There’s a phrase going around a lot. People are saying it to make each other feel better, but to me, it’s not making anything better. In fact, it’s making things worse. “We survived Reagan.” My father did not. My father, Michael John Norman, was one of the 388,253 people who died during the initial AIDS epidemic between 1981 and 1995… Read more →
I hear him before I see him. “Fuck you” He slides into my limited periphery, finger thrusting in my face, camera phone lifted at my eye level. “Fuck you” he says again, quickly, forcefully. To me. He moves on to do the same to my husband, with whom I have linked arms. I don’t respond. I let his words roll… Read more →
This past weekend I attended New World Magischola, a Wizard College Live Action Roleplaying game. This past weekend I healed the feelings I’ve been having in the wake of some intense hate mail I received for fighting for disabled rights in the gaming community, and for standing up for women and their space in the gaming sphere. This past weekend… Read more →
Long before either one of us was diagnosed with autism I knew that my kid was not like my friends’ kids. Now that she’s in school and has been identified as an ‘exceptional’ kid I have had to talk to a lot of ‘professionals’ about those differences and my related concerns. But no matter how I try to explain her… Read more →
If you’re a fan of feminist sonar you might be wondering “Where’s Elsa Been?” over the last month or so. The answer is that I wrote a book. Actually, since last August I’ve completed drafts of THREE books. August-November I finished the first draft of my novel. January-March I revised it and now it’s out on submission. So that’s a… Read more →
There’s been a lot of talk about what sexual assault survivors think and feel about abuse. There’s been a lot of thinking about how we handle the death of someone who perpetrated abuse, and about how we work in communities with people who have changed and remediated themselves (or haven’t). I think it’s important in conversations like these to remember… Read more →
Aging with a disability is a little different from normal aging, I’ve found. I turn 30 tomorrow, and it’s not a small thing for me. Every birthday, I look past tomorrow. Throughout the years, I’ve overheard various remarks (“Wow she made it to 18?” “I didn’t know rubella babies had high survival rates” “You can still see?”) all of which… Read more →
“Evil witch” one classmate called me. Other classmates simply tied my shoes together, laughing when I fell over. Yet others stole my lunch if I put it on my right side (the side where I am blind.) Being called four eyes eventually had a pat response of “Two, really. Can’t you do math?” since one lens of my glasses was… Read more →
Hello readers! I have news! #1: You can see me at GeekGirlCon next week in Seattle, WA. October 10 & 11. On Saturday the 10th I’ll be speaking on Daredevil & Disability Politics at 3pm, and then Blind Lady Versus will be LIVE at 4pm! On Sunday the 11th, I’ll be running Dead Scare from 10am to 12pm and then… Read more →
Finding your writing process is a balance of things. It is the process of knowing what kind of time you have to write. It is the process of knowing yourself well enough to know when you write – and it’s trusting yourself to do it. I have been writing my whole life. But until this summer, I’d been floundering around… Read more →
