Blog Against Disablism Day
May. 1st, 2009 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nilchanceI've been planning to participate in Blogging Against Disablism Day for the last few weeks, but I'm struggling now. I'm tired from weeks of sleep-debt and distracted by voices down the hallway. I'm paranoid that my supervisor will comment (again) on my absence on Tuesday, that if I was too ill to come in she supposes that I couldn't help it. I'm trying to calculate the amount of pain medication and sheer will it'll take to get through this semester's finals.
More to the point, I don't think I'm disabled enough to blog about disablism.
I don't have this kind of insecurity about commenting as a lesbian about how homophobia affects me. It's not a sliding scale of inevitable comparison: "well, my partner takes more medication and has two diagnoses, so she's more disabled than I am and deserves her handicapped tag. My mom has MS and uses a wheelchair, I'm definitely less disabled than she is. What right do I have to ask for help? Why do I get to write about this?"
In the last two performance evaluations I've had, my supervisor has suggested that I seek therapy and that I act more my age. Is that disablism, or just an attempt to make everyone in the office socialize?
It's a hundred small things that I'm left examining after the fact. It's working at the Disability Support table in a college fair and watching parents yank their kids away from the booth like disability is a contact disease. It's a young couple muttering that yeah, I look really disabled when I haul myself awkwardly out of the car; disablism or fat prejudice? Both?
It's intersectionality and privilege and it's the lack of any reference guide. I'm more disabled than my colleagues, but able enough to pass on a good day. I get less harassment than my mother about my disability, but more harassment when I go to the doctor and request pain medication. It's a gray area, and the negotiation of it is exhausting when I'm already tired by getting out of bed.
I've learned to argue back against homophobia. Disability is a newer, uncertain territory. I don't have a reference point; I'm not sure how to advocate when the disabled person is me, not my mother or one of my students.
I don't experience disablism like anyone else, only like myself. From myself, at times, when I reject handicapped tags and canes and the identity of a disabled person. It's not until I come to terms with my own disablism that I can try to overcome it from outside.
More to the point, I don't think I'm disabled enough to blog about disablism.
I don't have this kind of insecurity about commenting as a lesbian about how homophobia affects me. It's not a sliding scale of inevitable comparison: "well, my partner takes more medication and has two diagnoses, so she's more disabled than I am and deserves her handicapped tag. My mom has MS and uses a wheelchair, I'm definitely less disabled than she is. What right do I have to ask for help? Why do I get to write about this?"
In the last two performance evaluations I've had, my supervisor has suggested that I seek therapy and that I act more my age. Is that disablism, or just an attempt to make everyone in the office socialize?
It's a hundred small things that I'm left examining after the fact. It's working at the Disability Support table in a college fair and watching parents yank their kids away from the booth like disability is a contact disease. It's a young couple muttering that yeah, I look really disabled when I haul myself awkwardly out of the car; disablism or fat prejudice? Both?
It's intersectionality and privilege and it's the lack of any reference guide. I'm more disabled than my colleagues, but able enough to pass on a good day. I get less harassment than my mother about my disability, but more harassment when I go to the doctor and request pain medication. It's a gray area, and the negotiation of it is exhausting when I'm already tired by getting out of bed.
I've learned to argue back against homophobia. Disability is a newer, uncertain territory. I don't have a reference point; I'm not sure how to advocate when the disabled person is me, not my mother or one of my students.
I don't experience disablism like anyone else, only like myself. From myself, at times, when I reject handicapped tags and canes and the identity of a disabled person. It's not until I come to terms with my own disablism that I can try to overcome it from outside.