Everybody let's not sleep on the fact that Claudia's *entire* arc is not only about her discovering her queerness, but it's also an allegory about disability and ableism.
Claudia is "disabled" in a vampire sense. She has a weaker, slighter body, and looks younger than she is. She can't physically turn vampires, and must rely on help, having to beg for something other vampires can do freely.
She is sexually abused because of her percieved weakness by Bruce, a sad fact that the disabled are more likely to be.
But when she wishes to express her own sexuality she is mocked and patronized by her inability to control herself and not kill doing the act (something the physically older vampires are able to do), and again not able to turn one she wishes for her companion, and have to humiliate herself in the process (having to endure Louis calling her a burden in an attempt to convince Armand).
She just have to shut up and take it, just have so many disabled people have to endure abuse from the caregivers they rely on.
Her ability to decide for her own life, are constantly questioned, as are those with disabilities.
She is patronized, disregarded and systematically ridiculed just for wanting to be a part of a group.
Only Madeleine view her as an equal, and neither coddle her and patronize her.
So remember, when you write about Claudia, and how her relationship with Madeleine gives you "the ick" despite Claudia being a mature woman mentally, just because she has a physically slighter, younger body, remember that many disabled people, physically or mentally, can appear much younger than we are, yet still have fully formed sexual desires, and inner lives. Remember the people who's bodies outside of fiction who's sexual desires gives you "the ick" because they fall out of social norms.
And remember, that Claudia in this series is not only a sapphic woman of color, she's a *disabled* sapphic woman of color (and I love her for it).
549 notes
·
View notes
“You may now become who you thought was disposable”: COVID-19 Politics and Ableism - Published July 4, 2024
Unpaywalled link available in the link to our archive! A taste below!
“You may now become who you thought was disposable”:
COVID-19 Politics and Ableism
Andrea Kitta
Journal of American Folklore, Volume 137, Number 545, Summer 2024,
pp. 321-330 (Article)
Published by American Folklore Society
For additional information about this article
muse.jhu.edu/article/931461[37.228.238.33] Project MUSE (2024-07-09 12:59 GMT) American Folklore Society
This essay critically examines the intersection of COVID-19, Long COVID, ableism, and health care disparities in the United States, emphasizing the transformative impact of COVID-19 as a mass disabling event with a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. I also bring an autoethnographic lens to my experi-
ence of COVID-19 and Long COVID, underscoring the importance of recognizing the diverse and often untellable experiences of individuals with disabilities and challenging the prevailing ableist perspectives embedded in society. I raise ethical considerations of storytelling in the context of Long COVID and urge researchers to
embrace empathy and a more inclusive approach that challenges traditional notions of objectivity and distancing within academic research. I call for a collaborative approach between disability studies and folklore studies, encouraging scholars to interrogate and explore the traditions shaped by experiences of disability.
On December 13, 2020, disability advocate Imani Barbarin created a TikTok where she stated in the caption: “COVID is a mass disabling event. Things will never
be the same. Never. You may now become who you thought was disposable” (Barbarin 2020). Barbarin was not overstating what is happening in the United States. In addition to the overwhelming number of US-based COVID-19 deaths (1.07 million as of November 1, 2022, according to the New York Times COVID-19 Tracker [New
York Times 2023]), there is also an alarming number of cases of post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) or, as it’s more commonly known, Long COVID. Long COVID happens in anywhere from 5 percent to 50 percent of COVID-19 infections (although most medical experts agree the rate of Long COVID is somewhere around 20–30 percent of all infections). Long COVID affects women at a 22 percent higher rate than men (Sylvester et al. 2022:1391), and one study of Long COVID listed over 200 symptoms (Davis et al. 2021). The most common symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath, cough, chest pain, brain fog, sleep disturbances, depression, joint pain, and dysautonomia (a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system that typically
presents as the inability to control temperature, breathing issues, and other things the body normally controls automatically).
Current estimates of those affected by Long COVID in the United States are between twenty and forty million. COVID-19 has
also been shown to reactivate other viruses (Gold et al. 2021; Chen et al. 2022; Su et al. 2022), and one current theory is that Long COVID is the result of the COVID-19 virus continually being reactivated in the body (Klein et al. 2022). The latest research
out of Yale University shows that COVID-19 cases entail cellular changes to the B and T cells, lower levels of cortisol, and that the virus can reactivate other viruses (Su et al. 2022:891–2). A recent study with more than 154,068 participants showed that “in the post-acute phase of COVID-19, there was increased risk of an array of incident neurologic sequelae including ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, cognition and memory disorders, peripheral nervous system disorders, episodic disorders (for example, migraine and seizures), extrapyramidal and movement disorders, men tal health disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, sensory disorders, Guillain–Barré syndrome, and encephalitis or encephalopathy” (Xu, Xie, and Al-Aly 2022:2406).
Both COVID-19 and Long COVID exposed inequities in the US health care system, with Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) populations dying from COVID-19 at much higher rates than White people at the beginning of the pandemic. Compared to White people, Alaskan Indian or Alaskan Natives died at 2.1 times the rate, Black people at 1.7 times the rate, Hispanic or Latinx people at 1.8 the rate, and Asian Americans at 0.8 times the rate (CDC 2023). According to the Washington Post’s analysis of CDC’s statistics, the rate of White people dying from COVID-19
became equal to the rate of other groups beginning in October 2021, then (except for the Omicron wave) increased, primarily due to White people being unvaccinated. Strangely enough, the equalizing trend wasn’t because death rates dropped for BIPOC
people, but rather was due to the rise of the White death rate. Tasleem Padamsee, Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University who researched vaccine use and who is a member of the Ohio Department of Health’s work group on health equity, stated:
“Usually, when we say a health disparity is disappearing, what we mean is that . . . the worse-off group is getting better. . . . We don’t usually mean that the group that had a systematic advantage got worse” (quoted in Johnson and Keating 2022).
Additionally, at the time of this writing in Spring 2023, the pandemic has been declared as “over” despite the fact that around 400 people are still dying per day in the United States and that those dying tend to be people with disabilities and the
elderly (New York Times 2023). It’s difficult to imagine a situation where 400 deaths a day are deemed acceptable, yet here we are. Many people are desperate to “get back to normal” and seem to care more about going maskless or dining indoors than they do about those who are dying of COVID-19. Those who are unvaccinated and unmasked also seem to not understand (or not care) that the longer they continue on that path, the longer the pandemic will take to dissipate. Simply put, the majority
of people do not seem to care about people with disabilities, including those who are immunocompromised, and their increased health risks due to the pandemic.
People with disabilities are an unrecognized health disparity population, and they died at much higher rates during COVID-19 (Krahn, Walker, and Correa-de-Araujo 2015). The National Council on Disability found that 181,000 people with disabilities in long-term care facilities died from COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic, making up one-third of COVID-19 deaths at that time (National Council of Disabilities 2021). The report is worth quoting at length.
In addition to disproportionate fatalities, key findings of the report include:
People with disabilities faced a high risk of being triaged out of COVID-19 treatment
when hospital beds, supplies, and personnel were scarce; were denied the use of their
personal ventilator devices after admission to a hospital; and at times, were denied the
assistance of critical support persons during hospital stays. Informal and formal Crisis
Standards of Care (CSC), pronouncements that guided the provision of scarce health
care resources in surge situations, targeted people with certain disabilities for denial of
care (National Council of Disabilities 2021).
Students with disabilities were denied necessary educational services and supports during
the pandemic and have experienced disruption and regression in their behavioral and
educational goals (National Council of Disabilities 2021).
The growing shortage of direct care workers in existence prior to the pandemic became
worse during the pandemic. Many such workers, who are women of color earning less
than a living wage and lacking health benefits, left their positions for fear of contracting
and spreading the virus, leaving people with disabilities and their caregivers without
aid and some at risk of losing their independence or being institutionalized (National
Council of Disabilities 2021).
Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Deaf-Blind, and Blind persons faced a profound communication
gulf as masks became commonplace, making lip-reading impossible and sign language
harder (National Council of Disabilities 2021).
133 notes
·
View notes
This is the DUMBEST SHIT I have ever seen, so congratulations! You win a prize and the prize is apparently "myling unwisely picking fights".
AS A LEVEL 1 autistic person I say this unto you: Shut up. Sit down. Listen to higher support autistics. If you're so scared to be seen as disabled that you have to deny how autism is the direct cause of people's disability, there's always just the possibility of masking. I don't like saying that, because I think it's perfectly possible to both be autistic and to not be disabled in any way, but I despise these attempts from fellow low support autistic people to distance the disorder from those who are actually disabled. It stinks of ableism.
ASD isn't a mental illness. It is a developmental disorder. Feel free to explain how homosexuality being seen historically as a mental illness maps onto a developmental disorder that is frequently both intellectually and physically disabling.
Sometimes, there's actually a good reason to have a name for a group of symptoms! Such as the fact it makes it easier to get help.
225 notes
·
View notes
I hope it turns out that Maggie is "just" a human. I hope it turns out that there is absolutely nothing supernatural or occult or celestial or whatnot about her, fuck, I hope it turns out it's NINA instead.
Fuck, I'm trying very hard not to be frustrated and upset, but I am. I am because it's been over a month and people are still taking Maggie's clearly neurodivergent, and more specifically autistic, behaviour and twist it into "oh look no normal human is like this she's so creepy she must be a demon or an angel" like are you LISTENING to yourselves?
YES she talks differently sometimes, yes she's emotional, yes she did ONE FUCKING SPELLING MISTAKE while she was literally sobbing her eyes out. People are like that, you know. People that don't drink and that didn't go to parties and don't socialize well exist. I'm that person.
I had absolutely ZERO thoughts about Maggie being a celestial because to me, she isn't weird. There is nothing off about her. She's like me, I felt SEEN, I felt recognized and acknowledged.
The worst part is that people LOVE headcanoning Muriel or Aziraphale or Crowley as autistic but as soon as it's not something people can either infantilize or twist into something else, they hate it. Muriel gets praised for the same traits that have people calling Maggie a villain.
Can we stop doing that? Can we stop taking people who are weird or visibly disabled or different and shoving them into the non-human box? Do you have any idea how dehumanizing that is for people who are like those characters?
We had canonically non-binary characters this season that are human, so why, and please fucking tell me WHY, is it impossible in your minds to have disabled humans around? Why does anyone slightly weird have to be a supernatural being?
Just because Maggie's behaviour isn't played off as a joke? Because she is allowed to be a middle-aged, lesbian autistic woman? Because you cannot infantilize her like you can with Muriel?
Please tell me because I don't fucking know.
294 notes
·
View notes