I’m afraid I’ve stopped using Tumblr, and deleted my main blog…this one, I think (I’m not totally sure what I want), will remain up, but I will no longer post.
"Perhaps put more simply: unless you are in the habit of growing and harvesting all your own food, making your own clothes, fixing your own car, generating the power to run your household appliances, and performing dentistry on yourself (among other things) you are receiving accommodations. This is how society works — none of us exists in a vacuum. You might say that you have indirectly earned these services by, for instance, having a job that enables you to pay for them — but it’s very likely that your job also provides you with particular accommodations (such as artificial light — something you’re generally dependent upon unless you’re blind), convenient access to food and water, and restrooms. It might take some initial investment to produce a more accommodating, more inclusive environment, but that kind of environment tends to expand the pool of people who can work there, meaning that everyone wins."
—
Anne Corwin in response to some wanker (honestly if someone left a comment saying “get over yourself!” on a post like this I would delete their comment and ban them for personal attacks. seriously, what a jerk.)
(if someone wrote a letter in response to one of my zines along those lines, it would be ruthlessly and publicly mocked.)
"Fun fact, y’all. We’re skeptics too. And as an autistic woman, I cannot tell in which way I feel less welcome in the [skeptic/atheist] community. The sexism is awful, and the way you try to blame it on people with my fucking neurology is not acceptable."
— Kassiane S. in “Skepticism’s Ableism Problem”
"A wheelchair user tells me that public transit does not need to be accessible to autistic people. She says that people should not be denied opportunity on the basis of physical ability, but that those with cognitive impairments should be under 24-hour-a-day supervision and control in special institutions built for us. An autistic tells me that public buildings do not need to be accessible to wheelchair users. She says that people should not be denied opportunity on the basis of cognitive ability, but that those with physical impairments should be under 24-hour-a-day medical care in special institutions built for us. And while we’re fighting this one out in the disability communities and in the larger society, known barriers remain in place, barrier removal is treated as a handout and an unfair advantage rather than a just response to entrenched disadvantage, and I indulge in the guilty pleasure of imagining finding a group of like-minded, like-bodied people and seceding from disability rights. Wouldn’t be too many of us: we’d be leaving a whole lot of people out. But we’d be the insiders for once, not the outsiders; and wouldn’t it be great?"
— Cal Montgomery about horizontal ableism in Harry Potter and the Allure of Separatism
Autism journalism: a brief & handy guide
Some general rules, of which there are many exceptions:
-Respected media outlets: Although theoretically respected media outlets such as major newspapers, news shows, etc. should be respectful, accurate, and thorough, this is very rarely the case when it comes to autism. Any journalistic standards these outlets may otherwise adhere to are sure to be thrown out the window when the subject is autism. When you see a serious, well-respected media outlet running a story about autism, it’s probably best to brace oneself.
-Fluffy media outlets: One might expect that representations from fluffy media outlets that no one takes seriously (i.e. entertainment media, non-news magazines, etc.) would be even worse. Surprisingly, however, that is not always the case. Several non-serious media outlets done surprisingly good and respectful work. MTV’s “True Life: I Have Autism” was a respectful piece focusing on three young autistic men. Recently, Marie Claire ran a good piece on autistic artist Katie Miller, with a strong neurodiversity bent. There are other examples, too. So, while this isn’t a universal rule, “news” outlets which are generally worthless may sometimes present better portrayals of autistic people than the “real” journalists. Who knew?
-Independent media outlets (including online): A total wildcard. Representations may range from thoughtful and pro-neurodiversity to typical dehumanizing “about us without us” b.s. to anti-vaccine pseudoscience. And everything in between.
"
In building his case, Singer makes many assertions that he does not support, because they can not be supported.
Singer writes as if impairment itself guarantees that people with disabilities will have fewer opportunities in life. He ignores the fact that many of the barriers people with disabilities face every day are created and sustained by the very society he claims should be allowed to kill them.
He leads readers to believe that if some medical professionals judge the lives of people with disabilities as not worth living, that is indicative of how people with disabilities judge their own lives. In fact, study after study has shown that medical “experts” routinely underestimate the quality of life reported by people with disabilities.
But Singer does not include people with disabilities in the discussion of the quality of their lives. He assumes that non-disabled academics and professionals are better qualified to discuss what it is like to have a disability than disabled people themselves.
Singer suggests that decisions about who is a “person” can be made objectively and with little doubt, by doctors. In fact, doctors routinely underestimate the capacity of people who are judged to be mentally disabled.
In short, a lot of Singer’s “logic” is smoke and mirrors. It has no more basis in fact than the eugenic models of racial superiority and inferiority that were widely held and respected in the first decades of this century.
""The problem with trained medical professionals being trusted implicitly here is that they are also fallible human beings working within an industry/field that has proved itself vulnerable to societal assumptions about the inferiority of disabled people. All the disabled people I know politicized by this event came to an awareness of this through personal experience. Some of them were designated as no more capable of independent life than Ashley. So how far do we follow these experts? Only with medical decisions for the disabled people that they seem to be absolutely undoubtedly 100% right about? Which ones are those?"
— Kay Olson in this comment
