My ASDay

 I never did get to finishing and posting the two posts I had planned for Autistics Speaking Day.  I was going to explore the link between poverty and disability, as well as take a look at how crisis lines are ableist (aka, why aren't there online crisis chat services, why aren't there mental health services that disabled people who find leaving their homes or picking up a phone to be a challenge?).

But it never happened. There was just a flood of posts coming in that between taking care of them (I read pretty much every single one) and doing my own daily tasks, I didn't have time to write my own!

Luckily, I had a plan in case this happened, and took photographs throughout the day.  The ones I posted on Twitpic can be clicked on to see the full photo.

So, I bring you, My ASDay:

First, I started the day at the Sleep Clinic.  I have severe sleep apnea and had stayed the night in order to get my CPAP pressure checked.  Turns out, my pressure needed to be raised.

my room at the sleep clinic

I woke up at 6am, and made my way home from the Clinic.  My monthly bus pass had expired (new month), so I made a mental note to get it renewed.  I'm on a Municipal Fee Assistance program, so I get a discount on monthly bus passes.  I pay 46$ a month, instead of $60-something (the prices just went up, I used to pay $44).

I got home and noticed that I need to replace my bandaid.  I had cut my finger at work.  Here is a photo of it (which I'm not displaying here, for trigger warnings)

I also made sure to take my morning medications.  I have two main meds that I take, one in the morning and one in the evening.  The rest of my medications are as-needed meds, for things like acid reflux or when I need an extra boost to beat anxiety.

my morning meds

I sat down and started working on getting updating the ASDay blog.  So many posts!!

ASDay Headquarters no.1!

At one point, I noticed a bit of a crash in the hall.  A bit later, I went to investigate.  The maintenance guy had been around, trying to fix the small window in our front door that had broke.  He's been working on it for some time, and I think that it might be cheaper if the non-profit housing organization just replaced the door.  It's an old door, original to the house, and it has quite a few cracks and leaks.

our front door and the glass for our front door

After that I spent some time chatting to my boyfriend, Dave, on Skype while I worked on putting up submissions.

Chatting with Dave aka Noyer on Skype

Then my house-mate B asked whether I'd like to go grocery shopping with him.  His case worker came to pick us up and took us to the grocery store.  I got some new hair clips, because I am forever trying to find clips that won't fall out of my hair and I just got my hair cut.  I also picked up some of the Halloween makeup glitter on sale, and a few treats.  I mostly got things I needed, including things for my lunches to go to work. 

my groceries, about $60, a tad over budget but I figure I can afford it with a new job!
(stuff on the bottom rack are B's)

Since we were near one of the pharmacies that sells bus passes,  I ran inside to renew my monthly pass!!  B ran to the pet store for kitten food (for his kitten) and to the bank (to get cash to pay his share of the internet bill).  We came home and put our groceries away.

Between semi-obsessional food hoarding and donations from friends, I'm stocked for winter!

I put away my non-grocery items as well, and opened up the hair clips to wear for the day.

Had bigger ones as a kid, I used to pretend they were alien monsters

 
I got back to work on updating posts, but also got a little distracted by housework.  I did a little tidying around my room, swept/swiftered my floor and took out my recycling and garbage.  Garbage days are Sunday nights, so I usually take the recycling and garbage from my room after Sunday, about every other week.  Garbage/recycling is one of the chores around the house.  My chore is to vacuum the carpets, which I try to do at least every other week.  Right now, the upstairs carpets are fairly good, but since the kitten's litter box is downstairs, I think I need to do it soon.

Sweeping and taking out recycling

Then, I worked on ASDay posts again, and starting fixing my supper in the slow cooker.  I made chicken with a pesto-cream cheese sauce, which I had with vegetable juice and rice.  I usually put on these seasonings on my rice, and I'm pretty much out.  Next time I'm near the Asian Market, I need to pick up some more. As I started up the ASDay IRC chatroom with the GimpGirl Community I made Apple Crisp for my Dungeons and Dragons group, who came over to play.

Remainder of DnD Apple Crisp

Before I played a quick session of DnD, I did a bit of work on my schoolwork, handing in an assignment due that day, and working on discussion questions.  I also have an essay due next week.

Coursework, really!

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a photograph of my DnD group, but we had some fun.  Afterwards, people left for home (one slept on the couch though, she was too tired to head home) and I got back to work on ASDay posts.   Kathryn and I divided up the rest of the work, based on our strengths, and I managed to get completely caught up with the submission form list!

Caught up with posts! Yay!

By that time, it was kinda late for me, who had gotten up at 6am and had work the next day, plus school to work on.  Kathryn had Wednesdays off, so it was mutually agreed upon that she continue on while I went to bed.   So I did.

my bed!  Bedtime!

Ta-Da!  That was my day!

ASAN 5-Year Anniversary Celebration

So I guess I should post the news.  Kathryn and I have been invited to the ASAN 5-year Anniversary Celebration, at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., to receive the 1st Annual Award for Exceptional Service.  We're being recognized for our work creating Autistics Speaking Day. 

Um.  Apparently, this is a big deal.  I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to go, but my parents and I are going to drive nine hours to attend.  So I'll be there. 

I'm kinda embarrassed.  I don't do all the work I've done for awards, although it is nice for both of us to be recognized for what we've done.  

But I get to meet quite a lot of the people I've been emailing and chatting with online for the past... two years, at least?  I'm really excited for that. 

So if you're going to the celebration, I hope to see you there!!

Occupy Toronto: Disability Pride March

(This was passed my way by the Disability Studies program at Ryerson.  As much as I would love to attend, I am unable to do so, and so I spread the word.  ~Corina)

 

Toronto Disability Pride March

Saturday, October 29   ·  12:00pm - 3:00pm

Nathan Philips Square to Occupy Toronto (St. James park)

Please forward and share far and wide!!!

 

 

PLEASE SHARE/INVITE OTHERS!!!
Join us at the square, and come down to Occupy Toronto if you can! They're making great efforts to be accessible down there.

Why Disability Pride?
Because Rob Ford, or somebody under him, cancelled International Day of Persons with Disabilities Celebrations ...
Because when cuts happen, people with disabilities are often the first to be hit, wheeltrans was almost on the chopping block, and social housing still is.

Because there have been way too many deaths and injuries to people with disabilities in interaction with Toronto Police, and considering the amount of funding they get, there should me some disability training. No one should be dying in police interactions in Toronto! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhhkOMTgq30

It's time we showed Toronto that Torontonians with Disabilities have a voice, and we will not be sold out or discriminated against!

 

Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=150322745067099&notif_t=event_update

 

Isaac Stein, M.Ed

Disability Counsellor

Accessibility Services

St. George Campus

University of Toronto

Loathing Words by Dave Hingsburger

Dave Hingsburger is one of my favourite disability bloggers.  I find that he just has this way this words that says exactly what needs to be said.  This is one of his most recent posts, Loathing Words, which I asked permission for to be reblogged.

Loathing Words!!

Words.

Piles and piles of words.

So many of the things I've been reading recently, about disability, have infuriated me. There are words that appear over and over again. Words that appear benign. Words that appear to be about something BIG, about something GRAND, about something IMPORTANT. Words that assume what I want, as a person with a disability, what we want as people with disabilities. Words crafted by others, that pretend to be about us, about our needs, but are only, really, about the sense they get about being gifted in the presence of what they see to be our deficits. Its is only really a fool that could say, "There but for the grace of God go I," and not understand what it says and what it means. There are words that feel good in the mouth of the privileged but burn in the ears of the dispossessed.

Words like: Empower.

I hate this word. I see it all the time. I've written about it before and I will do again, but for now let me rant. Who the hell wants, ever, to be empowered by another? Who the hell wants to be seen as so weak and so passive that they wait for the benevolent help of one's 'betters' for the 'gift' of power? We can only, of course, empower ourselves. We can only, of course, embrace the power we've always had and begin to use it. We can only, of course, raise ourselves. No one can do these things for us. No one can do these things for another. The word 'empower' - where it bothers me most, is when I see it used by those within systems. Systems that have routinely disempowered, routinely disengaged, routinely disregarded those with disabilities. Those they SAY they SERVE. It's a word used without irony, which is, itself, ironic. They first rob of power and then give tiny pieces of it back and call it 'empowerment'. It's like a thief stealing from someone a dollar and then giving a quarter back in an effort to 're-enrich' the victim. Right.

Empower.

I call Bullshit.

Words like: Tolerance

I do not wish to be tolerated. I do not wish to be the 'one' tolerated by the 'many'. I do not wish anyone making the supreme effort to tolerate the mere fact of my presence. I do not wish to be the fart in the elevator that everyone pretends is not there. Existing with the understanding and tolerance of another, existing with the gift of someone's making an exception, someone's making an effort ... as if my existence here, in this place, is not a right but a privilege granted by another. Those who tolerate get to tut tut the tolerated. Those who tolerate get to roll their eyes and glance conspiratorially at the other tolerators at the antics of the tolerated. Those who tolerate get to determine what is acceptable and what is 'just to much my dear'.

Tolerance.

I call Bullshit.

Words like: Kindness

Let me dissuade you of an idea. I do not want your kindness because I do not wish your pity. And let's be honest, kindness most often grows as a weed around the wellspring of pity. Grabbing a door for a pregnant woman who is struggling with parcels to get in is not KINDNESS, for God's sake, it's CIVILITY. We have become a society who wants kindness credited to their humanity card for simple acts of civility. While I do not wish kindness, certainly not more or less kindness than offered to any other, I do wish for civility. I do wish for behaviour that considers me as a person and my needs in the moment. Just as I wish to consider the needs of you as a person and your needs in the moment. Civility is not kindness. Civility is increasingly rare but that does not make it's occurrence exceptional or it's practitioner kind.

Kindness.

I call Bullshit.

Words like: Blindness

Saying to someone with a disability that 'I just can't see disability' or 'when I see you I don't see your disability' or 'I only see abilities', and this is the worst of course, 'I'm just blind to disability.' Oh, freaking, please. PLEASE. No one is 'blind' to my disability and furthermore I DON'T WANT YOU TO BE BECAUSE I'M NOT ASHAMED OF IT. I don't see how you think I should be flattered or, God Forbid, think you are magnificent, because you don't see what is plainly there. I am disabled. Get that. I am freaking disabled. I am in a freaking, fracking, wheelchair. See it? It's the thing under my fat ass!! Don't try to get me to 'play pretend' that my disability doesn't exist to you or to the world. Don't get me to give in to your desire to play 'dress up reality' and feel that you have RAISED ME OUT OF DISABILITY AND INTO EQUALITY. No, don't. Just don't. I am disabled. I don't like the idea of being verbally euthanized by words like 'challenged' or 'special' or 'exceptional'. I don't like being taken out of language and I don't like being taken out of my wheelchair and into fantasy-land. I live here, in reality, and I FREAKING LIKE IT HERE. I do not wish to move into your world where you pretend I don't have a disability and I pretend that you are a saint.

'Blindness.'

I call, double Bullshit.

Hey, here's a word I'd like to hear a little more often: Respect.

Why don't we try that for a little while? Why don't we empower ourselves though kindness and tolerance towards a disability blindness so that we can ... oh, sorry the word respect doesn't fit in that sentence. Respect Difference. Respect Diversity. Respect Disability. Respect engenders respect. None of the other words have that capacity. None of the other words have within it a deep need for mutual change. None of the other words call us out into real interaction and real comradeship in the real world. Respect knocks at the door of social change. I'm guessing that's why kindness, and tolerance, and 'blindness' and empowerment never answer.

Words.

I love some.

I fear others.

I loathe these. 

Why "Retard" is a Hate Crime

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while I get confronted with a very ugly word.

"Retard"

It's used a slang, as an insult.  People know that it's offensive, but they still use it.  They seem to think "oh, it's slang, it's just a word, it doesn't matter."  But you see, it does matter.   Just because there isn't a person with intellectual disabilities there, or apparent, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Because connotations matter.  The thought behind the word, it matters.  

Let me show you how.

The noun "retard" comes from "mental retardation".  Despite some popular belief, it is actually still used as a diagnosis for people with a low IQ score and two or more adaptive behaviours.  According to the ICD-10 and the DSM-IV-TR, there are even varying degrees of it.  It is considered to be an intellectual disability, and in fact, most advocates prefer the term intellectual disability rather than "mental retardation". 

Why?  Because of how the term "retard" is used.  It is used not just towards people with intellectual disabilities, it is also used against any disabled person.  It gets flung at children in the schoolyard.  It gets tossed around as an insult by adults.  It has been used to mock, ridicule and insult, not only non-disabled individuals, but disabled people specifically by the simple act of using a diagnosis as slang. 

When you use the term "retard", you are specifically taking defining aspects of people, in this case disability, and mocking them.  It's kind of like taking a person's skin colour or sexual orientation and using that as an insult.  We don't use the words "nigger" or "faggot" anymore?  We know better, or at least, we should know better, because there is a history of discrimination against the groups that it refers.  In our supposedly more progressive society, it is no longer acceptable to use those words. 

The same is with "retard", but it seems like the same regard is not applied to disabled people.  It's discrimination.  It says that you can target disabled people, mock and insult them, and get away with it because you can. 

When you can hurt them in your head and with your words, what's to stop you from hurting them psychically?  Because believe me, you're already hurting people mentally and emotionally with your words, and it doesn't take much for those types of attitudes to shift from being merely words to physical violence. 

It already happens.

Right now.

Go on, look up "disabled victim", "disabled crime", "disabled violence", or "disabled murder".  It is said that disabled people have at least two to five, possibly up to ten times, the risk of violence than non-disabled (Sobsey 35).

Disabled people have been beaten, robbed, sexually and physically assaulted, and murdered because of how people think of them.  Because people think it's okay to use us as an insult, to mock us and degrade us, then it's okay to take things one step further and target us specifically for crimes, not just the individual, but the entire group. 

Do you know what it's called when an offence is motivated by a person's membership with a group? 

Hate crime

The question is, do you really mean it?  Do you really want to potentially endanger people with the carelessness of your words? 

Understand that ignorance as an excuse only goes so far, and intent does not mean that you are exempt from the consequences.  Once you know about the potential results, you got to ask yourself how you would feel if someone mocked you for being right- or left-handed.  Or being beaten because of your ethnic background?  Or murdered for speaking another language?  And then the people did that to you just walks away without facing any consequences, legal or otherwise?

Don't like it?

Yeah, neither do we.





Works Cited

Sobsey, Dick. Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities: the End of Silent Acceptance?. Baltimore: P.H. Brooks Pub. Co., 1994. Print.

The Beginnings of Autistics Speaking Day

Hi all!!  I wanted to let you know that I wrote a post on the beginnings of Autistics Speaking Day for the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, and it just went up today. 

So go ahead and check it out!

~Corina

Self Definitions of Recovery

Recently, I took a class called "Mad People's History" at Ryerson University.  It's a course that explores the narratives of psychiatric survivors, on their stories of their experiences in institutions and outside institutions.  Some of the stories we looked at were those of the leaders in the Survivor movement from the 1970s to today, and how they affect how mental health services are operated now.

As part of our assignments, we had to go out and explore our local "mad" community, keeping a diary as we went to record our observations.  One of the things that I noticed was how mental health organizations used the term "recovery".

Instead of enforcing an externally conceived notion of recovery, it is the clients themselves who defines their goals and terms for recovery.  This returns power to the patient and gives them control over the services and supports involved with their lives. This also rejects the notion that recovery is the same for every person.

What I think is that the concept of recovery is different when applied to different diagnosis. Just like there are different causes to disabilities and disorders, there are different reactions and progression after the onset of disability.  This applies to all kinds of disorder, disabilities and what is considered to be mental illness.

In some cases, the term recovery is apt; it describes the process of regaining, restoring and healing from injury, trauma and disease.  These are the times when the disability is temporary and possibly easy to repair without long term effect.  Such cases may be rare, since even as temporary, the experience can have a lasting effect on a person mentally.

Most of the time, recovery and healing can only be partial, compared to skills and abilities before the disabling event.  These can range from barely noticeable differences to huge developments for a person, and can be the result of a large variety of rehabilitation therapies.  The focus with the use of recovery in this setting is to give the person choice in what therapies to pursue and whether or not they want to undergo treatment, under the person's definition of recovery.  

However, there are also permanent disabilities that the term recovery is completely inappropriate. These are the cases where disability happens early on, either through genetics or other forms of causations, and affects development of skills from the get-go. I'm including Autism, ADHD, and Learning Disabilities, whereas skills and abilities have not been taken away, but rather develops to a different outcome at an individual rate.  In such cases, there is nothing to recover, since those skills and abilities might never have been there in the first place. 

It is not a matter of recovery, and so using the term recovery is completely inappropriate.  A more appropriate term is development.  A diagnosed child with these disabilities is going to develop skills at their own rate, but there is also more conscious involvement of parents, teachers, caregivers and professionals in observing and encouraging the development progress.   At the same time, it is difficult to give an accurate prognosis of a child, since there is little to compare a child to other than other children, which is not an appropriate gauge.  Since each child develops at their own rate, it is more accurate to compare a child's progress by the skills that have been developed so far, and try to use that as, at best, an educated guess at the rate the child will develop.

In any case, since a person with developmental and early-occuring disabilities will be following a more unique and individualized development growth.  As a person progresses, they will be building completely new skills, instead of regaining old skills.  Unlike situations where a disabled person may be actively compensate for impairments, the term recovery is completely inappropriate.  While the use of recovery may empower individuals, it can also de-power individuals.

To use the term recovery in such case is to perputrate the myth that there is or was a "normal" individual that can fixed or cured to the state where a person is no longer disabled.  This is a very medical model of disability, which places the burden of impairment and disability on the individual in a manner that is very victim-blaming.  In fact, in the medical model of disability, a disabled person is more or less a victim, whether by accident, the actions of other individuals, or the genes one inherited from parents.  It is then the responsibility of the individual to take up the burden of disability, and make oneself as less-disabled as possible.  This leads back to the idea of cure and recovery.  


If a person is the one defining recovery and is making decisions on how to achieve recovery for skillls and abilities that are capable of reclaiming and compensating, then the use of recovery is appropriate.  But for in the case where a person is progressing with new skills and abilities, then the term recovery is not apppropriate and should be replaced with more suitable terms such as development and growth.  This way a person is empowered by their own accomplishments instead of being improperly compared to unrelated others and potentially being disabled through the medical model.