Thread by @IvaCheung

Live-tweeting from the #DisabilityPolitics101 workshop today. Feel free to mute or follow along as desired!

Starting off with @mssinenomine, who has titled her talk “Everything Sucks for a Reason.”

That’s how a lot of us are feeling about what’s been going on with the pandemic, for example—the government’s response or lack of response.

#DisabilityPolitics101

We’re surrounded by so much pain and injustice in the land we call Canada, but we’re told it’s a perfectly wonderful place with a delightful history. So if you feel lousy, it must just be you.

#DisabilityPolitics101

Colonialism and ableism and white supremacy have so much interwoven history. #DisabilityPolitics101

Bill C7 was the expansion of medical assistance in dying to disabled people who aren’t dying. A disabled person could be offered MAiD as a treatment whereas a nondisabled person wouldn’t. #DisabilityPolitics101

Disabled people, like Rosina Kamis, are choosing this option because they aren’t being given the support they need to live, including adeqeuate pain management, an alternative to being a lone or being institutionalized, resources to live. #DisabilityPolitics101

Disabled people are either invisible, or somebody is speaking for them or taking their words and watering them down to be more palatable.

Quoting a Twitter user: “When you speak for us, you’re silencing us. We don’t need you to speak for us. Amplify us.”

#DisabilityPolitics101

Disabled poor people were put into crisis during the pandemic. And triage protocols, where disabled people would be denied lifesaving health care, made it clear to disabled people that the government thought they were less worthy than nondisabled people. #DisabilityPolitics101

Excerpted from an essay by Sunny Taylor, “The Right Not to Work: Power and Disability.”

“I am very happy not working. Instead, I spend the majority of my time doing the activity I find the most rewarding and valuable, painting.”

#DisabilityPolitics101

Policies that support disabled people would also be better for nondisabled people.

The more we centre work and employment, the more we marginalize the disability community. We challenge productivism.

#DisabilityPolitics101

We’d like to think that abuses of disabled people are ancient history, but many of the worst known offences are within our lifetimes, with survivors still working to give names to unmarked graves on institution grounds. And institutionalization is ongoing. #DisabilityPolitics101

Now hearing from @anne_theriault on a compassionate alternative to institutionalization for people with mental illness. #DisabilityPolitics101

She’s wrote about the story she’s telling here: #DisabilityPolitics101 broadview.org/geel-belgium-m…

Because this program has gone on for so long and has been isolated without many outside influences, it changed the culture of the town. Behaviours we associate with mental illness became normalized and destigmatized. #DisabilityPolitics101

.@mssinenomine on “unintended participants”: if you point out a barrier, you often get the response, “Oh, we hadn’t thought of that!” but the program/service/item was designed based on a certain definition of human; disabled ppl weren’t in that definition. #DisabilityPolitics101

How hearing from @PamelaHope3 on disfigurement and disability.

She prefers “disfigured,” but people also use terms like “facial difference,” “limb differences,” “oddity,” natural born.”

She has a tattoo that says “Human” on her wrist. #DisabilityPolitics101

She’ll avoid “deformed,” “malformed,” “freak,” “beautiful,” “mutation,” “half-“-anything, “monster,” “grotesque.” #DisabilityPolitics101

“Disfiguremisia” was coined by @guysmiley22 to describe “the erasure of an prejudice against disfigured people and people with visible differences.” #DisabilityPolitics101

You can be neither, either, or both disfigured and disabled. If you don’t identified as disfigured, please don’t speak over those who do. Like “disabled,” it’s not a bad word. #DisabilityPolitics101

Lateral ableism includes when disabled people say “at least I’m not disfigured” or when “disfigured people say “at least I’m not disabled.” #DisabilityPolitics101

This thread describes @PamelaHope3’s experience of Guillermo del Toro’s exhibit on monsters:

https://twitter.com/PamelaHope3/status/933726598502797313

The notion that we don’t have freak shows anymore is false. We still have “Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick’s skull preserved in a museum in the UK.

#DisabilityPolitics101

.@PamelaHope3 talks about how she related to the Futurama character Leela, who had a storyline about feeling alone and eventually finding representation and community and belonging. #DisabilityPolitics101

“Deformed babies in jars are not art or science. How did they die?”

@PamelaHope3 talking about how a grade 9 assignment asked students to write about what their lives would be in the Elizabethan era. She wrote that she would have been buried alive. In grade 9!

We still see “freak shows” in medical textbooks—black and white images of people with black bars over their eyes, ostensibly for educational purposes. #DisabilityPolitics101

.@mssinenomine says that people pat themselves on the back when their committee has someone other than a privileged white cis man, but it’s important to keep asking yourself who isn’t there and who isn’t being represented.

And then ask yourself why. #DisabilityPolitics101

.@SpringHawes: Disabled people are constantly told they are burdens or that they’ve caused their misfortune. Some people in the community have gotten to a place where they can push back, but people do internalize these messages, and they are deeply harmful. #DisabilityPolitics101

Next up: @qjusttheletter, @RabbitRichards & @TonyeAganaba on mutual aid and abolition. #DisabilityPolitics101

What do defunding the police and abolition have to do with disability?

@RabbitRichards: “Well, they won’t stop killing us, so I think it would be good if we stopped paying them to do it.”

#DisabilityPolitics101

.@TonyeAganaba: Black people, racialized people, neurodivergent people are so much more likely to have contact with the police. The disability and abolition movements have to work hand in hand to be in true solidarity. #DisabilityPolitics101

Racism, as defined by Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “the state-sanctioned and/or extra-legal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”

What strikes @RabbitRichards is its applicability to ableism.

#DisabilityPolitics101

“It’s silly to me how solidarity gets lost when we’re all fighting for the same thing.” @RabbitRichards #DisabilityPolitics101

.@qjusttheletter showing the free fridge in Chilliwack. Includes a pantry and a half-sized fridge, with a sign saying what can be put in the fridge. Almost as soon as food comes in, it goes out. Many folks who use the free fridge are criminalized. #DisabilityPolitics101

Mutual aid is about recognizing that the government doesn’t care if you live or die and coming together in service to the community. Mutual aid is no strings attached, both material and emotional support. #DisabilityPolitics101

.@RabbitRichards: “We’re flesh-and-blood people, and we’re trying to fight *systems*. Supporting each other in material ways is the only way we’ll move forward.” #DisabilityPolitics101

Now hearing from @SpringHawes on everyday ableism. #DisabilityPolitics101

Ableism is rooted in the belief that disability needs fixing and classifies disabled people as “less than.” #DisabilityPolitics101

Examples of everyday ableism:

1. Ableism and the “tragedy of disability.”

Disability has always existed and is natural. It is not a bad thing. #DisabilityPolitics101

2. Ableism and overcoming.

#1 feeds into this point. People feel the need to minimize their disability for the comfort of others, and internalized shame from not being able to *get better* can lead to thoughts of suicide. #DisabilityPolitics101

3. Ableism, burden and the centring of non-disabled people

@SpringHawes gives example of recent Washington Post article on non-disabled caregivers of disabled spouses.

#DisabilityPolitics101

4. Ableism and the expectation of gratitude

Disabled people feel the need to apologize for existing as disabled people. They suppress their own needs and emotions in order to deserve support and care, perform gratitude. #DisabilityPolitics101

5. Ableism, microaggressions and infantilization

@SpringHawes describes being talked to in a high-pitched baby voice and called “a good helper.”

Takes a huge amount of emotional energy to remain calm in those situations.

Microaggressions are cumulative. #DisabilityPolitics101

6. Ableism and the “right kind” of disabled

A disabled person who is otherwise privileged and fit is considered heroic, but a disabled person who doesn’t look the part is considered a parasite.

#DisabilityPolitics101

Ableism and applied dehumanization

Forced intimacy: disabled people are expected to display their vulnerabilities to get basic access to what they need.

#DisabilityPolitics101

“If your revolution isn’t accessible, it’s not a revolution.” @qjusttheletter #DisabilityPolitics101