Three Blog Carnivals: Allies, Disability, Sexual Freedom and Autonomy

Cripchick’s hosting the 37th edition of the Disability Blog Carnival:

Disability Identity: What Do You Think??

The Disability Activist Collective, a group of disability activists working to create change within the disability community by shifting focus towards culture and identity, is currently collecting pieces (poetry, art, essays, videos, blog posts) on disability culture, community and identity in hopes of creating a website or hub on disability culture. This carnival is your chance to participate in the building of it!

This edition will focus on disability identity and culture in all its forms (i.e. radical disability pride, understanding disability through various frameworks, disability intersecting [coming together] with other identities, dealing with pain, etc.).

The deadline to submit something is officially May 4th though I will keep adding people in through a rolling basis. The blog carnival will go on air May 8th. You can submit things by leaving a link in a comment to this post, emailing me it at consciouslycrip [at] gmail [dot] com, or using the blogcarnival.com tech.

The Angry Black Woman is hosting a blog carnival for allies:

I’ve been thinking about many things since the whole “Thank You, White People” post debacle and subsequent influx of white supremacists who seemed to come here with the intent of saying, “You thought you dealt with racists on a daily basis? HA! We’ll show you what REAL racism is!” And they did. One of my reactions was to say that for every white ally who acknowledged racism and worked to fight against it, there were 20 others wishing to drag us back to Jim Crow and worse. Then smart commenter Jackie said:

Thing is, I don’t believe there’re 20 of them for every one of us (black or white or other) who wants to make things right; I think there’s actually somewhat fewer of them. But for each white supremacist (and for each person of any color who wants to make things right) there are 20 nice, well-meaning, but privileged and entitled white people who thing “racism is bad” but have no idea whatsoever that real racism exists, or what it’s like to be a target of it. Or how much they have benefited from their European coloring, and from not having centuries of slavery and legally enforced poverty limiting every aspects of the parents’ and grandparents’ and great-great-great-grandparents’ lives.

This got me thinking about those white folks who exist in that liminal space where they are against racism but don’t understand how it works and get defensive, hurt, and freaked out when folks point out how they benefit from it without trying. We saw a lot of that on the Thank You thread before the others showed up. I am wondering how you turn that kind of person into an ally. I’m wondering if maybe I cannot simply because, when they read my words, they are so filled with defensiveness and perhaps guilt, nothing I say can get through. If they can’t listen to me, can they maybe listen to other White people?

And that got me wondering if this was true for any kind of ally. Is it easier to understand oppression, to move past guilt and on to useful dialogue, etc., if the person explaining these things to you in-depth is a person like yourself? White or male or straight or Christian or whatever? I don’t know. But as this is the Internet, it should be easy to figure out.

The deadline is May 5th, and I apologize for my own atrocious lateness in posting about it.

And finally, the Second Feminist Carnival for Sexual Freedom and Autonomy is up at Labyrinth Walk.

 

Yay, Bint!

Bint Alshamsa had some very good news the other day.

I just want to celebrate it a bit.

“You’re so brave to get up in the morning, just like a real person.”

Crip Chick posted about the really cloying, condescending pity that people like to dump on people with disabilities. How people will use that pity to turn her into an inspirational symbol rather than deal with her as a human being.

It’s something I’ve received too, as a trans woman. Not as often - more often, it’s hate, but sometimes people want to show just how accepting and tolerant they are, and tell me “You’re so brave for doing what you’re doing.” I guess if I can’t be a symbol of patriarchal oppression I get to be a symbol of how good a person someone is.

Anyway, yeah, I totally sympathize here. Go read her post.

Disability Rights and Intersections

Elizabeth McClung has posted an entry on Screw Bronze that everyone should read. It might be easy to brush what she says off, but every single person in the world who does not already have a disability is one accident or diagnosis away from having a disability.

A link to a Katie Jones Roundup

Katie Jones is, well, here’s the article.

Kactus has posted a link roundup to posts about this. To Kay at the Gimp Parade and Alas, Ms. Crip Chick, Bint Alshamsa at My Private Casbah, Trinity at The Strangest Alchemy, Shiva at Biodiverse Resistance, F.R.I.D.A., and brownfemipower at La Chola.

Sylvia at Problem Chylde has a great post on this as well.

Read all of those posts, because my paltry few paragraphs do nothing to illuminate this.

I find this disturbing, to say the least, because it shows yet again that some lives are disposable, or perhaps just less valuable than others - in this case, a child with disabilities. I don’t know what Katie Jones’ wishes are, whether she wants to live and is willing to go through resuscitation again, but that’s because the article doesn’t tell us. It makes her parents’ wishes very clear. But this is something that comes up again and again when it comes to parents of children with disabilities - the child is dehumanized into a burden that the parents must bear, and many (or even all) decisions about that child’s welfare come directly from that position as a burden, or even the assumption that able-bodied people know what’s best for their children with disabilities, as if the child’s wishes just aren’t relevant.

In the extreme, we see parents murder their children, and not only do they not suffer harsh sentences for doing so, they often receive sympathy from the press and community because they had it so darned hard because of their child’s additional needs - and never mind the fact that the child’s life is just written off.

Trinity has several posts about murdered people with disabilities.

I’m not saying Katie’s parents are on the verge of murdering her, but requesting that life-saving medical care be withheld if she’s about to die without it doesn’t fall far from that tree as far as I’m concerned. Children with disabilities aren’t pets to be put to sleep when they become too much trouble, they’re human beings, on the same level as any able-bodied person, and deserve to be treated as such.

 And yeah, the story makes me angry.

Some Links

Queen Emily describes what being transgender means to her. I need to post my own, soon.

Drakyn posts his description here.

Nexy responds to Emily’s post here.

Shiva describes the natural alliance of disability and transgender activism. I intend to cover this myself, but I didn’t get this done by today as I’d planned.

Monica Roberts continues her Transgender Day of Remembrance posts with Remembering Our Dead.

Gorgon Queen expresses some common frustration about the transphobia coming from certain prominent gay men.

Cara on Feministe posts about the transgender politician sued for fraud. I covered this somewhat, but didn’t comment much. Cara has a lot to say that I happen to agree with.

Brownfemipower, BlackAmazon, Donna, and Sylvia respond to Hugo Schwyzer resurrecting the Full Frontal Feminism controversy. The discussion about how women of color are marginalized in feminism is very to the point.

Miss Crip Chick wrote a poem everyone should read.

Kim at Bastante Already explains why she turned away from online radical feminism.

Dw3t-Hthr of Letters from Gehenna posts regarding mental health, sexual assault, and the personal being political.

Renegade Evolution discusses pornspeak, how some women react to it, and some women try to use it as a weapon.

Lesbianism. It’s serious business.