tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35743239.post136614071883783429..comments2024-03-29T03:43:45.977-04:00Comments on Of Battered Aspect: I know someone who ...Dave Hingsburgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11918601687946534172noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35743239.post-55871386080626570652011-10-06T16:34:07.128-04:002011-10-06T16:34:07.128-04:00Yikes, Beth, thanks for pointing that error out. M...Yikes, Beth, thanks for pointing that error out. My normal process for writing a blog involves me writing furiously, editting slowly and then reading it aloud to Joe. It's in the reading aloud that I catch most errors. This one, I wrote quickly, went over it once or twice and then published. It was early in the morning so Joe wasn't there to be read to. With your assistance I have fixed that sentence, which I agree was very confusing, it now reads: But I think it is important to not attribute to disability what doesn't belong to disability.Dave Hingsburgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11918601687946534172noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35743239.post-7389097781583279362011-10-06T15:56:33.902-04:002011-10-06T15:56:33.902-04:00Dave, when you wrote "But I don't think i...<b>Dave</b>, when you wrote "But I don't think it is important to not attribute to disability what doesn't belong to disability" did you have too many negatives? I <i>think</i> I get what you mean, but that sentence is really confusing me.<br /><br />I agree that giving disability (or any attribute) more credit than it deserves for whatever misery is a bad move and part of (or a potential cause of) ableism/disableism.<br /><br />I can also see how it's a good thing to have these discussions. By bring it up, the people with these stories are admitting it's worth talking about. This is a lot better than those negative views being so presumed true that they're not even worth mentioning. And whenever one says, the floor is open for teaching them different. I had a similar talk with my mother last night about disability and safety and accomodating my space for my needs being a point of pride rather than shame or sadness.<br /><br /><b>Baba Yaga</b>: Yes! When people imagine disability, they imagine the first shock, not life after that. I love the contrast of how people think of divorce.<br /><br />Many of my (acquired) cognitive disabilities, people can't imagine. I can understand that, but I wish most wouldn't say they'd rather be dead even if that meant suicide. There's no discussion with me that people with disabilities are or should be bitter, as far as I can tell, because the people that would say that don't think I should miserable but rather that I shouldn't be alive. Lovely. I'd much rather hear that kind of "I have a friend with a disability who..."Bethnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35743239.post-31734841108118930822011-10-06T12:30:39.703-04:002011-10-06T12:30:39.703-04:00I love it when you make me think. Great points exp...I love it when you make me think. Great points expressed in this post.Kristinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10791317184998122691noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35743239.post-27283333938598813222011-10-06T08:00:01.926-04:002011-10-06T08:00:01.926-04:00As for not being able to "ramp" exhausti...As for not being able to "ramp" exhaustion... I get what you mean, but I'm not sure it's that simple. (I'm not sure if you think it's that simple either, so these are just my thoughts on the matter.)<br /><br />People seem to find it easier to imagine things like building ramps -- something straightforward and easy -- than they find it to imagine building a society that is truly and completely <em>okay</em> for disabled people.<br /><br />Right now, we have a society where many of the problems commonly faced by nondisabled people are <em>very</em> accommodated for. People see these problems as universal, as part of the human condition. Not always a fun part, but part of it. And society has all these different ways built in to help people cope with these problems to the best of their ability. (And by "society" I mean just about any society has this, although which problems are accommoated for like this varies depending on the society.)<br /><br />Imagine a society where <em>any</em> possible level of exhaustion is completely and utterly planned for in a way where people don't stand out in a negative way just because they have the more severe forms of exhaustion. Where people do not grow up with the expectation that they <em>will</em> have a certain amount of energy. Where people therefore don't have the expectation that many people here do, that certain goals for themselves <em>have</em> to happen or else... they won't be happy, they won't be okay, they won't be able to feed their kids, etc. Where people acknowledge that the goals we have for ourselves are often dictated by the society around us, we don't just come up with them in a vacuum and become inevitably miserable if we can't do them. <br /><br />Where other people completely step up their support for you if you can't (do the dishes/take a walk/walk across the room/turn over in bed/move your arms/move your eyes/listen to things/breathe on your own) without having to rest for hours or days. So there is no pressure -- from inside or out -- to do more than you can do at that point in time. (With understanding that much pressure "from inside" is heavily affected by pressure from the outside, even if we can't see the route it took to get there.)<br /><br />Then yes, severe exhaustion will still <em>feel</em> unpleasant, but it won't necessarily cause the abject misery people currently expect it to. Because a lot of that misery is due to culturally-learned expectations and lack of support, and people really don't get exactly <em>how much of it</em> is that.<br /><br />I've been through exhaustion severe enough to affect breathing, where all I could do was lie in one place doing nothing for long periods of time. At a time when I was quite the workaholic. And I wasn't thrilled with the situation but I wasn't miserable either. In fact there were experiences I had because of this - good ones - that I could not have had if I were moving around all the time. Self-pity would have made those experiences impossible for me to notice.<br /><br />It's really easy to think that changing society won't affect how bad something feels, when you haven't ever lived in a society that does that thing better than the one you're living in. There are certainly things that won't <em>totally</em> be changed by changes in the society, but I can't think of anything that can't be changed <em>substantially</em> for the better, especially with a little more creativity than ramps take.Amandahttp://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35743239.post-2229346711959131822011-10-06T07:32:18.922-04:002011-10-06T07:32:18.922-04:00What I notice about those conversations, is they r...What I notice about those conversations, is they rarely go the other way around.<br /><br />It's always "I know someone who fits the expectations I already had about disability, so you're wrong in trying to change those expectations."<br /><br />What gets <em>really</em> messed up is when it becomes "Bob is more miserable than Alice, therefore Bob is more severely disabled than Alice."<br /><br />No. No. No. Not even if you look at severity in the (medicalistic) way most people do, and don't question that at all. Most people I've known who are utterly miserable about being disabled, would be considered less severely disabled than I'd be considered (under standard views of severity, which I don't go by, so just assume I'm making this disclaimer in the rest of this discussion). <br /><br />Yet they'll swear up and down that they have <em>way</em> more difficulty doing various things than I do, not because they know how difficult I find any given thing, but because they just <em>assume</em> that the more difficulty you have with something, the more miserable you get. <br /><br />Sometimes it seems like they feel like they <em>have to</em> believe this, because if they didn't... then they might find that it's not actually being disabled that's causing their misery, and that would be really scary to not know what really is. I get this sense of desperation off of them when these conversations happen, and I really wonder if that's what causes it.Amandahttp://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35743239.post-2477940780484343182011-10-06T06:35:45.574-04:002011-10-06T06:35:45.574-04:00Profound and thought provoking, thank you Dave. A...Profound and thought provoking, thank you Dave. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed your post. :)My Girls R Angelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07521021983945110512noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35743239.post-13991777684812569122011-10-06T04:19:11.557-04:002011-10-06T04:19:11.557-04:00Hmm. Interesting point: when people bother to cou...Hmm. Interesting point: when people bother to counter a view, it means they're starting to take it seriously. True, I think! (The opposite is certainly true. Nothing more infuriating than being entirely ignored, or metaphorically patted on the head.)<br /><br />One of the things I notice over and over again is that people imagine disability in terms of the first shock of *becoming* disabled, and expect that that is the lasting experience. They don't, generally, imagine divorce only in terms of the first shock.<br /><br />Equally, it seems reasonable that there should be people who attribute misery to disability because their particular disability makes them miserable. Merely being in a wheelchair and miserable might need unpicking, in good social model fashion, as might the wretchedness of often not being seen as a citizen, or a person at all. <br /><br />People do adjust significantly to almost any condition of life, given time, and some do so so excellently as to be a model for lesser souls to aspire to; but frankly, a lack of energy or the perpetual presence of pain can be real dampeners on a life. There seem to be limits to building ramps for exhaustion.<br /><br />I don't think that at all negates your general argument; perhaps tempers it a little.<br /><br />(Random thought arising: the medicalised discourse around depression seems to boil down to an idea that a depressed person's misery can never be rational. How bizarrely opposite are the ways society regards psychiatric and 'physical' disabilities.)Baba Yaganoreply@blogger.com