This week in Disability Thinking:
First, a bit further back, I went on a bit of a vacation …
Wednesday, October 28
And then …
Wednesday, November 4
Thursday, November 5
Friday, November 6
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
Disability Blogger Link-Up
Share a disability-related blog post or article here, any time between Friday, November 6 and Midnight Sunday, November 8, 2015. And of course, read what others have posted.
To make the links easier to browse, in the “Your name” blank, type the title of the article. In the "Your URL" blank, paste the address of the item you are posting. So:
Name = Title of your article.
Your URL = Link to your article.
Then click the "Enter" button. That's it!
Go ahead and post, read, and enjoy! This Link-Up will close at Midnight Eastern on Sunday. The next Disability Blogger Link-Up will start Friday, November 20, 2015.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Odo and The Scientist
I re-watched a TV episode last week that felt a lot like it was about disability, even though it wasn't about disability at all.
The show was Season 2, Episode 12 of the 1990s show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "The Alternate." The episode's main story concerns Odo, a regular character on the sci-fi show with highly unusual origins and biology. Odo is a Shapeshifter. He is, at this point in the series, assumed to be one-of-a-kind. His natural resting state is liquid, and, with practice, he can become anything that he wants, anything from an animal to a piece of furniture. Most of the time Odo functions as an adult humanoid, and is the Deep Space Nine station's head of security or "Constable."
In this episode, Odo reunites with Dr. Mora Pol, the Bajoran scientist who years prior had been in charge of studying him and helping him fit in with "normal" society. In previous episodes, Odo had hinted that being a research subject after being "discovered" was a mixed experience at best. He learned a lot about his origins and abilities, but quickly grew to resent being gawked at and essentially imprisoned in a lab, existing mainly to satisfy the well-meaning but rather insensitive scientists' professional curiosity. Dr. Mora claims to have loved and cared for Odo, but it’s not hard to detect layers of exploitation and condescension in his manner.
This theme is underscored by the tension between Odo and Mora when Mora visits the station. Odo behaves correctly but quite coldly towards Dr. Mora. Mora outwardly praises Odo's accomplishments like a proud parent or former teacher, yet all of his compliments come barbed with a vague disapproval, a sense that Odo has made poor decisions. He shouldn't have left the lab. He did a disservice to himself and the scientists by abandoning their research. And, most disturbing of all, Mora implies that Odo's acceptance by the other station personnel is superficial ... that as a Shapeshifter he is still someone apart, and in that sense really "belongs" with people like Mora himself, who really appreciate Odo and can help nurture his journey of self-discovery ... back in the lab, of course.
The relationship between Mora and Odo remind me of so many aspects of being an adult with disabilities, having grown up with disabilities, and the intimate but contentious relationships many of us have with doctors, therapists, teachers, and even our parents. People are rarely entirely selfless, or completely self-serving. The problem is that, like Dr. Mora, people in a position to help and care for disabled children and youth often have trouble acknowledging how personally invested they can be in our lives and decisions. Plus, their benevolence often comes across as paternalism, and a lack of full recognition of our agency, our personhood. On the other hand, we, like Odo, often find it hard to recover from old wounds, and have empathy for people who meant well, but made mistakes like all humans do ... and Bajorans for that matter. My sympathies are with Odo, but I do feel he was a bit too hard on Mora. Odo does want to learn more about himself and his origins. It’s just that he feels that the best way to do this is to live a normal and useful life, with all it’s variety and even danger. Mora thinks Odo should focus exclusively on himself, and essentially hide away in a safe place from a hostile world.
Even if you're not into science fiction shows, if you grew up with a disability or have spent part of your life treating, teaching, or raising a disabled child, watch this episode. It says more about the disability experience than most shows that are explicitly about disability.
----------
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Invalid Corps Kickstarter
Hello, I'm back from my blogging break.
I have never done this before on my blog, and I probably won't do it often, but I strongly urge readers to support a Kickstarter fund raising campaign for a documentary film about the Civil War Invalid Corps and the Battle of Fort Stevens. This filmmaker is Day Al-Mohammed, who is well known in the disability culture and activist community. I know her through the disability blogging and social media community. Day works in Washington, DC as a policy analyst, so this project seems like a personal passion for her.
I have never done this before on my blog, and I probably won't do it often, but I strongly urge readers to support a Kickstarter fund raising campaign for a documentary film about the Civil War Invalid Corps and the Battle of Fort Stevens. This filmmaker is Day Al-Mohammed, who is well known in the disability culture and activist community. I know her through the disability blogging and social media community. Day works in Washington, DC as a policy analyst, so this project seems like a personal passion for her.
The Invalid Corps was a section of the Union Army in the Civil War, manned by wounded soldiers. These are soldiers who chose to keep serving and fighting, even though they had permanent disabilities like amputations, blindness, and what we would today call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Let me quote Day on why this subject and project are important to her:
This project pushes all of my buttons, in a good way. I was a history major in college, and I am still a history buff today. In fact, the Civil War is one of my favorite subjects. And like Day, I am disabled, so this project has personal, crossover appeal for me.
"Uncovering these heroes is a personal passion of mine. As a woman with a disability, and as a volunteer with the US Coast Guard Auxiliary, I feel a kinship with their need to serve and their desire to do what they could. After more than 15 years working on disability policy issues and working with youth with disabilities, I have seen how important it is to see people like yourself - models and mentors. Disability doesn't just exist today, but existed in the past."
"This is a lost history of men who sacrificed for their country and then chose to remain on duty; of men who chose to continue to serve with a disability. It is a story that should be told, not just from a historical standpoint but to understand and recognize the efforts of men and women in uniform today."
This project pushes all of my buttons, in a good way. I was a history major in college, and I am still a history buff today. In fact, the Civil War is one of my favorite subjects. And like Day, I am disabled, so this project has personal, crossover appeal for me.
I am making a pledge today. I hope lots of readers will, too, and spread the word, especially among your friends with disabilities and their families. As you probably know, you don't have to pledge a lot to make a difference. But do it now, because there are only 14 days left to go in the campaign, and the way Kickstarter works, they only get the money if they reach their $7,776 goal.
----------
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Blogging Break
I’m taking a blogging break until next Wednesday, November 4, 2015. In the meantime, check out some past goodies from Disability Thinking:
Also, if you haven’t done so already, why not take the Visitor Survey?
I will be back Wednesday!
----------
Monday, October 26, 2015
Weekly Reading List
In which I try to find a link between 5 very different disability-related articles from last week ...
Melissa McGlensey, The Mighty - October 21, 2015
Gillian Mohney, Good Morning America - October 22, 2015
Elizabeth Harris, New York Times - October 19, 2015
Daniel Bethencourt, Detroit Free Press - October 22, 2015
Valerie Strauss, October 25, 2015
I chose all five of these articles because they all feed into this feeling I have about how mainstream journalists and even some more specialized disability outlets cover instances of apparent disability injustice.
A key thing I think we all tend to miss is the role of directionless stupidity and incompetence. I really think disabled people suffer more from bureaucratic confusion, and from systems too complex for ordinary people to run effectively, than we do from ableism and discrimination. Every so often, we run into people who operate from fundamentally misguided ideas about disability, and people who just can't stand dealing with disabled people. More often, though, we deal with over-worked offices led by besieged managers who above all want a bit of job security and to get through a week straight without undue stress. They don't mean us any harm, but many of them long ago gave up doing us any real good.
A few seem to be especially rudderless dealing with people experiencing intense emotions, like the school principle who apparently couldn’t manage to say “Yes, of course let’s do it,” while explaining that the requested moment of silence would have to be carried out with due deliberation and care. How did such a simple situation get so out of hand? And I find myself sympathizing with the fed up Special Ed teacher, but also craving more concrete information on exactly what directives she is talking about.
This is all terrible, of course, but I think it's a different kind of problem from naked disability prejudice and outright corruption, which is how these incidents usually get covered.
For example, I would bet real money that in the Applebee's case, there was a miscommunication about overlapping responsibilities between the company and the state Vocational Rehabilitation program, which the Mighty article mentions but the Good Morning America story does not. It's a piss poor situation, but it may not have been anyone's intention to rob the worker, or to do so because they figured they could get away with not paying a disabled person. It may have been exactly that, but it doesn't look like anyone really tried to find out. If they did, we didn't get to know about it, and so we're left with the worst possible interpretation. All interpretations here are bad, but deliberately not paying a guy is worse than not realizing it's time to take over paying him from some other agency
At least the New York Times identified the real unfairness of the graduation story. At first, it sounded like a pissed off Mom on her high horse because her son failed ... by a fraction ... to graduate. The key isn't that he didn't get a diploma. The issue is that non-disabled students are allowed to graduate when their scores are on the borderline, but for some reason disabled students are denied that cushion. Maybe nobody should be allowed to skate by with test scores a point or two below passing, but if you're going to allow some people to do it, don't deny it specifically to disabled kids, some of whom really probably deserve a break when it comes to standardized tests. The story mentions this, but again, doesn't really emphasize it as much as the mother's anguish, which is real, but kind of beside the point.
I guess that sums up most disability journalism right now ... covering the story, but missing the bigger point.
Addendum: I forgot to mention that according to GMA article on the Applebee's flap, the company sent an apology, to the worker's parents. Did they apologize to him? This is going to be the subject of another blog post, I'm sure.
Addendum: I forgot to mention that according to GMA article on the Applebee's flap, the company sent an apology, to the worker's parents. Did they apologize to him? This is going to be the subject of another blog post, I'm sure.
----------
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Weekly Wrap-Up
This week in Disability Thinking:
Monday, October 19
Tuesday, October 20
Wednesday, October 21
Thursday, October 22
Friday, October 23
----------
Friday, October 23, 2015
Disability Blogger Link-Up
Welcome back to the Disability Blogger Link-Up! Share a disability-related blog post or article here, any time between Friday, October 23 and Midnight Sunday, October 25, 2015. And of course, read what others have posted.
To make the links easier to browse, in the “Your name” blank, type the title of the article. In the "Your URL" blank, paste the address of the item you are posting. So:
Name = Title of your article.
Your URL = Link to your article.
Then click the "Enter" button. That's it!
Go ahead and post, read, and enjoy! This Link-Up will close at Midnight Eastern on Sunday. The next Disability Blogger Link-Up will start Friday, November 6, 2015.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Throwback Thursday
One year ago in Disability Thinking: Questions For Candidates.
These questions hold up pretty well. Disability issues don’t change all that much from one election to another. General Election years are a bit different, but I expect most of these issues will still be relevant next year.
----------
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Fun With Fallacies
A couple of weeks ago, I was catching up on back episodes of a podcast called The Light Bulb, when I ran across one about logical fallacies. The hosts, Alastair Stephens and Lani Diane Rich were talking about them in the context of understanding popular culture, but I started thinking about how logical fallacies crop up in discussions about disability. Alastair and Lani referred to, Your Logical Fallacy Is, a beautifully designed website explaining the most common fallacies, with examples of each.
I am still struggling to think of how these mistakes in clear thinking happen specifically in disability dialogs. I’m sure they do happen, not just from non-disabled people arguing against the disability rights perspective, but within the disability community itself. I don’t think we are immune from deceiving others, and ourselves, even when we are basically right about disability matters.
Here are a few of the more obvious examples of disability-related logical fallacies:
Changing the definition of something in order to dodge a valid criticism. Otherwise known as moving the goal posts.
Disability example:
A: Autistic people can’t communicate and need constant supervision.
B: Well, I am autistic and I am articulate and mostly able to look after myself, so your idea of autism is too narrow.
A: You are articulate and competent, which means you can’t be autistic, so you have no authority to speak about autism.
Arguing that something is true simply because an authority says it is.
Disability example:
I’m not sure if this is a proper example of this or some other fallacy, but I always feel uncomfortable when we back up some argument about disability with the fact that we have disabilities ourselves. It seems like an Appeal to Authority to me. Of course, it works both ways. Medical and disability professionals are always relying on the power of their credentials to convince us that our instincts are wrong. The key in both cases is that it’s an Appeal to Authority when neither side bothers to make any other kind of argument, and just relies on authority alone.
A modest, acceptable step will inevitably lead to a much bigger, more obviously objectionable and unintended outcome later on.
Disability example:
The first example that comes to mind is Assisted Suicide. Those of us who oppose it … including me … often argue that more modest, narrowly-defined legalization laws that many people support would lead eventually to much broader practices that most people now would oppose. Today’s law allowing terminal cancer patients in intractable pain to end their lives, would lead to quadriplegics and other disabled people feeling pressured to die in order to save their families cost and trauma. It’s a fallacy because people are capable of making decisions between one type of thing and another, and the first step on a continuum doesn’t always lead inevitably to the last.
Arguments against disability rights laws like the ADA often include the Slippery Slope fallacy, too. Alarmists argue that prohibiting obvious and avoidable disability discrimination will lead to disabled people thinking they are entitled to do any kind of job they want … blind people flying passenger planes and the like.
As Alastair and Lani were quick to point out in their discussion, knowledge of logical fallacies is unfortunately often used as a rhetorical weapon to impress or intimidate opponents. It’s also easy to misuse these concepts to not only question other peoples’ ideas, but to destroy them and humiliate the people who have them. Harping on logical fallacies is just plain annoying ... a lot like mansplaining and ablesplaining. It’s also important to remember the Fallacy Fallacy … the idea that if an argument contains a logical fallacy, it must be wrong. Sometimes, the slope really is slippery. Sometimes authorities are right. Sometimes it's appropriate to change or clarify how something is typically defined.
The true value of knowing about logical fallacies is that they can help all of us become more aware of the most common ways we misinterpret the world and even our own thoughts and feelings. Being aware of them doesn’t mean being a slave to them. It does mean that we at least try, and some point, to put our thoughts and feelings through a bit of self-examination and critical analysis. We may or may not decide to change course as a result, but it’s always better to be a bit more aware of what we are doing … as well as of what other people are saying.
What are your “favorite” disability-based logical fallacies? What kinds of logical goofs do we, and our opponents, make most often?
----------
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Blog Topics Update
I’m feeling poorly today … to quote Dr. Seuss, I’ve got “crummies in my tummy,” so I’m just going to run down a few of the blog posts I’m working on for the next few days:
Sex and Disability: Is It Really A Taboo?
I’ve seen quite a few blog posts and news stories lately with this theme, and while I certainly agree most peoples’ nations about disability and sex are either screwed up or naive, I’ve never quite agreed with calling it a “taboo.” I’ll explore this and try to figure out more precisely what we’re dealing with.
Logical Fallacies
One of my favorite podcasts focused recently on logical and rhetorical fallacies, and from there I found a really cool website with a listing of the main ways we weaken our arguments and suffer failures in critical thinking. I hope to identify some of the fallacies that crop up most frequently in discussions about disability.
DIY Disability Policy
If you could design a three-point national disability policy agenda, from the ground up, what would you include? Think practical, but think big, too!
Defining Inspiration Porn
I hope to finish this thing by the end of next week. It’s worth doing, but exhausting and, truth be told, a bit depressing.
Also, look for another Disability Blogger Link-Up this Friday, October 23.
----------
Monday, October 19, 2015
Weekly Reading List
Notes on last week’s reading …
Shaun Heasley, Disability Scoop - October 19, 2015
This is clearly a good thing, but in what sense? More jobs for disabled people is more jobs for disabled people. How many of the people who got these jobs would have gotten private sector or local government jobs if the federal jobs hadn’t been made available? I’m guessing quite a few, since the job market for disabled people is pretty thin. Plus, federal jobs have some of the features that disabled people value most, like job security and excellent benefits. And then there’s the commitment by the government to employ disabled people as a good in itself, a commitment that’s very rare in other workplaces. What I’d really like to know is how much of a dent does 100,000 newly employed disabled people make in the overall unemployment rate for disabled people?
Cheryl Green, Who Am I To Stop It - October 14, 2015
Thank God for Cheryl Green for stating the obvious, because for some reason it rarely gets said. Those two main models of how to understand disability are useful, but not doctrines. Mixing them is just fine, as long as you are thinking about what you are doing and what you’re trying to say. Disability activists need to say so more often, because people can get awfully uptight about the Medical Model / Social Model dualism.
Lane Harwell, Fox News Opinion - October 14, 2015
The article is fine, nothing radical, and the goal is worthy, but you can tell from the comments that it's out of place in a Fox publication. This man is encouraging arts organizations to include more disabled artists at all levels, but commenters hear this as a mandate forcing disabled people to participate in the arts. How they get that from the article is beyond me.
Emily Ladau, The Disability Dialog - October 15, 2015
This kind of thing rarely happens to me, but that's partly because I'm a bit of a hermit. More about this after the next article listing …
Bill Peace, Bad Cripple - October 14, 2015
I get impatient and judgmental of fellow disabled people's outrage at these predictable instances of ableism. Then I remember that if stuff like this happened to me half as often as it does for others, I would be in a constant state of fury. What people who complain about disabled people being cranky fail to grasp is that in most cases, the ill-temper they actually see in us is us being hugely restrained. And as I say, I forget this, too.
----------
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Weekly Wrap-Up
A light week at Disability Thinking:
Monday, October 12
Tuesday, October 13
Wednesday, October 14
Thursday, October 15
----------
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)