tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13194831576933842742024-03-18T12:33:28.112-07:00NeuroQueerqueering our neurodivergence, neurodiversifying our queerElizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-56060712124887725732016-10-10T14:00:00.000-07:002016-10-10T14:00:16.866-07:00Performing Failure: Integrating Clowning and Play into the Neuroqueering Project, by Simone René Antillón<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
This essay will look at the ways in
which failure, clowning, play and neuroqueering intersect. Practice “failing
well, failing often” (24), says J. Halberstam, a prominent contemporary queer
theorist in their book <u>The Queer Art of Failure</u>. Failure – the failure
to be perceived as “normal,” “sane;” the failure to “succeed” in hegemonic
society – is something to strive towards. It liberates us from all kinds of norms
– neuronormativity; heteronormativity; patriarchy; the norms of physiological ability;
capitalism; colonialism—and is a route through which to queer ourselves in a
variety of ways. Neurodivergents are often unable to “produce” in the
traditional, “business-as-usual” way, and this queers the hegemonic narrative
of success that rules such norms, thus threatening the whole structure.</div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Clowning and play are powerful
tools through which failure can be performed. I will be focusing on
neuronormativity specifically in this essay, and will detail the ways in which
clowning and play can be utilized to further the neuroqueer project and disrupt
neuronormativity by providing examples from my own life experience as well as from
critical theory and cultural studies.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I was younger, I went on a
“humanitarian clowning” trip to Peru, with Patch Adams and the Gesundheit
Institute. It was aimed at providing a new modality for health education, i.e.
teaching sanitation and self-care skills to a marginalized village, as well as
bringing joy to those in hospitals, orphanages, and on the street. We would
dress up in wacky clothes and act silly. This simple act was, in fact,
incredibly transformative. We crossed all kinds of social boundaries,
committing supposed faux pas, and it felt like we were getting to the heart of
humanity, creating true connections. When I went into “clown mode,” which
became something I could embody internally without having to express it through
dress-up, I was able to interact in much more open ways with people than I had
ever been able to in my life previously. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As I have become more socially
aware over the years, I have realized the ways in which this work, or rather
the theory behind this work, is problematic. The work was presented in a way
that proposed that clowning was a route to complete societal transformation.
This is not the case. The way we clowned did not rid society of structural
inequality, even as it brought joy and silliness an individual or a community’s
life. The oppression that brings the lack of health care and sanitation was
still there. People will continue to get sick and be put in orphanages.
However, I believe this work can be adapted to become a central part of a
neuroqueering project, of a project that can liberate us from internalized
oppression by transgressing cultural-societal boundaries and creating space for
failure to act within the norm. Also, if pushed further, I do believe societal
transformation is possible through this work, in the way that clowning reveals
the weak spots of the status quo which we can then take down. The clowning
trips may not be set up to be transformative in lasting ways, but I believe we
can harness the power of the clown to transgress and transform structurally
within neuronormative society, specifically here in the United States because
that is what I am familiar with.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In <u>The Queer Art of Failure</u>.
Halberstam challenges the commonly held notion of “positive thinking” being the
<i>right way</i>. A lot of the discourse
surrounding positive thinking is also the discourse of hegemony and the status
quo. Halberstam acknowledges the privilege inherent in “positive thinking” when
they state: “believing that success depends upon one’s attitude is far preferable
to Americans than recognizing that their success is the outcome of the tilted
scales of race, class, and gender [and ability]” (3). As Halberstam says, “heterosexuality
is rooted in a logic of achievement, fulfillment, and success,” (94) and this
restricts the range of sexual identities that can be expressed openly. I would
like to integrate neurodiversity into the concepts of positive / negative
thinking and “success” – heteronormativity is integrally linked to
neuronormativity. When one bends, so does the other. The demand to live and
think “positively,” in terms of success and production, not only prevents the
full spectrum of sexual and gender identity from being expressed; it is restrictive
and prevents neuroqueer explorations and play as well. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I would like to introduce a few
terms which I will explore throughout this essay: <i>neuroplay</i>, <i>neuroclowning</i>,
and the <i>neuroclown</i>. By embodying the
neuroclown, we are embodying a type of neuroqueer – one who tinkers around with
their neurology, consciousness and embodiment in a way that embraces failure
and seeks to perform social faux pas. Neuroplay and neuroclowning are similar –
they are the process of tinkering with one’s neurological embodiment, in a
playful, childlike way, one that has much room for learning and accepts failure
as a natural and necessary part of that learning. Negativity is not shied away
from in these processes; in fact it is essential. False positivity will not
achieve transformation or liberation from neuronormativity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In his book <u>Free Play</u>, about
his experience with play and improvisation as a musician, Stephen Nachmanovitch
reflects on the “Sanskrit word <i>lila</i>,
which means play. Richer than our [English] word, it means divine play, the
play of creation, destruction, and re-creation, the folding and unfolding of
the cosmos” (Nachmanovitch 1). It is “spontaneous, childish, disarming”
(Nachmanovitch 1). This is the definition of neuroplay closest to how I address
it in this paper. It is chaotic, disruptive and transformative. It evokes youthfulness
and sacred folly, like that which a clown presents. This is how play
contributes to the neuroqueering of humanity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As Halberstam states, “being taken
seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and
irrelevant. The desire to be taken seriously is precisely what compels people
to follow the tried and true paths of knowledge production” (6). By choosing to
be taken as a joke, we are opening paths or “detours” (6) through which to bend
the constructs of neurotypicality and neuronormativity. Halberstam also
discusses “low theory” and the “silly archive,” which should be accessed
instead of “high theory” in order to have an accurate understanding of the ways
our culture is queer, or can be queered. Halberstam considers Lauren Berlant’s idea
of “the counter-politics of the silly object” (20) – silly aspects of culture,
such as children’s films (which Halberstam spends much time analyzing) reveal
depths of cultural meaning and dominant paradigms, by revealing the ways in
which these paradigms are being challenged by the “silly archive” itself.
Children’s films, in Halberstam’s view, are often incredibly politically
radical, in a subversive, under-the-radar way that adults do not perceive. They
communicate ideas about socialism, subverting capitalism, and queering society
through non-heteronormative relationships between humanoid (but not always
human) characters. I would like to suggest that clowning acts similarly and is
part of such a “silly archive” – it can shroud radical dynamics in a level of
play, which makes it easier for them to work their magic and create change
while not disrupting mainstream societal comfort and creating pushback.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I would like to briefly discuss an
example of “low theory” that I came up with, looking at the children’s film <u>Inside
Out</u>. Within the narrative, the character “Joy” within the protagonist’s
brain attempts to prevent imminent destruction, but in the end “Sadness,” who
had been discredited throughout the whole process, is the only route to saving
the protagonist by allowing her to come to terms with her “negative” emotions
and thus begin to feel again. We need to make room in our consciousness for
other emotions and experiences besides the “positive” ones, because they are
what determine our fate, and make us interesting, odd, fascinating, neuroqueer
human beings - neuroclowns.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Neurodivergence
is a failure, in the sense that there is an “association of failure with
nonconformity, anticapitalist practices, nonreproductive life styles,
negativity, and critique” (89). Since failure is queer, neurodivergence is
queer as well. Halberstam uses the “silly archives,” which for them consist of
animated films and the like, but could just as easily consist of clowning
performance, improvisation and play, to “open up new narrative opportunities”
that “have led to unexpected encounters between the childish, the
transformative, and the queer” (186).<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is a concept of clowning
common in contemporary urban culture and Black culture. It means to roast, to
make fun of, to point out the ridiculousness of a person or thing. I think this
illustrates the power of clowning in a broader sense. If utilized correctly, it
can target those people and institutions that oppress us, and reveal their
absurdity. It can be a method to tear down oppression, at least internally and
within the community. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Another concept Halberstam
discusses is stupidity. I will start by acknowledging that the term “stupid” is
often one of offense for neurodivergent individuals, because it has been and is
still used to hurt and oppress them. However, I believe the way Halberstam
discusses it reveals that it can be reclaimed, in a similar way to the way
“queer” has been. Stupidity is a state that clowns embody. “In relation to the
theme of productive failure, stupidity and forgetfulness work hand in hand to
open up new and different ways of being in relation to time, truth, being,
living, and dying” (Halberstam 55). Neurotypical society has a particular
relationship with “time, truth, being, living, and dying” – one which is
successive, linear, and set in place. The labels of “stupidity and
forgetfulness” that neuroclowning embraces mix up that relationship. They create
“a queer temporal mode governed by the ephemeral, the temporary, and the
elusive” (54). There is space within these concepts for movement and
re-interpretation. Thus society becomes more neuroqueer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Forgetfulness is a common aspect of
a clown performance as well. “For women and queer people”—and I would add,
neuroqueer people—“forgetfulness can be a useful tool for jamming the smooth
operations of the normal and the ordinary” (Halberstam 70). Similar to
stupidity, forgetfulness is not linear, not “straight.” It doesn’t allow for
“business-as-usual” capitalism and normativity to function, and therefore is a
useful tool to harness in the spirit of breaking down normative society.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After my clowning trip is probably
when I was my most neuroqueer. I could easily access my “inner clown” and
perform her in a variety of contexts. At work, as a hostess at a restaurant,
she allowed me to connect with customers and bring jubilance and authenticity
in a way that is not normally present is such a scripted interaction. Everyone
has a unique inner clown (or neuroclown) that we can learn to access by
practicing queer, fantastic failure. Clowning gives us the opportunity to be
different kinds of people. Each neuroclown is unique to each individual, and
thus contributes to the neuroqueer project by furthering our neurodivergence
and non-normativity – allowing us to be our full odd selves unapologetically.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Society values people based on
their ability to produce. Autistic people, and other neurodivergents, have such
non-normative experiences in regards to production and time. For example, in a
conversation I had recently with an autistic woman, she recounted her
experience with “time agnosia.” She does photography, and can have a sense of
time in micro ways that allow her to know when the light shifts subtly. She
will make beautiful images, and then she’ll finish her photo shoot and not know
what day it is. She embraces this aspect of herself wholeheartedly, attempting
to neuroqueer herself through exploring her time agnosia (Yvonne Rathbone,
personal communication, March 14, 2016). Her neurodivergent sense of time
allows her to create in a way that, if she were attempting to subscribe to
normative notions of time, she would not be able to. However, in the process she
is also choosing to embrace failure to produce in the sense that capitalism
expects one to produce – in a linear, standardized way. Halberstam writes,
“disciplinarity, as defined by Foucault [1995], is a technique of modern power:
it depends upon and deploys normalization, routines, convention, tradition, and
regularity” (Halberstam 7-8). By failing to be disciplined in particular ways
we are foiling such “modern power.” Clowning also traditionally plays with the
idea of time. Ritual clowns in many cultures occupy liminal spaces in space
& time in order to transgress social
norms and create transformations of various sorts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Trickster trope<span style="background: white; color: #333333;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">“plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal
rules and conventional behavior. The Trickster openly questions and mocks
authority, encourages impulse and enthusiasm, seeks out new ideas and
experiences, destroys convention and complacency, and promotes chaos and
unrest. At the same time, the trickster brings new knowledge [and] wisdom” (<u>TV
Tropes</u>). This trope comes from contemporary as well as traditional
indigenous cultural practices around the world, often symbolized by an anthropomorphic
animal of some sort. For example, the Mmutle (Hare) is a “main trickster of
Southern Africa, who also appears in... East, West, and Central Africa” (Dube).
In the African Diaspora, African trickster stories have been extremely
important. They have “functioned among the enslaved Africans as</span><span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"> a sign
of hope in hopelessness. Despite the seeming powerlessness of enslaved people,
the trickster stories continually said, ‘you can resist, you can survive, you
can get out, you can in fact beat the master’” (Dube).</span><span style="color: #0f243e; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">The
Trickster is seen in contemporary Western narratives also, such as cartoons
involving Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, with Bugs as the Trickster that foils
Sam’s efforts to hunt him down with his ridiculous antics (<u>TV Tropes</u>).
All of these examples are anti-authoritarian in that they serve to point out
the weaknesses in authority and take advantage of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">Many Western cultures
have adopted concepts of play as a route to anti-authoritarianism and
revolution. For example, the Situationists invited play into their “anti-art”
and “anti-spectacle” (Ko 1). They were a radical French group that interpreted
Marxist theory in the art world and sought to revolutionize the power dynamics
of the status quo. Within this framework, “</span><span style="color: #0f243e; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;">play is used to undermine the very
institution of language, and therefore both social order and authoritative
control” (Ko 1).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;">The aim was to drift playfully, not
under the will of the subconscious, but to come to a realization of space
outside its ideologically imposed position... ‘to notice the way in which
certain areas, streets, or buildings, resonate with states of mind,
inclinations, and desires, and to seek out reasons for movement other than
those for which an environment was designed’ [Plant 59]. The goal was to
mentally deconstruct the city; to remove the center through disorientation and
therefore remove the power of the state over the city” (Ko 6).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">Thus capitalist ideology is challenged
through playful wandering. Neuronormativity is immediately challenged when
capitalism is, because it is capitalist society that allows neurotypicality to
rule and neuronormativity to flourish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">When I was younger, I
went to a circus sleep-away camp in Northern California. They had all kinds of
classes – juggling, unicycling, stilts, aerials, theater, improv, martial arts,
clowning.... I tried many of them but eventually fell into focusing on stilts.
However, within the camp in general, we were encouraged to play, to try new
things, to take risks, and to embrace our weirdness. This was the first time I
felt comfortable being my odd, neurodivergent self. Without having the language
for it, this camp’s philosophy was welcoming neurodivergence and encouraging
neuroqueerness through play and performance arts. During our nightly shows, not
only did everyone cheer regardless of how “well” we did, but we were encouraged
to screw up, to fail – as this was a natural part of being human and an
opportunity to learn and grow. I mention this because I see places out there
doing work to encourage neuroqueering and neuroplay, but unfortunately they
don’t have the resources to enact real change. I was privileged to be able to
go to this expensive, mostly white camp. I want to create a revolution that is
accessible to all, and that all can benefit from. I want spaces to be created
where the ideas of neuroclowning and neuroplay can be widespread and utilized
to their full potential to liberate us from internalized oppression and take
steps towards freeing us from structural oppression. That is why I’m writing
this essay, to make known these possibilities for embodying the clown, the
buffoon, the “stupid” and “forgetful,” to practice failure. This is a way to
grow; this is a way to transform ourselves and transform society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">I will leave you with
this poem, written by Henri Michaux:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><br /></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #0f243e;">One day, </span></div>
<div style="color: #0f243e; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white;"> One day, maybe soon. </span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"> One day I’ll uproot the anchor that
keeps my ship far from the seas. </span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
With the sort of courage that’s
needed to be nothing and nothing but nothing, I’ll let loose what seemed
indissolubly close to me. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
I’ll carve it up, I’ll knock it
down, I’ll smash it, I’ll give it a shove. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
All at once disgorging my miserable
modesty, my miserable schemes and “needle and thread” chains. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
Drained of the abscess of being
someone, I’ll drink nourishing space again. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
Striking with absurdity, with
degradation (what is degradation?), by explosion, by void, by a total
dissipation-derision-purgation, I’ll oust from myself the form they believed
was so well connected, compounded, coordinated, suited to my entourage and to
my counterparts, so respectable, my so respectable counterparts. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
Reduced to a catastrophe’s
humility, to a perfect levelling as after a big scare. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
Dragged down beyond measure from my
actual rank, to a low rank that I don’t know what idea-ambition made me
abandon. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
Annihilated in pride, in
reputation. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
Lost in a far off place (or not),
without name, without identity. </div>
</span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0f243e;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"> CLOWN, demolishing amidst laughter,
amidst grotesqueness, amidst guffaws, the opinion which against all evidence
I’d formed of my importance. </span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
I’ll dive. </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
Without a cent into the underlying
infinite-spirit open to everything, </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
open myself to a new and unbelievable dew </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
by force of being null </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
and blank... </div>
</span>
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
and laughable...</div>
<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">(Michaux)</span><span style="color: #0f243e; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Clown on, Comrades.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;"><b>Bibliography</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">Dube, Musa W. “The Subaltern Can Speak:
Reading the Mmutle (Hare) Way.” <u>Journal of Africana Religions</u>, Vol. 4,
No. 1 (2016).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Halberstam, Judith. <u>The Queer Art of Failure</u>. Duke
University Press, 2011.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Ko, Christie. “Politics of Play: Situationism, Détournement,
and Anti-Art.” <u>FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of
Culture and the Arts</u>. Special Issue 02, Summer 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Michaux, Henri. “Clown.” <u>Clown</u>. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0f243e; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;">Nachmanovitch, Stephen. <u>Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art</u>. New
York, NY: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1990.</span><span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">Rathbone, Yvonne. (March 14, 2016).
Personal communication.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;">“The Trickster – TV Tropes.” <u>TV Tropes</u>.
N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.</span><span style="color: #0f243e; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 128;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #0f243e;"><br /></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Simone is a neuroqueer, mad, invisibly disabled genderfluid mixed white and mestizx person. They are in the process of obtaining their master's degree in Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. In addition to their passion for human liberation, disability justice, and mad studies, they are interested in somatic dance and movement, play, food culture, queer fashion, and witchcraft.</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-66856279331676532352016-06-07T10:53:00.001-07:002016-06-07T10:53:38.885-07:00Neuroqueering Composition: Sensual Reflections on the Inconclusive Life of Thoughts, by Sara Maria Acevedo<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It is 10am, I arrive to the
MacArthur Bart station, I am headed into the city (San Francisco) from the East
Bay (Oakland). The walk to and from BART is always accelerated with a million
thoughts; they are slippery and merit being written down as to catch them on
the flight. I refuse. I am walking. Walking is reflecting. Walking is not
writing. It is a hot summer’s day and the air feels stuffy. I find it rather challenging
to tune out and process thoughts in crowded trains – chemical scents melt
together and make it hard to breath; happy banter turns into loud laughter
(everyone likes a hot summer day). Luckily, the world is still a big
palpitating mass (I feel it) and there is beauty all around me to weave stories
with (I sense it). Daring beams of light filter through the windows
chasing swirly dust particles. Together they birth rainbows. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 58.5pt; margin-right: 112.5pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Ouch! Ouch! Everything is suddenly dark and all
I can feel are the odious fluorescent lights rubbing painfully against my
corneas. The train is frictioning against the tracks and I am suddenly pulled
away from my daze. Pain in my ears and discomfort in my eyes is an indicator
that we are under the tunnel and underwater. My heartbeat and breath accelerate
and I turn visibly irritated - I plug my ears with both my index </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">fingers and frown. Not far
now to get to the Embarcadero Station. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Channel, L’oreal, Carolina
Herrera; an assortment of mini Purell containers attached to backpacks and
purses - readily there. I cannot take my eyes away from the fruity monsters:
exotic papaya fruit, strawberries & cream, madagascar vanilla, passion
fruit; body lotions are also of a wide variety: Mango, tropical pineapple,
cinnamon & brown sugar, figs & butter. </span><span style="font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">_____Deep breath _____</span><span style="font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I feel the shape of a wicked smile forming around the corners of
my mouth. Relieved, I finally make it up onto the street at Civic Center
Station after being insufferably enveloped by at least a <b>100 </b>different
scents for <b>30 </b>minutes. I notice my heart rate slowing down, as I emerge
triumphant through the<i> vomitorium</i>.
And yet, playing underground dodge-the-scent and emerging <i>viscerally</i>
victorious also entails finding oneself with a severely decreased collection of
spoons; big, small, medium. I use them all. </span><span style="font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The workday has just begun. </span><span style="font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 76.5pt; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.94px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.94px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.94px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Sara Maria Acevedo is an autistic mestiza born and raised in Colombia. She is an educator, activist scholar and disability justice advocate based in Berkeley, California. She is affiliated to the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where she serves as adjunct faculty and disability advocacy fellow with the <a href="http://www.ciis.edu/student-resources/diversity-and-inclusion/team">Office of Diversity and Inclusion</a>. Sara is nearing dissertation in the Anthropology and Social Change program where she focuses on disability justice movements, neurodiversity and the politics of social space.</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com132tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-4846191238606785602016-03-14T12:51:00.000-07:002016-03-14T12:51:42.146-07:00Puzzle Piece Blues, by Selene dePackh
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Case Study [delete]*</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bear in mind that I’m a <u>suspect witness</u>. Everything I
say is subject to erasure. I make for deaf ears, pressure-popping like
plastique in an airline cabin. I am a Someone Else not-quite-person, speaking
in a M/Other Tongue from the far side of acceptable neurology. I’m a droplet in
the AutisticTsunami<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">®</span>,
rocking myself as I write this to the feedback of the blue glow on my screen. The
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">real people</b> on the other side of the
web have <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">credentials</b>, so they are
allowed to tell me and everyone else that the feelings I have are <u>not real</u>.
My empathetic emotions are a clever construct, fooling me more than the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">experts</b>. The experts know I am a
shimmering network of lies, that my neuro-plague-defective <u>brain lacks
mirror neurons</u>, and therefore cannot possibly reflect compassion. Believe
nothing I tell you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
***</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Humans are all over the flatscreen, huddling in reflective
blankets, jaws shuddering from the latest shock. They are Somewhere Else, on
some beach or street on the other side of the world, speaking unintelligibly.
They are the trembling harbinger-birds of what’s coming, chattering, stunned by
broken glass and shrapnel. They cluster or wander, waiting for some kind of
safety. Their open mouths and hollow pupils threaten to migrate into our new world.
Hard calculations must be made. This is the Homeland<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">®</span>, and its citizens cannot be wrapped in the
butterfly-fragile protection of tissue-weight mirrors. Faith is not enough.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Remember though, as you peer in on me, with my small refrigerator
without animal parts in it, without the packaged results of extraction machines
that pump product from sentient bodies, that I’m the one <u>incapable of
empathy</u>. My food choices are simply <u>aberrant perseverations</u>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These people in their suits, speaking to the Electorate,
these are <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">good men</b>, and they will
protect you from aliens within and beyond the borders. I’m a different kind of
alien, with my rocking and humming, my eyes that don’t meet yours, and my
country of silence. I am a <u>burden and a plague</u> for which they will
eventually <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">find a Cure</b>, if given
enough money. In the meantime, if anyone finds caring for those of my kind too
much to carry, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">and takes matters into
their own hands</b>, the good men will offer their <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">compassion</b> and make eloquent calls for mercy as friends of the
court. There are <u>never enough services</u> because people like me suck up so
very, very much from the responsible citizens of the republic. When we’re
killed, we’re lucky if we’re mentioned by name in the coverage. We are the poor,
stressed caretaker’s <u>cross to bear</u>. Our <u>lives are meaningless</u>,
after all. We are <u>suffering</u>, even if we [<s>don’t share that view</s>.]
Everyone says “don’t judge the poor mother until you’ve walked in her shoes…”
We try [<s>to say we have shoes too</s>.]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[If you don’t believe me, Google Dr. Phil’s wise,
compassionate interview of Kelli Stapleton, who tried to suffocate her autistic
daughter Issy. Go to Kelli’s YouTube channel. You can still find her playful birthday
video for Issy that shows Issy’s kittens being put in a microwave. Autistics
are terrible at figuring out when they’re being played for a joke. They’re such
downers. Read the comments. Google the autistic dead boy, Alex Spourdalakis…]*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
***</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m at the customs gate, ready to explode like Arnold
Schwarzenegger disguised in cyber-drag in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Total
Recall</i>. The gate is the point between Passing and Not Passing, and the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Blue Puzzle Piece</b> logo waves on the
Autism$peaks<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">®</span> flag
above my head. I must be adjudged High Functioning, or I will lose my passport.
Genetics are not on my side. In my family, we’ve all failed eventually. The
test is done every day, and one failure is all it takes. If I’m not a perfect
TempleGrandin<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">©</span>
model autistic, if my head explodes, I’ll have to go back to my room. And stay
there. For years. Until.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My father <u>died alone</u>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
***</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I pass so well at some things that some of the Experts put
my head in the same <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">scanning machine</b>
as the original TempleGrandin<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">©</span>
autistic brain was scanned in, very <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">clean</b>
and shiny in a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">secure</b> University
laboratory. Only autistics who were really <u>good at pretending</u> not to be
autistic were worthy of being put in the machine to have their brain patterns
mapped like foreign continents ready for the boots of the New Empire. Only
autistics who <u>might be useful</u> are worth studying like that. The ones who
don’t pass are only as valuable as what anyone’s willing to pay to take care of
them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[They gave me fifty dollars to have my head riddled with
magnetic waves. It was more money than I’d made in a few years, but I recognize
faces well for an autistic, so it was worth it to them.]*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
***</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A lot of autistics are considered ugly for our <u>blank,
flaccid, androgynous faces</u> occasionally contorted by <u>paroxysms</u> of
emotion, and some of us are considered beautiful for a slight variant of that
expression. I’m one of the second group, for better or worse. Even as I’ve
gotten older, I look <u>detached, unreachable</u>, pure.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I first made fifty dollars giving a rich college boy a
handjob when I was fourteen, and then keeping my mouth shut about it. Not
talking about things is something autistics are usually good at. That was money
for taxis when my father would forget to pick me up from the bus stop. I did it
a few times, because the money made me feel [<s>strong and confident</s>.] The
boys made sure I knew they <u>didn’t love me</u>. That was [<s>fine</s>.] I
liked girls better anyway, but I still [<s>felt good</s>] about the work, and I
<s style="text-line-through: double;">wouldn’t</s> say one bad thing about any of
it, even today. It was an [<s>honest</s>] negotiation, and I [<s>understood</s>]
it. Love was a <u>mess</u>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s getting hard to testify here. There’s a lot of static.
I [<s>can feel</s>] your ears stopping up like the plastique has gone off in
the cabin.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
***</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[So I’m rocking, murmuring poetry to myself. I don’t rock
when I speak proper prose. The blue-glowing screen is my voice.] *</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimlqzEOB_bTpyBX_XNuqJHye3nuoxMydLSUGuFg0qv1UbNud5Njaqco4xyviT_-IW1H7lzZ-6CvZkpgdW0gRKdDbGC2GBJ8XUiTMdZwIqCuih9-kfZKhMDMmq06LV9pM9GVl7xQzqAs_I/s1600/it_s__still__a_process____by_asp_in_the_garden-d2yacsd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimlqzEOB_bTpyBX_XNuqJHye3nuoxMydLSUGuFg0qv1UbNud5Njaqco4xyviT_-IW1H7lzZ-6CvZkpgdW0gRKdDbGC2GBJ8XUiTMdZwIqCuih9-kfZKhMDMmq06LV9pM9GVl7xQzqAs_I/s640/it_s__still__a_process____by_asp_in_the_garden-d2yacsd.jpg" width="512" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="_5yl5"><span>[harsh black and white comix-style cyberpunk image of feminine face repeating within itself from multiple angles]</span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="_5yl5"><span> </span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="_5yl5"><span> </span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span class="_5yl5"><span><span>Selene dePackh, artist and author, can be found online at </span><a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fasp-in-the-garden.deviantart.com%2F&h=5AQFm3meR" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://asp-in-the-garden.deviantart.com/.</a></span></span></i><i><span class="_5yl5"><span><span> We are proud to announce </span></span></span></i><i><span class="_5yl5"><span><span><span class="_5yl5"><span>the first book of her upcoming trilogy</span></span> to be published by NeuroQueer books, an imprint of Autonomous Press.</span></span></span></i> </div>
Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-42360065889681430072016-03-10T18:13:00.001-08:002016-03-10T18:13:12.257-08:00Cognitive Dissonance In A Different Key, by Erin Human<div class="ii gt m15353c3979a19d24 adP adO" id=":tu">
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<div style="word-wrap: break-word;">
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<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Cognitive Dissonance In A Different Key</div>
</span><div>
Erin Human</div>
<div>
<a href="http://eisforerin.com/" target="_blank">http://eisforerin.com</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
CN
and TW for ableism, abuse, torture, behavioral training,
institutionalization, filicide, and basically everything that could be
triggering for autistic people and some parents of autistic children. I
will be using direct quotes from <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In A Different Key </em>that employ profoundly ableist ideas and language. Also a note that I will usually use the acronym <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK</em> instead of the full title of the book, and will emphasize in bold and/or italics some of the quotes from the text.</div>
<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The press release for <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In A Different Key : The Story of Autism </em>by John Donvan and Caren Zucker says that this book was “written by two journalists personally committed to <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">widening respect, understanding, and support</strong> for the loved ones in their families – and in <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">every </em>family
touched by autism.” I want you to keep that sentence in mind as you
read my review. I want you to note that the supposed object of this
widened respect is the autistic person, and remember that as you read
on.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
In the preface the authors lay out the premise that this book will be about parents, and that <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“their two main goals – to find out why their children have autism and to <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">make it go away</em> – remain unfulfilled.” </strong></div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Acceptance for the Strangest Boy</strong></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>then
begins by telling the story of Donald Triplett who, as a child, was
Case 1 for the infamous autism diagnostician Leo Kanner. These chapters
are essentially an expansion of the authors’ 2010 article for <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Atlantic</em>, “Autism’s First Child.”</div>
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As
the Triplett family is praised for resisting the pressure to
institutionalize Donald (well, after first trying it out for a year) and
using their wealth to ensure his acceptance in the community (well,
even though they did send him off to the countryside to be raised by
another couple), the ableism in the text is a bit subtle. I thought that
I might be criticized for overanalyzing things as I underlined the
words the authors used to describe Donald as a child, words like<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> violently
inflexible, peculiarities, oblivious, wild tantrums, odd, deficits,
emotional indifference, strange, the strangest boy, her taxing
child, obsessions, obsessed, obsessive. It was a challenge to be friends
with Donald. </em></div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
But
this was only the first of numerous – too many to count – anecdotes
about autistic children which described them repeatedly as <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">odd, strange, violent, disconnected, destructive, dangerous, difficult to handle,</em> their behaviors <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">meaningless</em>, their interests <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">obsessive</em>. As <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">isolated, unspeaking, severe, uncooperative, </em>and<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </em>having <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">illo<wbr></wbr>gical anxiety. </em>They describe autistic children as<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">vanishing</em>, having <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">broken minds</em>, as <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">screamers, runners, and head bangers</em>.
These are the words that Donvan and Zucker use to perpetuate a tragedy
narrative that is meant to justify every horrible thing that will be
done to these children by parents and professionals.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The
Donald Triplett story serves as a framing device (the book concludes
with a story about his 80th birthday party), because it encapsulates the
Donvan/Zucker Model of “Acceptance”: Autistic people are very strange,
hard to deal with, and not like us, but it’s not their fault they have a
disorder, so we will tolerate them, help them act less autistic if we
can, and generously create some token place for them in our community.</div>
<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Birth of Autism Moms</strong></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>spends
some time on the Refrigerator Mother myth of the 50s and 60s, and the
backlash against this myth: the rise of The Autism Mom (and Autism
Parents more broadly). The expiration of the Refrigerator Mother myth,
claim the authors, was <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“due
to a concerted effort, launched by parents in the 1960s, to replace
mother blaming with research into the causes of autism.”</strong></div>
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At
no point do the parents in this narrative pause to consider autism
acceptance as an alternative to “trying to make it go away.” I know for a
fact that some parents in the real world <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">have </em>done that, but they are not in this book. Instead, the authors take it as a given that <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“parents
of disabled children so often feel a twinge of guilt deep inside – the
unbearable suspicion that their children are paying the price for
something they have done.”</strong></div>
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Why
this matters, I believe, is that this need to absolve themselves of
guilt quickly grew into a grotesque quest to “blame” someone else for
“causing” autism. Immeasurable harm has come from that quest, much of it
described in detail by <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK. </em></div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
This
section includes profiles of two autism parents named Ruth Sullivan and
Bernie Rimland. We can thank Sullivan for many of the ableist
storylines about autism that are still in play today: she “wooed
reporters” by describing autistic children as “strange and wondrous,”
mysterious, having strange gifts, and made sure to emphasize their
physical beauty so as to “make the public care.” Rimland, according to <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK, </em><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“always thought of autism itself as his primary enemy, as a foreign entity that needed to be defeated.”</strong> These
two were the founders of the National Society for Autistic Children
(NSAC), which would become the currently active organization, the Autism
Society of America (ASA).</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Justifying Filicide </strong></div>
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As many autistic reviewers have pointed out, the low point of <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>is
when it justifies the murder of an autistic teenager killed by his
father. Though filicide sympathizers would have you believe that “mercy
killings,” as they call them, happen because a lack of support, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>is
actually more candid: Dougie was murdered because life as a disabled
person was seen as not worth living, both by his parents and by the
authors who present that point of view sympathetically.</div>
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But I will give you the authors’ justifications for murdering an autistic child:</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Alec killed Dougie to put him out of a misery he believed to be inevitable”</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“It would only get worse”</strong></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The
DA’s competing story – that Alec was tired of the sacrifices required
and just wanted his freedom back – appealed more to a common sense <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">that knew nothing of raising a child with severe autism. No members of the jury had such experience. He was found guilty.” </em></strong></div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>then
neatly parlays this awful incident into the story of how local parent
activists successfully exploited Dougie’s murder to garner public
sympathy for their campaign to get inclusive education for autistic
students. The parents moved the battle for education reform forward
“partly because of what happened.” (Later, the authors reveal that it
was actually an unrelated legal battle in Pennsylvania that spurred real
nationwide education reform, so this filicide justification is totally
gratuitous and false.)</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Institutions </strong></div>
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The
history of institutionalizing disabled people is a history worth
knowing. To the extent that we can trust a book riddled with
inaccuracies and generously peppered with ableist attitudes, there is
some interesting reading on the topic of institutionalizing autistic
people and people with psychiatric and cognitive disabilities. To their
credit, the authors do celebrate the widespread closing of brick and
mortar asylums; however, there are more ways to institutionalize people
than by locking them up in buildings.</div>
<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
And
indeed, while purportedly exposing the abuses of asylums, the authors
also deliver a chilling justification for old fashioned
institutionalization. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“</strong>Being
a parent is hard enough when a child does not have a serious
disability. But when he does, [the] unrelenting pressure cannot help but
take its toll.<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Indeed,
there had been some truth in the argument that the doctors made to
parents through the decades when they prescribed institutionalization.</em> It
was no solution for the child, but it did address, in one stroke, a
large part of the parents’ problem, which was real and acute. </strong>For
some families, twenty-four hours a day of handling severe autism,
unrelieved, is a challenge beyond what love alone can handle.”</div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Triumphs of Torture</strong></div>
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The original purpose of ABA therapy, as developed by Dr. Lovaas, was to <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“get children with autism to behave in ways that made them look and act less autistic.”</strong> Donvan
and Zucker tell us that indeed he “achieved mastery” over the autistic
behaviors of his test subjects – young children – but with short term
effects. Autistic children tended to “relapse” with time spent away from
therapy. This is the reason that, to this day, it’s considered common
knowledge that for ABA to “work” it must be applied at least 32-40 hours
per week and ideally “nearly every waking moment” of a child’s life, as
Lovaas applied it in his later studies.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Nevertheless, IADK<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </em>tells us: <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The work […] was worth the time and the suffering. ABA worked.” </strong></div>
<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
This
suffering included at first electric shocks, cattle prods, slaps to the
face, starvation, and isolation. Our authors directly justify these
techniques. In one story, a child named Dicky was by turns isolated and
starved in order “motivate” him to perform in therapy, but Donvan and
Zucker conclude: <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“The team from the University of Washington hadn’t cured Dicky’s autism, but they had helped him find a place in the world.”</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Of
course, such grotesquely cruel punishments were not palatable to a wide
audience of parents, so they were eventually phased out with more
rewards and milder punishments phased in. However, the focus on
suppressing autistic behaviors was the same. Lovaas specifically said
that he did not believe in autistic people, only autistic behaviors. And
he famously said in an interview with <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Psychology Today</em>, <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“They are little monsters. They have hair, a nose, and a mouth – but they are not people in the psychological sense.”</strong></div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Over and over the authors tell us, <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“ABA
worked, the more of it the better, and a whole lot of it held out a
nearly 50/50 possibility of achieving the previously impossible.” </strong>They repeat parents’ claims that they were able to <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“recover”</strong> children from autism with ABA. They write how <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“triumph equals recovery” </strong>and describe
a parent’s ABA memoir as “a love story.” They celebrate the “retreat”
of “classically autistic behaviors.” They use the word <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“triumph”</strong> as they describe the disappearance of autistic behaviors, again and again and again.</div>
<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
And this, remember they have told us, is a book about <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">respect, understanding, and support.</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Myth of the Trapped Child</strong></div>
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Earlier
in the book we learned that Dougie Gibson, murdered by his father, was
an autistic child whose parents believed that there was a non-autistic
child trapped somewhere inside of the child they actually had. The
authors return to this theme later on by noting, <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“it had</strong><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> had
always been the most tantalizing conception of autism, this idea of the
‘real’ son or daughter hidden behind the mask of autism.”</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
And: “The<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> fierce
desire to locate ‘the child within’ was in many ways unique to families
dealing with autism. In families dealing with other developmental
disabilities, such as Down syndrome, love translated into embracing he
child as he or she was, and providing for as many opportunities as
possible without hoping for a radical transformation. The parents of
children loved their children no less, but many felt a strong impulse to
rescue them, and sought out breakthrough treatments to help them do
so.” </strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I felt that this admission was curiously revealing. It left me wondering <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">why</em>.
Instead of pausing to consider the answer to that question, they go on
to mention a number of fad “cures” and harmful treatments that parents
have used in their attempts to get rid of autism, once again giving
abuse a pass: <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“But
no one could ever refute with certainty the possibility that, perhaps
for some extremely small number of people, something real and
therapeutic did take place at one time, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">or at least appeared to</em>.”</strong> [Emphasis mine]</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Erasure of Nonspeaking Autistics </strong></div>
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One of the most infuriating parts of <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>is
when it embarks on a defamation campaign against Facilitated
Communication, or FC. FC is used by some non-speaking autistics (and
non-speaking people with other disabilities as well) who need support in
order to communicate via typing, iPad, letter boards, and so on. Donvan
and Zucker once again employ the tragedy narrative of the “trapped”
autistic child and the desperate parents to set the stage for their
claim that FC is an utter fraud. The idea that FC is fraudulent has been
disproven, but that doesn’t stop them from boldly stating, <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“it
was easy for facilitators and parents to delude themselves, and to
forget to suspend disbelief about a patently impossible process, because
they so badly wanted it to be real.”</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Why
is this included in their story of autism? Because it suits their
agenda to discredit any and all autistic activists who reject the
central autism parent mission to <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">make autism go away.</strong> There
are in fact non-speaking autistics and other non-speaking disability
rights activists who use FC to tell us they do not want to be cured,
fixed, or prevented. This might give a reasonable person pause, to hear
from the very people autism parents <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">most</em> want to cure – the non-speaking, the so-called “severe” – that they accept <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">themselves</em> as they are. So it is critical for Donvan and Zucker to convince you to ignore these voices. And so they tell you it is <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">deluded</strong> to believe that the non-speaking can articulate such thoughts. This is ableism of the highest, the most hateful, order.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Parent Power</strong></div>
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There’s quite a lot of detailed sausage making in <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK’s </em>history
of parent organizations. It’s fascinating if you are fascinated by that
sort of thing (I was), but can be summed up pretty succinctly:</div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
In
the 90s there were two big autism organizations run by two sets of
parents. The Londons ran the National Alliance for Autism Research
(NAAR), and the Shestacks ran Cure Autism Now (CAN). NAAR was all about
throwing money at scientists to research causes of autism, and CAN was
all about throwing money at quacks who could come up with treatments
like chelation, supplements, special diets etc. Meanwhile they both
started compiling creepy DNA databases in the hopes of “cracking the
genetic code” of autism (read: so they can make it go away). Later they
would both be absorbed by Autism Speaks, and, together with Autism
Society of America, see to it that Congress passed the Combating Autism
Act of 2006.</div>
<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The sordid tale of Andrew Wakefield is one we’ve all heard by now, but in the <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>telling
of the story I had the stunning impression that it was actually the
aggressive lobbying of parents, rather than the con job by this one
rogue scientist, that stoked the flames of autism panic. The “Mercury
Moms” group SafeMinds was granted meetings with the NIH, FDA, and CDC. A
book came out, called <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Evidence of Harm</em>, that received a lot of press as it touted the work of the Mercury Moms who <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“never
abandoned their ambition to prove that mercury in vaccines is what
pushed their children, most of the boys, into a hellish, lost world of
autism.” </strong>This narrative helped push through the Combating
Autism Act of 2006, and then the president of SafeMinds was actually
given a seat on a US Government committee called the Interagency Autism
Coordinating Committee. All of that power based on baseless fear
mongering and quack science.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fake Autistics or Fake Acceptance</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Having
dispensed of non-speaking autistics by denying their ability to
communicate, Donvan and Zucker wrap up their parent-centered autism
story by cleverly invalidating the rest of the autistic population –
those who <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">can </em>speak.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>version
of the history of the neurodiversity movement is distorted beyond
recognition; it would be tedious to correct its many inaccuracies, but
it’s useful to focus on why they tell it the way they do. In this
version, a teenager named Alex Plank launches modern autistic culture by
creating a web forum called Wrong Planet in 2004. Plank serves their
agenda well because he is <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not </em>an
autistic activist and doesn’t identify with the broader autistic
community – Wrong Planet is mainly for people who identify as having
Asperger’s and are sometimes called Aspie Supremacists.</div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
That subculture neatly bolsters the <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>argument
that there are “many autisms” and that the “kind” of autism that people
like Plank have is something completely different from the “severe”
kind of autism. [editorial note: there are no “kinds” of autism, but
this is a central argument to the book] Ergo, autistic activists who
argue against cures and eugenics have no right to say what should happen
to the “other” kind of autistics. Totally false, but that’s what Donvan
and Zucker would have you believe.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>then
takes aim at Ari Ne’eman, founder and president of the Autistic
Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN). The authors employ a classic autism parent
entrapment strategy of framing Ne’eman as both “not autistic
enough” and “too autistic” to be an effective advocate for autistic
people: <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Many parents questioned whether he even had autism – of any kind</strong><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</strong><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </strong>Some,
however, thought they recognized such a dramatic failure of empathy in
his pronouncements about them as parents, or at least a failure of tact,
that they took it as evidence that he did, after all, match the
stereotype of Asperger’s.”</div>
<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Intriguingly,
Donvan and Zucker zero in right there on what specifically they find
repugnant about the neurodiversity movement: while they claim to agree
that autistic people deserve respect, dignity, and safety – which, they
assert, was already achieved through deinstitutionalization – they
cannot accept the <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“radical proposition that a child with severe autism was not, in some fashion, sick.”</strong></div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Let’s look at that one more time, because this is indeed the crux of the Fake Acceptance model that <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">IADK </em>puts
forth: accepting autistic people means keeping them out of institutions
while working on curing them of their sickness by any means possible.
Or, to put it in the cutesy language they employ at the end of the
book, <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“we would recognize, and take steps to welcome and protect, </strong><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the odd man out.”</strong> </em>And
the thing that really makes my ears ring, the cognitive dissonance in
this thesis, is that I fully believe that the authors are 100% sincere
in thinking that that is the pinnacle of autism acceptance.</div>
<span class="im"><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">History of the Oppressors</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In A Different Key </em>is subtitled <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Story of Autism. </em>Note
that it’s “the” story, not “a” story. And I do believe the effort to
lay out “the” story is sincere, in much the same way that your 8th grade
history textbook told you how America was discovered by Columbus in
1492. This is a history of the oppressors by the oppressors, presented
as neutral factual information. All the better to convince you that
their biased view is truthful – indeed, as they at one point describe
parental love, <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“unassailable.”</strong></div>
</span><div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“For
forty years, from the 1960s onward, the work of autism advocacy had
been a mission carried out almost entirely by mothers and father
dedicated to <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">making the world better for their kids.</em>“</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 23px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="null">Erin Human is a writer, cartoonist, and Art Director
for Autism Women's Network. You can find her writing at <a href="http://eisforerin.com/">eisforerin.com</a>
and her cartooning is at <a href="http://humanillustrations.com/">humanillustrations.com</a>.</span> </strong></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<tr><td><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
<tr><td class="gF gK" style="width: auto;"><br /></td><td class="gF gK"><br /></td><td class="gH"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="gF gK" colspan="3"><br /></td></tr>
<tr class="acZ"><td class="gF gK"></td><td class="gH"></td><td class="gH"></td><td class="gH acX" rowspan="2"></td></tr>
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</tbody></table>
Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-61699960267184198792016-03-09T15:44:00.000-08:002016-03-09T15:44:05.557-08:00Countdown to Spoon Knife: from "How to Time Travel in a Closet"<br />
Today's excerpt from <i>The Spoon Knife Anthology</i> appears in "How to Time Travel in a Closet" by N.I. Nicholson.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Autonomous
Press is now taking pre-orders for<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i>The Spoon Knife Anthology,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>as well as<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Barking Sycamores, Year One<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Imaginary Friends.</i>
Order at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.autpress.com/"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">www.autpress.com</span></a><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">. (See the latest issue of Barking Sycamores online at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">barkingsycamores.wordpress.com</span></a><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">.)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve
piloted back to this moment to see you <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as
you were, a skeleton carrying your own ruined self – <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a
hungry ghost, deflated shriveled skin, mouth unhinged <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to
scoop up stray bits of the love you never got – <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">over
your shoulder. You clobbered the girl that I was <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with
your miserable sack of nothing, beating into me <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the
whippings <i>you</i> got as a girl. But know
that <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
am rebuilding myself:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I have the technology, I am learning how<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to
regenerate, and I am reincarnating as a queer <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">man.
Are you surprised? I am becoming what you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">hated most. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com102tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-48585493178740088592016-03-07T15:37:00.000-08:002016-03-07T15:37:04.688-08:00Countdown to Spoon Knife: from "Kelly's Blackbird" by Nick WalkerToday's excerpt from <i>The Spoon Knife Anthology</i> comes from "Kelly's Blackbird," by Nick Walker.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Autonomous
Press is now taking pre-orders for<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i>The Spoon Knife Anthology,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>as well as<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Barking Sycamores, Year One<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Imaginary Friends.</i>
Order at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.autpress.com/"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">www.autpress.com</span></a><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">. (See the latest issue of Barking Sycamores online at<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">barkingsycamores.wordpress.com</span></a><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">.)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This year I’m in the Gold Star class for art. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t like the name. The Gold Star class.
Sounds like we’re in kindergarten. If I hadn’t been sent to this place, I’d be
a freshman in high school now. Instead, I’m in the Gold Star class. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Despite the name, the Gold Star class doesn’t
entirely suck. For one thing, no one gets into the Gold Star class unless they
have a solid track record of making it through art classes without engaging in
what the staff call <i>disruptive behaviors.</i>
Most of the time I’m a great fan of disruptive behaviors, but it’s nice to be
able to concentrate on my art without being distracted by a lot of shouting.
And without having to watch out for flying crayons, clay, paint, and other
airborne hazards. And without having my table crashed into by people who are
fighting, flipping out, or being tackled by staff. The absence of that sort of
thing makes the Gold Star class a major improvement over the art classes I was
in last year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Another improvement is that in the Gold Star
class we get to use the good art supplies they don’t trust the other kids with.
Like today I’m using this little wooden-handled tool called a gouge, which
looks like the offspring of a chisel and a potato peeler. The kids in the other
art classes don’t get to use anything sharp. Not even pencils. Which is
ridiculous, because they all use pencils in math class. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m using the gouge to carve a picture of a
bird into the surface of a square piece of linoleum. I’m almost done, except
for a few final touches. Then the square of linoleum can be coated in ink and
pressed against paper to make prints. That part of the process isn’t so
interesting to me, so I might skip it. The carving is the interesting part. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The art teacher advised me to draw the outlines
of the picture on the linoleum first, but I decided to ignore this advice and
just let the bird emerge as I carved. And now here it is, almost fully emerged
from its hiding place within the gray linoleum, spreading its wings like it’s
about to take flight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“That’s really nice,” a girl’s voice says from
somewhere above my right shoulder. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At first I don’t even realize it’s me she’s
speaking to. Once I get into working on something, it’s hard to shift my focus.
Fortunately, someone else is here to help me this time. A head with dark hair
and neon pink lipstick leans sideways into my field of vision. “Hey, queerboy,”
the head says. “Wake the fuck up. She’s talking to you.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This is Trina. I don’t want to deal with Trina,
so I twist around to look up at the first girl, the one who said “That’s really
nice.” She has pale white skin and long straight hair a dozen shades of blonde.
This is Kelly. Kelly and Trina are best friends, even though Kelly is always
kind to people and Trina is mean to everyone except Kelly. No one is mean to
Kelly, at least not here. General opinion among both guys and girls is that
Kelly is the coolest girl in school. Though even the kids who are considered
cool in this place were once outcasts among the normal kids, so I guess coolness
is relative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Will you make me a blackbird like that?” Kelly
asks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Blackbird? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Until this moment I hadn’t given any thought to
what kind of bird it might be. I don’t think it looks like any real-life bird
at all. It’s come out more abstract than realistic, the carved lines jagged and
wild, emphasizing motion. If I had to guess, I’d maybe say it was a raven.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But girls mostly don’t talk to me at all,
certainly not girls like Kelly who is the coolest girl in school and also so
beautiful it hurts to look at her. So now it’s a blackbird. And I’d gladly make
her one, or give her this one when I finish it. Or maybe I should use this
carved piece of linoleum to make a print for her? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Before I can decide which option would be best,
Trina grabs Kelly by the sleeve of her denim jacket and pulls her away, walking
fast. “Come on,” she says. “Fuck this shit. You don’t need to talk to that
little fucking faggot.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kelly’s pretty easygoing, but in ordinary
circumstances she’d never allow Trina to drag her around like this. In the team
of Kelly and Trina, Kelly is the leader and Trina is the sidekick. But Kelly
seems to have become mesmerized by this bird I’ve carved, and she just looks at
it over her shoulder and blinks in a bewildered sort of way as Trina leads her
back to their seats on the other side of the room. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I go back to putting the finishing touches on
the carving. By the time I’m done, art class is almost over. Across the room,
Kelly and Trina are whispering to one another with fierce intensity, heads
together, not even pretending to be working on their art projects. This doesn’t
look like the kind of conversation I want to interrupt, so I guess I can’t just
walk over there and hand my finished carving to Kelly. Instead, I hand it in to
the art teacher for safekeeping. The art teacher loves it, and by the time
she’s done bubbling about it the bell has rung and Kelly and Trina are gone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com88tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-7036721535228957152016-03-05T15:35:00.000-08:002016-03-05T15:35:14.444-08:00Countdown to Spoon Knife: from "Something Plus One"Today's excerpt from <i>The Spoon Knife Anthology</i> comes from "Something Plus One," by Bridget Allen.<br />
<br />
Autonomous Press is now taking pre-orders for <i>The Spoon Knife Anthology, </i>as well as <i>Barking Sycamores, Year One </i>and <i>Imaginary Friends.</i> Order at <a href="http://www.autpress.com/">www.autpress.com</a>. (See the latest issue of Barking Sycamores online at <a href="http://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/">barkingsycamores.wordpress.com</a>.)<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; mso-outline-level: 1; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: ideograph-other; vertical-align: baseline;">
<b><u><span lang="DE" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Day Four<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: ideograph-other; text-indent: 35.3pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: ideograph-other; text-indent: 35.3pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span lang="DE" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Each
day here feels worse. I wonder if I'll ever get out of here. The sense of Other
is tangible, like a film that covers every surface with a greasy dust. Of
course, there is also real, non-metaphorical, greasy dust. I wish I had some
Pine Sol and a scrub brush. I know I'm still in the same hospital, but on this
floor everything is different. If I wasn't terrified, I'd be joking about how
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest this place is. Not that there's anyone to joke
with. No one's visited since I was moved. Not even my mother.</span><span lang="DE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: FA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Andale Sans UI"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: ideograph-other; text-indent: 35.3pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span lang="DE" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: ideograph-other; text-indent: 35.3pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span lang="DE" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The
Turtle Man stops by the ward but doesn't speak with me. I can't tell if that
bodes well or not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-85111104405095198142016-03-04T15:31:00.002-08:002016-03-04T15:31:44.984-08:00Countdown to Spoon Knife: What is a Spoon Knife?In today's Excerpts from <i>The Spoon Knife Anthology</i>: the Introduction, "What is a Spoon Knife?", by Michael Scott Monje, Jr. <br />
<br />
Autonomous Press is now taking pre-orders for <i>The Spoon Knife Anthology, </i>as well as <i>Barking Sycamores, Year One </i>and <i>Imaginary Friends.</i> Order at <a href="http://www.autpress.com/">www.autpress.com</a>. (See the latest issue of Barking Sycamores online at <a href="http://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/">barkingsycamores.wordpress.com</a>.)<br />
<br />
<b>Introduction: What is a Spoon Knife?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
first question I got from my partners and blogging friends when I started
talking about spoon knives was “What is that?” Every one of them had heard
about Christine Miserandino’s “The Spoon Theory,” of course, and they could
tell I was referencing it, but none of them seemed to be familiar with
traditional woodworking tools, because they didn’t see that reference or its
connection to activist work. Not at first, at least. Once I posted some
pictures of various spoon knives and the bowls they were used to carve, the
idea caught fire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
start understanding the idea of the spoon knife, you need to start back at “The
Spoon Theory,” that wonderful, dynamic metaphor for living with chronic pain
and disability. If you’ve never read the original essay, it’s worth the time,
and it is available online at </span><a href="http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">www.butyoudontlooksick.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">. In it, Ms.
Miserandino details how she used a collection of spoons to symbolize her pool
of resources when a friend asked her what it was like to live with lupus. As
she detailed the tasks of a regular day, she took spoons away, to show how her
energy had to be spent. At the end, when there was only one spoon left and the
only item on the list—dinner—was likely to take two spoons, it helped to drive
home the choices and the careful safeguarding of resources she has to make as
she plans her daily activities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
essay is a powerful statement about the importance of long-term planning, of
not doing everything, and of prioritizing self-care. At the same time, though,
it also begs a question: How does one get more spoons? To extend the idea in
her original essay, each day is treated like a table, and each table is set
with a different number of place settings. Sometimes, there are more spoons
than you need to do everything on the list. Sometimes, though, there are not
enough. That complicates planning. What if there was another way, though?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Interdependency,
that principle that governs so much of the way that disability and disabled
cultures are constructed, seems to suggest that the whole room does better when
we are willing to send extra spoons to other tables. That, at least, is the
organizing principle in most of the activist organizations and groups I’ve been
involved with, whether they are formal or informal in nature. What about when
the whole room is packed, though? How do we get more spoons when everyone needs
them?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
answer is the spoon knife, that old woodworker’s companion that looks something
like the tool it is used to make, only sharp and nasty and quick. A spoon knife
is used to carve the bowl, which makes it curved, like a melon baller. It
shaves away the unnecessary parts of the wood in layers, too, so it has to be
sharp and strong, to keep slicing and slicing until it has peeled enough to
make a depression in an otherwise smooth stick. It looks thin, like something
made from an old beer can, but in a master’s hands, it rewards patience and
precision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
we’re keeping with our extended metaphor, though, then we still have to ask the
question: <i>What is a spoon knife? </i>We
know what our symbol does, but what in our community is capable of doing that
thing—cutting away layers of what shouldn’t be there, to leave us with the
ability to do more, reach further, and nourish ourselves more successfully.
What looks thin and weak, but nonetheless digs deep channels into reality?<br />
<br />
My belief is that the spoon knife is a story. For some, it’s an expression of
solidarity that refills our emotional reserves even as it bolsters the morale
of the one who offered support. For others, it might be an example that
provides the cognitive scaffolding needed to get out of an abusive situation,
or even just to recognize one in the first place. It’s also possible for it to
be a confrontation, a reality that will not yield to our need until we learn to
wield it and to control its damage with unwavering precision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
fitting that the spoon knife looks both weak and menacing at once, because
story is a thing that can be blown away on the wind, or it can slice away the
people around you by revealing what lies underneath your initial presentation.
And, at the end of the day, a spoon knife is absolutely unthreatening unless
one chooses to make it otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
I’m right, then this collection of knives will provoke new spoons when the
right kinds of readers connect with them, providing the things those readers
need to navigate their own daily tasks and challenges. And who knows? Maybe a
few of them will look into this volume and see more than spoons. Maybe those
readers will see the possibilities that arise when you study the uses of the
knife. And you know what? We will be waiting for them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-20694503649951704532016-03-03T12:00:00.002-08:002016-03-03T12:00:34.594-08:00Countdown to Spoon Knife: from "My Mother GLaDOS"This month, Autonomous Press releases three new titles, including the first volume of <i>The Spoon Knife Anthology.</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://autpress.com/2016/03/presales-overstock-and-changes-at-the-company/">Pre-orders are now open online</a>, but if you'd like to get a sneak peek at <i>Spoon Knife</i> before you order, stay tuned. We'll be running excerpts from works in the anthology from now until the release date.<br />
<br />
Today's excerpt is from "My Mother GLaDOS," by Dani Alexis Ryskamp.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">You, SUBJECT NAME HERE,
Must Be the Pride of SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">You come from a long line of people who
really loved cake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">“Cake,” of course, is a euphemism for
sex. Straight sex. The kind of sex that is always implied, never
stated; the kind of sex one assumes happens in marriages but tastefully omits
to mention. Good-girl sex. Lie back and think of England, where cake is
served alongside afternoon tea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">In 1690, your
great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Harold Kennedy, disowns
your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Harold Kennedy, depriving
the latter of several thousand acres of southwest Ohio in addition to the usual
emotional connections one associates with family. Three hundred years later, the remaining
records only mention that the disowning had to do with Harold Junior’s
conversion from Presbyterianism to Methodism.
You’re in graduate school before you learn that “Methodism” is a
euphemism for “enjoying too much cake with the wrong people.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">It might even be a euphemism for “enjoying
cake with your own team,” as it were.
You can’t tell. The familial
euphemisms for non-bakery-approved relationships are even more dense and
confusing than the euphemisms for vanilla cake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">In 1901 or thereabouts, your
great-great-grandmother’s sister, “Aunt Marie,” scandalizes the society pages
of the Urbana, Ohio newspaper by declining to have her impending marriage memorialized
in them. Instead, she runs away to
Florida for her nuptials. Ninety years
later, your great-grandmother is still heavily implying that Aunt Marie ate her
cake and had it too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">How many Methodist bakeries <i>are</i> there in Florida? The sketchy end to which Aunt Marie came is
repeated, technicians inform you, by your great-aunt, whose decades-long
friendship with the first openly gay mayor of Key West may or may not have involved
cake. If the family knows, nobody will
discuss it. “That has nothing to do with
us,” your aunt announces staunchly at her funeral. Of course it doesn’t. Still, when he is cremated, half his ashes go
to his artist partner in Florida; the other half live in your great-aunt’s
house, caked in the bottom of a glass tumbler.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">“I knew this bisexual thing was just a
phase,” your mother says in 2005 or thereabouts. She’s not referring to the six months you’ve
spent attending Methodist college youth meetings – she doesn’t know about
those. No one does. That has nothing to do with us. Your mother is talking about your cousin,
whose actual bona fide relationships with women were followed by an actual bona
fide relationship with a man, whom she married.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">Your mother’s voice oozes scorn. You decide not to mention the Methodist youth
group. Your gaze drops to the cake lying
on your plate, half-eaten. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 100%;">Only after you’ve been safely married off
to a straight man do you start to suspect that the cake is a lie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-39132731171239176502015-11-23T13:46:00.001-08:002015-11-27T10:32:52.462-08:00Official AutPress Statement on the TASH Response to Slate<div class="entry-content">
Encouraging update!<br />
<br />
Autonomous Press and TASH had a very encouraging meeting this morning on the topics of Communication Justice and research. <br /><br />TASH reaffirmed their powerful commitment to human rights and quality of life for people, which puts us clearly on the same side, and so we look forward to a fruitful partnership. <br /><br />Stay tuned for more detailed news about future developments soon.<br />
<br />
<i>[Ed. note: We want to make it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to see this statement of our principles on communication justice. So we reprint it here and invite you to reprint it on your own blog if you wish; to see the original, go here. Thank you very much for your attention, and for helping us stand strong in defense of everyone's right to communicate. -Ib]</i><br />
<br />
Following the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://tash.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/FC-Letter.pdf" target="_blank">statement from TASH</a></span>
regarding their official stance that they will not support or directly
endorse facilitated communication, the partners at Autonomous Press have
decided that we cannot do business with the organization or any
representative acting in their capacity as such while this policy is in
effect. As a press started by a majority autistic partnership, one whose
own members type to communicate frequently, we do not feel comfortable
attending, selling at, or promoting this organization or their events in
any way.<br />
<br />
We make this decision with a heavy heart. Many of us have friends on
the board. In addition to that fact, though, one of our editors on <i>Typed Words, Loud Voices,</i>
our groundbreaking anthology of typers, is herself an FC activist. She
has presented at TASH to specifically address the ways she communicates
and barriers caused by false and ableist skepticism leading to poorly
designed and agenda-driven “studies.” We can only imagine the strain
that this institutional decision has placed on her, implying as it does
that TASH does not stand behind those that they invite to share their
knowledge and ideas.<br />
<br />
It is out of a desire to make our commitment to representing voices
like hers, and not to privilege some forms of accommodation and some
forms of communication over others, that we make this move:<br />
<br />
Until TASH officially embraces FC and the right of all disabled
persons to communicate with the methods they choose for themselves,
Autonomous Press will be forced to avoid the TASH conference, withdraw
outreach funding from any travel grants being used by TASH presenters
applying for our assistance, and withdraw our memberships (for those of
us who are members). The partners are also asking that AutPress authors
who wish to present at TASH during this period, however long or short it
is, do so without promoting the books they have published with us or
directly tying them in to their abstracts (casual mentions are fine).<br />
<br />
We are happy to fully embrace any organization within our community
that supports and embraces our mission and the authors we represent.
When an organization leaves itself open to the idea that the books,
presentations, and other intellectual work by facilitated communicators
are not genuine, that is the same thing as stating that they are open to
the idea that we have created false or counterfeit scholarly work. It’s
unfortunate, but we cannot have a relationship with organizations that
take such a position and declare it to be principled.<br />
<br />
We look forward to communication justice becoming, once again, a
priority for TASH, and await a new institutional statement showing it.</div>
Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-37918074455022396082015-10-26T11:57:00.000-07:002015-10-26T11:57:32.146-07:00On Stigma (Ode to the Secretly Neuroqueer) by E.J. (Ibby) GraceIt is a very serious problem that for many people, the heavy and unfair stigma attached to their disabilities forces them to live "in the closet" in order to be safe.<br /><br />I was just thinking about definitions, and for me, my being neuroqueer means I'm both neurodivergent and deliberately fierce and fabulous about it. But this way of living was not always within reach for me.<br />
<br />
You can be secretly neuroqueer. You can be secretly fierce and fabulous while keeping yourself safe. Be who you are with people you can trust. We are rebuilding the world so that we can all reach a point where we don't have to keep worrying about the very real repercussions of our labels.<br />
<br />
If I'm talking to you, and you see yourself in this, love and solidarity. I have your back, and there are many others like me who feel the same way. Please pass this on to others who may be wondering if anyone could ever understand.Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-36886268159754828882015-09-16T18:36:00.000-07:002015-09-22T09:32:19.220-07:00There Is No Case Without D. Johnson's Testimony.<style>
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<br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I came of age a quarter of a century ago, people with
intellectual and developmental disabilities were often classified by “mental
age” based on various test scores. If they were adults, but called a “mental
age” that was less than their chronological age, it was widely assumed that
they could not be interested in love and sex. After all, “He’s just like a
three year old.”<br>
<br>
That was offensive then, and it’s offensive now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A woman was discussing her daughter with me once, back then.
Her daughter was older than I then was, but deaf, without having had much
access to the culture. The mother was talking to me about the daughter’s
business because she wanted me to convince her to get off birth control pills.
What could she possibly need with those? She was not interested in sex,
according to her mother, because “She tells me everything. I would know.” I was
uncomfortable with the conversation but I did point out that if I were hanging
around with my mother in the mall, having a root beer or whatever, I can’t
imagine myself announcing “Nice ass” or something whenever someone attractive
passed by. She’s my mother. Boundaries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To her credit, this woman had an epiphany then and said she
would not ever have discussed such things with her own mother, either. She realized
that her daughter, who was then about thirty, could decide for herself whether
she was interested in men, and what to do about it, without maternal input.<br>
<br>
Twenty-five years ago, this was.<br>
<br>
A few years after that, the Health Sciences University around there wanted to
do a pilot project of peer education on safer sex, for AIDS prevention. There
was a huge outcry that people with visible Down syndrome, for example, were
involved in making video tutorials in which they mentioned sex. This would be a
terrible “example” and “corrupt” the “kids,” to hear the detractors tell it.
These “kids” were adult – even middle-aged – and were already well aware of how
to have sex. Even when the medical school students said that not knowing about
how to have sex in safer ways might kill people, many of their relatives tried
to block the program. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Around that time, someone I knew who lived in supported
apartment housing fell in love with a homeless young man. Because her “staff”
wouldn’t “allow” “conjugal visits” with him (yes, jail terminology was really
used back then for free adults) she fled to be with him on the streets. He was
accused (against her strenuous objections) of “raping” her because her parents did not like that he was not of the
same religious sect as the one in which she was raised, and also they knew for
a fact that she was “childlike” and could not be a part of such "sins." Had he
not been able to prove that he, too, was developmentally disabled, he would
have been taken into prison instead of the “system” of state-supported group
homes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Apparently, if that guy had not been disabled, there would
be no other explanation for him loving and being attracted to his girlfriend
who loved him too, other than his being a creepy sex offender. She could not
possibly have consented on her own, because her parents had filed for
guardianship.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That was more than twenty years ago, but people still assume
that developmentally and intellectually disabled people can have lovers only if
they are being victimized against their will by evil perpetrators who should be
punished for loving them. Unless we are fairly successful and can communicate
readily, in which case those who love us must be some kind of saintly martyrs,
bless their cotton socks.<br>
<br>
Although developmentally disabled, I’m typing this blog post all by myself,
which makes my wife a saintly martyr instead of a sex offender, I guess. She’s
lucky I became interested in writing!!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, everyone, it’s been a quarter of a century, and I
declare that Mr. Johnson is the one who knows if he loves Anna Stubblefield and
consensually wanted to be with her. If he is not attracted to her and she was
being creepy to him, let him tell us. His family is not who knows this
information and neither do judges and juries. Not allowing him to testify is
malarkey. It is still malarkey even if most people consider themselves
intellectually superior beings who can decide if it’s “wrong” for others to
hook up. Ableism is somewhat understandable because it is so pervasive, but we
must not let it govern us. (Racism is also no way to make decisions.)<br>
<br>
If Mr. Johnson says that Ms. Stubblefield is a creepy stalker who pushed
herself on him, then she fits that trope, but again: he is the one whose
opinion matters here. Legally claiming that a person is not fully a person
capable of choice is a mess, and so is the notion that certain people are
automatically undesirable and so thus whoever desires them must be suspected of
evildoing.<br>
<br>
It is twenty-five years later than it was a quarter century ago. Let us hope we
have evolved.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some further reading: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2015/09/professor_accused_of_sex_assault_declares_love_for.html">http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2015/09/professor_accused_of_sex_assault_declares_love_for.html</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1717">http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1717 </a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://julieswritings.blog.com/2015/09/13/some-of-my-thoughts-on-the-anna-stubblefield-case/">http://julieswritings.blog.com/2015/09/13/some-of-my-thoughts-on-the-anna-stubblefield-case/</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://autonomous-press.myshopify.com/products/typed-words-loud-voices">http://autonomous-press.myshopify.com/products/typed-words-loud-voices</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://emilybrookswriter.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/disability-rights-on-trial-whats-really-at-stake-in-the-stubblefield-case/">https://emilybrookswriter.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/disability-rights-on-trial-whats-really-at-stake-in-the-stubblefield-case/</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thank you for letting me share. </div>
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<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Love, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ib</div>
Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-47475732705132183472015-08-16T06:18:00.000-07:002015-08-16T06:18:00.091-07:00Transubstantiation, by Anonymous<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I feel self-conscious trying to talk
about transition because I don't have the intention of taking certain steps,
and because the fact that I don't want a name change makes me feel like I stick
out. The fact of the matter is, there are going to be no easy solutions. I am
not one thing, I change, and as I try to find the best possible combination of
strategies for navigating the world, I can't help but feel a firm conviction
that I must get the testosterone out of my system. I don't like the way it adds
to my aggressive fight-or-flight tendencies, and when I feel most in tune with
my biochemistry as it is now, I am most prone to doing the things I least
identify with. As I have sought to dismantle my unhealthy strategies for
dealing with the world, I have felt less and less capable of communicating with
my body's shape and… texture… as it is currently constituted.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The fact is, I want to be called
"they" and "she", but I don't have a particularly strong
interior need for it, it's more like not being seen makes me just disengage
from the people around me. Like, if you can't see me, then why should I even
bother to include you in my messages to and with the world? For a long time,
that seemed like a way to be, but it made the world very small. Getting the
outside world to acknowledge and to create the space for me that is me-shaped,
is about participation. When I am alone, like now, the biochemistry that gives
me such trouble is nothing. In the kayak, on the water, the body I have is my
body. I make it sing, and the things I do with it produce such wonderful
sensations. In those places, I am not disabled because the way I process the
world is not limited by the ways I need to be able to interact when my
attention is demanded by others.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Kassiane wrote something about where she
is and is not disabled that really resonated with me when I was first coming to
terms with myself. In those days, I tried to find blogs by female autistics
because I was very aware of the fact that I didn't think like male autistics
and I had already made the choice to abandon my first run toward transition.
When I read that piece, it made me think less about my communication issues, as
profound as they were in many situations. Instead, it made me think about why I
played women in games and always gravitated toward female-led spaces online. It
made me think about the places where I felt like it made sense for me to be,
and why my natural instincts led me there. At the time, I was also starting to
read a lot of trans feminist work, because I felt like my ability to give up
made me, definitively, not one of them. Still, because I had tried, I wanted to
learn to be a better ally.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I have hurt myself in so many ways with a
callous disregard for my own body's attempts to tell me what to be. I don't
have a lot of ways of expressing how the burden of memory or the process of my
background created a rubric of the self that was so resigned to the idea that
life had to be constantly awful. All I can really say is that I had a unique
set of circumstances that came together to make me terrified of expressing my
terror, lest its sources be interrogated. I don't know when the first time I
heard an anti-trans slur at a family gathering. The word he-she was something
the adults had bandied around in conversation in front of me by the time I was
five. I distinctly remember, about the time I noticed leg hair, my father
talking about his failure to understand "those things" that were
willing to settle for never being right as either. About how he "had
one" at his work.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I waited every day for my voice to
change, and I tried to tell myself the terror and the crying was just because I
was nervous, because (as my parents said repeatedly), hormonal changes made
people emotionally unreliable and my teenage years would be painful and make me
do and say stupid things. Looking back, their entire approach to adolescence
seems like it was designed to make sure that people like me turn in on
ourselves, and I did.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The ironic part about reviewing my past
as I come out about my transition is that there were so many ways that I was a
cliché of female teenage emotional disturbance in the nineties. My early
adoption of BDSM lifestyle fashions was only months ahead of my first
flirtation with surrendering autonomy and consent to a partner. I cut,
uncontrollably, and actively sought out romantic partners who would not judge
me and at least one who openly helped me to eroticize the sensations. I got
into a series of lopsided friendships with people who understood my problems
and took advantage of them to maintain control over our social relationship.
Some of them were people I felt deeply for, romantically. Some of those were
unrequited. Eventually, I developed an eating disorder. Then I cut off all my
hair, attempted to talk myself into transition, came out of the closet instead,
right before cycling back to bisexual, and had the kind of friends who viewed
me as deceptive for this. Luckily, as I lost them, I forged what would turn
into my relationship with my partner.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">In the early years, I took a lot of
damage in the name of making safe space for her. I knew I could, so I did, and
I was willing to do it because I could tell that the way she hurt me was not
like the way other people hurt me. It was because of things she could not stop,
but that she worked against. They were because she had the same flavors of
trauma in her past, even if she had different experiences. So when I took that
pain, the transubstantiation into eroticism was easier to do, and I learned
with it, and it grew. There were times we were driven apart again, and in
those, I was still too hurt from my early relationships to begin to approach
gender again. When I was fifteen, I had spent time in skirts and had approached
makeup with my family, but the restrictions put on what I could use and where I
could go, how I could express myself and what it would mean, they made me
surrender to their restrictions by freezing. After ignoring them and thinking I
could get away with it, my father shut me down so hard that I could not make
myself up again without crying. And it didn't help that the girl who had
enabled things and got me dieted down until we could share skirts decided
conventional khakiness and Abercrombie and Fitch were her thing instead, and
she didn't really want a skirt wearing weekend-tripping fishnet clad boyfriend
who had more cosmetic practice than she did. And when she demanded, I did,
because she was still an alternative to the people who had shut me down to
begin with.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Sometimes, I think the only reason I'm still
alive is because of the suicide of a family friends. There have been a lot of
times I've been with death, with visions of ways that I might end with just a
flip of the wrist again, and then an embankment. Those visions are almost never
near now unless I conjure them like I did when writing this, but there was a
time that they were riding beside me through everything. And to be honest?
Those times were pretty much every moment from when I let myself give up on
getting into my first girlfriend's leather skirt again until the first time I
decided to demand movement toward transition. This might seem sudden, but it's
something that I spent every day trying to not keep track of the number of days
since I'd considered it.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I didn't always identify with girl
things, and I still don't in a lot of ways and times. It's more like there was
a tightness in my chest whenever people tried to divide us into those two
groups, and the one I got pushed into always seemed like the not-so-best of the
two. Today, I know what that means, and it makes me reluctant to use words like
<i>woman</i>, even if I am looking for a
chance to change my whole system to estrogen. And that gives me trouble when I
try to approach services, too, because I know what a lot of doctors think of
people like me, because after all, there are some doctors who said some of the
awful shit right here in my family. And so, even though I can't really tell how
many of the people around me are going to be like they've been, my brain can't
give up on the idea that my doctors are going to be people like them. And so,
away I go again.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">This is my rumination, and it burrows so
deeply into my brain that even when I don't feel close to suicide and I know
why I left her sleeping alone in that bed, it still stalls me out and makes me
spend days feeling like I am my tasks, not really alive so that I don't have to
contrast it with being dead. And then, too, I lose time. I grieved the
beginning of my change at twelve, and I tried to embrace the bass in my voice
even though I couldn't be in love with it. And then I tried shaving everything
at fifteen and taking advantage of constant walking to stay lean and get into
my favorite clothing, only to be shut out of it. I redid a wardrobe to attract
men and fell into a swirl of club douche and drag queen in my early twenties,
and I felt constantly jealous of my friends who did dress up, but I lacked
confidence and made about ten thousand dollars a year, so makeup was not in my
economic picture.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">By the time I was twenty-five, it was just
enough to work on that grad appointment, to learn a profession, to get into a
situation where I could protect us. In the in-between, I got a vasectomy and
started crying when I found out it couldn't really lower my testosterone,
because if it did that would have given me a way to talk about just giving up
on male hormones and going with an alternative in pill form, but with that out
of the picture and our money situation so tight I had to get a grant to get my
three hundred and fifty dollar surgery done, I gave up. And then, I graduated
in 2008 and fell out of the job market and into steep debt and no savings, and
I gave up again.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Somewhere along the way, I let myself
give up. I let myself think that being autistic and prone to gender perceptions
that were different (shown by a preponderance of the studies on the subject), I
let myself pull away from it, to embrace the idea of just being a different
kind of masculinity… and then my body rebelled against me. I have broken so
many pieces and lost so much mobility. I am over a hundred pounds heavier than
at the point where I was ready to transition before (although honestly, I'd
developed an eating disorder again by then), and only recently have I managed
to get full feeling back in all my limbs. I have spider veins now, and at least
one or two scars caused by wearing clothing so tight it cut off some of my
circulation. I had periods where I couldn't afford to change that.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I know my family would probably say that
if I'd talked about this to them, then they would have helped. At least with
basic things like learning to credit or needing extra help navigating things.
I've seen their help, though, and I would have been lost in it, with my life a
collage of their decisions and the same eroticism with death at night, alone,
when other thoughts have gone to sleep and she is the only one awake and horny.
I have survived by maintaining autonomy, and by seeing that the temptation that
snuck into my room when I had to sleep around my family was destructive to me.
I have moved past that.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">So, I don't feel particularly like I have
a strong attachment to my gender. But I know what hasn't worked for me, and I
know what my body wants, and I simply have to ask: <i>if gender is something that is going to be done to me, why not at least
let myself move in the direction that my natural inclinations lead other people
to classify me in? </i>And that's really the secret of it. The horror I face
daily is not feeling like my body doesn't fit me, it's feeling like the
reactions to that body, and the communications offered to it at every level of
interacting out in society, are disproportionately out of line with what people
should be seeing.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I fear being evaluated by conventional
psychologists because I have always built my identity outside-in, and there are
a lot of people that seem to view that as unhealthy, but I can't be any other
way. My self is built by doing what is comfortable for me, and then labeling it
according to the concepts provided by the society I'm in. Transition doesn't mean
changing me, it means finding out how to do the last few things that will lead
the labeling others do when they look at me to be more accurate.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I'd like to call bullshit on myself at
this, but there are some things that can only be approached, and some aspects
of having multiple gender presentations to be negotiated in different
circumstances that beg you to look at the literal words used in the sentence
and draw inferences, because there are some topics that are still too far
outside my ability to find words for that will be accepted as competent.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I feel uneasy, but the story is telling.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-24107083045167891332015-08-14T06:06:00.000-07:002015-08-14T06:06:00.582-07:00Telling Our Stories: Why I Launched the Disability Visibility Project, by Alice Wong<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
This year, we commemorate the 25<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and recognize the achievements and progress of people with disabilities. While I appreciate the labor and sacrifices of generations of people in the disability rights movement, I can’t help but have a slightly jaded view of the ADA festivities in light of the current status of people with disabilities.</div>
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Despite the passage of the law, disparities in <a href="http://dredf.org/healthcare-stories/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">healthcare</a>, <a href="http://www.ncd.gov/publications/2015/06182015/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">education</a>, and <a href="http://www.demos.org/blog/7/6/15/poverty-disabled-adults-50" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">economic security</a> continue to undermine the ability of people with disabilities to live in the community and to fully participate in every aspect of society.</div>
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I wonder how it is that in 2015, the <a href="http://www.dol.gov/odep/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">labor force participation rate</a> for people with disabilities (31%) is less than half that of non-disabled people (81%); that people with disabilities who use Medicaid-funded personal assistance services are <a href="http://www.rootedinrights.org/a-dream-deferred/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">unable to move from state to state</a> without risking a reduction in their services; that people with disabilities who receive Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI) cannot <a href="http://www.ourcareeraccess.org/index.php/ready-willing-disabled/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">save for the future</a> because they are hindered by outdated asset limitations, which needlessly trap people in poverty; and that people with disabilities can face <a href="http://www.dominickevans.com/2015/06/some-people-with-disabilities-are-prevented-from-getting-married-and-heres-why/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">marriage penalties</a> due to Medicaid and SSI policies regarding income and assets.</div>
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If the mission of the ADA is to prevail, these counterproductive policies must be reformed. </div>
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Because how else can some segments of the disability population fully participate in society?</div>
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Challenging these insidious public policies requires listening to the stories and experiences of people with disabilities—and dismantling the idea that living with a disability is either something to be pitied or an inspirational act.</div>
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To that end, I often share my own story as a <a href="http://letterstothrive.tumblr.com/post/55608302401/hey-angry-girl" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">disabled Asian American woman</a> and a person who uses <a href="https://usodep.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/04/07/consumer-directed-personal-care-as-a-human-right/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">consumer-directed Medicaid personal assistance services</a>, arguing that these services are a basic human right. It was with that goal in mind that I also launched the <a href="http://storycorps.org/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">Disability Visibility Project</a> (DVP), a community partnership with <a href="http://storycorps.org/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">StoryCorps</a>. The project encourages people with disabilities to <a href="http://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/in-the-pressnews/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">record their oral histories</a> and to foster conversation on the lived experience of disability.</div>
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The following are just a few of the many stories we have collected through the project:</div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/?s=Ingrid+Tischer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">Ingrid Tischer</a></strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"> on disability and work</strong></div>
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… if you don’t have a disability, you know, basically you are encouraged to always present yourself in terms of what you can do. That’s your identity, hopefully, if you have a healthy sense of self. The things that you can’t do are simply the things you haven’t learned how to do yet, or that you didn’t really care about in the first place. It feels like the message that a person with a disability gets is your identity is based on what you’re unable to do.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">(For extended audio clip with text click </em><a href="https://soundcloud.com/alice-wong-60/ingrid-tischer-on-disability-and-work" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">here</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">.)</em></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/?s=Mia+Mingus" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">Mia Mingus</a></strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"> on disabled women of color and able-bodied conceptions of work</strong></div>
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So what does it mean then to be a disabled woman of color and to really be like, putting forth questions around work? And what does work mean? What does it mean to be a woman of color who can’t work? Or who is not able to work as much, right? And like, in some ways I feel like it’s totally oppression that like makes us work harder…I think about that a lot around like, yeah, disability and aging.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">(For extended audio clip with text click </em><a href="https://soundcloud.com/alice-wong-60/mia-mingus-on-work-and-disabled-women-of-color" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">here</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">.)</em></div>
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<strong style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2015/06/23/dvp-interview-yomi-wrong-and-alice-wong/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">Yomi Wong</a></strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"> on economic justice and people with disabilities</strong></div>
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…I think the next frontier, and I know that there are people working on this and talking about it, so it’s not like some nuanced idea is really economic justice for people with disabilities. I mean, we are among the poorest of the poor in this country, the most unemployed or underemployed demographic and you know, I think economic justice is really the next fight, and it, it’s the fight now, right? And it’s the fight in the future.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">(For extended audio clip with text click </em><a href="https://soundcloud.com/alice-wong-60/yomi-wrong-on-economic-justice-and-disability" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">here</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">.)</em></div>
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Economic security is indeed the big elephant in the room when it comes to disability policy. Everyone knows it’s there, it stinks, and few have the political will to do anything about it. All the while, people with disabilities are being left behind. Storytelling is one way to change this dynamic. By gathering individual narratives into a larger collective voice, we can provide a sense of urgency, and push for a transformative shift in the relationship between the state and people with disabilities.</div>
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All researchers, policymakers, and activists have a role to play in creating social change and expanding opportunity for people with disabilities. But the lived experiences of people with disabilities must be at the center of that process. I encourage people with disabilities to record and share the stories of their lives, and for people who work on disability policy to learn from our stories as we work to further inclusion and justice over the next 25 years.</div>
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<em style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/SFdirewolf" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">Alice Wong</a></em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> is a Staff Research Associate at the </em><a href="http://clpc.ucsf.edu/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Community Living Policy Center</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> at the University of California, San Francisco. Currently, she is the Founder and Project Coordinator for the </em><a href="http://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Disability Visibility Project</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">. Alice is also an </em><a href="http://apidisabilities.net/?page_id=27" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Advisory Board</em></a> <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">member of </em><a href="http://apidisabilities.net/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Asian Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> (APIDC) and a Presidential appointee to the </em><a href="http://www.ncd.gov/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">National Council on Disability</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">. </em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">For more information about the </em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Disability Visibility Project</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">:</em></div>
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Website: <a href="http://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">http://disabilityvisibilityproject.com</a></div>
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Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/356870067786565/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">https://www.facebook.com/groups/356870067786565/</a></div>
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Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/DisVisibility" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ed1c24; text-decoration: none;">https://twitter.com/DisVisibility</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-33221287323972028462015-08-12T06:02:00.000-07:002015-08-12T06:02:00.204-07:00photographs by Barbara Ruth<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNhA3smBwr8Vmm-RTcn-bvhbktuzdB2YHCnMm_e-LCzc-DktRB6FNTwT-i318qZ3Dswn4d4drWCs0U5AIPp1AWoPo2ihri7-QxuiU8y8gR8VgiciVxVO7dL_ysPj73ANDTZugRyrWifz5J/s1600/calla+lily+dreams.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNhA3smBwr8Vmm-RTcn-bvhbktuzdB2YHCnMm_e-LCzc-DktRB6FNTwT-i318qZ3Dswn4d4drWCs0U5AIPp1AWoPo2ihri7-QxuiU8y8gR8VgiciVxVO7dL_ysPj73ANDTZugRyrWifz5J/s320/calla+lily+dreams.jpg" width="168" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Calla Lily dreams</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">: Manipulated Photograph: Picture of a calla lily with the colors
changed. The majority of the picture is the leaves, which are primarily midnight
blue with some red. There are two flowers, in ivory. One is open, and one is
closed. The open one is just a suggestion of flower; no detail. In the upper
left of the picture is a cream wall with some flat blue beneath it. All of the
colors bleed into each other a bit and there are hints of red in the deep blue
of the leaves and on the wall, and touches of the lighter blue in the ivory
opened flower. The leaves which are articulated against the wall sway to the
left.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5lQa04KM-hcQQ-kPy6ZpljM1h-T6VzGMt1lBG4FXEZ9iYofUcf0rRUno51yjq6ZMT9odMpb4X47sdog5x2L334UZbtv1OvUPUKt3bIYZpixlA3ez1VLMtcq4udzw8q8NmgsfTGdTHrfPf/s1600/calla+lily+and+wooden+fence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5lQa04KM-hcQQ-kPy6ZpljM1h-T6VzGMt1lBG4FXEZ9iYofUcf0rRUno51yjq6ZMT9odMpb4X47sdog5x2L334UZbtv1OvUPUKt3bIYZpixlA3ez1VLMtcq4udzw8q8NmgsfTGdTHrfPf/s320/calla+lily+and+wooden+fence.jpg" width="129" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Calla lily and wooden fence</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">: Manipulated photograph, rectangular, twice as tall as long. The
background is a wooden fence, with burls in the wood and light seeping through
between the boards. The burls are phosphorescent green. The tops and bottoms of
the boards are lighter in color than the deep brown of the middle section. In
the foreground half a dozen calla lily leaves are vibrant violet with lighter
blue-green tips. Two leaves have more blue and green than violet. The one calla
lily flower is mostly closed, in side view, near the center of the plant, and
is cream-colored, with some white.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCNZCO9JXgcfS7Qa23aRdMK6tEoK3IhBkcqzA_ZGLmttgjC6xrKe5kSem5dl5hjpDpbTVxeAn76QdfGGvuA4R4FIt10zIHhYl-I7SyugpVsJ8p5Riab4nDZbCaBux1rKpafNTzXKfF29vF/s1600/daffodils.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCNZCO9JXgcfS7Qa23aRdMK6tEoK3IhBkcqzA_ZGLmttgjC6xrKe5kSem5dl5hjpDpbTVxeAn76QdfGGvuA4R4FIt10zIHhYl-I7SyugpVsJ8p5Riab4nDZbCaBux1rKpafNTzXKfF29vF/s320/daffodils.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Daffodils</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">:
Manipulated photograph: Three soft black daffodils with deep blue centers are
in the middle of the picture surrounded by lilac leaves and blades of grass.
The lilac cross in front of one flower, behind the other two. All of the edges
and especially the lower right, are lighter, the lilac fading into cream, the
general background color.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_qbvugk5BFiW0RIBoHIaYfNk-m2AgaJDQlz4mFyZU4F6ZXnuYwBOyrrtu8QPhq7nl8Da-2bckghyphenhyphenXN-W3ryhMI5lmkuIyIWxTFp8OKKovtDup1J_OeWxHOxqGYbEe1-oltJxewwLXKFfe/s1600/road+trip.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_qbvugk5BFiW0RIBoHIaYfNk-m2AgaJDQlz4mFyZU4F6ZXnuYwBOyrrtu8QPhq7nl8Da-2bckghyphenhyphenXN-W3ryhMI5lmkuIyIWxTFp8OKKovtDup1J_OeWxHOxqGYbEe1-oltJxewwLXKFfe/s320/road+trip.jpg" width="183" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Road Trip</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">:
Manipulated photograph - Image is twice as tall as it is wide. Most prominent
in the picture, slightly to the right and below the center, is an antique
car,perhaps from the thirties, four door, black or dark blue, in cherry
condition. It is the only car clearly visible on the 4 lane road.
It appears to float on the surface as it goes around the surface of the road,
which repeats faintly at least twice above and below the main road. A line of
trees follow around the curve of the road, on the outside, on the right. The
right top of the picture is a white opening, indicating sky, and large
grey-green hills which extend beyond the frame of the picture. In the top left
the entire image has been rendered kaleidoscopic, doubled and shrunk.The effect
is two circles, one on top of the other, perhaps resembling eyes. The place
where they meet is the starting point of the strip of white which stretches
above the hills.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Totem of Cactus and Ston</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">e: Manipulated photograph - Picture is twice as tall as it is
wide. An image of a cactus with stones and leaves on the ground near it. The
image has been mirrored, so all aspects are symmetrical. The cactus (cacti) is
a little above the center and bright green, the most vibrant color in the
image. The rocks and leaves above and below suggest masks, idols, totems; their
colors are various shades of green, from dark moss green to pale lime green,
and also beige and tan.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAoUZA0HfnjkdHPYRvGjayJSansA0qB8JL2rdNE_lT0l5FpNGTQc9XBJl3Pm_YR-x9rVdBH5X0bug9RMjkSBGrcFKPqbSgnvNrbaDt5OJUg1QaKD7lhIzZItF17YkF52ioHz5i3Mg3BsuM/s1600/when+chamomile+gets+witchy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAoUZA0HfnjkdHPYRvGjayJSansA0qB8JL2rdNE_lT0l5FpNGTQc9XBJl3Pm_YR-x9rVdBH5X0bug9RMjkSBGrcFKPqbSgnvNrbaDt5OJUg1QaKD7lhIzZItF17YkF52ioHz5i3Mg3BsuM/s320/when+chamomile+gets+witchy.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">When Chamomile Gets Witch</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">y: Manipulated photograph. The camera looks down on a chamomile
plant, which is greatly enlarged. The ground is rendered steely blue, sparse
curling lines of midnight blue are the grasses and weeds. Eighteen buds of
chamomile raise their cerulean heads, above their lavender bodies. In the lower
right some stems have no buds. In the upper right the surface (the ground
appears thicker; these are twigs, some of which lie under the chamomile buds. A
faint circle can be seen slightly off-center, this area is slightly lighter
than most of the rest of the picture. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<i>Artist Bio: Barbara Ruth is an old lesbian who learns all the time from the Neuroqueer community. She has epilepsy.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-65951895009476240462015-08-10T05:48:00.003-07:002015-08-10T05:49:27.491-07:00My Bipolar Pain(t) by David A. Feingold, Ed.D.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizY1MIS-94CHdNp8oPac9-rhGD96p6n0ccS0MPlgGG4PulOOx5oAK-T0C5epXn44y8IuLWT8HKkDT3G8vXclCSzcXJuyR0mHkEpubtGCMFWi-8NwEqmenC00uCaDCp-FLJi_1ulWKhQPKv/s1600/pain%2528t%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizY1MIS-94CHdNp8oPac9-rhGD96p6n0ccS0MPlgGG4PulOOx5oAK-T0C5epXn44y8IuLWT8HKkDT3G8vXclCSzcXJuyR0mHkEpubtGCMFWi-8NwEqmenC00uCaDCp-FLJi_1ulWKhQPKv/s320/pain%2528t%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<i>(Artist's Statement: I feel I am fortunate to have bipolar disorder. It contributes to my uniqueness and not only forces me to live with imperfections, it redefines them as necessities. I am bipolar and proud to the extent that I refer to myself as a bipolar artist as opposed to a more conventionally acceptable form: "an artist </i>with<i> bipolar disorder." Yes, at times, it pains me to have bipolar disorder, but shirking from its overriding place, influence and effects in my life, pains me even more. As the title of my image suggests, we can't paint over our pain with euphemisms and minimizing its close ties to our personalities, as it only muddles our self-perception and creates confusion and doubt concerning who we really are.)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Visit the artist's Web site: http://www.feinart.me/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-5281803472227895262015-06-10T07:35:00.000-07:002015-06-10T07:35:03.476-07:00"What is NeuroQueer?" by Michael S. Monje Jr.<div class="MsoNormal">
What is <a href="http://neuroqueer.blogspot.com/2013/07/what-i-mean-why-part-1-queer.html">NeuroQueer</a>
and what does it mean to <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2013/07/neuroqueer-prose-poem-essay.html">me</a>?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, let's see. Maybe you should take a seat,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
this could be a long one in the telling,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I'm not sure that you necessarily want the whole thing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Plus, I'm feeling like this is a lot of responsibility,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because I'm one of the original three to speak the term into
being,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but I'm not wanting a situation like at science fiction
conventions<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
where conventionally timid disciples cling on to continuity
questions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2013/09/bodies-and-behaviors.html">This is my
origin</a>, yes, but that still means <a href="https://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/peering-into-infinity-michael-scott-monje-jr/">it's
a construct</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
so your perception of it is its meaning <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/01/performing-naked-in-public-with-ski.html">once
it leaves me</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I have to hope you're good people who <a href="https://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/conditions-of-victory-michael-scott-monje-jr/">remember
my intentions</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but I'm also aware that my ideas will <a href="https://soundcloud.com/michael-scott-monje-jr/belching-crude">become
garbage</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
if I can't learn to loosen my rhetorical grip.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So if you remember one lesson, let it be this:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm a <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/04/reintroducing-art-to-house-of-rhetoric.html">working
demonstration</a> of constructing a <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/10/its-time-to-accept-that-they-hate-you.html">durable
cultural rhetoric</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I didn't originate a single one of my own damn tactics,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
all I did was assemble parallel arguments, making a collage
of activist rhetoric<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that pulled its credibility from the <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/12/on-writing-activist-fiction-amwriting.html">humanity</a>
of its ethic.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm an autistic atheist <a href="https://soundcloud.com/michael-scott-monje-jr/facing-truth-at-the-top-of-the-world">trans</a>
humanist,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
trying my best to create a storm around an <a href="https://soundcloud.com/michael-scott-monje-jr/reading-my-own-screams">empty
eye</a>, a center<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
where we can center anyone who has a need for the calm,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
create a safe space to hold them while they grow,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and then <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/04/reintroducing-art-to-house-of-rhetoric.html">let
them loose</a> with their own rhetoric to storm some more.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then we center another young artist through their <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2013/10/i-am-at-peace-with-killing-my-socially.html">traumatic
experience</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because that's what crafting at this level will always be,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
birth is painful, you try speaking yourself into being.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That's why I will always owe this debt to the cultural
orators before me<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATePlsHsJiI">Nas</a>
to <a href="http://english.duke.edu/uploads/media_items/baldwin-native-son.original.pdf">James
Baldwin</a>, <a href="http://www.shawnashapiro.com/courses/wrpr0102a-s10/Tan_MotherTongue.pdf">Amy
Tan</a> to <a href="http://www.shawnashapiro.com/courses/wrpr0102a-s10/Tan_MotherTongue.pdf">Tennessee
Williams</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/06/thoughts-on-writing-introduction-to.html">my
summer rhetoric</a> before I let my <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/06/chapter-one-feast-of-maccabees.html">web
serial</a> begin,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hinted that there was an explanation of the fugue<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and a canon to give to you, and this is it,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
so let this be the beginning,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and know that this is a document that you should always be
adding on to,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and it started long before you,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and it started long <a href="https://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/autocyborgography-michael-scott-monje-jr/">before
me</a> too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what is NeuroQueer <a href="http://neuroqueer.blogspot.com/2014/12/eating-naked-lunch.html">to me</a>?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, it was almost the title of the <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/318160/1/nothing-is-right">Clay
Dillon</a> series,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
if that gives you an idea of his place in this and my
thoughts (<a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2013/10/coming-of-age-in-shadow-of-rain-man.html">in
the beginning</a>).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was an expression of the fact that my gender was in
question,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I was unsure of the implications for this and <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
for the rediscovery of my tactile fetishes<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
on my perception of my own sexual orientation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When your gender is in flux and you're attracted to both
sexes,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
there is actually the question of whether you're in
different states<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and still feeling like a heterosexual, or if it's more than
that<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and you spend much more time than you might like thinking on
it,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and it becomes just another thing that interferes with the
progress of your being.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I decided to let those insecurities breathe in the brain
of a character,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I actually started with him <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/12/defiant-is-coming-i-got-book-contract.html">older</a>
and only wrote <i>Nothing is Right</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
when I had to find a backstory,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because I was <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2013/10/atpeace3.html">drowning</a> in my own
immersive memories,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and putting his life in order allowed me to order my being<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and center the voice that sounded like a version of me that
I wouldn't hate to be,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and if that meant it, then <a href="https://barkingsycamores.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/nonouns-michael-scott-monje-jr/">transitioning</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So in short, at first neuroqueer was my perception of my
gender,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a new type of neurodivergence, interacting with both my
behavior<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and my autistic characteristics, and it was what that meant<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
for my communication style and choice of partners<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
during sexual interactions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was always all three, which is why when I wrote <i><a href="http://autonomous-press.myshopify.com/">Defiant</a></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I used chapters that illustrated all the intersections,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and then how they were alone,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and then when other segments came unexpectedly into play,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
like how Clay gets confused by sadistic cues in his
therapist<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and becomes compliant because his sexual preferences have
conditioned him to it<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and how he has to build a professional power exchange
relationship<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
with his wife as his partner in control of it<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
before he can structure a career path that makes sense to
him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And <i>Nothing is Right </i>is all of those characteristics
as expressed in a little kid,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and if you read clearly you can see my sources all cited:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like it was Eli Clare who said his gender was screaming,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
so I took that same feeling, as I understood it being when
it was me,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I stuffed it into the brain of this fictional seven year
old<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and showed you the pain exactly as I had felt it unfold.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In reality, those aren't memories,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but that's because I'm acknowledging the reality<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of the <i>Persistence of Memory</i> being <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/04/uses-of-knife.html">malleable actually</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and so I'm broad brushstroking and hoping you catch on to
what expressionism is,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and then I'm moving it into the viewpoint of the little kid<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and trying to say his cognition is<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a perfect demonstration of what it's like to live in <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/10/chapter-fourteen-adapted-curve-corrals.html">that
environment</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
when you're more of an impressionistic thinker,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and none of the portraits in your perception are
recognizable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But never forget, the text is the product <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of my omniscient third person.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Clay Dillon reads a lot, but he actually says little,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
so if you're about to make the objection that the vocabulary
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
was out of wack to the perceptions of little kids,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm just going to accuse you of not understanding a bit <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
about <a href="http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/what-is-autism/">what autism is</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The words are descriptions of things he understands through
feeling,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
visualizing, reading silently, dancing through, or dreaming.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He makes connections in his head, but the assumption that
they're verbal<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
or that his cognition is the thing you're reading is really
demeaning<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and makes me wonder if you can be a competent critic. But if
you get it?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then we're in business, and you need to know this:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm only writing one dissertation. It's represented in
several media<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and put in chronological progression,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but the poetry and theory are the same work,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and the fiction and drama are rhetoric in the showing mode,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
case studies in accessible language for how these theories
unfold.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That means: You guessed it. I have already penned three
treatises:<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Nothing is Right </i>and <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/450993/1/mirror-project/Medium,Times,-,-,Single"><i>Mirror
Project</i></a> are already available and widely marketed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
along with some minor discourse on <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/472308/1/a-waking-narrative/Medium,Times">coming
out</a> to myself,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and that's without citing all the blog posts that I did<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
or the half dozen articles I sydicated to <a href="http://www.thinkinclusive.us/3-ways-talking-to-autistic-adults-can-make-you-a-better-teacher/#sthash.4nGowcgO.B4fkUZQJ.dpuf">other
outlets</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I put in the work and had copyrights and ISBNs<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
before advertising the theories I had tucked within<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to make sure I put you in the position of having to cite
fiction,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/08/chapter-nine-what-will-neighbors-think.html">the
drama</a> is <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/08/chapter-ten-people-are-not-legos.html">the
criticism</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and I did everything on my end to put in the work<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to make sure rhetoriticians in disability studies had to
teach literary interp.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/michael-scott-monje-jr/face-my-morning-face">This</a>
is what Neuroqueer is to me<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a way to speak my way of thinking about literature into
being<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because my identity is my cultural vocabulary,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and my new narrative happens on levels that illustrate <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/09/chapter-eleven-bill-watterson-knows.html">moral
stories</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
decorated with a bibliography in all the arts of rhetorics
that influenced me;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm constructing sampled mashups like internet directories,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
hypertext rhetoric, not a line stolen but rather an easter
egg citation,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
begging the student to understand how to write like this<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
by throwing on some Nas and <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/05/nevermindfulness.html">reading</a> like
they might get it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I've been dead awhile and you find me, then locating my
references<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
will let you know what I did because it will locate my
influences<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and that will let you infer my most direct descendents;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm a creative scholar who's studied hip hop philosophy,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
paleoanthropological and historical methodologies,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and sought to expand the diversity of their stories<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
so that when I construct meaning, it's with an awareness of
my own identity<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that locates me within a vast network of free beings,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
all thinking, contributing to our group understanding with
our interactions,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
coming to understand our moral obligations through negotiation<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and not pontification based on assumptions of others'
experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
See what I did?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm betting right now there are people who want me to get to
speaking about who I read,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but I'm more interested in discussing what <i>Mirror Project
</i>did.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That was my out of body exploration piece, <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but in a way it was closest to being my autobiography.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don't think I need to explain the <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/450993/94/mirror-project">abuse
dynamics</a> in the writing,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but know that my perception of gender was growing as I
explored Lynn's body,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and so in a way it was my fingers talking back to me,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
giving a scenario to the verbal thinker in my face,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
having a dialog between my body and my brain,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and negotiating what each of them will need<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
if we're going to make the jump and I'm going to get free.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So that one took the longest but you need to include it in
your read<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because without it you can't understand the rest of my
theory.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And my entire career it will be like this, from discourse
poems on my blog to publications<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to novels, conferences, and paid speaking engagements.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I've been thinking for over six years in scholarly silence
and I'm only giving this talk once,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and it's the only thing I'm doing, so it will, naturally, be
evolving.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'll be going from criticizing Steinbeck and locating Lenny
as someone lovable<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
despite the condescension with which he's written and his
inhumane treatment,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to bringing flowers for Algernon and cricizing Charlie's
regression symptoms;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'll be on Alice Walker too, and reading <i>The Color Purple
</i>to compare to Sapphire's <i>Push </i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
for a generational point of view. I'll bring Borges
alongside Nas and Boy George, <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
doing gender studies on Sam Shepard's drama and making new
theories <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
about disability as presented in cinematic Dada,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but then I'll be situating these observations in character
perceptions<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
or embedding quotes in rhymes on spoken word albums,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
making hidden attacks in the lyrics on purpose in places <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to comment on appropriation, and trusting my audience,
presuming competence,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and creating texts that embed moral rhetoric as <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/06/chapter-four-rules-of-game-imaginary.html">literary
allusion</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
or through juxtaposition of different figures, creating a
tapestry<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
with more representation in it than I got to see as a kid,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
trying to bring visions of interacting histories in the
background of developmental narratives<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that don't exist to reinforce normative structures, but to
deconstruct heterosexist cis whiteness,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
showing how it is that teenaged, working-class,
undereducated teen parents could miss<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the queer autistic experience of one of their kids.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They are the parents who would view a child's quietness as a
blessing <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
after a day of unrelenting expectations<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and whose reliance on their working class, white social
networks <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
reinforced bad values that led to them paying more than
their dues,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
guilting them out of asking for help when it was the right
thing to do,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
using peer pressure and racism, homophobic hatred, gender
policing,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and a healthy dose of talk radio with inappropriately
imbalanced news<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to keep them in suspension until their will to think
vanishes<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and they wind up with only short-term thinking strategies,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
which makes them impulsive and selfish,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
which is what <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/07/chapter-five-sass-and-sensibility.html">they
teach</a> to their kids,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and those kids grow up not knowing what a coping mechanism
is<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
or having a real sense of who they should be, beyond the
tough guy exterior<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and the refusal to treat other people decently.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fact that <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/04/behavior-modification.html">this</a>
identity exists is my criticism of the entire culture that could produce him,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and since he's a painting of my emotions during my
upbringing,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
his existence on the page should be doubly troubling,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and should inspire us to move together in unison,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
dismantling the cognitive dissonance, placing expectations
of conformity<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
outside of our shared experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is why we need to make sure people know my ideas came
from <i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Invisible Man</i>, and not the slim one that H.G.
Wells did,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but the one I read over years and in excerpts, always too
busy to give it sustained attention.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still, I'm glad I got what I did of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm also looking into <i>The Joy Luck Club</i>, the criticism
of Wayne C. Booth,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and some of the early essays of Jim Sinclair too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When it comes to my understanding of feminist theory,
though,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I get worried. Not that I think I lack understanding,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but because some ideas have been trickled up into
inappropriate appropriations,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and others have become so common that I can't even tell
their beginnings,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
so what the hell am I supposed to do? If I'm looking into
media theories,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
do I talk to the blogger or talk about books?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do I cite <a href="http://intersecteddisability.blogspot.com/">Kerima Cevik</a> or do I cite
bell hooks?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It matters how we do this, and who we trust in it and with
it,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because we don't want to leave anyone out of the
conversation<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but we need to make sure we don't get appropriated.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is why I won't even respond to a rhetor who doesn't
read my work in all of its places,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because you can't know enough about it to grasp the basics,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and you're sure to miss the extended arguments<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
in hypertextual rhetorics of arranged and selected setting
mosaics,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Luddite links like Finneganswakeanism filtered through the
ears<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
of a kid who couldn't stop listening to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y1Emb7Jyks">Rakim</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
links you can't click, but you might perceive if you have
the training.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They are programming connections in imaginations,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
creating alternative intranets in the webs of our <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/06/standard-model-introduction-to.html">thought
complexes</a>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
restructuring the architecture of solitude to reflect the
world around you,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a seamless interior blended with a digital environment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fingers talking, <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/06/sense-informationlook-for-our.html">unspoken
communication</a>, are the tumblrs falling into place yet?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even if you can't respond in all of my modes,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
you'd better taking responsibility for knowing that's how my
argument will go.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You gotta start with <i>Nothing is Right </i>as the first
one that I did,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
then go to <i>Defiant </i>and compare him to what he was as
a kid.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Read <i>Mirror Project </i>next, and then jump contexts,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
because I immediately went into the <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/06/poetry-as-scaffoldingnarrative-literacy.html">poetic
mode</a> when I emerged from my <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/07/coming-up-from-under-water-poem.html">post-traumatic</a>
hole.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Start with <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2013/12/environments-like-pollock-taken.html">environments
like Pollocks</a>, and read every painting,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
every discourse and dedication,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/2014/06/standard-model-introduction-to.html">Thoughts
on Writing</a>, Barking Sycamores publications, and <i>A Waking Narrative</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then return to Clay Dillon as a kid,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and while you're busy reading <i>Imaginary Friends</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'll pen a piece on gender and speech for a <a href="http://typedwordsloudvoices.blogspot.com/">text communication collection</a>,
then write this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And all of this is what I think NeuroQueer Theory is.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And it will be ongoing for as long as Clay Dillon is.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every story is discourse, and it discusses the progression
of an identity<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
as a combined narrative about multi-modal media literacy,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
with books and magazines, TV and music, the birth of the
internet,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
pamphlets, library book sales, and dumpster dived paperbacks<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
all influenced by a setting and a lack of direction,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a lack of social context for his texts<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and a solipsistic interpretation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And somehow, there still will emerge a beautiful human<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
after they stop sorting through all of the hatred and find a
way to let go.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You'd better believe that when Clay Dillon misunderstands
things,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
it's appropriate, to illustrate the level of his textual
comprehension<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
in context, and next to his actual navigation of the
construction of a sentence's grammar.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm not being lazy or taking pot shots,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm showing a point of view with all of its pitfalls and
intellectual inconsistencies,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
showing maturity multidimensionally to illustrate early
reading in a realistic setting.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How long will that take? Who knows?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm not done speaking,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but it's time I concede<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
that the only way this will have any meaning<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
is spaced out between similar musings from a variety of
other beings.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-45932644590561654792015-05-31T07:11:00.001-07:002015-05-31T07:11:53.281-07:00Corbett OToole's Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History is #mustread<p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: BerlingAntiqua;"><i>[Editorial note: This is the preface I was moved to write about the world-changing excellence that is Corbett OToole's new book, <b>Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History.</b> It is an indescribable honor to have had a small part in bringing this much-needed book to you. Love, Ib]</i></span></p><p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: BerlingAntiqua;">ONE ELDER IS A WHOLE LIBRARY</span></p><p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: BerlingAntiqua;">When I was in grade school in Portland, Oregon, I was lucky enough to be included in outreach activities by a coalition of local Native American tribes who made a practice of inviting children on field trips to traditional Potlatch events, to share between cultures. Like many cities in the US, Portland was constructed on ground—some of it holy —taken from a variety of tribes. While many people went to reservations in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, a relatively large number remained in the growing urban center, and helped give it the character for which it is still now known.</span></p><p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: BerlingAntiqua;">A Chinook woman told me I was bound to like fry bread, despite my idea that very few things were actually edible, and unlike myself, I rightly believed her. Then, having discerned my love of reading, she told me a much more important thing.</span></p><p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: BerlingAntiqua;">“Respect your elders,” she said, “And hear what they have to say. One elder is a whole library.”</span></p><p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: BerlingAntiqua;">This has stayed with me always, and it is why I became interested in epistemology, which has to do with how people know things, and what it means for them to know them, and what kinds of knowing there can be.</span></p><p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: BerlingAntiqua;">People can know by thinking, and also by doing, for example. The knowledge held by an elder is doubly powerful: elders have done the things, and also thought about them. More is written about this elsewhere, but what must be said here is that Corbett OToole was there in key moments of disability culture even before people had written that there is such a thing as disability culture and named it. She is also friends with other people who write about disability culture and history, and so knows in a lot of detail what she thinks about the things she has done and seen in many different ways.</span></p><p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><span style="font-family: BerlingAntiqua; font-size: 11pt;">This book spans decades, major events and topics, and comes from a </span><span style="font-family: BerlingAntiqua; font-size: 11pt;">point of view called “autoethnographic,” which is another word for writing about one’s own life in order to show larger culture to the reader. It is a memoir with educational purpose. It is from the horse’s mouth, as they say: a play-by-play written by someone inside the action, telling us what happened then and there.</span></p><div class="page" title="Page 12" style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392);"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: BerlingAntiqua;">Fading Scars is absolutely essential reading in courses of disability studies and provides an excellent voice to complement histories written by historians, who have access to other kinds of knowledge about our collective past. Karen Nakamura is right to say that this is not only to be read by students of disability culture and history, but also by everyone. As Kim Nielsen says in A Disability History of the United States, disability history is the story of our nation. And the future of disability history (and queer history) is the kind of intersectionality and coalition we learn about in these exciting pages. </span></p></div></div></div>Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-75260824071555290352015-05-04T12:52:00.000-07:002015-05-04T12:54:42.496-07:00Neuroqueer: An Introduction, by Nick Walker<b>This piece was originally published on the author’s blog, <a href="http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/" target="_blank">Neurocosmopolitanism</a>.</b><br />
<br />
The term <em>neuroqueer</em> was coined independently and more or less simultaneously by <a href="http://tinygracenotes.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Grace</a>, <a href="http://www.mmonjejr.com/" target="_blank">Michael Scott Monje Jr.</a>, and <a href="http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/about-me/" target="_blank">myself</a>. Having coined it, all three of us managed to spend a few years not getting around to using it in any published work, even though the set of concepts and practices represented by the term came to heavily inform our thinking. I almost used <em>Neuroqueer</em> as the title for my blog, but decided to go with the title <em><a href="http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/" target="_blank">Neurocosmopolitanism</a></em> instead. Michael almost used <em>Neuroqueer</em> as the title for a novel, but decided to go with the title <em>Defiant</em> instead.<br />
<br />
It wasn’t until Michael mentioned this last fact, in an online conversation in which he and Ibby and I were all involved, that we discovered that all three of us had been playing around with the same term. Happily, though we were all approaching it from different angles, our various interpretations of neuroqueer (or neuroqueerness, or neuroqueering) were in no way incompatible. In the same conversation, we learned that another friend and colleague of ours, <a href="http://kuiama.net/" target="_blank">Melanie Yergeau</a>, while she hadn’t yet stumbled upon the word <em>neuroqueer,</em> had been thinking along quite similar and compatible lines in playing with the concept of neurological queerness; Melanie’s contributions have been extensive enough that even if she didn’t come up with the actual word, I consider her - along with Ibby, Michael, and myself - to be one of originators of the concept of neuroqueer (or neuroqueerness, or neuroqueering).<br />
<br />
All four of us - Ibby, Michael, Melanie, and I - emerged from that conversation freshly inspired to begin introducing the term, and the set of concepts and practices it describes, into our public work and into our communities and the broader culture. Since then, we've been following through on that intention in various exciting ways. Ibby, Michael, and I, along with <a href="http://itsbridgetsword.com/" target="_blank">Bridget Allen</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbett_O'Toole" target="_blank">Corbett O’Toole</a>, founded the independent publishing house <a href="http://autpress.com/" target="_blank">Autonomous Press</a>, to publish books in which neuroqueerness of one sort or another tends to play a prominent role (starting in 2016, Autonomous Press will also have an imprint called NeuroQueer Books). Ibby founded the <a href="http://neuroqueer.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">NeuroQueer blog</a>, with Michael and <a href="http://autisticacademic.com/" target="_blank">Dani Alexis Ryskamp</a> and I later joining as co-editors. Melanie is working on a book that I can’t tell you about yet, but it’s going to be extraordinary and most definitely relevant. We’ve all started talking about neuroqueerness and neuroqueering in our academic conference presentations and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXXFeKwVQeQ" target="_blank">public speaking engagements</a>. Ibby and I are now co-editing the <em>NeuroQueer Handbook,</em> which will be published by Autonomous Press in 2016.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the term is catching on in various circles and communities, taking on a life of its own, as terms and concepts tend to do when the time is right for them. It’s showing up in academic papers and conference presentations, creative projects, Facebook communities, blogs and Tumblr accounts and all manner of social media platforms. It’s been adopted by a whole lot of people I don’t know - and when a new term/concept spreads beyond the social circles of its originators, that’s generally a sign that it’s “got legs,” as they say. In other words, it’s a term that you’re likely to be hearing a lot more of in the years to come.<br />
<br />
(The day before I wrote this piece, I was at <a href="http://ciis.edu/" target="_blank">California Institute of Integral Studies</a> for the first meeting of a course I teach called <em>Critical Perspectives on Autism and Neurodiversity.</em> I was introducing my students to basic <a href="http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/neurodiversity-some-basic-terms-definitions/" target="_blank">neurodiversity-related terminology</a> like <em>neurotypical</em> and <em>neurodivergent,</em> when a young undergraduate excitedly asked me, “Have you heard of the term <em>neuroqueer?</em>”)<br />
<br />
I’ve already seen a lot of interpretations of neuroqueer and attempts at definition from folks who’ve adopted the term. Some of those interpretations miss the point, sometimes in ways that are truly facepalm-worthy. Other interpretations are more on-point but overly narrow, such that Ibby, Michael, Melanie, and I look at them and say, “Yeah, that’s <em>part</em> of what we were getting at... but only <em>part</em> of it…”<br />
<br />
So what <em>were</em> we getting at? What <em>is</em> neuroqueer (or neuroqueerness, or neuroqueering)?<br />
<br />
I should first of all acknowledge that any effort to establish an “authoritative” definition of neuroqueer is in some sense inherently doomed and ridiculous, simply because the sort of people who identify as neuroqueer and engage in neuroqueering tend to be the sort of people who delight in subverting definitions, concepts, and anything “authoritative.”<br />
<br />
That said, the definition that follows is as close to an “authoritative” definition of neuroqueer (and neuroqueerness, and neuroqueering) as is ever likely to exist. I wrote it with the input and approval of the other three originators of the concept. So it’s the one definition out there that all four of the originators of neuroqueer have agreed is not only accurate, but also inclusive of <em>all</em> of the various practices and ways-of-being that any of the four of us ever intended <em>neuroqueer</em> to encompass.<br />
<br />
<em>Neuroqueer</em> is both a verb and an adjective. As a verb, it refers to a broad range of interrelated practices. As an adjective it describes things that are associated with those practices or that result from those practices: neuroqueer theory, neuroqueer perspectives, neuroqueer narratives, neuroqueer literature, neuroqueer art, neuroqueer culture, neuroqueer community. And as an adjective, <em>neuroqueer</em> can also serve as a label of social identity, just like such labels as <em>queer, gay, lesbian, straight, black, white, hapa, Deaf,</em> or <em>Autistic</em> (to name just a small sampling).<br />
<br />
A neuroqueer individual is an individual whose identity has in some way been shaped by their engagement in practices of neuroqueering. Or, to put it more concisely (but perhaps more confusingly): you’re neuroqueer if you neuroqueer.<br />
<br />
So what does it mean to neuroqueer, as a verb? What are the various practices that fall within the definition of <em>neuroqueering?</em>
<br />
<ol>
<li>
<div class="none">
Being neurodivergent and approaching one’s neurodivergence as a form of queerness (e.g., by understanding and approaching neurodivergence in ways that are inspired by, or similar to, the ways in which queerness is understood and approached in Queer Theory, Gender Studies, and/or queer activism).<br />
<br /></div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="none">
Being both neurodivergent and queer, with some degree of conscious awareness and/or active exploration around how these two aspects of one’s identity intersect and interact.<br />
<br /></div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="none">
Being neurodivergent and actively choosing to embody and express one’s neurodivergence (or refusing to suppress one’s embodiment and expression of neurodivergence) in ways that “queer” one’s performance of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, occupation, and/or other aspects of one’s identity.<br />
<br /></div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="none">
Engaging in the “queering” of one’s own neurocognitive processes (and one’s outward embodiment and expression of those processes) by intentionally altering them in ways that create significant and lasting increase in one’s divergence from dominant neurological, cognitive, and behavioral norms.<br />
<br /></div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="none">
Engaging in practices intended to “undo” one’s cultural conditioning toward conformity and compliance with dominant norms, with the aim of reclaiming one’s capacity to give more full expression to one’s neurodivergence and/or one’s uniquely weird personal potentials and inclinations.<br />
<br /></div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="none">
Identifying as neuroqueer due to one’s engagement in any of the above practices.<br />
<br /></div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="none">
Being neurodivergent and producing literature and/or other cultural artifacts that foreground neurodivergent experiences and perspectives.<br />
<br /></div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="none">
Being neurodivergent and producing critical responses to literature and/or other cultural artifacts, focusing on intentional or unintentional characterizations of neurodivergence and how those characterizations illuminate and/or are illuminated by the lived experiences of actual neurodivergent people.<br />
<br /></div>
</li>
<li>
<div class="none">
Working to transform social and cultural environments in order to create spaces and communities – and ultimately a society – in which engagement in any or all of the above practices is permitted, accepted, supported, and encouraged.</div>
</li>
</ol>
<br />
So there you have it, from the people who brought you the term. This definition is, again, not an authoritative “last word” on the subject, because that would be a silly thing to attempt. Rather, I hope this will be taken as a “first word” - a broad “working definition” from which further theory, practice, and play will proceed.<br />
<br />
Happy neuroqueering!
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-83090204492940142232015-04-30T14:35:00.000-07:002015-04-30T14:35:02.071-07:00Four Pieces, by Barbara Ruth
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">Tallying</span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">here it is, my desiderata:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">spiritual progress; the skill of surreptitiously sliding </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">along; sustained resistance in the face of oppression;</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">an accurate map to scale; indulgence for my shortcomings; sudden
sunshine after long rain; no scrape I can’t get out of.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">I am an ordinary, unheroic tourist.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">I am native to this place, I shift shape, ceremoniously make magic</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">out of words. I travel far.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">my maladies, my victories, both acute and chronic.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">I climb mountains and I can’t get out of bed.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">Now/Instead</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">Now</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">when I’m anxious for no reason</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">I clean the one corner of one room of the house</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">instead of drugging</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">myself to death.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">When I’m so depressed I can’t stand it</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">I pull the blankets over my head</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">instead of drugging</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">myself to death.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">When I haven’t slept for four days and four nights</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">I write as the tears sting my burning eyes</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">instead of drugging </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">myself to death.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">When I can’t think, can’t rest, can’t write, can’t read</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">I wait instead </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">of drugging</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">myself </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">to death.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: black;">Loma
Prieta Epilepticus</span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> I was by myself that day. I’d been hanging out
on my hospital bed, with the back raised, reading maybe, or doing paperwork.<i>
I know I was using the bed because it was days before the electricity came on
again and I could return it to the flat position. I remember afterwards,
yearning to stretch out, in my bed, and pull up the covers. Just that.</i> I
got up to go to the the kitchen. Then the lurch, the roll of the room. But that
was one of my symptoms. I’d said it to my neurologist: <i>my own
personal earthquakes.</i></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> I think it was warm.<i> Afterwards, didn’t we
say</i> <i>earthquake weather? But didn’t we often say that, here in
California?</i></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> After the quaking stopped, my neighbors checked
on me. Shame, embarrassment, uncertainty as to exactly what DID happen; I
didn’t tell them much. It hurt my brain to look for words. Even if I tried to
explain - what could they do about it? I had a few scratches; someone got a
first aid kit when I couldn’t remember where my band-aids were. No scars; the
bruises didn’t show till the next day. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">That evening the gas lines
were turned off and the power was out so all my neighbors were cooking on their
barbecues outdoors, and that just made matters worse as far as I was concerned,
the air reeking of lighter fluid and charcoal and meat.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> Darlene came that night. She wasn’t even my
attendant any more, but she was my friend and the phones were down and she was
worried about me. She got me some food, cleaned up the broken glass on the
kitchen, and settled me on the couch for sleeping.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> But the earthquake, the big one, not just my
personal quaking, but this: the black and white of the linoleum smearing into
each other, the black engulfing the white, and the black grew larger and
larger, coming for me and the white shimmered and squeaked.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> I remember backing up from it. I didn’t want
that black maw to reach me. But it did, as the lurching jolted me, and the
black, the absence of color, the black, the absence of balance, the black and a
color past black I do not know the name for swallowed my brain and the
place past black was all there was. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">
Seizure. It will seizure. Seize your partner throw them all around. Seize her.
We’re all having a seizure. The world is a seizure and all of us are seized.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">
</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Full Moon In Scorpio</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> Adaptive yoga class, and I can’t make sense of
the teacher’s words. I can hear her; we share the same California accent; she
calls out the poses in English, not Sanskrit. But words and meaning keep
drifting apart. When I do understand, I can’t figure out how to move my body
into those poses I’ve done a hundred times. I’ve lost the file marked
“Following Directions.” Am I having a stroke?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> Yesterday, on my way to an emergency dentist
appointment, my attendant’s car broke down. It was over 100 degrees by then. We
had to open the windows, even though we were right beside the cacophony of leaf
blowers. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;">I managed to postpone my
collapse until safely home. Once in bed, I fell into a deep sweaty sleep. I
awoke paralyzed, couldn’t turn my head, let alone find the grab bar to pull
myself up out of bed. How long did that last? Five minutes? An hour? Maybe I had
a seizure. Or maybe I dreamed it.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> Often my mind goes off on a tangent. Most times
I like that.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> Yoga class is over. I’m home, still unsure what
to do.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> I could call 911. I’d have to tell the
dispatcher, “Silent approach, no flashing lights, those things can trigger my
seizures.” Sometimes that works. But they’ll pound on my door, stomp into my
house, swirling my brain and polluting my home with the fumes of dryer sheets
and shampoos, sunblock and gum: the smells of normal people. They’ll talk too
loud, too fast. “When was the last time you took your medication? What else
have you taken? What are you on right now?” Sometimes they complain that the
house numbers on my street are out of order. “You should move,” they’ve told
me, three different times, at different addresses in three different towns,
when all I wanted was to quietly talk to an paramedic who didn’t reek of fabric
softener, get a little help deciding if I needed to brave the ER. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> I’ve done hard time in the nearest hospital,
the one they’ll take me to. The ER is always packed, overflowing with human
misery, patients and staff stinking far worse than the First Responders. The
moon is full, in the sign of Scorpio, they’re bound to have even more business
than usual. The cleaning carts relentlessly employed, never quite
defeating the stench of death. And when they release me - how will I get myself
home?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black;"> I
could call 911. But I can’t figure out how to answer the first question the
dispatcher always asks: “What is the nature of your emergency?”</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></span></div>
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Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-58675627594181965502015-04-23T13:13:00.003-07:002015-04-23T13:13:48.353-07:00Anarchist Neuroqueeritude, by Susan Song<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: right; text-indent: 0.5in;">
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">[Editor's
Note: This is the transcript of a talk given at the Disability Studies in
Education 15th Annual Conference, April 14th, 2015, at National Louis
University in Chicago, Illinois.]</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My talk
seeks to discuss queer and anarchist theory as they intersect and lend to </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">neurodiversity theory. I will start
with a short discussion about what I mean </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">when I talk about queer anarchism and
continue into a way of looking at neuroqueer through that </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">lens. I argue for an anarcha-feminist
theoretical impulse in creating relationships based on love </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">and mutual aid. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Queer
anarchism and disability have similar understandings in the ways they trouble
the </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">boundaries and borders of identity.
Classical anarchism is mostly focused on looking at power relations between
people, the economy and the state. Feminist theory adds to this by encompassing
the idea that gender is not natural, stable or “innate” and queer theory opens
this up further. Queer theory opens up a space to critique how we relate to
each other socially in a distinctly different way than typical anarchist
practice. Queer theory understands people in relation to the normal and the
deviant and troubles those borders surrounding identity instead of simply
focusing on issues of economy and capitalism. Queer theory seeks to disrupt the
“normal” with the same impulse that anarchists do with relations of hierarchy,
exploitation, and oppression. We can use queer theory to conceptualize new
relationship forms and social relations that resist patriarchy and other
oppressions by creating a distinctly “queer-anarchist” form of social relation.
I see this intersect with disability theory in how both perspectives
de-stabilize what it seen as biologically normal or natural in the physical
body and identity. Identity exists on a continuum of experiences and not in
discrete binaristic terms. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I ground
this queer-anarchist understanding in some of my favorite anarchist theorists: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman and
Gustav Landeur. The classical anarchist Peter Kropotkin </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">in his book <u>Mutual Aid: A Factor of
Evolution</u> critiques social Darwinism’s conclusions that the </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“fittest” in nature are those that
compete and dominate over others. Kropotkin writes, “[If] we resort to an
indirect test, and ask Nature: “Who are the fittest: those who are continually
at war with each other, or those who support one another?” we at once see that
those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1319483157693384274#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a>.
From this, we can see the roots of </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">relationships built on the strength of
community interdependence which contrasts with a </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">capitalist logic of individualist
production. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I find
the work of Gustav Landauer and Emma Goldman also compelling in theorizing </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the kinds of relationships I believe we
should create. Landauer in <u>Revolution and Other Writings</u> writes that
“The state is a social relationship; a certain way of people relating to one
another. It can be destroyed by creating new social relationships; i.e., by
people relating to one another differently.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1319483157693384274#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a>
And Emma Goldman in <u>Anarchism and Other Essays</u> writes about free love.
She discusses the power of love, writing “Man has subdued bodies, but all the
power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations,
but all his armies could not conquer love.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1319483157693384274#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a>
From these writings, I find that social relationships based on radical love and
a shared sense of community create a model for the kind of world I wish to
create. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I have
recently asked myself the question what is it that we are supposed to be able
to do </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">under capitalism and for what reason?
It is not simply that we are to produce labor or to consume </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">goods. We participate in this system
that has been intentionally structured to create power differentials that
reinforce social difference designed to divide us. I see the way this system works
too in how I have internalized ableism about how I link work and production
with my value as a person and also see this ideology in the professional work
that I do working in mental </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">health social services. I feel as if I
cannot take sick days for my mental health and feel pressure </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">to be a “good” worker. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So what
are we to do with this to combat this practically? I find the work of Liat Ben-</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moshe in her essay “Queer-Cripping
Anarchism” particularly refreshing. She writes that </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“through a queer-crip lens we should
perhaps focus more on DIT—do it together. The focus on </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">independence, we would argue, is an
adoption of capitalist values. […] This ideology, however, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">is a lie as all of us are
interdependent and rely on each other not only for our food, shelter, and clothing,
but also for our emotional, physical, and intellectual needs.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1319483157693384274#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a>
This is a critique on a </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">prevalent individualist punk ethos of
DIY or do-it-yourself and articulates what I feel we must </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">have in the relationships we build with
each other. To me, being in community means that we </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">must create a space where we are
accepted, supported and loved and we cannot participate in a </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">meaningful world unless we do it
together. Unless we do it together, we cannot do it ourselves. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1319483157693384274#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="background: #F2F2F2; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kropotkin, Petr.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution</i>.
London: William Heinemann, 1902. Print.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1319483157693384274#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Landauer, Gustav</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> and
Gabriel Kuhn.</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oakland, CA: PM
Press. 2010. Print. </span></div>
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<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1319483157693384274#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> Go</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ldman, Emma. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anarchism and Other Writings.</i> New York:
Mother Earth Association. 1917. Print.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1319483157693384274#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ben-Moshe, Liat, Anthony Nocella II and A.J. Withers.
"Queer-Cripping Anarchism: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Intersections and Reflections on Anarchism, Queerness and
Dis-ability". <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Queering </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anarchism:
Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.
Oakland, CA. AK Press: 2012. Print. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-43061539526053488452015-03-09T12:05:00.004-07:002015-03-09T12:05:40.483-07:00Schizo-Queer, By Praecoxious Queer
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Schizo-Queer</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By Praecoxious Queer</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Author is a schizoaffective,
queer, genderqueer, Latin@ witch living in Tacoma, Washington pursuing
undergraduate degrees in Gender and Queer Studies and Political Theory. Aspirations
include graduate school and an eventual visit to family in Argentina. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Abstract: This piece
is an expository, associative description of a tendency within neuroqueer
thought to undermine the expectations and norms governing behavior for particular
neurotypes. Aiming to avoid harsh definitional maneuvers, I hope to offer a
wager to neuroqueer whereby it may embrace/enjoy what I theorize as
schizoqueerness to make salient the political and communitarian value of
fragmentation, both as a method for escaping systems of constraint and control
but </i>also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as a method for bringing
communities of resistance together in a strengthened commitment to
intersectionality. Positing fragmentation as foundational to some modes of
consciousness or perception rather than as a contingent affliction befalling
some and not others and avoiding the temptation to position whole-ness or
holity as beneficial or “natural”, I hope that this piece may deepen the redemptive
possibilities of neuroqueer by offering schizoqueerness as a tool within
conceptual repertoires of a neuroqueer vocabulary. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Queer thinkers have brought into sharper focus than ever
before the problematic nature of what we nevertheless continue to take for
granted: the very notion and value of community itself. And it is in doing that
that queers should command the attention of straights—that is, not because we
have anything to tell them about the value of relationships or community … but
rather because of our exemplary confusion” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--Leo Bersani, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Is the
Rectum a Grave? And Other Essays</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember when I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">realized
</i>I was not straight. I also remember when, though I wouldn’t think of it
this way at the time, and still don’t all the time, I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">realized </i>that I “hear voices.” I know when I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">decided </i>I was queer: but I never <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">decided </i>I was schizoaffective. I was told that I am. I now <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">decide </i>that I am schizoqueer, deploying
a tendency within <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">neuroqueerness </i>to
queer the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">neurotype </i>offered by
medical science to explain the phenomenology of schizophrenia through an
intentional refusal of the normalizing forces at work in a social sphere
embrocated by psychiatrization.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I decide I am schizoqueer when I reflect upon the reality of
my psychosis. And when I say the reality of my psychosis, I do not mean the
reality of my experience <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as </i>a
psychosis in the terms of medicine; rather, I queerly inflect <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reality </i>to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">effect</i> that I mean: my psychosis was and is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real </i>but remains a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">psychosis</i>
nonetheless. Schizoqueerness will therefore be concerned with queering not only
the expectations of a given neurotype, but also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must </i>be concerned with queering the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">construction of reality as reality</i>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Through this essay, I have chosen to resist the imperative
to provide a strict definition of neuroqueerness. What I offer instead is nothing
but an exposition of certain tendencies already at work within neuroqueerness;
I hope to persuade any who read this of another, partial, but nonetheless <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">insistent </i>imperative toward <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fragmentation </i>operative in the
communitarian efforts of neuroqueerness, a tendency that I hope to amplify and
make visible through such poetic exposition. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will not pretend to hold the answer to the riddle of
schizophrenia or psychosis. I will not pretend that I know anything about the
generalities or formal structures at work within what it is that we call
“schizophrenia,” and I will not pretend that what I hope to articulate here is
anything but phenomenological description of what this experience may be.
However, I refuse to cast off the experiences of psychosis; I refuse to relent
to the pacifying sway of doctors who will tell me that this psychosis-reality
is in, fact, a fiction; there is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">value </i>in
which I experience insofar as it informs my action. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 1.0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">i.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>The world is ruled by straight people, for
straight people|straight people bash me at every corner|the corner becomes a
coroner, when? Well: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I hear them talking
about me, to me, reminding me of…my queerness, their straightness….</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
“Sir, have you ever had any
delusions of persecution?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
“I’m not a sir, please do not call
me that” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per-se-cu-tion lo-cu-tion
per-SIR-cution Sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sirrrrrrrrrrrrprise
demise, reprise!</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
“Sir, have you ever experienced
auditory hallucinations?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></i>ii<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. </i>Is
this the condition of Being</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>queer? In the absence of the
words to state</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
iii. that I know
what it is I am talking about,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-indent: .5in;">
recourse to re-course
the whole syntax</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-indent: .5in;">
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this thing</i> that is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the state, </i>or “this reality.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Greek word “schitzein,” from which we get the prefix
“schizo,” refers to an act of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">splitting </i>articulated
in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">verbal </i>mode, which is to say
it describes a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doing</i>. Like “queer,”
it is an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">action, </i>not a mode of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being</i>; it is, in a sense, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">process </i>of splitting. “Schizo” becomes in
other utterances a noun-as-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">slur </i>describing
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one who is split, </i>but also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one who is split off (from us), </i>one
whose personality is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">split (in two, or
more), </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one (really several) who is/are
‘psycho’. </i>Like “queer” and “crip,” then, terms of violence reclaimed as
words and strategies of resistance, “schizo” names a sometimes futural, often
anti-social, affectively ambiguous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">method
</i>that can also be a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">way </i>to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">split </i>a thing, whether that means to
split it off from resources of domination, split it off from the privileges it may
enjoy, split <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">against </i>an erasure,
naming a further <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">division </i>within any
project aspiring to universality: a way of doing that is both an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">un-</i>doing (of something whole/”complete”)
and the rearrangement of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">parts </i>of
a thing to the effect that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing
itself, </i>formerly whole, is no longer the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">same, </i>has become <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">different</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">queer, </i>a thing has been made <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">schizo</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I hope to articulate is the possibility of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">schizoqueerness, </i>to offer
“neuroqueerness” a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wager </i>whereby it
might not only be broadened definitionally or conceptually, but also to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deepen </i>it by bringing a schizomatic
tendency of internal fragmentation, to consider the force of fragmentation as
generative of affective tendencies that may be deployed toward social and
political ends. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here fragmentation must not be conceived of as
a factionalist turning-away from one another: to reproduce such a narrative
would legitimate the entire discourse that has tended toward the forcible
hospitalization and incarceration of schizophrenics/schizoaffectives and others
with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
Rather, the wager of
schizoqueerness is an opportunity to delve into the depths of community-making,
to consider “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why do we desire to come
together </i>when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">coming together is
itself so terrifying?”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in;">
To schizoqueer something is: to
analyze and sometimes reverse, or, alternately, re-verse, the processes whereby
identitarian similarities and the pragmatic demands of political engagement may
disappear the productions of suffering, isolation, alienation, and loneliness
intrinsic to the naming of a community/consciousness united and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">named </i>as such, where <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">integrity </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wholeness </i>are posited on the side of typicality, banality, and
therefore on the side of terror? That will have to do for now. But we can’t let
this attempt at articulation come to limit schizoqueer critique. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By all this I mean to ask: what are the reparative
possibilities of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">splitting </i>itself,
what might <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">splitting </i>signify when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">schizo </i>is itself split off from its use
as a weapon of domination, and re-versed in a tone dis-affect(able) to the
melodies of an architecture of inaccessibility, when this architecture is
broadened to include <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reality, </i>the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">construction </i>of reality, itself? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari take one thousand plateaus
to make the same argument stated at the beginning of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anti-Oedipus</i>, that: “The code of delirium or of desire proves to
have an extraordinary fluidity … It might be said that the schizophrenic passes
from one code to the other, that [they] deliberately scramble all the codes, by
quickly shifting from one to another, according to the questions asked [them],
never giving the same explanation” (Deleuze and Guattari, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anti-Oedipus, </i>15). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what is this insistence on explanatory drift, whereby
the schizo is presumed to offer ever-new explanations for constantly variant codes
of being? What is salient about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">schizo </i>in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">schizoqueer </i>is the expansion of
psychotic fragmentation into the conceptual domain of a political weapon or
tool. For Deleuze, Guattari, and a whole host of thinkers influenced by their
work, this element of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">delirium </i>is
coded into schizophrenia and therefore the schizophrenic themselves <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">drifts </i>from the explanations they
themselves have offered before, in the past. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But do we deliberately scramble these codes?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>iv.
Do I choose to engage this psychosis?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
How can it be that my very
existence scrambles every code, when all I can do is lock the door to my
bedroom—check the windows, look for the crowd gathered beneath my house
screaming <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Faggot! Sissy! Queer!—</i>how is
it that Deleuze and Guattari can posit this delirious nature of schizophrenic
thought when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> schizophrenic
psychosis anchors itself around the very <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">same,
similar </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">recurrent </i>experiences
of antiqueerness; experiences which, too much for my childhood, adolescent
consciousness to resolve by any way aside from what must have been only a total
and absolute repression <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at the level of
experience</i>, and locked them away into a domain of my psyche <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">so totally foreign to myself </i>that it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">haunts </i>in the form of, at times,
persecutory, “delusional” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">feelings </i>of
subordination, annihilation<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">? </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
v. What wager had <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I </i>gambled when I became persuaded by the
delirium conjured from within my own being? Was it that</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew this would happen? I was told this
would happen? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Do I not invite this
fragmentation by failing—</i>but what/who is it “I”/we fail<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in;">
(If hallucinations are my mind’s
compensation, is it compensating for my queerness?<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Is my queerness not then an impairment that becomes disability,
insofar as it necessitates this compensation?) </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Against this assumption, I cannot and will not posit
delirium as foundational to my experience of psychosis, fragmentation, or
schizophrenia. On the contrary, I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must </i>posit
my queerness as an aspect of my disability. My disability is therefore queer;
my disability is neurological, or at least all my psychiatrists think so;
therefore, is my queerness, as disability, wired into the cortexes of my brain,
and, if so, what must I now think, reconsidering all the theories of
performativity I had learned in Gender Studies courses, reading feminist
theories?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Delirium may occur in some, it may manifest at times, but
the explanatory drifting instantiated by Deleuze and Guattari offers little by
way of reparative possibilities for schizos who, queerly, nonetheless desire a
community, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">queer </i>community, a
community which may itself <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">queer </i>the
very typicalities which underlie the construction of reality as inaccessible.
In other words: by deploying neuroqueerness within the frame of
schizoqueerness, simultaneously offering schizoqueerness the queering of
neurotypicalities implied within neuroqueerness, l hope that this deepening of
the neuroqueer community can be the starting point for a new, queer orientation
within schizophrenic thought. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Situating
schizoqueerness as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my </i>neuroqueerness
is how I re-verse the narratives of performativity that were <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">themselves </i>thrown into delirium in my
experience of psychosis. My queerness, then, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">becomes </i>disabled in the course of engaging with a reality
architecturally structured by co-constitutive forces of straightness (which
make our understanding of reality <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">narrow,
confining</i>) and neurotypicality (which summon a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">naturality </i>to one mode of experience while <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pathologizing </i>others as deviant). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If “neuroqueer” can be understood to act as a form of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doing</i>, where the actions of people “who
are intentionally ‘queering’ their neurotype through a refusal to
conform/assimilate […] an assertion of identity, or as a way of asserting an
accommodation need without invoking the usual procedural legal channels,” what
might such a queering have to offer to bodies not only positioned beyond the “shared”
reality architecturally created as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inaccessible,
</i>but also to modes of consciousness which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">split from</i> intersubjective reality-creation? I defend that
schizoqueerness is a tendency already at work within neuroqueer communities: it
is a radicalization of the deployment of disability as a queer act of political
resistance, where particular|individual aesthetics, modes of perception,
ontologies, modes of consciousness, whole ways of being are summoned by
individuals but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">also </i>the differences
of each from the other, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">uniting </i>these
modes/thoughts/beings through the queer “nosology” of neuroqueerness. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In other words: when schizoqueerness comes to be understood
as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">already in conversation </i>with
neuroqueerness, what reparative possibilities might the two have to offer one
another? What projects become possible when the schizomatic tendency toward
re-organization engages with this political inclination located within
neuroqueerness, to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">queer </i>this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">neurotype </i>by deploying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">neuro-schizo-queerness </i>as an aegis of
resistance? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Imagine: a Rubix Cube rotating upon itself, rotating and
re-arranging even the distribution of colors on the surface, the colors
themselves sinking into undifferentiation, passing into a depth from which the
morass of identity can later come to embellish the surface? This is how I
envision a schizomatic tendency operating within a community of neuroqueerness:
offering to neuroqueer this velocity, a principle of re-making, making <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">through</i> splitting, splitting which
itself <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">strengthens </i>community by providing
an impetus for re-making, re-modeling, re-constructing by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fragmenting</i>. This means that splitting|fragmenting might be
properly understood as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">splitmending, </i>the
mending of terror through a compensatory splitting that is no longer
pathological. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>vi.
Fragmentation occurs: unable to cope with the tendencies of reality to demand
blood, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>consciousness
wavers: insomnia roils; mania commands—itself</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>vii.
Before hopeless, before powerless, in face of the reality-bashing-in|on-me that
is what </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">THEY </i>call “sanity” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>viii.
This is the most beautiful compensation, I could have thought. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Within my “split” consciousness, and even in the harshest
throes of a manic psychosis, I never experience myself as several <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entirely</i> different entities. In the same
way, the fragmentation that schizoqueerness offers to neuroqueer should not be
taken as a threat to the “singularity” of communities of neuroqueerness, since
what this fragmentation has to offer is a coming-together by coming-apart, a
coming-apart that reveals our modes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doing
</i>neuroqueerness as motivated by this velocity-toward-differentiation: it is,
as all psychosis is, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wager </i>where we
risk the coherence our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">selves </i>and our
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">communities </i>in order to deepen the
conceptual definitions we offer in the name of lateral inclusion. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
I will gamble here on a
post-structuralist turn-of-phrase, but, in my florid episodes, any signifier
which might name this entity called “myself” that would attempt to unify the
fragmentations of consciousness would always only fail to name the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">experiences </i>of non-existence
constitutionally present in many expositions of schizophrenic life. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;">
Language tumbles forward on itself
when vocabulary attempts to define any experience of psychosis, recourse to
metaphor is insufficient, and simile is rarely satisfying to reflect upon
outside the mania of a florid episode. In the same way, any explanation of
feelings of loneliness, isolation, alienation, and fragmentation <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">felt </i>by members of any community—whether
communities of neuroqueerness or neurotypicality—fail to find themselves
represented in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">names </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">values </i>that would come to constitute the
community as such. The splitmending tendency of fragmentation, then, should be
deployed as a way to bring ourselves closer to one another even as we recognize
the conceptual difficulties we have in communication, the differences in
realities that we live in, the reality that we are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">different </i>from one another as well as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">different </i>from the expectations of hegemonic neurotypicality. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
ix. How can we re-turn the phrase,
re-verse the tendencies of exclusion, when this tendency is inscribed within
reality? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
x. Fragmentation has its costs;
splitting does not happen without pain, but a splitting is always a chance to
do something <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">new </i>with something that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was not there </i>before. If neuroqueerness
will accept the wager of schizomatizing itself, or embracing|enjoying the
schizoqueer flows still hiding, even within communities of neuroqueerness, what
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">new </i>worlds can we, together, create?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-32814429400216780142015-03-03T09:56:00.002-08:002015-03-03T09:58:04.663-08:00Neuroqueer Art by Katie F. Croteau<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT6rz2rEHueQNwT_F0n6z-9Sd13MzXkN6pF48BnbzrwZ9p2FlGA7megLnH8sG1UjpusLOh6zb3H5_so2j-fpdFVJZwymEuVl5LSM30qJmn8avg56kLZHN_H2qGfE37kWdgxslUsvlrWMA/s1600/10849892_10205508596497383_678251315544002141_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT6rz2rEHueQNwT_F0n6z-9Sd13MzXkN6pF48BnbzrwZ9p2FlGA7megLnH8sG1UjpusLOh6zb3H5_so2j-fpdFVJZwymEuVl5LSM30qJmn8avg56kLZHN_H2qGfE37kWdgxslUsvlrWMA/s1600/10849892_10205508596497383_678251315544002141_n.jpg" height="640" width="475" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description: A drawing on a white piece of paper sits atop a blue
and yellow plaid tablecloth. The drawing is done entirely in pen, and
features a few objects of interest. In the upper left corner, standing
on a field of grass, an elephant with a surprised or intrigued look on
it's face gazes upward and to the right, it's trunk folding inward and
upwards. To the right of the elephant is a tree with fluffy spiky leaves
and a palm-tree like trunk. Beneath the elephant is a large black
flower with white polka dots, and a large, dotted center with a black
circle in the middle. To the right of the flower, and beneath and
between the elephant and the tree, is a friendly dragon's bust with two
curved, striped horns atop it's head, smaller horns going down it's nose
ridge, and two fangs from it's upper mouth. Behind the field and the
tree are clouds and sky.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xsZo1XdfgJJv_1zucAixO_wO4X0au8w1hGRpWtwYapHIQjZej_XtTN4e1IAbFo73s6FMHhtx8zBrXToBh6txykFP7Y3iOk5u01qj3unD-tKVO8OEDwR4iDUNaSfQE7oCexoUSGH_afw/s1600/1017442_10205556612537754_8263928965799536492_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xsZo1XdfgJJv_1zucAixO_wO4X0au8w1hGRpWtwYapHIQjZej_XtTN4e1IAbFo73s6FMHhtx8zBrXToBh6txykFP7Y3iOk5u01qj3unD-tKVO8OEDwR4iDUNaSfQE7oCexoUSGH_afw/s1600/1017442_10205556612537754_8263928965799536492_n.jpg" height="474" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description: A photo of a sketchbook drawing of a snail with lime
green skin gazing upwards with its wiggly antennae. It has a blue
outline, and a white shell that is crammed full of blue stars spiraling
around on it. Background is white.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUcl5_8CS8W51QDe7pCPxBhtbcsNB56KmZZ6mHrbAhnuzGxFoU747Dtlo2mOKv0aFcO5qn4UdyjHgeHbGMBwkOtmFi5yKHrxonldKG4P-Ip_nyfxccyHxPp2epvScDMt9fvHnDOskQb4/s1600/Sky+Blossoms+Cropped.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUcl5_8CS8W51QDe7pCPxBhtbcsNB56KmZZ6mHrbAhnuzGxFoU747Dtlo2mOKv0aFcO5qn4UdyjHgeHbGMBwkOtmFi5yKHrxonldKG4P-Ip_nyfxccyHxPp2epvScDMt9fvHnDOskQb4/s1600/Sky+Blossoms+Cropped.png" height="640" width="488" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description: A black tree with no leaves stands in the middle of a
field of black grass. The tree's trunk curves in almost an "S" shape,
and towards the base of its trunk fades into a crosshatching that gives a
gray effect. Floating around the tree and lying in the grass are red,
floral orbs that resemble chrysanthemums, which vary in size. Beneath
and to the right of the field of black grass is a pond made of red
water. In the upper left-hand corner is a sun that is made of the same
chrysanthemum pattern, but has red lines emitting from its edges, and is
the largest chrysanthemum on the page. To the tree's left is a tiny,
black, leafless sapling.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiawAUOEUa2OVuILfHcrUoU-XTbfsMOjUYL627r68B7Kav_D6X-JBxwtYE0luqYQ8BwiCl_nZX33guosiuDDTzrbbTnHkEVqixu4PFR_wQ4YXKQXVxCYhvVB4mHQtNtUa2BOvW3JO1-pTI/s1600/10373629_10205927922300266_4038489219989625617_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiawAUOEUa2OVuILfHcrUoU-XTbfsMOjUYL627r68B7Kav_D6X-JBxwtYE0luqYQ8BwiCl_nZX33guosiuDDTzrbbTnHkEVqixu4PFR_wQ4YXKQXVxCYhvVB4mHQtNtUa2BOvW3JO1-pTI/s1600/10373629_10205927922300266_4038489219989625617_n.jpg" height="474" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div>
Image Description: A drawing of a dimmly, warmly lit room with
brown, wooden flooring stretching horizontally across the room. There
are two windows on a gray-colored wall-- the window on the left features
an orange-yellow striped curtain topper, and through the window is
light blue water and pink fish with eyes, noses, and mouths. The window
to the right has a purple curtain topper with blue polka dots. There are
also fish with eyes, noses, and mouths, but they are teal and swimming
in light purple water.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Beneath the window with
the orange curtain is a bed with coral-colored sheets and pillow cases,
topped with two pillows and a red blanket. The pillows inside the coral
cases are white with thin, light blue horizonatl stripes running across
them. The feet of the bed are very anthropomorphic-- you can see one of
the bed's legs is bending, and the rest are implied as the bed runs off
the page. The bed's foot is round and toeless, almost implying that it's
wearing shoes.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Next to the bed is another
anthropomorphic piece of furniture-- a lamp. The lamp's torso is
spiraling upwards to the lampshade, but at the bottom has two feet which
it is standing upon. The body of the lamp is yellow with green stripes,
and the lamp's shade is teal.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
To the right of
the lamp, and partially obscuring the window with the purple curtain, is
a green dresser with two drawers. The upper drawer has two round, blue
knobs, which when paired with the lower drawer, which has a handle, the
dresser appears to have a smiling face. The feet of the dresser are like
pumps-- they are greener than the legs, which bend at slightly
different angles.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTUiVfKwPcwFIyZnQs52Tup7rR8K0WCT_G5t-VCRs-Gb6hBt4MzoZnbUyFBb1_kzqeTH4pDR7ulf1-M-KWN5Z0xolScnK-IvNMXV2jRNsfoblNHfM5YU4QQPTygx9MC0VaeI_SNKgoZY/s1600/10403022_10205927920460220_3493794017441282883_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTUiVfKwPcwFIyZnQs52Tup7rR8K0WCT_G5t-VCRs-Gb6hBt4MzoZnbUyFBb1_kzqeTH4pDR7ulf1-M-KWN5Z0xolScnK-IvNMXV2jRNsfoblNHfM5YU4QQPTygx9MC0VaeI_SNKgoZY/s1600/10403022_10205927920460220_3493794017441282883_n.jpg" height="640" width="474" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description: A drawing of a peacock-esque bird. The main body of
the bird is hot pink-- its neck is long and curving as it looks down and
to the viewer's right. The bird's tail feathers are in a rainbow
sequence of "red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet," and like all
the feathers on this bird, are drawn in a rounded, bolded style with a
line running through the center and thin lines forming a series of "V"
shapes down the line. The feathers on the wings are green, blue, teal,
and yellow, and randomly but strategically placed in order of color. The
bird has three feathers atop it's head-- the main and largest feather
is red, and at its base has a yellow circle with and orange circle
inside. The two feathers directly on either side of the red feather are
violet. The bird's beak is orange, but towards the tip is greenish blue.
The bird's legs and feet are orange, except for the talons which are
white with blue tips. The bird has three toes and one rear talon on each
foot. The background is a warm gray color.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw5mKp7KoslkI_0-JbYxm92tlTSP2DXMJY-zzdE3_teedFSIuJigzApF_FFTvMg0KB1DMJU9NBuePFwyqR3HF1sJeHvAC_n-4MZvAQZ29AtvOcb4qLtZ4ULhb9B165CqP-l0zRvwmSRkQ/s1600/560168_10205927920660225_8882775786688165764_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw5mKp7KoslkI_0-JbYxm92tlTSP2DXMJY-zzdE3_teedFSIuJigzApF_FFTvMg0KB1DMJU9NBuePFwyqR3HF1sJeHvAC_n-4MZvAQZ29AtvOcb4qLtZ4ULhb9B165CqP-l0zRvwmSRkQ/s1600/560168_10205927920660225_8882775786688165764_n.jpg" height="640" width="474" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description: A close up of the wing and tail feathers from the peacock drawing.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiurwFFexakHDizZPCQC3v4BWY9d_b2CVGklNmZZUmTkhl3XvsbN9ExsyRTHSzMQT1zM-tczPKj9XxMwuZHNyWE_FwgkFnFDzfApvfoSXvcTzuTA_G1Pc9QbugotIjKUZryNlGy7U_quSs/s1600/10947252_10205927921740252_8824213419326999942_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiurwFFexakHDizZPCQC3v4BWY9d_b2CVGklNmZZUmTkhl3XvsbN9ExsyRTHSzMQT1zM-tczPKj9XxMwuZHNyWE_FwgkFnFDzfApvfoSXvcTzuTA_G1Pc9QbugotIjKUZryNlGy7U_quSs/s1600/10947252_10205927921740252_8824213419326999942_n.jpg" height="640" width="474" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description: A close up of the head, tail, and upper wings of the peacock drawing.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJHQeuswGyNBLvVSSDEs7u74gwEccKsiZBbI17FmmPUx1BNjn5Vy84PpMj-OpM8KSF9bsMCHRl9mHa1iXo6ChYarMWH5rxKFBpzEzapqvxqHLKqRHc6DSEBtJwvVbhjFcPU_ma8M3yX0g/s1600/10846515_10205556612777760_2968206951280555285_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJHQeuswGyNBLvVSSDEs7u74gwEccKsiZBbI17FmmPUx1BNjn5Vy84PpMj-OpM8KSF9bsMCHRl9mHa1iXo6ChYarMWH5rxKFBpzEzapqvxqHLKqRHc6DSEBtJwvVbhjFcPU_ma8M3yX0g/s1600/10846515_10205556612777760_2968206951280555285_n.jpg" height="640" width="474" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description: A drawing of a blue bird with two tail feather, a red
bow tie, and three small buttons downing down it's chest. The bird is
wearing thick, black rimmed glasses, and has it's beak open pretty wide.
The bird is looking to the left, and is drawn on a white background.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWItOVtimcLzv9dVyzKVNfAn28PVWk2v19tUa5AsZPCdQIpIrpkVuG4NHLal9IUIS8fNrovlHR7q2M3cmxkH4HGZrWC3pQQjHgpBOtaRYq1OABL_DxmD1u0QfbqPQek6yy7PlXDShKeBg/s1600/10628358_10205564883224516_4917287682404839373_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWItOVtimcLzv9dVyzKVNfAn28PVWk2v19tUa5AsZPCdQIpIrpkVuG4NHLal9IUIS8fNrovlHR7q2M3cmxkH4HGZrWC3pQQjHgpBOtaRYq1OABL_DxmD1u0QfbqPQek6yy7PlXDShKeBg/s1600/10628358_10205564883224516_4917287682404839373_n.jpg" height="640" width="474" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description: A large carrot with spiky leaves stands upright in
the middle of the page. It stands atop a purple heart on a gray floor,
as green vines spiral out of the leaves and consume the background. A
white bunny with a blue outline and pink inner ears eagerly approaches
the carrot with her arms spread wide-- she is wearing an ear ribbon and a
white dress with blue polka dots. She is standing on one foot, with the
other gracefully pointing behind her.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRbcYZjnbsQAyPU-Gs1s_SOCG9ZgJ3-eYAAPBXZ0VkPHxVozUVWrLejkvGj4KUt5TqEwKaW1h2Q0nkXpVNjYFyr8Xv-ssunD1nbPPvyxTuMrdbaS0qojENtsvnKxXM6cYntfQNDCSFZA/s1600/228745_2072336971115_7282113_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRbcYZjnbsQAyPU-Gs1s_SOCG9ZgJ3-eYAAPBXZ0VkPHxVozUVWrLejkvGj4KUt5TqEwKaW1h2Q0nkXpVNjYFyr8Xv-ssunD1nbPPvyxTuMrdbaS0qojENtsvnKxXM6cYntfQNDCSFZA/s1600/228745_2072336971115_7282113_n.jpg" height="640" width="512" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Description-- an acrylic painting on canvas featuring three
bunnies-- the bunny in the middle is the largest, and is wearing what
could either be interpreted as sunglasses or goggles without
legs/straps. All three bunnies are facing the same direction (the
viewer's left) and have exactly the same body shape-- similar to a
gourd. The bunny on the far left is colored in entirely in black, and
the bunny on the far left is colored in entirely in white. The middle
bunny is a light gray. The background is a dark-ish gray, with the right
and bottom edges of the canvas painted a medium gray. In total, there
are 9 shades of the gray scale that make up this painting.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
To support Neuroqueer artist Katie Forbes Croteau, please visit her store on Zazzle at <a href="http://www.zazzle.com/boldlymadedesigns" target="_blank">http://www.zazzle.com/<wbr></wbr>boldlymadedesigns</a> .Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-15007023562747885502015-02-24T10:51:00.000-08:002015-02-24T11:02:06.718-08:00Speaking For Myself, by N.I. Nicholson<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">SPEAKING FOR MYSELF: MY COGNITIVE STYLE, ABLEISM, AND
COMMUNICATION</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">Viscous inky clouds </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">wrapped around me,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">I’ve lived beneath</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">the black blots</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">on a page: a pen’s </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">teardrops, lingua obscura.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">Half-lit in phosphorescent</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">white-noise glow</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">my words pulse, edge-bleed</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">through static snow,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">slide sideways under</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">a glass ceiling door.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">The autism dictionaries</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">are out of date,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">anachronisms crammed</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">into medical model margins;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">meanwhile, my heart </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">transmutes into a tin can.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">You have no reference,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">no entry for its label; </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">you translate it as</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">“contents: unknown”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">I am an autistic person who primarily thinks
visually. Most of my cognitions begin as either pictures or moving film. When I
communicate verbally, I perform acts of translation in my brain – converting those
pictures into written or spoken language -- before I speak or type.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">I also have a deep love of written language. Books
were doors, beckoning my child and teenaged fingers to open them. I’ve walked
through too many of them to count. Stories became my native lands; I found
safety and comfort as I wrapped their color-crammed worlds around my skin. And
naturally, I wanted to wield words myself the way my heroes did. I decided I
wanted to be a writer when I “grew up”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">When I was eleven, my parents separated and my mother
and I moved to Middletown, Ohio. As a child, I had been accustomed to using
vocabulary that was more advanced than my grade level and which also included
low-incidence words. During my sixth and seventh grade years, some of my
classmates teased me because of the way I spoke, asking why I always used “big
words”. At the same time, the aunt who raised me also insisted that I quit
“trying to be smarter than everyone else” and to “talk normally”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">She also bullied me for not speaking quickly enough.
When she frightened me – usually by screaming at me or hitting me – I would
feel my whole self go rigid. In the web series <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Imaginary Friends,</i> Michael Scott Monje Jr.’s narrator Clay Dillon describes
a feeling of his body turning to metal. Mine turned to ice, including my vocal
chords. Nothing would come out of my mouth – which would enrage my aunt even
further. And on the heels of that rage, more of her screaming and hitting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">So what did I do? I changed myself to suit other
people. I learned to speak more quickly, and moved away from reflecting before
I spoke. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">I learned to pass as “normal”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">I have struggled for years with a fear of not being
understood when I communicate. I become easily frustrated when I cannot
successfully express myself. Sometimes, my memory film rewinds to those moments
in my childhood and teen years when I was teased, shamed, and bullied for the
way I spoke. I go into a very dark place; my throat fills with murky clouds,
and I feel obscured from everyone’s sight. Unseen, unheard. Couple this with an
ingrained, unconscious attempt to pass for “normal” even when I speak, and my
whole self turns to fire and ice: electrical wires overloaded with current
crackling inside an frozen body. I am still not understood, and I feel worse
than when I began.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">During a recent conversation with my fiancé, I
discovered just how ineffective and damaging this was to me. The first time I
tried to explain my reasons for a particular behavior, he didn’t understand me.
It was not until I slowed down, completely translated my thoughts from pictures
to words, and then spoke again that he understood.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">Then it occurred to me: what if I slowed down…ALL of
the time?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">When I type, I (usually) naturally slow down and take
time to reflect – and thus translate my thoughts from pictures to words – before
those words land on the page. During this process, I edit these words either in
my head or (as I have been encouraging myself to do so that I don’t overload my
mind) on the page. I can refine, revise, and polish my words before you even
read them. And I see no reason not to do the same thing when I speak. This may
cause me to speak more slowly, or to take more time to collect my thoughts and
then express them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">But you know what? I offer no apologies or excuses for
any stilted speech or lack of speed on my part. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">It is way too easy for marginalized people to
internalize the dominant cultural prejudices against them. Neurodivergent folk
are subjected to both overt and unspoken prejudice against them in many forms,
including ableism. And with that ableism comes a pressure to be “normal”: fake
it until you make it, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if you can. </i>Why
use a scooter sometimes, when you can walk? Why use a device to help yourself
communicate when you need it, when you can speak “perfectly fine”? Heaven
forbid you appear disabled!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">A pressure to communicate “like everyone else” –
whether it is in the form of pushing non-verbal autistics towards speech,
disguising a different cognitive style as I did for so many years, or insisting
that one’s language conform to perceived norms without regard for individuality
or creativity – is ableism, plain and simple. It does not matter whether it is
explained away as being “for our best interests”, disguised as “therapy”, or
trotted to us under the banner of “helping us become normal”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">You can pour scented food coloring over a pile of
shit, but it’s still shit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">And ableism – no matter in what form it appears –
still smells like shit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">In 2015, I plan to be non-compliant to the ableist
status quo, starting with my method of spoken communication. I will keep y’all
posted on how it goes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">- N.I.</span></div>
Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1319483157693384274.post-44110227780763228202015-02-16T14:16:00.000-08:002015-02-16T14:16:53.671-08:00What is Neuroqueer? And why should I care? By Corbett Joan OToole
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I had no intention of identifying with NeuroQueer. I am a
lifelong physically disabled person and I happily identify as “disabled”, a
part of the “disability rights movement” and when I am with other disabled
people, I call myself a “crip”.
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My first introduction to NeuroQueer came through Autistic
adults. This new concept of Neurodiversity took me a long time to wrap my head
around. The idea that people’s neurologies are different came easily to me. But
the idea that baffled me for a long time was that people might speak one thing
and what they think can be completely different. Huh? Didn’t everyone have
congruence between speaking and thinking?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, I knew that for some folks, like people with traumatic brain injuries,
that the speaking might not always convey the thoughts – but the idea of this
being an organic neurology was new to me.</div>
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Even though people patiently explained it to me I remained
skeptical until I started reading Emma’s Hope Book blog. Begun by a parent to
share their journey with Emma, who is an autistic child, the blog slowly
started incorporating Emma more directly. When I first read the blog, the
family had no reliable communication. Over the past two years they found a
method that works for everyone. With careful documentation the blog posts by
both Ariane, the mom, and Emma showed how the new communication method worked
and Emma began, for the first time, to write about her experiences. She
detailed how her thoughts and her speech often do not match. Her thoughts can
now be written down, although the process is slow and requires enormous effort.
Until I read her posts I did not understand, nor did I fully believe, that
speech and thinking could be so different. Emma showed me that I was wrong.</div>
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For me, NeuroQueer is about blowing up my old assumptions. I
can let go of them because Autistic and other NeuroQueer people like Emma share
their journeys. They write about how their inside worlds often do not match
their outside presentations. They write about the horrific abuse they receive for
not having typically-acting bodies. They write about theories of cognition and
assumptions of in/competence. What surprised me most of all from Emma’s blog is
how unfailingly kind she is. Until the past year people routinely treated her
as incapable and incompetent. She was neither and, in fact, she is brilliant
and insightful.</div>
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If Emma was the reason my heart turned around, then the
NeuroQueer adults turned my head around. My part of the disability rights
movement consistently ignores and demeans people with cognitive disabilities.
They are denied leadership training and opportunities. The wisdom gathered in
those communities, who often call themselves self-advocates, is ignored. </div>
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When I was with NeuroQueer folks in person, sometimes called
“In Real Life (IRL)”, I often imposed and expected a neurotypical communication
style so I was frequently frustrated and uncomfortable. When I joined online
NeuroQueer groups everything changed for me. Communication became easy,
people’s intelligence and charm came through to me. I realized that what had
changed was the structure of our interactions. In person, I was functioning
with the dominant culture’s assumptions and privileges (i.e. people say what
they mean, speech fluency equals intelligence, participating in group
discussions is easy). Online a different culture reigns that is more inclusive
and neurodiversity-friendly. For the first time I could be on equal footing
with neurodivergent folks. And that changed everything. </div>
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Before meeting NeuroQueer folks, I was locked in binaries –
gay/straight; woman/man. For me, NeuroQueer means binaries disappear and the
concepts they attempted to define became spheres that can hold endless
possibilities.</div>
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People ask me what does NeuroQueer mean? I explain it this
way. Imagine that someone said, “Hey, let’s have a clubhouse where we can feel
safe and welcomed.” And there were a group of people sitting around. And maybe
at first, the person starting the clubhouse is Autistic (the Autistic One) and
then saw an Autistic person in the group and said “I think you might like this
new club. Do you want to come in?” And the Autistic person said, “Sure, I am
Autistic and epileptic. Can my friend who is epileptic and queer come in too?
Even though he is not Autistic?” And the Autistic One said, “Sure, everyone is
welcome who wants to be in the NeuroQueer club.” And so they both came. Then
they told other folks and they joined too. And one day someone said, “We need
to define NeuroQueer”. And some folks said – “we are a binary – Neurotypical
and Neurodivergent”. But other folks said “We are NeuroQueer”. But some folks
said “I am not queer, I am straight”. And other folks said, “why are we locked
into binaries – can’t it all be true? And maybe “queer” can have a broader
meaning of rejecting limiting binaries and embracing all possibilities”. </div>
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NeuroQueer is a big clubhouse where you are welcome if you
want to be there. And while it’s chaotic, there are definitely some important
ground rules. No one neurology is above anyone else. So folks who type for
communication hold the same possibilities for leadership as folks who speak.
People are the only experts on themselves – outside evaluations might be useful
for some folks sometimes – but the only expert is the NeuroQueer person
themselves, not any professional. </div>
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The group has guidelines too so that people can work
together. Kindness is a nonnegotiable principle. We can agree or disagree but
we will not be mean to each other. The world already treats many of us badly,
we will not bring that in here. We encourage people to not use jargon and to
ask for clarifications if they are confused. We want everyone to be able to
participate and since we all have different knowledge bases and lived
experiences we will always have stuff that we don’t understand. Everyone has
something valuable to contribute – but when and how they do that will depend on
how much time and energy they have to give. We encourage people to introduce
themselves, to bring themselves into the NeuroQueer rooms. There is a lot of
support and wisdom in these rooms. People who share their hard times with the
group are treated as giving us all a gift of vulnerability. We respect their
gift and offer whatever they ask of us – support, advice, resources. </div>
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But by far my most favorite part of being in NeuroQueer
community is how my vocabulary expanded. I could be polite and tell you about
all the new theories I’ve learned. But the part of my vocabulary that’s
expanded the most is my swearing. The NeuroQueer folks have the most creative
ways of naming oppression and oppressors. To give you a few examples, culled
from multiple postings on NeuroQueer: “He is an asshat who deserves to be
forced to walk barefoot in a room full of scattered Legos.” Or “The world would
be just as interesting without you snotwaffles and nozzleboxes and a lot less
annoying.” Or “When life is hard, imagine sitting on a raft with a chicken.” </div>
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For most of my life I have been visibly physically disabled
and non-visibly mentally disabled. Yet I only disclosed my physical disability.
I spent over two years in the NeuroQueer rooms before I felt ready to disclose
my mental disability. That disclosing liberated me. Today I read a post by
Meriah Nichols, a deaf mom with three kids, one of whom has Down Syndrome. She
received a letter from a pregnant woman who’d received a diagnosis of Down
Syndrome and because she read Meriah’s blog she decided to not abort. Meriah,
like all the other NeuroQueers, just showed us her life as she is living it –
with imperfect creativity. For me, that is the single most important part of
NeuroQueer – that so many of us find a place where we can be ourselves, where
we can contribute and be appreciated.</div>
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Elizabeth J. (Ibby) Gracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08330631899371657005noreply@blogger.com10