sorry for spamming you guys with this, but I figured it would be entertaining to at least one person. I kind of think both these papers are bullshit--I mean they were pass/fail and I had a lot of stuff going on so I wrote about themes that are easy for me to find in anything. But I do think the fact that these themes are so easy to find indicates a lot about how deep in the values are.
HERCULES--ABILITY
Supernatural conditions are sometimes portrayed as being analogous to disabilities; for example, telepathy in True Blood or lycanthropy in the Harry Potter books. It’s not necessary that the analogously “disabled” character lack an ability that other people have, as long as he or she has the wrong abilities compared to other people. Hercules is easily interpreted as part of the magic-as-disability tradition, as his super strength impairs his ability to live normally and fit in with his community.
Hercules can sometimes use his super strength to do chores for his adoptive parents but, perhaps because he lives in a world set up for humans with an ordinary level of strength, he often expends too much strength and ends up breaking buildings and injuring people, which causes him to be unpopular in his community, which labels him a “freak.” Although his adoptive parents love Hercules, they come to accept that he doesn’t fit in their community and must journey elsewhere to be successful.
Hercules’s journey can be seen as a positive message for viewers with disabilities or other people who don’t match the standards of their community. As he moves into different environments and roles--training with Phil, performing heroic deeds in Thebes, partying on Mount Olympus as a god among gods--we see that Hercules, who was not good at anything in his parents’ town, can be good at everything when different things are expected of him. However, his clumsiness isn’t completely cured when he becomes a hero, and this is realistic. He also chooses an imperfect existence as a human over existence as a god, where he presumably wouldn’t have to deal with the issue of clumsiness--showing that if he has a life he’s proud of and happy with, he doesn’t mind not being good at everything.
Like many magic-as-disability works of fiction, Hercules fails to deliver a completely positive message about disability because the resolution of the “disabled” character’s problems is less than applicable to real life. Ultimately, a character with super strength can’t be a real disabled character for two reasons. First, super strength doesn’t resemble any real-life disability so it’s not as easy to identify Hercules as disabled, which limits his ability to be a role model for disabled kids or bring images of disabled people into the minds of non-disabled kids. (This isn’t necessarily the case for all “magical” disabilities; a magical illness, for example, can be easily read as resembling a real illness.) Second, Hercules finds a solution for his problems that’s nearly perfect, and steps into a new life where he’s universally admired. While it is important to show that someone who’s labelled a loser or a freak can be successful by different standards, Hercules’s tremendous success is somewhat problematic because it sets a standard viewers, not having superpowers, may not be able to aspire to or identify with.
Notably, the magic-as-disability aspects of the character are not at all present in the original myth. In the myth, Hercules/Heracles’s problems come from a fact that is completely excised from the movie; Hera, his father’s wife, is not his mother, and even though he lives with his mother and stepfather instead of on Olympus, Hera nonetheless hates him and causes him various problems. Although evil stepmothers are certainly acceptable in Disney movies, the portrayal of infidelity that would be required by an accurate adaptation of the myth would probably be considered inappropriate for a children’s movie. Therefore, the villain of Hercules’s story becomes Hades, who is not evil in classical mythology; and Hercules’s main motivation comes from within.
Protagonists who are unpopular, or who are initially perceived as “losers,” can be appealing in American movies, but don’t really fit with classical values, which had less of a focus on the individual. In the Disney movie, Hercules doesn’t want to be a hero for the sake of glory or other more classical values, but for more modern reasons, and ones that position him as a minority or an outcast in his community, in the same way as other Disney characters like Belle and Mulan.
Showing posts with label but everyone is disabled in their own way. Show all posts
Showing posts with label but everyone is disabled in their own way. Show all posts
03 December, 2011
20 April, 2011
some models and their applications in fiction
To me there are three ways of portraying disability in fiction--medical model, social model, and fake social model, with the first and the last being the most common. Although I wouldn't say it's the best movie I've ever seen, It's Kind of a Funny Story was impressive in its attempt to tell a story within the social model. It doesn't see the main character's problems--suicidal ideation and panic attacks--as a reason to avoid making a fairly typical quirky teen comedy with montages, huge amounts of voiceover, and animated sequences. And although Craig, the protagonist, is in a psych ward with people who have more severe problems than his, he ultimately identifies as "like them." The standard romantic conflict, where a boy must choose between the girl he always thought he wanted and a new girl he really should be with, is here about normalcy vs. visible psychiatric disability. The non-disabled girl Craig thinks he wants sees his hospitalization as "edgy," but is disgusted when his anxiety causes him to throw up; the girl he should be with cuts herself on her face. Reviews of It's Kind of a Funny Story insisted on reading it as either medical model or fake social model, and effectively criticized it for having a protagonist whose disability wasn't obvious or severe enough.
What medical model means in pop culture should be obvious enough. In this dour movie, Craig displays every textbook symptom of depression and anxiety, and the montages and fantasy sequences are excised because they're not appropriate for such a serious subject. Also excised are the major subplots about the academic pressure Craig is under from his friends, school, and family, and how this conflicts with his love of drawing. This might imply that society contributes to Craig's problems, which would mean he isn't really ill, just sensitive! Real disability is obvious and, when untreated, looks the same in all situations.
Fake social model is more fun to watch--a fake social movie could definitely include montages--but it's ultimately just as unsatisfying and lacking in truth. I call it fake social model because I think it's what people are responding to when they say things like, "In this case, the social model fails." Sorry, guys. Prophecies can fail, tongues can cease--but the social model remains applicable to every case there ever has been or will be. The thing is if we say "disability isn't real," we mean objectively. Many important things are not objectively real. The fake social model takes the perspective of, "Not only is disability not objectively real, but it isn't real, full stop." Of course, this is obviously not true, which means that stories in the fake social model which have more than one disabled-identified character often portray the main characters in fake social model, and other characters in medical model. The way this would work in It's Kind of a Funny Story would be to show Craig's anxiety and depression as entirely caused by external pressure, or even imagined out of nowhere because he lives in a society that is always "labeling people." The more severely, inarguably disabled characters would function as jokes--how funny that anyone would think Craig is like them, when he's clearly like us!--and possibly by tragic example they would convince Craig that, since he's not as bad off as they are, he must be normal. The girl Craig falls for would also be fake social model, and in all likelihood would not cut her face--self-injury is serious, you know, and a character who's Not Like Us is too sad or funny to be a viable romantic interest.
Fake social model is frustrating because, of course, it always fails when applied to all disabled people. So it ends up promoting a feeling which is even more offensive than the medical model--that it is wrong for our hero to be under pressure, overmedicated, involuntarily committed, stigmatized, or whatever else he or she faces, as a result of being mistakenly identified as disabled. FWD/Forward did a whole post discussing tropes of non-mentally ill people who end up in psych wards, and came to much the same conclusion. The implication is, invariably, "this is wrong because the hero isn't really disabled." Real disabled people, those ghouls, deserve all this, but fortunately it is not Our Life.
The third option, of course, is social model. True social model can be any genre, though pure tragedy or educational film often has difficulty understanding it. Life tends not to feel like either of those things. It's probably no surprise that I began this post thinking about Skins which awestruck me with its ability to hold two ideas in its head at the same time--a)JJ is genuinely disabled, and b)the stigma he faces is a problem. This is real social model writing, which pays attention to both impairment and outside pressure, as well as the ways the two can exacerbate each other. Though aspects of It's Kind of a Funny Story are very naive, and it doesn't reject fake social model as clearly as I would like, the movie cares enough to portray a complex disability experience and should be commended.
What medical model means in pop culture should be obvious enough. In this dour movie, Craig displays every textbook symptom of depression and anxiety, and the montages and fantasy sequences are excised because they're not appropriate for such a serious subject. Also excised are the major subplots about the academic pressure Craig is under from his friends, school, and family, and how this conflicts with his love of drawing. This might imply that society contributes to Craig's problems, which would mean he isn't really ill, just sensitive! Real disability is obvious and, when untreated, looks the same in all situations.
Fake social model is more fun to watch--a fake social movie could definitely include montages--but it's ultimately just as unsatisfying and lacking in truth. I call it fake social model because I think it's what people are responding to when they say things like, "In this case, the social model fails." Sorry, guys. Prophecies can fail, tongues can cease--but the social model remains applicable to every case there ever has been or will be. The thing is if we say "disability isn't real," we mean objectively. Many important things are not objectively real. The fake social model takes the perspective of, "Not only is disability not objectively real, but it isn't real, full stop." Of course, this is obviously not true, which means that stories in the fake social model which have more than one disabled-identified character often portray the main characters in fake social model, and other characters in medical model. The way this would work in It's Kind of a Funny Story would be to show Craig's anxiety and depression as entirely caused by external pressure, or even imagined out of nowhere because he lives in a society that is always "labeling people." The more severely, inarguably disabled characters would function as jokes--how funny that anyone would think Craig is like them, when he's clearly like us!--and possibly by tragic example they would convince Craig that, since he's not as bad off as they are, he must be normal. The girl Craig falls for would also be fake social model, and in all likelihood would not cut her face--self-injury is serious, you know, and a character who's Not Like Us is too sad or funny to be a viable romantic interest.
Fake social model is frustrating because, of course, it always fails when applied to all disabled people. So it ends up promoting a feeling which is even more offensive than the medical model--that it is wrong for our hero to be under pressure, overmedicated, involuntarily committed, stigmatized, or whatever else he or she faces, as a result of being mistakenly identified as disabled. FWD/Forward did a whole post discussing tropes of non-mentally ill people who end up in psych wards, and came to much the same conclusion. The implication is, invariably, "this is wrong because the hero isn't really disabled." Real disabled people, those ghouls, deserve all this, but fortunately it is not Our Life.
The third option, of course, is social model. True social model can be any genre, though pure tragedy or educational film often has difficulty understanding it. Life tends not to feel like either of those things. It's probably no surprise that I began this post thinking about Skins which awestruck me with its ability to hold two ideas in its head at the same time--a)JJ is genuinely disabled, and b)the stigma he faces is a problem. This is real social model writing, which pays attention to both impairment and outside pressure, as well as the ways the two can exacerbate each other. Though aspects of It's Kind of a Funny Story are very naive, and it doesn't reject fake social model as clearly as I would like, the movie cares enough to portray a complex disability experience and should be commended.
12 September, 2010
Our growing and shrinking island
I got weirdly depressed because my friend was talking positively about the head of disability services at our school, who I sort of loathe. (Way out of proportion to what she actually did to me, which was three years ago, but it just was really bad, and I've gotten the impression that she is really great to students with Real Disabilities and not so good to students with Fake Disabilities--to put it bluntly.) The stuff my friend was saying wasn't really different from what I'd expect for her; the two of them had basically been talking about physical accessibility issues and how they suck at school, and how it's even harder now to get the administration to make things accessible because the two students who were full-time wheelchair users graduated and can no longer be invoked as an obvious example of how shitty things are. And she (the head) has now made the administration promise to clean up ice and snow which my friend is really happy about because he had a lot of trouble getting around last winter. (He's ambulatory but has balance problems.)
I think I'm not good at holding two conflicting ideas at the same time, though. So knowing that she works really hard to make school more accessible for kids with mobility disabilities (which it is admittedly not at ALL) makes me feel bad about the fact that I resent her a lot. I also feel bad about the fact that I'm so into "disability stuff" but I didn't even think about the fact that ice would be a problem for my friend. I think that partly because we're going through the MR-->ID shift right now, and also because there are so many annoying euphemisms like "special needs," "developmental delay," "Down syndrome" (used to mean all ID), and "developmental disability" (used to mean only ID), I have a really bad habit of using the word "disabled" when I'm talking about the issues I am especially interested and entrenched in--the issues of people with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders.
I don't feel good about doing that because I feel like that's exactly what people with physical disabilities sometimes do to us. And it's what some people who identify as allies of disabled people, like the head of disability services, do as well. (In fact I wonder if it's non-disabled allies more than people with Real Disabilities who have such a sense of what a Real Disability is.)
The first time I went on FWD/Forward, I remember being surprised when I read the contributors' descriptions of themselves. Mental illnesses weren't disabilities! Physical disabilities that were invisible weren't disabilities! How could this website be called Feminists with Disabilities, when most of these people weren't Really Disabled? My confusion soon turned into excitement and happiness as I started to feel like maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to apologize four hundred billion times for identifying as disabled. I've really been changed by the disability blogosphere, because I now see issues of ableism, disability, and accessibility as being much bigger and broader and more complex than I thought they were. I know this sounds depressing, but it really isn't, because I can see that many things that I once thought were Problems With No Name are actually related to disability.
However, I guess I also worry that as the definition of "disabled" becomes more broad, there won't be enough attention paid to the needs of people who use wheelchairs. I mean, it makes me really frustrated that I have to depend on my professors' goodwill in order to be successful*, and that I feel like I have nowhere to turn if I have a professor who dislikes me or judges my work harshly because of things related to my disability. At the same time if I do poorly in a class it's not the end of the world. And an infinite number of nice professors can't make campus better for a student who uses a wheelchair. It just completely sucks. I can sort of scrape by in a lot of ways because my impairments clash with people not buildings.
[*I would never, ever go through the disability services office because I know it wouldn't work. On a basic level I need not to be judged for not being able to speak well or understand unspoken rules about what an assignment is supposed to be like--something I can't ask for because a professor is either the kind of person who is going to resent me, or they aren't. Last year when things were really terrible, I asked for some extensions (I've probably asked for fewer extensions than a non-disabled person in the time I've been at school) and I asked to take exams in a separate room on a computer to reduce panic/discomfort. Which is not something that's a stereotype of autism, so I don't think the disability office would support me in asking for that if a professor refused to give it to me.]
I think I just feel guilty sometimes for being so angry about being erased from the mainstream understanding of the word disability. It's funny because to the extent that there is disability stuff at my school, I feel totally erased by that too because it's mainly people with specific learning disabilities. I just go through life feeling there are many things that I'll never be able to do, and I think that something like dyslexia or dyscalculia can shut down certain parts of the world, but sometimes I feel like there's such a small area that I can actually safely move around in and aim for. So I totally find myself mumbling to myself, too, "yeah, come back when you have a Real Disability." Except. You know. Is that ever valid?
I think I'm not good at holding two conflicting ideas at the same time, though. So knowing that she works really hard to make school more accessible for kids with mobility disabilities (which it is admittedly not at ALL) makes me feel bad about the fact that I resent her a lot. I also feel bad about the fact that I'm so into "disability stuff" but I didn't even think about the fact that ice would be a problem for my friend. I think that partly because we're going through the MR-->ID shift right now, and also because there are so many annoying euphemisms like "special needs," "developmental delay," "Down syndrome" (used to mean all ID), and "developmental disability" (used to mean only ID), I have a really bad habit of using the word "disabled" when I'm talking about the issues I am especially interested and entrenched in--the issues of people with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders.
I don't feel good about doing that because I feel like that's exactly what people with physical disabilities sometimes do to us. And it's what some people who identify as allies of disabled people, like the head of disability services, do as well. (In fact I wonder if it's non-disabled allies more than people with Real Disabilities who have such a sense of what a Real Disability is.)
The first time I went on FWD/Forward, I remember being surprised when I read the contributors' descriptions of themselves. Mental illnesses weren't disabilities! Physical disabilities that were invisible weren't disabilities! How could this website be called Feminists with Disabilities, when most of these people weren't Really Disabled? My confusion soon turned into excitement and happiness as I started to feel like maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to apologize four hundred billion times for identifying as disabled. I've really been changed by the disability blogosphere, because I now see issues of ableism, disability, and accessibility as being much bigger and broader and more complex than I thought they were. I know this sounds depressing, but it really isn't, because I can see that many things that I once thought were Problems With No Name are actually related to disability.
However, I guess I also worry that as the definition of "disabled" becomes more broad, there won't be enough attention paid to the needs of people who use wheelchairs. I mean, it makes me really frustrated that I have to depend on my professors' goodwill in order to be successful*, and that I feel like I have nowhere to turn if I have a professor who dislikes me or judges my work harshly because of things related to my disability. At the same time if I do poorly in a class it's not the end of the world. And an infinite number of nice professors can't make campus better for a student who uses a wheelchair. It just completely sucks. I can sort of scrape by in a lot of ways because my impairments clash with people not buildings.
[*I would never, ever go through the disability services office because I know it wouldn't work. On a basic level I need not to be judged for not being able to speak well or understand unspoken rules about what an assignment is supposed to be like--something I can't ask for because a professor is either the kind of person who is going to resent me, or they aren't. Last year when things were really terrible, I asked for some extensions (I've probably asked for fewer extensions than a non-disabled person in the time I've been at school) and I asked to take exams in a separate room on a computer to reduce panic/discomfort. Which is not something that's a stereotype of autism, so I don't think the disability office would support me in asking for that if a professor refused to give it to me.]
I think I just feel guilty sometimes for being so angry about being erased from the mainstream understanding of the word disability. It's funny because to the extent that there is disability stuff at my school, I feel totally erased by that too because it's mainly people with specific learning disabilities. I just go through life feeling there are many things that I'll never be able to do, and I think that something like dyslexia or dyscalculia can shut down certain parts of the world, but sometimes I feel like there's such a small area that I can actually safely move around in and aim for. So I totally find myself mumbling to myself, too, "yeah, come back when you have a Real Disability." Except. You know. Is that ever valid?
31 August, 2010
It's true that everyone will be disabled. But everyone will also depart from being heteronormative at some point, and that means fuck all to people who are actually queer or trans all the time. It really warms my heart to see trans people whose lives are actually affected in a big way by being trans snarking on college students who don't believe gender is real and use trans identity/presentation as an accessory to be donned and dropped. And I've been in environments where talking the way I'm talking is seen as a shitty thing to do, but I don't care. Sure I'm policing people's identities. That's because some people's identities are stupid.
I remember being told that disability is the one identity category we will all embody, but that is not true. Or sure it is, if you stretch the word disability until it's meaningless. But right now, a lot of people are spending a lot of money to try to find the gene that makes people like me, and if that isn't the case for you, you can shut up and stop telling me that disability is ~socially constructed~. Only you would think that proving something is socially constructed is the same as proving you and I are equal.
I remember being told that disability is the one identity category we will all embody, but that is not true. Or sure it is, if you stretch the word disability until it's meaningless. But right now, a lot of people are spending a lot of money to try to find the gene that makes people like me, and if that isn't the case for you, you can shut up and stop telling me that disability is ~socially constructed~. Only you would think that proving something is socially constructed is the same as proving you and I are equal.
17 August, 2010
Fictional diagnostics stock responses--part one
I've only commented at Basket of Kisses a few times, but it's one of my favorite blogs, and a place I spend a ridiculous amount of time now that Mad Men season four is off and running. Today I got the shock/delight of a lifetime because I saw that Meowser, a poster with ASD, is writing a series called Pete, Peggy, and PDD-NOS, and linked some of my posts about ASD and Mad Men! It sort of fries my brain to go to sitemeter and see that people are coming here from the Most Amazing Place in the World!
However, people have already made some of a certain kind of comments on Meowser's post. These certain kind of comments really bug me, but because I rarely post on Basket of Kisses I don't want to just go on there and act really confrontational. I really do love it there. Besides, it's not really on topic, so I'm bringing it back here.
The kind of comments I'm referring to go like this:
"I think sometimes people read too heavy into things."--Edward A.
"If [Pete and Peggy] represent an accurate portrayal of Asperger’s then everyone I have ever known fits the diagnosis."--Mrs. Blankenship
"Perhaps we can say that it is a testament to the quality of writing of the show that people seem to work very hard to find a way to say certain characters are exactly like themselves."--MM fan
I want to be clear; I don't have a problem with anyone disagreeing and saying, "No, Peggy just seems different because she has a different background, and Pete has trouble with people because of the way he was raised." What I do have a problem with is a certain kind of automatic response that non-disabled people seem to have when fans with ASD suggest that a certain character might have ASD. This response comes in two types, which can exist on their own or be combined.
1. You're reading too much into it./It's just a TV show./You're working really hard to try to make this fit.
Response #1 tries to cast the fictional-diagnostician (henceforth called f.d.) as a ridiculously obsessive fan, which is usually undercut by the fact that the Responder is on a forum or blog or LiveJournal community for the fandom. Most people who consume Mad Men (or anything else) are not involved in Internet fandom. If you are discussing this on the Internet, you've already forgotten that "it's just a TV show" just as much as the f.d. has.
The Responder also seems to imply that having a disability is like being a mastodon from outer space. It's so bizarre and out of the blue that the f.d. must have worked really, really, really hard on this theory, just so he or she could have the most original idea ever. The f.d. probably opened some crusty old encyclopedia and was thumbing through it for days on end, until finally the weirdest possible condition emerged--autism! Whoever heard of that? What could be more off-the-wall than saying that Character X has autism?
Of course, most f.d.s aren't diagnosing Character X with some random disability. They're diagnosing Character X with a disability they have a lot of experience with, or even have themselves. If you are actually living with ASD, then of course you're going to notice that Character X seems familiar in a certain way, and that ASD could explain some of his personality traits.
For example, Pete Campbell often behaves like someone who feels powerless. But in the obvious areas--race, class, and gender--he has a ton of power. Does he feel powerless because he lacks abilities that other people have? I came up with that all by myself, you guys, and it took me about a minute because I have ASD so it's easy for me to come up with theories that relate to ASD. I'm not "working hard" or "reading really heavy into things." I just tend to respond to my fandom from my own experience, like everyone else.
The implication that ASD-related theories are elaborate or ridiculous, and must take up a lot of time to think up, is insulting to people with ASD, especially when the f.d. is a person with ASD. That reaction implies that people with ASD are so other that it's not logical or intuitive to expect them to be part of a story. It also erases the fact that of course disabled people are the center of our own experience like non-disabled people are the center of theirs. I'm not other to myself, so of course I don't think of ASD as being some rare condition that no one could possibly have. Am I really expected to feel that way about it, just because that's how you feel?
Interesting new twist: MM fan's suggestion that Meowser and I desperately want Mad Men characters to be "exactly like us." Are all people with ASD exactly the same? Most of the people who think Peggy and Pete are non-disabled are non-disabled themselves--does that mean they want Peggy and Pete to be just like them?
I'm really sleepy but I will be back tomorrow with part two ("You can't just diagnose anyone with ASD! It's a serious disability! You're making it sound like just anyone could have it!"--come to think of it, that kind of overlaps). Again, not trying to be a bitch, incredibly excited to be linked at a website I love--it's just that as an ASD person in fandom I get sick of these kind of responses, and I wanted to address them.
However, people have already made some of a certain kind of comments on Meowser's post. These certain kind of comments really bug me, but because I rarely post on Basket of Kisses I don't want to just go on there and act really confrontational. I really do love it there. Besides, it's not really on topic, so I'm bringing it back here.
The kind of comments I'm referring to go like this:
"I think sometimes people read too heavy into things."--Edward A.
"If [Pete and Peggy] represent an accurate portrayal of Asperger’s then everyone I have ever known fits the diagnosis."--Mrs. Blankenship
"Perhaps we can say that it is a testament to the quality of writing of the show that people seem to work very hard to find a way to say certain characters are exactly like themselves."--MM fan
I want to be clear; I don't have a problem with anyone disagreeing and saying, "No, Peggy just seems different because she has a different background, and Pete has trouble with people because of the way he was raised." What I do have a problem with is a certain kind of automatic response that non-disabled people seem to have when fans with ASD suggest that a certain character might have ASD. This response comes in two types, which can exist on their own or be combined.
1. You're reading too much into it./It's just a TV show./You're working really hard to try to make this fit.
Response #1 tries to cast the fictional-diagnostician (henceforth called f.d.) as a ridiculously obsessive fan, which is usually undercut by the fact that the Responder is on a forum or blog or LiveJournal community for the fandom. Most people who consume Mad Men (or anything else) are not involved in Internet fandom. If you are discussing this on the Internet, you've already forgotten that "it's just a TV show" just as much as the f.d. has.
The Responder also seems to imply that having a disability is like being a mastodon from outer space. It's so bizarre and out of the blue that the f.d. must have worked really, really, really hard on this theory, just so he or she could have the most original idea ever. The f.d. probably opened some crusty old encyclopedia and was thumbing through it for days on end, until finally the weirdest possible condition emerged--autism! Whoever heard of that? What could be more off-the-wall than saying that Character X has autism?
Of course, most f.d.s aren't diagnosing Character X with some random disability. They're diagnosing Character X with a disability they have a lot of experience with, or even have themselves. If you are actually living with ASD, then of course you're going to notice that Character X seems familiar in a certain way, and that ASD could explain some of his personality traits.
For example, Pete Campbell often behaves like someone who feels powerless. But in the obvious areas--race, class, and gender--he has a ton of power. Does he feel powerless because he lacks abilities that other people have? I came up with that all by myself, you guys, and it took me about a minute because I have ASD so it's easy for me to come up with theories that relate to ASD. I'm not "working hard" or "reading really heavy into things." I just tend to respond to my fandom from my own experience, like everyone else.
The implication that ASD-related theories are elaborate or ridiculous, and must take up a lot of time to think up, is insulting to people with ASD, especially when the f.d. is a person with ASD. That reaction implies that people with ASD are so other that it's not logical or intuitive to expect them to be part of a story. It also erases the fact that of course disabled people are the center of our own experience like non-disabled people are the center of theirs. I'm not other to myself, so of course I don't think of ASD as being some rare condition that no one could possibly have. Am I really expected to feel that way about it, just because that's how you feel?
Interesting new twist: MM fan's suggestion that Meowser and I desperately want Mad Men characters to be "exactly like us." Are all people with ASD exactly the same? Most of the people who think Peggy and Pete are non-disabled are non-disabled themselves--does that mean they want Peggy and Pete to be just like them?
I'm really sleepy but I will be back tomorrow with part two ("You can't just diagnose anyone with ASD! It's a serious disability! You're making it sound like just anyone could have it!"--come to think of it, that kind of overlaps). Again, not trying to be a bitch, incredibly excited to be linked at a website I love--it's just that as an ASD person in fandom I get sick of these kind of responses, and I wanted to address them.
08 April, 2010
Just a splinter
Okay, I got kind of pissed in class today because we were talking about bullying and people started talking about their friends and how when their friend's ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend comes into the room, they start pointing at them. I don't really understand the point of talking about bullying if you make the definition of bullying so broad that it's about everyone.
I raised my hand and said something like this (I didn't sleep last night, okay? I'm not doing a good job taking stuff lying down):
When I was a kid I had very dramatic physical and facial reactions to things. So, other kids would come up to me with scissors and make like they were going to stab me in the eyes. They would also goose me, lunge at me, etc. There were also verbal fake-outs where people would say things over and over that we both knew weren't true, like that they wanted to go on a date with me.
I'm not saying this ruined my life or anything, but it has had a huge effect on my ability to have physical emotional reactions to things. It's very hard for me to let myself smile or flinch or anything at the drop of a hat, especially when I'm standing up. For example when I see people I like, it's hard for me to let myself look happy. My body wants to look happy, but it stops itself. It can't just let itself do whatever it feels like. I feel overwhelmed and I make faces or just go stiff and stuff instead.
After I had only been away from that environment for a year, I had this boyfriend who I communicated with online. I had known him in real life before we started being in contact online, but once we started dating I would get too panicked about seeing him in real life or even talking to him on the phone. It was just too much. I couldn't let myself get overwhelmed by being around him. One time he made the mistake of telling me that he loved me, and I got so upset I went on this dissociation/shutdown experience for most of a day.
This is obviously much more than what I said in class. And I'm not trying to make a point. I mean, I am, but do you see what I mean without me coming out with a thesis statement? People are frequently shitty to each other but I would say that people were shitty to me in a way that led to very pervasive problems that still affect me almost ten years later. When I have little DSM flamewars or whatever, I don't think that's the same thing. I don't think anything will ever be the same thing.
I raised my hand and said something like this (I didn't sleep last night, okay? I'm not doing a good job taking stuff lying down):
When I was a kid I had very dramatic physical and facial reactions to things. So, other kids would come up to me with scissors and make like they were going to stab me in the eyes. They would also goose me, lunge at me, etc. There were also verbal fake-outs where people would say things over and over that we both knew weren't true, like that they wanted to go on a date with me.
I'm not saying this ruined my life or anything, but it has had a huge effect on my ability to have physical emotional reactions to things. It's very hard for me to let myself smile or flinch or anything at the drop of a hat, especially when I'm standing up. For example when I see people I like, it's hard for me to let myself look happy. My body wants to look happy, but it stops itself. It can't just let itself do whatever it feels like. I feel overwhelmed and I make faces or just go stiff and stuff instead.
After I had only been away from that environment for a year, I had this boyfriend who I communicated with online. I had known him in real life before we started being in contact online, but once we started dating I would get too panicked about seeing him in real life or even talking to him on the phone. It was just too much. I couldn't let myself get overwhelmed by being around him. One time he made the mistake of telling me that he loved me, and I got so upset I went on this dissociation/shutdown experience for most of a day.
This is obviously much more than what I said in class. And I'm not trying to make a point. I mean, I am, but do you see what I mean without me coming out with a thesis statement? People are frequently shitty to each other but I would say that people were shitty to me in a way that led to very pervasive problems that still affect me almost ten years later. When I have little DSM flamewars or whatever, I don't think that's the same thing. I don't think anything will ever be the same thing.
05 April, 2010
Before recommended reading
I feel hesitant about linking things that are related to the state of being a geek or school outcast. I really don't like the equation of mainstreamed ASD people with these roles. (This is a very unorthodox use of the word mainstreamed but I try to avoid words like "high-functioning" because I'm not actually talking about how good the person's life is or how accomplished they are. When I say mainstreamed I mean people who aren't immediately socially categorized as "disabled" and can be fit into other social roles such as space case, manic pixie dream girl, geek, stoner, unstable artist, etc.) The thing is that ASD isn't considered to be something that manic pixie dream girls are always self-diagnosing themselves with, and people aren't always responding to a description of Asperger's with, "Oh, that just sounds like a manic pixie dream girl." So when I write about my use of or identification with the MPDG social role, I don't feel that it's undermining my identity as a disabled person. I do feel that way about the geek and social outcast roles because they are so often invoked to create a slippery slope where milder forms of ASD are not "real."
But, okay: most mainstreamed ASD people are some kind of geek, and are or have been some kind of school outcast. (I'm actually not a geek, I don't think. To me being a geek means your social life is based on your interests. My interests, like my religion and the fact that I'm disabled, are an important part of who I am but not something I have in common with most of my friends.)
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that FWD/Forward does "Recommended Reading" posts, and I love FWD/Forward. And. Sometimes I see stuff and want to link it. But some of the stuff is not actually Disability Stuff but it feels like that to me, because it relates to social roles and experiences that I think are more common for ASD people. But I don't want to do the ASD = geek thing. But it feels related!
So. I'm going to do some "Recommended Reading" posts sometimes and some of the posts are going to be things that were written about weird, non-ASD people. But I'm still disabled, okay?
But, okay: most mainstreamed ASD people are some kind of geek, and are or have been some kind of school outcast. (I'm actually not a geek, I don't think. To me being a geek means your social life is based on your interests. My interests, like my religion and the fact that I'm disabled, are an important part of who I am but not something I have in common with most of my friends.)
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that FWD/Forward does "Recommended Reading" posts, and I love FWD/Forward. And. Sometimes I see stuff and want to link it. But some of the stuff is not actually Disability Stuff but it feels like that to me, because it relates to social roles and experiences that I think are more common for ASD people. But I don't want to do the ASD = geek thing. But it feels related!
So. I'm going to do some "Recommended Reading" posts sometimes and some of the posts are going to be things that were written about weird, non-ASD people. But I'm still disabled, okay?
30 March, 2010
Good Behavior and Psychoanalysis
Jelly told me about this person named Smockity Frocks who is a Christian homeschooling blogger and apparently never heard of disabled people before in her life. She took her post down and replaced it with a link to Autism Speaks (of course, because it's better to eradicate people with disabilities than treat them with charity and understanding) but it's cached here: http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5C2Ta2YGCfTYmRhOTliZTUtNjQ5ZC00MmNjLWJmYzItNWU5MjNlYzU4ZTc3&hl=en
Basically, her post was about how she was at the library with her kids, READING THE BIBLE (for some reason that's my favorite part), and this other kid was waiting for the computer that SF's daughter was using. The other kid got very frustrated by waiting and started flapping her hands and saying, "I'm being really patient," to which her grandmother would reply, "Yes, you're being very patient, soon you'll be able to use the computer." So SF made a post about how no one understands how to treat kids anymore, and this kid was majorly spoiled and wasn't actually being patient at all, or something.
Then a bunch of people commented on it and were like, "This kid obviously has ASD and you fail at being Christian." Smockity Frocks was like, "Well, her grandmother should have made her read a book instead." Then the other people said, "That might not have worked with a kid who has ASD," and it all climaxed with Smockity Frocks declaring, "Well, YOU'RE not being very Christian YOURSELF, because what if I have a disability that keeps me from being able to tolerate kids who are BRATS??"
Oh, boy. There is a collection of response posts here from people whose kids have disabilities: A Message for Smockity Frocks. I haven't read them all but I like Kristina Chew's post a lot. Jelly also wrote a post, which is really good: Oh the joys of judgmental people. From my not especially thorough skimming, it seems like Jelly is the only ASD person who has written a post.
This was striking to me because I've been having a lot of trouble with waiting lately. I've said I've been having shutdowns but that's not really true because they're not really a state of bluntedness or distance, which is how I think of shutdowns; at the same time I don't want to call them meltdowns because I don't actually do anything. They're like proto-meltdowns, and they happen in situations like this, when I'm waiting for something to happen, or something to be over, and I get so tremendously agitated that I feel like I'm going to have...well, a regular meltdown. Which isn't practical since I'm 21. To stop it from happening I start trying to scratch myself with pens and stuff.
I'm sure that if someone looks around the room when a class is running long and sees me gritting my teeth and scratching my arms with a pen, it probably looks to them like I'm being a jerk and trying to tell everyone how much I don't like the class, but this isn't the case. Trying to judge other people's morals is a terrible idea, and CS Lewis explains this much better than I can in the chapter of Mere Christianity called Morality and Psychoanalysis. (I think this chapter isn't that specific to Christianity and can still be useful and interesting if you're not Christian.) CSL points out that you don't know what is happening to a person inside and it's not fair to just judge them by what they do because you don't know what they're fighting against.
[Note: I know that CSL equates homosexuality with having a phobia of cats. I think this is actually pretty charitable given his time period and culture, because he understands that a person can't help being gay and a gay person can be moral, or at least move in a moral direction. Obviously your mileage may vary, but I think he has a good attitude given his raw material.]
This is part of why instead of saying "high-functioning," "low-functioning," etc., I like to say "severely affected," "mildly affected," and so on. This means that instead of thinking about what the person appears to be doing, I'm thinking about what they are working against or around. This seems like a fairer and more accurate way of thinking about people.
The greatest story ever told: At the ASD school where I interned last summer, they used to take the kids on the subway. A lot of the kids had trouble taking the subway and their aides would try to make things easier, for example they'd hold a big clipboard in front of the kid showing how many points the kid was earning by being well-behaved. Also some of the kids would wear iPods on the subway.
Another thing that made the experience easier was being able to sit down. If people didn't offer their seats to the kids, the aides would sometimes ask. Apparently, one time they asked this woman if she could move over so one of the kids, who not only disliked standing, but also had a cold, could sit down. So she very slightly moved over and sat there glaring at the kid, who was squished in next to her. AND THEN HE SNEEZED ON HER FACE.
Basically, her post was about how she was at the library with her kids, READING THE BIBLE (for some reason that's my favorite part), and this other kid was waiting for the computer that SF's daughter was using. The other kid got very frustrated by waiting and started flapping her hands and saying, "I'm being really patient," to which her grandmother would reply, "Yes, you're being very patient, soon you'll be able to use the computer." So SF made a post about how no one understands how to treat kids anymore, and this kid was majorly spoiled and wasn't actually being patient at all, or something.
Then a bunch of people commented on it and were like, "This kid obviously has ASD and you fail at being Christian." Smockity Frocks was like, "Well, her grandmother should have made her read a book instead." Then the other people said, "That might not have worked with a kid who has ASD," and it all climaxed with Smockity Frocks declaring, "Well, YOU'RE not being very Christian YOURSELF, because what if I have a disability that keeps me from being able to tolerate kids who are BRATS??"
Oh, boy. There is a collection of response posts here from people whose kids have disabilities: A Message for Smockity Frocks. I haven't read them all but I like Kristina Chew's post a lot. Jelly also wrote a post, which is really good: Oh the joys of judgmental people. From my not especially thorough skimming, it seems like Jelly is the only ASD person who has written a post.
This was striking to me because I've been having a lot of trouble with waiting lately. I've said I've been having shutdowns but that's not really true because they're not really a state of bluntedness or distance, which is how I think of shutdowns; at the same time I don't want to call them meltdowns because I don't actually do anything. They're like proto-meltdowns, and they happen in situations like this, when I'm waiting for something to happen, or something to be over, and I get so tremendously agitated that I feel like I'm going to have...well, a regular meltdown. Which isn't practical since I'm 21. To stop it from happening I start trying to scratch myself with pens and stuff.
I'm sure that if someone looks around the room when a class is running long and sees me gritting my teeth and scratching my arms with a pen, it probably looks to them like I'm being a jerk and trying to tell everyone how much I don't like the class, but this isn't the case. Trying to judge other people's morals is a terrible idea, and CS Lewis explains this much better than I can in the chapter of Mere Christianity called Morality and Psychoanalysis. (I think this chapter isn't that specific to Christianity and can still be useful and interesting if you're not Christian.) CSL points out that you don't know what is happening to a person inside and it's not fair to just judge them by what they do because you don't know what they're fighting against.
[Note: I know that CSL equates homosexuality with having a phobia of cats. I think this is actually pretty charitable given his time period and culture, because he understands that a person can't help being gay and a gay person can be moral, or at least move in a moral direction. Obviously your mileage may vary, but I think he has a good attitude given his raw material.]
This is part of why instead of saying "high-functioning," "low-functioning," etc., I like to say "severely affected," "mildly affected," and so on. This means that instead of thinking about what the person appears to be doing, I'm thinking about what they are working against or around. This seems like a fairer and more accurate way of thinking about people.
The greatest story ever told: At the ASD school where I interned last summer, they used to take the kids on the subway. A lot of the kids had trouble taking the subway and their aides would try to make things easier, for example they'd hold a big clipboard in front of the kid showing how many points the kid was earning by being well-behaved. Also some of the kids would wear iPods on the subway.
Another thing that made the experience easier was being able to sit down. If people didn't offer their seats to the kids, the aides would sometimes ask. Apparently, one time they asked this woman if she could move over so one of the kids, who not only disliked standing, but also had a cold, could sit down. So she very slightly moved over and sat there glaring at the kid, who was squished in next to her. AND THEN HE SNEEZED ON HER FACE.
20 March, 2010
Okay someone better get excited
A few months ago I made a post about how much I liked the TV show United States of Tara last year. The first episode of the second season is airing on Monday and I'll probably be posting about every episode so I thought I would briefly shill for it and attempt to get other people interested.
Before I start, though, I should say that I wasn't as conscious of ableism when I watched the first season as I am now. I'm also probably much less conscious of ableism regarding mental illness than I am regarding any other kind; writing about ableism tends to focus on physical disabilities, and in real life my experience is with developmental disabilities, so I think I'm less likely to notice when people with mental illness are being discriminated against. United States of Tara is about a woman with a rare, "exotic" mental illness, Dissociative Identity Disorder. It's a comedy (/drama). Even though I don't know anyone with DID, I am pretty sure that Tara's experience in the show is very unrealistic. She has very distinct, cartoonish alter egos who are different ages and genders from her, have their own specific styles of dressing and talking, and behave outrageously. Tara's feelings about her mental illness, and people's reactions to it, are often portrayed as serious--but the actual behavior of the alters is usually meant to be funny.
I don't know how I would feel about this if I had DID or a similar illness. I think that I like how Tara's DID isn't portrayed as something incredibly tragic and heavy. It obviously is a problem, but for Tara's family, the alters are just another part of life and they can be funny. Of course, maybe I'm just rationalizing this because I like the show. I'm hoping that FWD/Forward or another blog that writes about disability issues in TV shows will have some posts about United States of Tara.
But yeah, now that I've done disclaimering here are some reasons I watch the show:
1. I love Toni Collette a lot (because I'm gay okay, fuck you, it is not my fault).
2. It's written by Diablo Cody--which I know is the opposite of a reason to watch something in some people's opinion, but I really don't get all the hate. I mean, so what, the characters say snarky things and make references. I think it's fun.
3. Some of the reactions people have to Tara's DID are really spot-on depictions of the stupid things people say about invisible disabilities, like when Tara's sister refuses to believe that Tara's DID is real and claims that she fakes it for attention, or when one of Tara's clients says "I think all women have DID, a little, because we all have to be so many different people in one day."
4. Tara's 15-year-old daughter is a cool character because she is a stereotypical rebellious teenage girl (she dresses in an "edgy" way, has sex, etc.) but she is really smart and resourceful. Tara gets stressed out about the things her daughter does, but we're not actually made to think that the daughter is stupid or a bad person.
5. Tara's 14-year-old son is even better because he's a gay character who is neither written as a stereotype or written against stereotypes. He happens to be quirky and kind of girly, but not in a really obvious musical-theater way like Kurt from Glee. He's just an odd kid who is gay. Also, even though there are problems that come from him being gay, they're not necessarily the expected ones. His parents and sister are completely used to him being gay, for example, and don't even see it as an issue.
Before I start, though, I should say that I wasn't as conscious of ableism when I watched the first season as I am now. I'm also probably much less conscious of ableism regarding mental illness than I am regarding any other kind; writing about ableism tends to focus on physical disabilities, and in real life my experience is with developmental disabilities, so I think I'm less likely to notice when people with mental illness are being discriminated against. United States of Tara is about a woman with a rare, "exotic" mental illness, Dissociative Identity Disorder. It's a comedy (/drama). Even though I don't know anyone with DID, I am pretty sure that Tara's experience in the show is very unrealistic. She has very distinct, cartoonish alter egos who are different ages and genders from her, have their own specific styles of dressing and talking, and behave outrageously. Tara's feelings about her mental illness, and people's reactions to it, are often portrayed as serious--but the actual behavior of the alters is usually meant to be funny.
I don't know how I would feel about this if I had DID or a similar illness. I think that I like how Tara's DID isn't portrayed as something incredibly tragic and heavy. It obviously is a problem, but for Tara's family, the alters are just another part of life and they can be funny. Of course, maybe I'm just rationalizing this because I like the show. I'm hoping that FWD/Forward or another blog that writes about disability issues in TV shows will have some posts about United States of Tara.
But yeah, now that I've done disclaimering here are some reasons I watch the show:
1. I love Toni Collette a lot (because I'm gay okay, fuck you, it is not my fault).
2. It's written by Diablo Cody--which I know is the opposite of a reason to watch something in some people's opinion, but I really don't get all the hate. I mean, so what, the characters say snarky things and make references. I think it's fun.
3. Some of the reactions people have to Tara's DID are really spot-on depictions of the stupid things people say about invisible disabilities, like when Tara's sister refuses to believe that Tara's DID is real and claims that she fakes it for attention, or when one of Tara's clients says "I think all women have DID, a little, because we all have to be so many different people in one day."
4. Tara's 15-year-old daughter is a cool character because she is a stereotypical rebellious teenage girl (she dresses in an "edgy" way, has sex, etc.) but she is really smart and resourceful. Tara gets stressed out about the things her daughter does, but we're not actually made to think that the daughter is stupid or a bad person.
5. Tara's 14-year-old son is even better because he's a gay character who is neither written as a stereotype or written against stereotypes. He happens to be quirky and kind of girly, but not in a really obvious musical-theater way like Kurt from Glee. He's just an odd kid who is gay. Also, even though there are problems that come from him being gay, they're not necessarily the expected ones. His parents and sister are completely used to him being gay, for example, and don't even see it as an issue.
18 February, 2010
my reply to her reply
(Hi: so I feel like this is an unfair thing to do, not just because I'm cheating on God, but because I'm only posting my responses and not what my professor actually said. I guess I feel like it would be wrong to post what someone else said. I basically feel that I really misunderstood comments she made in class that I took as her saying that ableism was going to be looked at in a really theoretical way and we weren't going to talk about how it affects specific disabilities. She was actually saying that we weren't going to read a lot of personal narratives and that she didn't want disabled students to feel that they had to educate anyone about their experience, and that classification of disabled people can be othering. She also totally missed/ignored what I was saying about accessibility, and was like, "in an academic class, which this is, you can get accommodations through the disability services office." And I think that a disability studies class taught by a nondisabled professor is problematic in general, unless the professor is MAGIC. But I feel like, by only posting my own emails, I might be making her look bad, so I want to be clear that she was pretty nice in the email, and didn't say the things about ableism that I misinterpreted her as saying.)
Dear [professor],
I'm sorry to hear that I misunderstood what you said, about classification and not studying personal experience, to such a great extent. I wish that add-drop wasn't so short, because then I would have been able to go to class more times before making my decision. As it is, since I have trouble changing my schedule and had never dropped a class before, I didn't really have any more time to make the decision. It took a lot of time (Wednesday through Sunday, I think) to make the decision and get myself used to the fact that my schedule was going to be different from what I expected. If I waited until after class on Monday, I would have felt like I was making the decision at the last minute.
I think it's possibly an inherently uncomfortable situation. The problem is that, while it's obviously wrong for a disabled student or students to be the zoo animal of the class who has to explain disability to everyone else, it is also uncomfortable to be invisibly disabled while everyone else is theorizing about it, especially if you don't feel that you're allowed to say, "I'm disabled." I don't feel that the class is [Ralph] Studies, but when [Ralph] makes comments in class, everyone knows that he is coming from a particular perspective and set of experiences, and if they are not disabled, they feel that he may have more understanding of certain issues. (At least, I hope they feel that way, because he does.) Note: "Ralph" is the only visibly disabled person in the class.
Like a lot of people with autism, I was raised to be hyperconscious of the way I speak and what I say. It is hard for me to participate spontaneously in class discussions because I am also trying to speak and respond to people in a standard way, and cover any lapses that I have in creating or processing speech (if someone interrupts me, I basically feel like someone has tripped me, and can't finish at all). On Wednesday, a person in class said, "I'm really interested in Asperger's, and they're taking Asperger's out of the DSM and they're going to call them autistic, and people with Asperger's feel like the identity they claimed is being taken away from them." Actually, a lot of people with an Asperger's diagnosis don't feel this way, identify as autistic rather than Asperger's, and are horrified by this response to the DSM change (which we see as very ableist, and basically coming out of mildly disabled people not wanting to be identified with severely disabled people--a very prevalent type of ableism which occurs in many disability communities). I've been thinking, reading, and writing about the autism/DSM issues a lot in the past few weeks. However, I felt like I couldn't say anything because it might take a lot of words to explain, and because I might be seen as dominating the conversation and trying to make it about a more specific issue (instead of classifications), or trying to make the conversation about my "Asperger's special interest," or whatever the stereotype is. It was just really uncomfortable because it would have taken more preparation to figure out how to talk about it, and I didn't have time to prepare, but I felt upset about it for days because it's really uncomfortable to have another person speak for you, and attribute sentiments to you that you find offensive.
It would have been nice to feel like I could just explain that I am disabled/what my disability is, I guess. At the same time I can imagine that maybe other invisibly disabled people want to pass, or feel like zoo animals if they're expected to explain themselves in that way. I have trouble with people not knowing, because then I just have to spend a lot of time wondering how soon they'll figure out that something is wrong, or what assumptions they'll make about me before they figure it out. (For example I had a professor who chastised me for not having done the reading and not being serious about the class, because in his opinion I didn't speak coherently enough to have done the reading, and didn't make the facial expressions that people make when they are interested in a class.) And it is especially hard if people are talking about stuff that is disability-related or especially autism-related, because I worry that I'm too emotional about it to talk about it in an appropriate way, or if I shouldn't say anything, which also feels wrong.
To conclude, I basically have no useful criticisms of the class, and I'm sorry. I just was upset, and figured I would email you, because sometimes it's hard to tell from the inside if you are feeling uncomfortable for a good reason or not. I'm really relieved to hear that I misunderstood the classification/specificity thing and I appreciate that you are concerned lest disabled students might feel that they are being studied or expected to educate other people about disability or ableism.
I don't agree that disability is the one identity category we will all embody. What about queerness?
I explained why I don't want to apply for accommodations and don't think that any standard accommodations would be useful for me. Also, I think that the whole setup, where I have to go through the disability services office, and bring in doctors' reports to prove that I'm disabled--well, I think it's kind of like a building with a wheelchair entrance in the back, where wheelchair users have to ring the doorbell and wait until someone comes outside and then ask the person to unlock the wheelchair entrance. To make the analogy more appropriate for my situation, let's say that the wheelchair user has CP, and has difficulty being understood, especially by strangers. If I understand the ADA correctly, this building is ADA-compliant, but I wish that buildings would have ramps in the front that people can use if they need them, without feeling like they're asking for special treatment. My desire for the autism and learning disability equivalent of this doesn't have anything to do with whether your class is "academic," by the way. I guess I mentioned it because I was dropping the class anyway and figured that, given the nature of the class, you might be interested in accessibility (which is also an assumption I might make about psych or neuro professors, or professors teaching a disability-related literature class, and so on). I admit I have somewhat radical views on accessibility, and I apologize for unleashing them on you, especially if you felt that I was saying your class wasn't academic.
Thank you very much for your reply, have a wonderful semester too (and I'm sorry for being so long-winded),
Amanda
(I'm being kind of a bitch with the wheelchair entrance thing, huh? also, here is a paragraph I cut:
I don't agree that disability is the one identity category we will all embody. What about queerness? Something I wanted to say about classifications, but didn't manage to get out in class, is that when someone tries to "reassure" me by saying I'm not disabled, I feel like the floor is being pulled out from under me. I know that there are parts of disability and queerness in everyone, but people don't look at me the way they look at Eli Clare, and people with regular brains don't feel the way I do about being found out. Neither do straight people. Being able to escape a certain amount of worry and ambiguity is something that certain people get, in certain areas of life. I'm jealous. I feel different from them, even if we're technically all different/all the same.)
Dear [professor],
I'm sorry to hear that I misunderstood what you said, about classification and not studying personal experience, to such a great extent. I wish that add-drop wasn't so short, because then I would have been able to go to class more times before making my decision. As it is, since I have trouble changing my schedule and had never dropped a class before, I didn't really have any more time to make the decision. It took a lot of time (Wednesday through Sunday, I think) to make the decision and get myself used to the fact that my schedule was going to be different from what I expected. If I waited until after class on Monday, I would have felt like I was making the decision at the last minute.
I think it's possibly an inherently uncomfortable situation. The problem is that, while it's obviously wrong for a disabled student or students to be the zoo animal of the class who has to explain disability to everyone else, it is also uncomfortable to be invisibly disabled while everyone else is theorizing about it, especially if you don't feel that you're allowed to say, "I'm disabled." I don't feel that the class is [Ralph] Studies, but when [Ralph] makes comments in class, everyone knows that he is coming from a particular perspective and set of experiences, and if they are not disabled, they feel that he may have more understanding of certain issues. (At least, I hope they feel that way, because he does.) Note: "Ralph" is the only visibly disabled person in the class.
Like a lot of people with autism, I was raised to be hyperconscious of the way I speak and what I say. It is hard for me to participate spontaneously in class discussions because I am also trying to speak and respond to people in a standard way, and cover any lapses that I have in creating or processing speech (if someone interrupts me, I basically feel like someone has tripped me, and can't finish at all). On Wednesday, a person in class said, "I'm really interested in Asperger's, and they're taking Asperger's out of the DSM and they're going to call them autistic, and people with Asperger's feel like the identity they claimed is being taken away from them." Actually, a lot of people with an Asperger's diagnosis don't feel this way, identify as autistic rather than Asperger's, and are horrified by this response to the DSM change (which we see as very ableist, and basically coming out of mildly disabled people not wanting to be identified with severely disabled people--a very prevalent type of ableism which occurs in many disability communities). I've been thinking, reading, and writing about the autism/DSM issues a lot in the past few weeks. However, I felt like I couldn't say anything because it might take a lot of words to explain, and because I might be seen as dominating the conversation and trying to make it about a more specific issue (instead of classifications), or trying to make the conversation about my "Asperger's special interest," or whatever the stereotype is. It was just really uncomfortable because it would have taken more preparation to figure out how to talk about it, and I didn't have time to prepare, but I felt upset about it for days because it's really uncomfortable to have another person speak for you, and attribute sentiments to you that you find offensive.
It would have been nice to feel like I could just explain that I am disabled/what my disability is, I guess. At the same time I can imagine that maybe other invisibly disabled people want to pass, or feel like zoo animals if they're expected to explain themselves in that way. I have trouble with people not knowing, because then I just have to spend a lot of time wondering how soon they'll figure out that something is wrong, or what assumptions they'll make about me before they figure it out. (For example I had a professor who chastised me for not having done the reading and not being serious about the class, because in his opinion I didn't speak coherently enough to have done the reading, and didn't make the facial expressions that people make when they are interested in a class.) And it is especially hard if people are talking about stuff that is disability-related or especially autism-related, because I worry that I'm too emotional about it to talk about it in an appropriate way, or if I shouldn't say anything, which also feels wrong.
To conclude, I basically have no useful criticisms of the class, and I'm sorry. I just was upset, and figured I would email you, because sometimes it's hard to tell from the inside if you are feeling uncomfortable for a good reason or not. I'm really relieved to hear that I misunderstood the classification/specificity thing and I appreciate that you are concerned lest disabled students might feel that they are being studied or expected to educate other people about disability or ableism.
I don't agree that disability is the one identity category we will all embody. What about queerness?
I explained why I don't want to apply for accommodations and don't think that any standard accommodations would be useful for me. Also, I think that the whole setup, where I have to go through the disability services office, and bring in doctors' reports to prove that I'm disabled--well, I think it's kind of like a building with a wheelchair entrance in the back, where wheelchair users have to ring the doorbell and wait until someone comes outside and then ask the person to unlock the wheelchair entrance. To make the analogy more appropriate for my situation, let's say that the wheelchair user has CP, and has difficulty being understood, especially by strangers. If I understand the ADA correctly, this building is ADA-compliant, but I wish that buildings would have ramps in the front that people can use if they need them, without feeling like they're asking for special treatment. My desire for the autism and learning disability equivalent of this doesn't have anything to do with whether your class is "academic," by the way. I guess I mentioned it because I was dropping the class anyway and figured that, given the nature of the class, you might be interested in accessibility (which is also an assumption I might make about psych or neuro professors, or professors teaching a disability-related literature class, and so on). I admit I have somewhat radical views on accessibility, and I apologize for unleashing them on you, especially if you felt that I was saying your class wasn't academic.
Thank you very much for your reply, have a wonderful semester too (and I'm sorry for being so long-winded),
Amanda
(I'm being kind of a bitch with the wheelchair entrance thing, huh? also, here is a paragraph I cut:
I don't agree that disability is the one identity category we will all embody. What about queerness? Something I wanted to say about classifications, but didn't manage to get out in class, is that when someone tries to "reassure" me by saying I'm not disabled, I feel like the floor is being pulled out from under me. I know that there are parts of disability and queerness in everyone, but people don't look at me the way they look at Eli Clare, and people with regular brains don't feel the way I do about being found out. Neither do straight people. Being able to escape a certain amount of worry and ambiguity is something that certain people get, in certain areas of life. I'm jealous. I feel different from them, even if we're technically all different/all the same.)
03 January, 2010
Everyone has it
I'm rewatching United States of Tara which was the light of my Winter Term last year. (This year it's not starting until March, so I guess I'll have to find happiness in hanging out with my friends, or reading, or something like that.) I don't know enough about DID to know if it is an accurate portrayal and I'm sure that it might be offensive to me if I had more experience with DID. However, I just wanted to share THE BEST SCENE:
Annoying lady: Oh, I kind of feel like everyone has it, you know? A little. I mean, how many different women do we all have to be in one day?
Awesome. I think this happens with every disability there is. Oh, buddy, your real life is such a poignant metaphor for my tribulations! ADORABLE!
Additionally, Tara's son Marshall is by far my favorite gay TV character. He's not some sort of overcompensatory football player like the guy on Dawson's Creek, but he's not like Kurt from Glee either. He is kind of stereotypically gay, but it's in his own way--he wears suits to school, is obsessed with old movies, and bakes. He's weird and unique in a girly way, not just straight-up girly in the most obvious way possible, like Kurt.
Plus, he's completely comfortable with his homosexuality at the age of fourteen, and so are his sister and parents. This doesn't mean that it never causes him problems, but just that everyone is used to the fact that he's gay and it's just another thing he has to deal with. This is kind of the way the family acts about Tara's DID, too--they're just trying to live with it. Which may be completely unrealistic, I have no idea, but it seems kind of positive, maybe?
Annoying lady: Oh, I kind of feel like everyone has it, you know? A little. I mean, how many different women do we all have to be in one day?
Awesome. I think this happens with every disability there is. Oh, buddy, your real life is such a poignant metaphor for my tribulations! ADORABLE!
Additionally, Tara's son Marshall is by far my favorite gay TV character. He's not some sort of overcompensatory football player like the guy on Dawson's Creek, but he's not like Kurt from Glee either. He is kind of stereotypically gay, but it's in his own way--he wears suits to school, is obsessed with old movies, and bakes. He's weird and unique in a girly way, not just straight-up girly in the most obvious way possible, like Kurt.
Plus, he's completely comfortable with his homosexuality at the age of fourteen, and so are his sister and parents. This doesn't mean that it never causes him problems, but just that everyone is used to the fact that he's gay and it's just another thing he has to deal with. This is kind of the way the family acts about Tara's DID, too--they're just trying to live with it. Which may be completely unrealistic, I have no idea, but it seems kind of positive, maybe?
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