emmareidgws300-blog

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The Bustle article above talks about the new Netflix show Special. The main character Ryan is a gay man in his twenties with cerebral palsy. I watched the first season and really enjoyed the episodes. I am going to focus on one scene from the first episode because it shows the viewers an example of the unit we are currently talking about. During the opening minutes of the show, Ryan is at physical therapy where he looks over at his friend who used a wheelchair and says he is jealous of him because he knows “where he belongs.” Ryan said he does not know which world to exist in being too disabled for ableists but not disabled enough for the disability community. When Ryan receives an internship at an online magazine, he tries to cover up his disability but when he cannot open envelopes or other activities that are seen as “normal’ he can no longer hide his disability and blames it on a car accident instead of disclosing his CP.

In Fritsch's “The Neoliberal Circulation of Affects: Happiness, Accessibility, and the Capacitation of Disability as Wheelchair,” the author talks about how the ISA wheelchair leaves a lot of people out. This is why Ryan was jealous of his friend in a wheelchair. Fritsch talks about not being able to get onto a bus because there was accessibility for wheelchair users but not for disabled folks who do not use a wheelchair but did not have the strength required the climb the steep stairs. The author also talks about how the ISA creates what disability has to look like. Ryan does not fit the image of disability throughout the film causing him to struggle within the ablest ideas of disability.

Ryan does get hit by a car at the beginning of the show, but it only fractures his elbow. He blames his disability on the car accident, and everyone at the office views the incident as a traumatic event. However, his boss continually brings up the car accident and even gives him a cake with a person being hit by a car when his story becomes the most viewed on the website. Despite thinking this is a traumatic event, his boss constantly brings up the experience without a trigger warning. In Alison Kafer's work “Un/safe Disclosures: Scenes of Disability and Trauma” the author points out most people associate trauma with sexual trauma and do not consider other forms of trauma such as fires or car accidents. Ryan is exploited for his traumatic accident without warning (not that a warning would make it okay). I do not want to spoil this show for those of you who have not seen it, but it is a great watch for people interested in disability.

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Sexuality & Disability

https://www.npr.org/2017/02/14/514578429/hookup-culture-the-unspoken-rules-of-sex-on-college-campuses

Hookup culture is a prevalent part of college life but is that true for all students? NPR did a wonderful podcast called “Hookup culture: The Unspoken Rules of Sex on College Campuses.” The producers Shankar Vedantam, Renee Klahr, Tara Boyle, Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, Maggie Penman, and Chloe Connelly talked about how the dominate hook-up culture can be exclusive to white students, Asian women, and black men while black women, Asian men, and other minorities are excluded from the casual sex movement. They also discussed the LGBTQ community being left out of the mainstream hook up current on campus and having to look off campus for sexual relationships. However, they did not mention people with disabilities at all.

In “A Sexual Culture for Disabled People” Tobin Siebers states “the idea of sex life is ableist, containing a discriminatory preference for ability over disability.” I think the reason folks with disabilities are left out of this podcast is that they are not seen as sexual or having a sex life. Students with disabilities also do not have the same access to sex as able-bodied students. For example, It is a Friday night. All of the white middle-upper class male students are throwing a party at their fraternity house. Only the members are allowed to attend the party as well as females they find attractive. The students dance, grind, and sometimes have sex in the bathroom or bedroom nearby. This is not accessible to students with disabilities. This is a privatized sexual event, only for certain able-bodied folks. Just like institutions and other public spaces, people with disabilities are excluded from access to sexual spaces.

College can be known as a time to explore sexual experiences with one’s peers. But not for those with disabilities, who’s sexuality is “actively ignored or encouraged” according to Michael Gill in “Questions of Consent: Rethinking Competence and Sexual Abuse.” Consent is an ongoing issue in this hookup culture. During consent presentations in college, the state of mind is only regarded in a sober or not sober aspect. Gill talks about Harris being portrayed as a wolf and McArthur as a lamb. She was labeled as innocent and childlike by her parents and other authority figures, unable to give consent. People with intellectual disabilities are also college students, sexual humans, and deserve to be included in the consent conversation. Access to sexual spaces should be inclusive of all genders, sexualities, races, and disabilities.

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Erasing Normal

Katie said, “the doctor promised she would become more social and back to normal.” But she felt like she was in someone else’s body. In “Chemical Constraint: Experience of Psychiatric Coercion, Restraint, and Detention as Carceratroy Techniques” the authors Erick Fabris and Katie Aubrecht exchange letters discussing their experiences with mental illness “treatment.” The image above shows eight perfectly cut out white figures. They are seen as “normal” and if a cut out differs from these above, they are categorized as abnormal. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one out of four adults in the US has a diagnosable mental illness. So in fact, 2 of these seemingly perfect cutouts are “abnormal”. What if there is no “normal?” What if Katie’s doctor is proposing an idea to her to that is simply unattainable?

In “De-regulating Disorder: On the Rose of the Spectrum as a Neoliberal Metric of Human Value” Anne McGuire proposes using a spectrum to measure disability. Gender and sexuality are fluid and seen on a spectrum. Disability is also vastly fluid, as everyone becomes disabled if they live long enough. One’s mental state will also change significantly throughout life transitions and time. Disability can even change daily. People continually vary mentally and physically causing strict boxes of labels to simply not fit such a complex species. McGuire’s spectrum would act as a “dimensional blurring of the borderlines separating normal and abnormal.” If there is no “normal” then the stigma related to disability can be erased. There are no cookie cutter origami humans. As McGuire says “we are all mentally ill.”

Using a spectrum to define disability can help eliminate the assumption Fabris experienced that “mentally ill are generally confused, noncompliant, and dangerous.” In Sami Schalk’s “Bodyminds Reimagined” the author talks about the film “The Girl with All the Gifts.” In this film the children with disabilities become the norm, releasing stigma against them. If disability could be seen on a spectrum then the question would no longer be: is this person mentally ill? It would instead be for example, to what degree is someone experiencing anxiety? Cutouts are not real life and trying to make them reality put a heavy burden on society.

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Unit 4

https://phillys7thward.org/2017/12/intentional-predictable-school-prison-pipeline/

Nirmala Erevelles defined the school-to-prison pipeline in “Crippin’ Jim Crow: Disability, Dis-Location, and the School to Prison Pipeline” as “a multidimensional process that funnels large numbers of minority students from the classroom into the adult prison system.” The image above may seem like an exaggeration, but every day black students are shoved out of school doors into police cars, alternative schools, or into the streets. The students are put into a system that essentially breaks them down and then spits them out, to deal with a society that has wholly stigmatized them. A world where they can not get a job, an education, food, or governmental help. How can we expect these students to succeed when we provide them with institutions designed to watch them fail?

Erevelles refers to this cycle as a “hamster wheel.” With each turn, the wheel becomes more disabling. The school thrusts these students into prisons where they are often disabled then places them on the streets with nothing in which their disability increases with no medical help. Stuck in this vicious cycle, these people become inmates for the second, third, fourth time, and so on. In “The Color Of Violence: Reflecting on Gender, Race, and Disability in Wartime” Erevelles talks about how disabled people who can not work are seen as not valuable, therefore not deserving of health services. People of color coming from the incarceration system who are disabled are not only seen as defective for their disability but their race and social status of ex-felon.

Erevelles talks about the different reactions instructional faculty has to students based on race. Black students are seen as “choosing to act out” while white students are provided with additional resources to help them succeed. Queer students of color are seen as emotionally unstable. These labels do not leave students as they grow older. In “Reconsidering Confinement: Interlocking Location and Logics of Incarceration” by Chris Chapman, Alison C. Carvey, and Liat Ben- Moshe the authors talk about the “unworthy poor versus the deserving poor.” Once again the poor black community is seen as undeserving as if they want to be poor and have brought it upon themselves. The poor white community is viewed as deserving of government assistance. There is a common theme that tends to run rampant through society: black people deserve the vile mistreatment of institutions.

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GWS post #3

https://www.kalw.org/post/creative-growth-art-center-gives-artists-disabilities-place-shine#stream/0

Alison Kafer said in her book, Feminist, Queer, and Crip “to eliminate disability is to eliminate the possibility of discovering alternative ways of being in the world.” The link above is an image of the work of Meyshe Shapiro-Nygren, an artist with a cognitive disability. There is also a podcast that goes along with the art that involves the director of Creative Growth, Tom Di Maria. I think this image shows us how many different perspectives there is in the world. The disabled community should be valued for their take on the world, the same way able-bodied and minded people are. In the image, there are many nonidentical keys, no one the same. This image reminds me there is no one standard for quality of life, no right perspective on life, and that is what makes our world beautiful. Kafer often talks about how ableists assume the quality of life when it is contrasting for everyone, and it can only be determined for oneself. Every mind and body should be cherished.

“How one understands disability in the present determines how one imagines disability in the future; one's assumptions about how the experience of disability creates one’s conceptions of a better future.” The word that stands out to me in this statement by Alison Kafer is ‘assumptions.’  In the podcast, Maria talks about how the artists of Creative Growth have not been asked to speak, to share their thoughts with the world before entering the art studio.     When the artists come to Creative Growth and are invited for the first time in thirty or forty years to speak, “they have a lot to say.” Maria talks about the vibe one feels upon entering the studio “100 artists all working next to each other, and this wave of creativity is just coming for you.” The wave of creativity is full of varying outlooks on the world. 

When most people hear accommodation, they think wheelchair ramps, curb cuts, and parking spaces. Creative Growth is accommodation many don’t consider. Maria says in the podcast “accommodated by the world wanting to know who you are.” The director also talks about how when the artists leave the studio they put their hoodies up to brace against the stigma they face on the train ride home. Accommodation comes in many different shapes and forms, and Creative Growth should be right there alongside curb cuts and wheelchair ramps.

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This youtube video talks a lot about a variety of shows starring “little people.” These reality programs act as the modern day freak show as they grow more and more popular.  The person speaking on the youtube video describes the reasons for the show's popularity, “ working, raising kids, and drama.” All three of these things are very normal, daily activities but because the show consists of people with dwarfism, the viewers are intrigued. How is watching this through a screen different from looking up at a stage? It isn’t. 

One of the people starring on a “tiny person” show shined a light on why the series is a success, “people always want to know about the unknown.” In Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s work “Disability, Identity, and Representation: An Introduction” the author talks about the use of freak shows to “display the disabled to confirm the ‘normal.’” People watch these TLC shows in order to reassure themselves of how ‘normal’ they are. Why else would they watch people doing day to day tasks, the viewers do themselves? Thomson also talks about the freak shows as a site where “the ordinary citizen could exercise the authority to interpret the natural world.” Viewers of these tiny people shows are doing this exact act. 

In the youtube video, a scene was shown in which a person with dwarfism is trying on a wedding dress and crying because she finally feels ‘beautiful.’ This directly shows how society has created a hierarchy of bodies. The moment is supposed to spark a pathos effect in the watcher, as they see this ‘tiny person’ feeling ‘normal.’ This is ableism at its finest. This is saying “you can not feel like one of us unless you wear a white wedding dress as a girl should.” The scene is using disability for the benefit of the non-disabled viewer. Thomson talks about this similar stigma presented in freak shows, “..the era’s physical and social hierarchy by spotlighting bodily stigma that could be choreographed as an absolute contrast to normal American embodiment.” I think this quote shows us that this normal American embodiment still exists or our society would not be watching people with dwarfism doing activities most Americans do every day.

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Quote from the article: “because of his disabilities the teen has been limited from doing a lot of things, including attending a school dance.” This line labels the disability as the problem instead of the lack of accessibility to such events. Why should using a wheelchair limit this student from attending prom? It shouldn't. 

The cheerleader who asked him to prom told the media “I just wanted to show him that he matters.” As Ndopu talks about in “Able Normative Supremecy and the Zero Mentality,” the bar is set so low that this student with a disability being asked to prom is groundbreaking. Why does asking him to prom correlate with his worth in the world?

“The girl’s sweet ‘promposal’ has gone viral, warming the hearts of everyone.” That is, warming the hearts of people without disabilities. This article fulfills the Mundane category of the supercrip talked about in “Reevaluating the Super Crip” by Sam Schalk. The Mudance supercrip ideology reeks of ableism preaching “people with disabilities are just like me and you.” Just like tv ads using people with disabilities to “inspire” and sell products, this whole scenario is being used to make able-bodied people feel warm inside. 

“Wheelchair-bound friend,” was used in this segment instead of “uses wheelchair.” As discussed in Simi Linton’s “Reassigning Meaning” using “wheelchair-bound” implies the person is trapped and creates a negative connotation towards the wheelchair. If the writer of this article bothered to talk to someone who uses a wheelchair, they would find the item actually creates freedom and movement as it allows the person to not be bed-bound or home-bound. 

As prom season approaches we will seem more of these proposals and more “heartwarming” stories. It is important to recognize the ableism present in these events and its effects on the disabled community. Pushing back and moving past the “zero mentality” (Ndopu) and supercrip narratives will begin the process of eliminating these articles.