On Lostness, Part 1: The name of this blog

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“”Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”

I don’t like the seniors’ class motto. Walking next to me is not a friendly act. People do it so we can have a conversation, certainly. But if we’re out in public, I’m trying not to get lost. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to navigate and talk to someone at the same time.

Even worse, people who want to walk beside me often insist on walking on my left-hand side. I don’t notice a lot of things on my left. What they experience as “not looking me in the eye” or “not being friendly,” I experience as “someone’s sneaking up on me.”

When I see the senior class motto on its felt banner at school assemblies, I know I’m being silly. My mother’s voice chides me in my head: “You have NLD and are being literal. It’s not talking about actually leading or following, or walking next to people. It’s a metaphor.” I know it’s a metaphor. That’s why it bothers me.

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A Matter of Perspective

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My teacher says that writing too much is a good problem to have. “Most people,” she tells me, “have to flesh out their ideas. That’s much harder than having to cut things out.” She doesn’t understand why I can’t just do it, and I, at fourteen, am no help. It will be years before I go to conferences and see other people with my diagnosis freeze when asked to summarize things. It will be even longer before I realize what my having a “good problem” really means.

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The Right Kind

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I am the right kind of mental patient. He is not.

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District 9 and failed allegories

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Neill Blomkamp’s story of space aliens abused by Earthlings is about racism without actually involving race—and therein lies the problem. The parallels reflecting atrocities committed against black South Africans by white ones are clear: the aliens, called hateful names (“prawns”) by human bureaucrats are being forced from their shantytown in a multiple-of-three district in Cape Town to a smaller, more out-of-the-way compound. Signs read, “Humans only;” the aliens are constructed as violent for no real reason (they like to blow things up “for fun,” says the human protagonist), while the humans destroy them with impunity.

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Rosemary

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From True Compass by Edward M. Kennedy:

“My eldest sister, Rosemary, was twenty-three in 1941. Luminously pretty and round-faced, with a widow’s peak, dark brows, and a great smile that dimpled her cheeks, Rosemary was the one sibling with whom all the others were unfailingly gentle. Her affliction, diagnosed as mental retardation, left her struggling to comprehend things as quickly or as clearly as other people. She was a sweet and loving human being.

Rosemary enriched the humanity of all of us. Our sister Eunice seemed always to be near her, helping her through simple childhood games such as dodgeball, inviting her along and giving her assignments in sailing races. As she grew into adolescence, Rosemary knew she could count on Jack or Joe to escort her to dances at the Yacht Club at the Cape, or to the Stork Club in New York. I looked out for her too, when I could, although I was fourteen years younger–she was my godmother, after all. Dad wrote affectionate letters to her from abroad, and Mother actually altered her own handwriting from the swirling ‘fine Spencerian hand’ on which she’d prided herself, to a simpler style that imitated typographic print, so that Rosemary would have less trouble following it.

But in the fall of that year, our father, concerned that Rosemary’s condition would pose insurmountable dangers to her as an adult woman in the world, listened to doctors who assured him that a new form of neurosurgery would greatly benefit her and improve her quality of life. The doctors were wrong, the surgery further injured Rosie, and my parents were devastated. I, of course, knew and understood nothing of what had happened. Rosemary spent her remaining sixty-three years mostly in comfortable supervision at her home in a Catholic community in Wisconsin. Over the years, through her regular visits to Eunice’s home or her summer days on Cape Cod or wintertime in Florida or Thanksgiving at Jean’s, Rosemary remained a loving and inspirational presence in our family, not just for her siblings, but for the next generations as well.” (pp. 25-6)

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New blog of awesomeness

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FWD/Forward is a new group blog of/for feminists with disabilities. From the Mission Statement:

It is a place to discuss disability issues and the intersection between feminism and disability rights activism. The content here ranges from basic information which is designed to introduce people who are new to disability issues or feminism to some core concepts, to more advanced topics, with the goal of promoting discussion, conversation, fellowship, and education.

This site does not claim to speak for all feminists with disabilities. However, we are trying to cultivate a broad perspective which incorporates as many experiences and viewpoints as possible. We have attempted to assemble a diverse team of contributors with a broad spectrum of disabilities who come from different cultural, racial, religious, and class backgrounds, as well as age groups, and we welcome contributions such as guest posts, suggestions for article topics, and engagement in the comments from people interested in disability issues, disability feminism, and related topics, especially if those contributions will broaden our perspective.

We are very committed to accessibility; we want everyone to be able to enjoy our content. To that end, we commit to fully captioning and describing any images published here, transcribing text in images and audio content, and taking any other steps which can improve accessibility. We also welcome translation of our content into other languages. If you identify an accessibility issue here, we most definitely want to hear about it.

The site has just started up, but there’s lots of really excellent stuff there already, including an Ableist Word Profile series, and a series “about representations of disability in movies, television shows, and books.” (The series’s inaugural post examines the television show Joan of Arcadia.)

It’s awesome. Get thee over to disabledfeminists.com and check it out.

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Trailer dump:Avatar

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“There’s something wrong with Esther”: Disability, deception, and Orphan

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WARNING: Major spoilers for the movie Orphan, including the twist.

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Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear (of disability)

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A movie poster. On a black background is a toy monkey holding cymbols and wearing pinstriped pants. It's sitting above the words "Monkey Shines," which are written in huge white block letters. Under them, in red letters and underlined, reads: "An Experiment in Fear."

(Trigger warning: descriptions of horror movie violence)

(Spoiler warning: in-depth discussion of Monkey Shines, including the ending).

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Quickie: Study examines benefits of DDR for people with disabilities

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A brown-haired boy in a brown suit and white shirt, standing on a dance pad. In the upper right corner is a bar that says "Player 1." Underneath that are four arrows--left, down, up, right. Beneath that is the word "Perfect" and a right-pointing arrow. The scene is on a fiery orange background.

West Virginia was the first school system in the United States to incorporate a video game (Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution) into its physical education curriculum. Now, West Virginia University, ResCare Home Care and the Special Olympics are conducting a study to see if the series has benefits for people with disabilities. According to the very small blurb I was able to find, “Participants will play the game three days a week, for eight weeks. If it is successful, the Special Olympics may consider making ‘DDR’ a competitive event during its annual games.”

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