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Srs Bzns Disability and Ablism Linkspamming
Thinky-thoughts finals week reading, for those of you who like thinky-thoughts.
May 1st was Blogging Against Disablism Day. This post has a link to archives from previous years, and this post links all of this year's entries.
Highlights:
A post about Oracle - or rather, about fan discussions about Oracle.
[T]he majority of this post is going to instead focus on the ablism inherent in the online discussions of Oracle - that is, the arguments over her fitness as a superheroine, her perceived uselessness when being "confined to a wheelchair", and the unapologetic ablist terminology & attitudes that were displayed in these various discussions.
Fictional Heroes with Disabilities
These disabilities aren’t the shiny sparkly sort; you know, the ones that are portrayed as elevating PWD to a ~*~*~*higher plane of existence*~*~*~ — they simply happen to be part of the person’s character (although, being fiction, sometimes these disabilities do take a supernatural form). Sometimes, the character’s perspective as a person with a disability gives them insight into particular issues, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they do things that aren’t so heroic, not because disabilities lead them down the path to irredeemable evil, but because they are fully rounded characters. The disabilities of these characters aren’t shrugged off as irrelevant, merely a plot point to be overcome (and indeed, they are often central to the characters’ lives), but at the same time, they are not the sum and total of these characters’ existence.
[Editorializing: I really disagree with what Beppie writes about the first character on her list in the post linked above. I mean, if you count Sookie Stackhouse's telepathy as a 'disability' then you have to count like all of the freakin' X-Men as well, and yes of course any fictional character hated and feared for having a superpower does serve as a nice metaphor for the social model of disability - but I mean come on, really? Her disability is a superpower and, uh, no. SuperCrip. No. But, my kneejerk criticism aside, the rest of Beppie's post is freakin' awesome, especially her opening paragraph (quoted above) about how fictional characters with disabilities can be written and portrayed in a way that doesn't suck.]
A Screenshot's Worth a Thousand Words
So why is Ableism of Low Importance? Why does the biggest encyclopedia on earth consider it to be of lesser importance than discrimination against other minorities? Why are sociologists learning and being taught that racism and sexism are The Discriminations, that all others are secondary or tertiary or not really worth bothering about? Why, when a person is both female and PWD, or of colour and PWD, or all three, and/or lesbian, trans, non-citizen, working class, and so on, is ableism automatically ranked as the least important discrimination they’ll encounter? Why are PWD losing this Oppression Olympics, a game we shouldn’t be playing in the first place? (“Intersectionality” hasn’t yet received a rating on the Importance scale at Wikipedia.)
Other topics considered more sociologically important than Ableism (not equal, but more), as far as Wikipedians are concerned, include: est and The Forum in popular culture, Ralph Larkin, Wilhelm Dilthey, Vixen (comics), Stay-at-home dad, Weddings in the United States, Truce term, Friendship Paradox, Heterophobia, Babywise, Boomerang Generation, eHarmony, Lavalife, OkCupid, Yahoo! Personals, Fritzl case, List of UFO religions, Greenbelt Maryland, The Hapa Project, Biosocial criminology, Grand Tour, Speed dating, Blond, Schoolgirl and Hooters.
Dear Author: please, don't heal me.
Your lead was disabled?! And dealt with it? And was allowed to get angry? And she was neither in a Quasimodo caricature, nor like anything Katy ‘I’m-gracefully-accepting-my-school-of-pain’ Carr? (i.e. an obligatory angel, afraid of the burden she places upon others.) She wasn’t either of those and was she able to kick arse with modified moves that made sense? Enough sense to make me overemphasise like the elocution teacher of doom? Yes! Oh, my god. Yes!
…and then you broke my heart.
Secret Disabilities
Just read the whole post.
Teaching All Students
Just read the whole blog.
And finally, not a part of BADD 2010, but still worth linking: Lennard Davis commenting on the casting controversy in Glee:
The issue isn't purely ideological. There are an increasing number of actors with disabilities who have trouble getting parts and for whom these major roles would be a great opportunity. According to a recent article in The Hollywood Reporter, out of a total of 600 characters on television shows in a given season, only 12 will have a disability. And of those, most will be played by non-disabled actors. A third of disabled actors have faced active discrimination by being denied auditions or not being cast in a role because of their disability.
Yet every actor knows that there is Academy Award material in playing a disabled part. Think of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July Jon Voigt in Coming Home, Sean Penn in I Am Sam or Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot. There is a very high frequency of Oscar winning films that depict disability, but very few of those clutching the golden statues are people with disabilities.
There is a standard response on the part of Hollywood and Broadway when this issue is raised. The producers will say that they "tried" (if they tried at all) to use disabled performers but that they couldn't find anyone good enough to play the part. Aside from being a poor excuse, this response should lead us to see a vicious circle. If young people don't see role models in performers with disabilities, they might internalize the obvious message--"Don't go into show business if you have a disability. You'll never get a job!"
[Editorializing: And that is juuuuust the tip of the iceberg in terms of Glee, Artie, and WTF IS THIS EVEN THE 21ST CENTURY I MEAN SERIOUSLY FOX WHAT THE HELL. But I am working on a longer Glee post for soonish and I don't want to start ranting too early.]
May 1st was Blogging Against Disablism Day. This post has a link to archives from previous years, and this post links all of this year's entries.
Highlights:
A post about Oracle - or rather, about fan discussions about Oracle.
[T]he majority of this post is going to instead focus on the ablism inherent in the online discussions of Oracle - that is, the arguments over her fitness as a superheroine, her perceived uselessness when being "confined to a wheelchair", and the unapologetic ablist terminology & attitudes that were displayed in these various discussions.
Fictional Heroes with Disabilities
These disabilities aren’t the shiny sparkly sort; you know, the ones that are portrayed as elevating PWD to a ~*~*~*higher plane of existence*~*~*~ — they simply happen to be part of the person’s character (although, being fiction, sometimes these disabilities do take a supernatural form). Sometimes, the character’s perspective as a person with a disability gives them insight into particular issues, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they do things that aren’t so heroic, not because disabilities lead them down the path to irredeemable evil, but because they are fully rounded characters. The disabilities of these characters aren’t shrugged off as irrelevant, merely a plot point to be overcome (and indeed, they are often central to the characters’ lives), but at the same time, they are not the sum and total of these characters’ existence.
[Editorializing: I really disagree with what Beppie writes about the first character on her list in the post linked above. I mean, if you count Sookie Stackhouse's telepathy as a 'disability' then you have to count like all of the freakin' X-Men as well, and yes of course any fictional character hated and feared for having a superpower does serve as a nice metaphor for the social model of disability - but I mean come on, really? Her disability is a superpower and, uh, no. SuperCrip. No. But, my kneejerk criticism aside, the rest of Beppie's post is freakin' awesome, especially her opening paragraph (quoted above) about how fictional characters with disabilities can be written and portrayed in a way that doesn't suck.]
A Screenshot's Worth a Thousand Words
So why is Ableism of Low Importance? Why does the biggest encyclopedia on earth consider it to be of lesser importance than discrimination against other minorities? Why are sociologists learning and being taught that racism and sexism are The Discriminations, that all others are secondary or tertiary or not really worth bothering about? Why, when a person is both female and PWD, or of colour and PWD, or all three, and/or lesbian, trans, non-citizen, working class, and so on, is ableism automatically ranked as the least important discrimination they’ll encounter? Why are PWD losing this Oppression Olympics, a game we shouldn’t be playing in the first place? (“Intersectionality” hasn’t yet received a rating on the Importance scale at Wikipedia.)
Other topics considered more sociologically important than Ableism (not equal, but more), as far as Wikipedians are concerned, include: est and The Forum in popular culture, Ralph Larkin, Wilhelm Dilthey, Vixen (comics), Stay-at-home dad, Weddings in the United States, Truce term, Friendship Paradox, Heterophobia, Babywise, Boomerang Generation, eHarmony, Lavalife, OkCupid, Yahoo! Personals, Fritzl case, List of UFO religions, Greenbelt Maryland, The Hapa Project, Biosocial criminology, Grand Tour, Speed dating, Blond, Schoolgirl and Hooters.
Dear Author: please, don't heal me.
Your lead was disabled?! And dealt with it? And was allowed to get angry? And she was neither in a Quasimodo caricature, nor like anything Katy ‘I’m-gracefully-accepting-my-school-of-pain’ Carr? (i.e. an obligatory angel, afraid of the burden she places upon others.) She wasn’t either of those and was she able to kick arse with modified moves that made sense? Enough sense to make me overemphasise like the elocution teacher of doom? Yes! Oh, my god. Yes!
…and then you broke my heart.
Secret Disabilities
Just read the whole post.
Teaching All Students
Just read the whole blog.
And finally, not a part of BADD 2010, but still worth linking: Lennard Davis commenting on the casting controversy in Glee:
The issue isn't purely ideological. There are an increasing number of actors with disabilities who have trouble getting parts and for whom these major roles would be a great opportunity. According to a recent article in The Hollywood Reporter, out of a total of 600 characters on television shows in a given season, only 12 will have a disability. And of those, most will be played by non-disabled actors. A third of disabled actors have faced active discrimination by being denied auditions or not being cast in a role because of their disability.
Yet every actor knows that there is Academy Award material in playing a disabled part. Think of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July Jon Voigt in Coming Home, Sean Penn in I Am Sam or Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot. There is a very high frequency of Oscar winning films that depict disability, but very few of those clutching the golden statues are people with disabilities.
There is a standard response on the part of Hollywood and Broadway when this issue is raised. The producers will say that they "tried" (if they tried at all) to use disabled performers but that they couldn't find anyone good enough to play the part. Aside from being a poor excuse, this response should lead us to see a vicious circle. If young people don't see role models in performers with disabilities, they might internalize the obvious message--"Don't go into show business if you have a disability. You'll never get a job!"
[Editorializing: And that is juuuuust the tip of the iceberg in terms of Glee, Artie, and WTF IS THIS EVEN THE 21ST CENTURY I MEAN SERIOUSLY FOX WHAT THE HELL. But I am working on a longer Glee post for soonish and I don't want to start ranting too early.]
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