliminate coverage of basic health services. These state requirements include:

* Twenty-nine statesƒƒ require cervical cancer and Human Papillomavirus screening Sixteen statesƒƒ require coverage of the HPV vaccine
* Thirty-one statesƒƒ require comprehensive drug benefit plans to include contraception
* Twenty-one statesƒƒ require coverage of maternity care
* Forty-nine statesƒƒ require breast reconstruction

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.

Sez ‘zoy:

From the NYT, about John McCain:

“He said, ruefully, that he had not mastered how to use the Internet and relied on his wife and aides like Mark Salter, a senior adviser, and Brooke Buchanan, his press secretary, to get him online to read newspapers (though he prefers reading those the old-fashioned way) and political Web sites and blogs.“They go on for me,” he said. “I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need.” (…)

I’m sure I speak for internet users everywhere when I say how sorry I am that we will not be able to enjoy the blogtastic stylings of John McCain in the near future. It does make me wonder on what basis he said “I hate the Bloggers”, though.

That was the snarky part. Here’s a non-snarky question: what is hard about “getting online”? I assume he’s not talking about having trouble setting up his cable modem, or something. I also assume he’s talking about he web, and not about, say, having his computer update its clock automatically. What, exactly, do you have to do to get online? Well, you have to know which application is the one you click to surf the web, I guess. And it would help to have someone set up a few favorite sites for you, so that you could jump off from them, or at least read them when you felt like it. But, having done this myself for a few people who came of age long before PCs were invented, it’s really not that hard. Did none of his kids, or his friends, or the people who work for him, offer? Does he perhaps not own a computer?

It’s just puzzling, is all.

I think the answer is rather obvious. Remember, McCain has been in the senate for decades, certainly much longer than the Internet (even back to its old-school BBS roots) has existed. And in that time, his every need has been provided-for with nary an effort on his part. Why, then, would he fuss about with all this technological nonsense? It would serve him no purpose: he is obviously quite comfortable in his old-time world, carefully constructed to protect him from any change the outside world might try to impose.

There is no need for a person of such incredible privilege to understand, say, what purpose a personal computer serves in the average household, or how the Internet has changed the realm of communications across the world — unless, of course, that person has a curious spirit, always challenging and broadening the borders of his world, seeking out knowledge and engagement with the larger community, living life beyond aides, maids and personal assistants.

The question, then, is whether John “the issue of [insert subject here] is something that I’ve never really understood as well as I should” McCain is that person.

I think we all know the answer.

* 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.