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Nobody outside the disability sector ever talks about institutional ableism. Yes, we talk about the individual slights and hurts that people inflict upon us every day. The hurts and abuses and daily breaching of rights. But we do not talk about the more subtle ways that ableism is built into systems and institutions that are built for people who are like them, not us. We don't talk about the ways we are daily discriminated against by practices, economic and political structures, and when we do, nothing happens. When we do, people tell us that we are angry. Or bitter. Or both. This is what institutional ableism looks like. It looks like a person who won't give a disabled person a job because they might need too much time off work. It looks like the building of homes that are not accessible. It looks like social housing only being available to people who can navigate steps. It looks like a disabled woman being refused IVF on the basis that she probably couldn't ...

Image description - The conversation starts when you #justsayhi. A hand is in the air.  The logo below reads, 'Cerebral Palsy Foundation'  I was in the shopping centre on the weekend, and a Sad-Sweet-Smiler walked past and said hello.  Smiling sadly and sweetly and sympathetically. If you are not physically disabled, you will not know about Sad-Sweet-Smiler Sympathy Syndrome. It's a sympathetic smile of solidarity from a passerby. They clearly imagine that I am lonely or sad or in need of a Non-Disabled Hug from a fellow shopper. Here's a news flash - no, I don't. There's this shitty campaign going about 'just saying hi' to disabled people. It's been going a while now and I am kind of grateful it has not gotten much currency in Australia. It's bad enough with people leaping out of the way and apologising (even if you are a metre away) or the endless 'sorries' - I counted 37 in a Westfield...

Five people in front of a mud brick house.  Two are teenagers, both reclining.  Two older women are seated. About a week ago, I was down at a little shop that sells African products, buying maize (for sadsa). As I was getting out of my car, two women were openly speculating about what kind of disability I had. Why I could use my legs and stand up and that I was 'very young' (I am assuming they said 'to be disabled', but I didn't recognise the words). I didn't recognised those few words because they were speaking in Shona, a language I studied at school because I was deported to Africa by my parents when I was fourteen years old.  I understood the rest.  I'd learned far more Shona in boarding school (after school ended) at the first public school I attended than I did anywhere else. I learned from the girls that I lived with - at my first school, there were only four white girls. The Black girls treated me kindly, for t...

I went to sleep thinking of homelessness, and I woke after having one of those dreams which was startling in its clarity. It was part memory, part fantasy, and it was about sleeping rough.  Most people know that I was deported to Africa by my parents (lol) for being a naughty teenager. Some might not know that I compulsively ran away before that happened - I packed my bags and left, over and over again. Some of that experience involved sleeping on the streets, which fills me with horror now to think about how unsafe it would have been for a teenaged kid. Except it wasn't. There was a real community amongst the homelessness community and most people watched out for we young folk. There was Dan the Hotdog Man, who fed us at any time (not just at the end of the day or night, when we would tour the city's bain maries.). The places to sleep were all collective places - I don't remember now the names of the other children, but I do remember one had a job s...

Image description: To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise - Voltaire. A giant hand is pushing down and crushing a group of people, who are fighting back against it.   Dear non-disabled people -  Silencing disabled people is oppression. It relieves them of whatever limited 'power' has been granted to them in the first place. That limited power has usually been fought for by disabled people themselves.  If you silence disabled people, you are not 'allies', no matter what you purport to say or do. You are not an advocate. You are not a friend. You are part of the problem.  Silencing. It's a good idea to think about why you're doing this. Keep this quote in mind. 'When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.' - George R.R. Martin Silencing is not confined just to disabled peop...

Image description:  A large, triangular table is set with 39 place settings.  Each has a different runner and hand painted plate. In 1974, feminist artist Judy Chicago created an installation artwork called ‘The Dinner Party’.   Her ‘guest list’ included the names of more than 1000 women, with 39 ‘guests of honour’, including luminaries like Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony and Virginia Woolf.   It’s now regarded as the first epic feminist artwork – a ‘true milestone celebration of women in history’.    That work is now almost forty years old.   Chicago started thinking about it in the late 1960s, after noticing that ‘there were no women’s studies programs, no women in history courses, no seminaries teaching about the female principle in religion, and scarcely any women leading churches.’   She wanted to create a visual symbol ‘to end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record....

In the disability community, our diversity is our worst enemy. It is hard to be proud in the face of oppression and discrimination, but it is harder when your culture is almost wholly comprised on stories based around those things. Stories create culture. The response to the story makes it narrative, and it informs the way people behave. Our public narratives are all created by non disabled people - inspiration and charity and tragedy, and our private narratives are conce aled by our diversity.  Even stories which should belong to us have been appropriated by non disabled people as inspiration porn. We're objectified every day because of it. And even stories that reflect pride are often based on protest. Although it is wonderful being part of a community who are fighting for their rights, there is nothing beautiful about the desperate struggle to stay out of nursing homes or have good health care or access or just to be part of the world. It is hard t...