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Autistic Thoughts
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Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Autistic Thoughts" journal:
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05:20 pm
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A Story of REAL Awareness
( Once Upon a Time.... )
Current Mood:  hopeful
Current Music: Mago de Oz- "Hasta que el cuerpo aguante"
Tags: disability, disability rights, do-gooderism, media, organizations
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10:14 pm
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"April is the cruelest month....."
...too frazzled and exhausted for posting anything particularly eloquent or coherent at the moment, much to my chagrin.
Autism 'Awareness' Month begins today.
Be(a)ware.
Current Mood:  fatigued
Current Music: Tori Amos- "Strange Little Girl"
Tags: autism, disability rights, linkspam, media, video
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08:09 pm
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First Post of 2008
Nothing really interesting to say at the moment, but I had some interesting links I wanted to share.
Creature Discomforts- a series of ads about physical disabilities produced by Leonard Cheshire Disability and the creators of Wallace and Gromit. All of the claymation Aardman animals are voice-acted by real people talking about life with their disabilities and the obstacles they face because of inaccessibility and stigma.
D-PAN- music videos beautifully re-interpreted in ASL by deaf performers. I've kinda been perseverating on their version of "Waiting on the World to Change" and watching it over and over. :-)
the seam of skin and scales- Poem by Little Light. Very powerful and moving, regardless of whether you're cis- or transsexual.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Current Music: John Mayer- "Waiting on the World to Change"
Tags: community, disability rights, linkspam, media, organizations, physical disability, video
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04:03 pm
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A Letter I Don't Need to Send
They did it. They actually did it.
I was in the process of writing a sad, timid little post about the offensiveness of The NYU's Ransom Notes campaign, questioning how such a campaign could be compatible with their stated mission to "eliminate the stigma of being or having a child with a psychiatric disorder", or how they intend to promote 'awareness' by conflating the effects of disorders with the effects of ostracization and stigma (not to mention conflating psychiatric disorders and developmental/neurological disabilities), by presenting exaggerated worst-case scenarios without even the slightest mention of how to recognize the conditions that they were painting such bleak pictures of.
The post was going to be entitled "A Letter I'll Never Send", because I saw no point in sending it. I was nervous and frightened of taking even these first tiny baby steps towards public self-advocacy because I'd already seen others try and fail. When a corporation's only response to criticism and outrage is to take it as "evidence that [their] approach is working", what good can one more outraged voice do? When eloquent speakers, concerned parents, and even entire disability rights organizations all seem to be falling on closed ears, what use is one more person? I felt more small and insignificant than I ever had before I'd become aware of the disability rights movement. If the best we can do is still not good enough, is there any point to even trying?
...except.
Except that it worked. Whether it was the media coverage of the criticism or the online petition or the deluge of blogs and emails and phonecalls or the fact that someone noticed Koplewicz's affiliations with Pfizer and his participation in the infamous Paxil Study 329... it worked. As of today, the ads appear to be gone, hopefully for good.
Thank you, Ari Ne'eman, Kristina Chew, Mike Stanton, Bob Kafka, Jim Ward, Autism Hub, Not Dead Yet, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, ADAPT, TAAP, Alliance for Disabled in Action, and every blogger, advocate, parent, psychologist or other person of any creed or kind who spoke out against this. Thank you not allowing yourselves to be silenced, for fighting even when it seemed to be in vain. Thank you for making it a bit easier for people like me to add our voices to your chorus next time.
Thank you for hope.
Current Mood:  amazed
Current Music: Rogue Traders- "Voodoo Child"
Tags: ablism, autism, community, disability, disability rights, media, organizations, self-advocacy
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11:28 pm
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Disability in Comics, Part II
( Data crunching under cut )
Pans
...for blind superheroes who aren't
...for Puck and his writers for prizing the appearance of normality over the ability to actually function in society
...for Saturn Girl's shame over her lack of verbal speech, despite having projective telepathy and despite this actually being the NORMAL state for her species
...for Claudette St. Croix, Legion, and all the other characters in temporary, intermittent, or permanent catatonic states who Marvel inexplicably chooses to call "autistic"
...for complete and utter lack of representation of the cognitively disabled
Pats
...for Mr Fantastic, Aspergian superhero who bucks the trend of Marvel having no clue about autism
...for speech-impaired superheroes using sign language, paraplegics with realistic wheelchairs, and amputees with plausible prosthetics
...for Black Manta, who responds to Aquaman curing his autism... by continuing to try to kill Aquaman!
...for Batgirl/Oracle, who doesn't let spinal injury keep her from being a superheroic badass- or a "big name" comics character
...for Dan DiDio, Denny O'Neil, and other editors at DC for recognizing her value as a prominent disabled hero and repeatedly refusing to cure her:
...And...that went nowhere. Denny shot it down, because, according to him, everybody loves Barbara Gordon as Oracle and as a handicapped character. The theory was that DC didn't have enough handicapped characters, so they weren't going to do anything with Barbara as she was. And the design went into the drawer.
Some stories... are so strong that undoing them would be a crime. The DCU would be a lesser place without Barry's sacrifice, or the crippling of Barbara at the hands of the Joker.
...for all the people in the comics industry who get it to at least some degree and, despite occasional errors, are legitimately trying to treat their disabled readers and characters with respect.
Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Phil Collins- "In the Air Tonight"
Tags: data analysis, disability, fandom, media
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03:30 pm
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"Fixing" Oracle
So, there've been recent discussions going on in comics fandom over whether or not DC should let Booster Gold go back in time and retcon the events of The Killing Joke so that Barbara Gordon never gets shot and paralyzed. I haven't been participating at all since I don't really have much of an interest in most comics, Western or Eastern, but this, unsurprisingly, piqued my curiosity. Most of the debate that I've seen has centered around whether or not what happened to her fits the trope of "Women in Refrigerators", whether said trope is overinvoked, whether or not 'fixing' the events and letting her continue to be Batgirl is worth sacrificing her character development and role as Oracle (not to mention simultaneously retconning about a million other character's storylines), whether your "classic" version of a character should be called the "original" even if they had a predecessor or not, etc...
And in the middle of it, someone points out: Also, I think changing it would detract from DC's one prominent disabled character whose disability doesn't have anything to do with their "powers".
So, here's some actual data on that:
( Disability in Comics, according to Wikipedia )
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The Cure- "Kyoto Song"
Tags: data points, disability, fandom, media, more data please
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06:50 pm
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*Bury This Story*
Lately, I've found myself thoughtlessly using the word "lame" as an insult, something I've normally made a point of trying not to do. It may not have the same force behind it as "half a person","cripple", "gimp", or "retard", but it's still a slur, and it's still as pathetic an insult as using "gay" as a synonym for "pathetic", especially from someone who's actively trying to fight against the idea that physical disability and mobility impairments are inherently pathetic.
On reflection, I think this bad habit is probably a consequence of my presence on the newsfeed site Digg. I am on there regularly, digging up stories and comments championing the basic human rights of the disabled and digging down articles and comments expressing bigoted or just plain scientifically inaccurate views about us. Comments are buried without any need to give explanation, but burying a story allows you to inform the site's algorithms why you think a bit of news doesn't deserve visibility. Was it a duplicate of an article already posted? Was it spam? Was the headline, description, or article inaccurate? Or is it just "OK, This is Lame"?
Every time I read the explanations to myself as I bury someone for repeating scientifically disproven and debunked theories about the causes of autism, or insisting that there's nothing wrong with disowning your Down's Syndrome child, or insinuating that a pair of wheelchair users suing an inaccessible store must be in it just for the money, or saying that the disabled are just burdens on society and should be aborted... I wind up repeating to myself, "OK, This is Lame".
Every time I bury them, I am semantically equating the people who society describes as "lame" with those bigoted pieces of human garbage. And that's just pathetic.
Current Mood: chagrined
Current Music: Scooter- "Don't Let It Be Me"
Tags: ablism, internalised ablism, language, media
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thauts's journal