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 →
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 →
There’s a common thread in media about disabled lives – and it’s the notion that a disabled life is not worth living. In superhero stories there are disabled people whose lives are worth living because their disabilities transcend their disabled experience. Daredevil and Iron Man are both great examples of this. It’s not a fantastic tale to tell, and I… Read more →
CONTENT WARNING FOR DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE. I ran across this website this past weekend, and it made me take many pauses. At first, I was amused, after all a company called “Damsels in Defense” has to raise a certain amount of hilarity. As I went through their website, however, I went from amused, to pretty horrified. Self defense should… Read more →
I work for a couple cons as a disability access coordinator – that’s the first thing you need to know. I’m not willing to engage in a dialogue about “what are YOU willing to do about it?” Because I’m already there. I’m already digging into these trenches – I just can’t be the only one. This post, in addition to… 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 →
I work in a variety of positions throughout the gaming world, and almost all of them result in me doing at least a bit of educating when it comes to disability politics/preferred language. The most pervasive issue that I seem to come across is the use of language around wheelchairs. People aren’t IN wheelchairs. People USE wheelchairs. Here’s why: when… 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 →
There’s a video going around that I’m not going to link here. You’ve probably already seen it, anyway. It’s of a man with a disability being fed by a worker at McDonald’s. Everybody seems to love this video. I’ve seen it deemed heartwarming. I’ve seen it called news. When did compassion become a headline? There’s another news article that came… Read more →
When I was a kid I loved Sherlock Holmes, and thus the Victorian era, more than anything. I dressed up as Holmes for Halloween multiple years, as I grew older I collected Victorian clothes, dressed in corsets and long skirts, carried parasols, and read everything I could about the Victorian Era. I knew I wanted to be an historian. But… Read more →
