Mom and I are planning a trip to DC to visit my aunts, and I’d hoped to be there for ADAPT’s 25th anniversary. (It didn’t work out–sigh). Members are celebrating in Washington DC, with a fun run, a dinner, film screenings….and actions.

“At least 20 disabled activists, most of them in wheelchairs, were arrested outside Sen. John McCain’s offices Tuesday after being refused a meeting with the GOP presidential nominee-to-be over a bill to expand Medicaid coverage to more people who want in-home care.” [from Laurie Kellman, "Disabled group members arrested at McCain's office"]

The bill in question is S. 799, also known as the Community Choice Act of 2007. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both support it. I couldn’t find anything from either John McCain or Ron Paul about it.

Go, ADAPT!

“My freedom ends where your safety begins.”
           –how a teacher explained freedom
           of speech in my 7th grade Government class

I’m a big believer in safe spaces. Having to navigate somewhere that isn’t my house takes a lot of effort; I only noticed just how much effort once I left school and stopped having to spend 6 hours a day in a strange-to-me place. But I’ve always felt most comfortable in my house–my bedroom, especially. Maybe that’s why I like stories about people trying to protect their homes from outsiders.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly constitutes a safe space–what safety even is. Because I’ve seen that the safe space can turn into an oppression-sword real fast. Like when a cissexual feminist isn’t “comfortable” around trans* women because they don’t fit her theories:

“I am not comfortable being my radical feminist self amongst transpersons. Reading transperson accounts online and in books does not help it either–in fact, it heightens my inability to speak freely. How can I, a gender abolitionist, feel comfortable speaking out against gender and its manifestations in the company of a transperson? ….. I think gender is woefully destructive and I put it to blame for so much of what pits us against our bodies. But what I am arguing for and about smacks against what transpersons feel is their reality and experience. In recognizing their daily trauma and very real oppression they receive I don’t have the *guts* to sit in a room and speak the truths I feel about gender with a transperson.”

–Pisaquari, “RadfemPhobia” (hat tips: Lisa and Queen Emily)

My bedroom is an important safe space for me because spending time in it gives me the energy to leave. Since leaving school, I’ve done all kinds of things that I didn’t have the time, energy or ability to do beforehand:

• go for more walks (especially alone)
• help count turtle nests on the beach during mating season
• do my own grocery shopping (my mom drives me to the store, but I find everything I need myself…for the most part).
• volunteer at a small video game store, testing devices and cleaning thumbsticks
• learn about UNIX
• volunteer writing reviews of video games and cult films
• see plays (season tickets, baby!)
• start learning how to write grants for the library
• start learning about disability rights, transgender/transsexual issues and feminism
• work on this blog
• work out at the YMCA

These things aren’t easy, and they certainly aren’t always comfortable. For instance: navigating the playhouse is still new and weird to me, though it gets easier with time. But if my safe space protected me from any and all discomfort, thereby stifling my growth and development as a person, it would be a very harmful space, indeed.

Similarly, I hope this blog is a safe space. I don’t always read other people’s tone of voice well, and understand criticism much better in text than in speech. I chose this format not because it makes me feel good, but because it will allow me to actually listen to and learn from critiques and disagreements.

So when I see calls to give white author Amanda Marcotte a “safe space” from which to respond to criticisms that she failed to cite other people’s work (particularly women of color) in an article she wrote about immigration, I think: “Huh?” When people ask that those raising concerns about the racist comics introducing the chapters in her book to hush up so she doesn’t feel attacked, I’m like, “What, now?”

“Safety” does not mean “freedom from disagreement.” It means the freedom to be, to do, to think and discuss. Which makes some people’s behavior of late all the more disgusting.

I’ve seen white editors of a feminist press barge into a woman of color’s blog and demand that she tell them why she doesn’t like them. (For the story, see Prof. Black Woman’s Why Seal Press if Off the Syllabus).This blogger now feels unsafe in the space she created. (Read her fairwell at Sylvia/M’s Problem Chylde). I’ve seen a woman of color who’s done years of blogging about immigration and other issues make make that work private to protect it from those who’d use it for their own ends. I’ve seen a cissexual woman spew transphobic, racist crap on a trans* woman’s blog–and hide behind a psuedonym to do it. Thanks to Monica Roberts and Phyllis Frye, I have seen a huge organization (the Human Rights Campaign) call the police (the police!) on a small number of non-violent trans* people who were protesting a fundraising dinner.

I guess the people who deserve all the “safe spaces” are those who’ve always been safe.

As a white, cissexual person who’s passed for straight, I’m safe everywhere I go. In fact, as Jessica Hoffman points out in her Open Letter to White Feminists, I am so safe that I can trust the police to help if I’m the victim of a crime, domestic violence or random acts of perviness. Although they may brutalize innocent people of color like Sean Bell (via Holly at Feministe) or 12-year-old Reinaldo Rodriguez, I’ll be safe. And my government will protect my country from all sorts of brown people, whether they’re a Muslim family or a Mexican woman. People may get beaten, raped and killed, but I’ll be safe.

And that’s all that matters, right? Because all people are equal. It’s just that some people are more equal than others.

* Regarding the word “trans *”: I’ve borrowed this from Drakyn, who says: “I prefer to use the asterisk because there are so many possible variations on labels and identities.”

"Why didn’t you tell me?" my mother says.

When I was very young, I had a book called Stranger Danger. It told me not get in cars with adults I didn’t know, especially if they offered me candy. It told me to tell an adult I did know if such a person ever tried to get me in their car, or touched me "in any way that was uncomfortable." It had pictures of shadow-men in fedoras and trenchcoats.

I met no strangers, no shadows, no men. But I knew a girl.

The girl was in my daycare, maybe a couple years older than me, maybe not. I wanted to be friends with her, to like her. But I couldn’t.

She made me laugh sometimes. But other times she’d climb up into our treehouse and say,"Nobody can leave until they put on a strip show for the boys."

We try to leave; she blocks the entry. We drop our pants. "Oooh!" she says to me. "Your underwear is silky!" Why did I come into this treehouse? I know she always comes here. It’s my fault, like when you touch a stove and burn yourself, even though you know it’s hot. I have no words. Except one.

"Tattle," I think. "Tattle-tattle-tattle-tattle-tattle."

Someone hears what I couldn’t say. "…king kids take their clothes off again," says a voice far below us.  And then a new voice: "___! Come down here RIGHT NOW." Something in that voice scares me. Not because it’s angry, but because it’s not. That voice is afraid. The adults who were supposed to help, who my books told me would fix everything, were as frightened of this girl as I was.

"I don’t like daycare," I tell my mother.

"You have to go," she says. "I have to work."

Now she says, "Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve raised holy hell!" I think back to my Stranger Danger book full of grown men who had no faces. No little girls. No sometimes-friends.

No words.

(Thanks to Venus, who gave me the courage to write this. And thanks to Ettina, who gave me a deadline and thus, the courage to write it faster).

Cue your best Wayne Campbell voice! Thanks very much to Venus of Venus Speaks, who gave me an Excellent Blog award:

[Image description: A rectangle placed vertically, with black margins and a white center. The top margin says "Excellent" in white letters. The bottom margin says "This Blog is Rated E for Excellent," also in white letters. In the white center is a black "E," tilted].

Sweetness!

The award was created by Shannon of The Mommy Project. The rules–I now award this honor to 10 other bloggers and their blogs. In almost-perfect alphabetical order:

1. Abnormaldiversity: Ettina advocates for the rights of all disabled people. She thinks deeply about a great many issues, and extends that thoughtfulness to those who disagree with her. I want to be just like her when I grow up.

2. The Angry Black Woman: I’ve only recently discovered the Angry Black Woman, but the little I’ve read is powerful and damned hilarious. My favorite posts so far are Thank You, White People and We can’t stop here! This is MULTIRACIAL country!

3. Ballastexistenz: Amanda Baggs has taught me a lot about disability, human rights and institutional abuse (in both the abuse that happens in institutions sense and the abuse that’s institutionally sanctioned sense). She has influenced an awful lot of my thinking. And she remembers the VIC-20! (Full disclosure: mine is three feet away from me, in the closet). GOTO. Now.

4. Chewing the Fat: Dave Hingsburger has worked in the disabilities field for around 30 years, and is disabled himself. He also posts something every single day. One of my favorite pieces is A Question Along the Way.

5. The Gimp Parade: Kay Olson started her blog as a place for “personal reviews of books and movies from a disability culture perspective.” Her analysis of disability-related media and news totally rocks.

6. Questioning Transphobia: I love how Lisa calls people on their crap. I love how she carefully dismantles their arguments while calling them on their crap. And I love how she challenges all my cissexual privileges.

7. Reimer Reason: I found Jodi’s blog through the last Disability Blog Carnival, and I’ve been reading through her archives like my hair’s on fire. (And, no, that simile didn’t make any sense to me, either).

8. Asperger Square 8: University student by day, autism advocate…also by day, Bev’s posts are always thought-provoking, funny, and beautifully written. Plus, her art is awesome.

9. Taking Steps: Little Light is a “crimefighting multiracial transsexual semiprofessional occultist and obsessive religion scholar.” Read I, colonist. And the seam of skin and scales. Because I said so.

10. Victoria’s Corner: Victoria Biggs is the author of Caged in Chaos: A Dyspraxic Guide to Breaking Free, which I’ve wanted to read for, like, ever. (I need to just call up the bookstore and have them order it for me). Please see Disability and Self-Portraiture. And also Hob-Nobbing at Number 11, just because I love finding other people with navigational disabilities who travel with companions. (Really! Why are you laughing?)

The Angry Black Woman is hosting a Carnival of Allies

[w]here self-identified allies write to other people like themselves about why this or that oppression and prejudice is wrong. Why they are allies. Why the usual excuses are not good enough. I figure allies probably know full well all the many and various arguments people throw up to make prejudice and oppression okay. Things that someone on the other side of the fence may not hear. Address those things and more besides.

And when I say allies, I’m talking about any and every type. PoC [people of color] can be (and should be) allies to other PoC, or to LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/transgender, queer] people if they are straight, or any number of other combinations. If you feel like you’re an ally and have something to say about that, you should submit to this carnival.

The deadline for submissions is May 5. Again, go here for the full rundown, and to submit your entry.

There are three places around town that I can walk to by myself: the Target, the dentist and the local library. (Okay, there’s a Pizza Hut on the way to Target, but since starting my diet lifestyle change I don’t go there).

Since the weather’s finally warming up and since I don’t like spending money if I can help it, I’ve been hanging out at the library while my mom’s at work. I was there last week when I saw a sign calling for “shelf elves”–people to put books in their proper place. So I fill out an application, talk to the volunteer coordinator, and promise to come back Monday afternoon for my first day of work.

I show up on Monday about fifteen minutes early. The volunteer coordinator is still at lunch–while I wait, I read a little of Laying Community Foundations for Your Child with a Disability. When she comes back, she takes me into the board room. I fully expect to learn how to shelve books.

“I hope you like the job I’ve got for you,” she says. Maybe she wants me to file things. “Probably,” I say.

“Well, you’ve put ‘writing’ as a special skill on your application. What do you think of writing grants?”

I’m honest; I tell her I’ve never done grantwriting before, but would like to learn.

“Great!” she says. She tells me the library would like to get more public speakers in. To have more programs for kids and senior citizens. She entrusts me with copies of grants she’s written, a book on grantwriting, and a booklet of speakers that are “out of our budget” but are the kinds of people the library is interested in nonetheless. Thrilled with my new job (which is something I really have wanted to learn to do), I cross the street to have lunch at Runza.

At home, I curl up with my how-to grantwriting book and think, Wait. While some stuff sounds like fun, I hope the library hasn’t given me as much power as I think they have. I’ve never planned huge projects before, especially not ones that cost money. I honestly couldn’t tell you what kinds of things people in the community want from the library. And dude, I was in the slow math class. (Budgeting? Oh, snap).

So, I don’t know about this. I’m still excited, but I hope I’ve misunderstood something and that my new job is really more secretarial than it looks.

[Image Description: A faceless person with brown hair parted cleanly down the middle. The back of the office chair she's sitting in is visible, and behind her you can see a white wall and a wooden door flung open with a plastic bag on the doorknob. In the lower left corner, you can see some pink shoes.]

A friend once told me that my disability was “semi-visible.” At the time, I thought I knew what she meant. Now I realize I don’t.

She could have been talking about my hemiparesis; the way I walk and hold my left arm has been commented on by all kinds of people. A couple of therapists once told me not to worry, since “We see it only because we’re therapists.” (Where were all the three-year-olds who asked me how come I walked like that getting their occupational therapy degrees? And who said I was bothered by their noticing, anyway?)

But my friend is also the daughter of a speech-language pathologist. She’s seen all kinds of disabled people because of her mom’s practice. Her teenage-at-the-time sister once told a woman that she thought her son could have Asperger Syndrome–and unlike some op-ed writers, she wasn’t being mean-spirited at all. Because of my friend’s background, she’s probably familiar with some disability issues in ways that other people aren’t.

This is why I have a problem with terms like “visibile” and “invisible” disability. I didn’t used to; before being corrected I just took them for granted as objective descriptions of natural phenomena. They aren’t. How can they be, when whether something is “visible” or “invisible” depends so much on who is looking?

For example:

You are 18. Your much younger autistic cousin and his family are coming to visit. You have read some things about autism (mostly from autistic people) and you think of some of the barriers your cousin might face in your house. The guests arrive; you have lots of fun hanging out with all your cousins. At one point, your cousin with autism climbs on top of the toilet tank. You don’t think the toilet tank can hold him; you also remember some things you read in books. In as calm and even a voice as possible, you say ” __, come down from there,” starting with his name so he knows you’re talking to him and then giving him a few moments to process what you said. After a few seconds, he comes down from there. And you are thankful, because you really didn’t want to bring his cut-up, bloodied corpse to his parents.

Later, you’re out with a friend who has an intellectual disability and uses a wheelchair. You’re at a party at the skating rink, and you’re the one driving. Looking back, you can’t remember if your friend actually asked you to drive. She may have–especially since you drive very badly and she laughs whenever you crash into the clothing racks at the mall. But she also may not have, in which case you are being a complete asshole. Considering that you were friends through a program that paired teens up with other teens who have intellectual disabilities, and you were involved in this program as a way to get enough “service hours” to graduate from high school, “being a complete asshole” is most likely.

So, anyway. You’re driving, and you see a single, small step. You think, “Hey! That’s not much of a step–we can go over that!” So you do, and your friend falls flat on her face. She does not fall because she has an “invisible disability.” She falls because you did not appreciate a barrier. You did not appreciate this barrier because you don’t know much about what kind of barriers people who use wheelchairs face. Cal Montgomerey wrote an article called “A Hard Look at Invisible Disability” in which she says:

“Dismissing that which is unfamiliar to us as ‘invisible’ (and suggesting that it cannot be discerned rather than that we have not learned to discern it) is another way of throwing the responsibility for social justice back on the individual who carries the burden of injustice.”

So when people draw lines between “visible” and “invisible” disabilities, I get annoyed. Especially when they use those lines to say stuff like, “It would be easier if I/my kid had a visible disability and used a wheelchair/white cane/guide dog, etc., etc, because then people would fall all over themselves to be accommodating.”

Baloney sandwiches.

The only barriers I am intimately familiar with are my own. When it comes to anyone else’s barriers–including others who have my diagnosis–I can never know them as well. It is my responsiblity to listen to other people, and to learn.

When people form communities, I think there’s a lot of focus on what they are not: not evil, not “crazy,” not Catholic, not “low-functioning.” (Even my diagnosis of “nonverbal learning disability” just tells you that my disability is not verbal). So we end up thinking a lot about our specific needs and how those needs separate us from other people. And when we take action, we only advocate for the people who are most like us.

There’s a lot of cross-disability ignorance and prejudice out there. People have said that nonverbal learning disability is somehow worse than dyslexia because “dyslexia only involves reading”; that kids with ADD are all “wild” and “bounce off walls”; that people with Asperger Syndrome don’t want friends; that people with Asperger Syndrome do want friends while people with high-functioning autism do not.

Stereotypes and misinformation spread beyond disability of course; and if you don’t recognize all the ways labels, identities and prejudices interact with each other, your advocacy won’t get very far. Disability interacts with class which interacts with race which interacts with gender (including cissexuality and transsexuality) which interacts with sexual orientation which interacts with culture and sub-culture which interacts with nationality which interacts with region (we Nebraskans are different from Rhode Islanders who are different from Floridians, etc.) and probably a bunch of other stuff I forgot.

I’m not saying that we’re all the same. What I am saying is that too often, we part ourselves off and focus our advocacy on one or two identity labels at a time. This narrow focus leaves a lot of people out, and won’t help us move forward in the long run. We can spend way too much time fighting other people’s prejudices, when we should really be working on our own.

A while back I saw this video of Mia Mingus accepting the Creating Change Award on MsCripChick’s blog (includes transcript). I thought her speech was awesome, of course, but something seemed vaguely familiar about her, particularly her voice.(I recognize people by their voices more often than by their faces). Last night after watching the video again I had an epiphany: “Ohmygod! That’s Mia Mingus!”

We met at Agnes Scott College, and were in the same graduating class. Mia helped organize a disabled students’ advocacy group on campus, which was way cool. (Although I didn’t do much work; I mostly just listened to everyone else). One of our issues was accessibility of handicapped parking spaces, and reporting people who parked in them illegally.

Now, Mia’s the co-executive director of SPARK! Reproductive Justice NOW. The organization has a YouTube channel here. Unfortunately, none of the videos are captioned; I’ll see if I can work with them to change that. Also, here’s a copy of a speech Mia gave on violence against women, as well as her review of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals.

Yes, I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes. At least now I can stalk get back in touch with Mia and congratulate her.

LiveWorkPlay is a Canadian organization of self-advocates with intellectual disabilities. Its website has lots of videos that the members wrote and starred in; they cover everything from voting (I Am A Voter) to standing up for yourself when your parents aren’t ready to “let go” ( Out of the Box) to staying out late and having fun (The Right to Party). There are also clips from self-advocacy conferences, as well as news stories about some of the organization’s activities. Way cool stuff…unfortunately, none of it is closed-captioned.

Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered is a similar national organization in the US. Advocating Change Together is another self-advocacy organization in the US, but I don’t know if it’s national or not.