Thread by @JillianWeise

And to my colleagues? The ones calling me "crazy" or "not believable" ? I will be writing about you next.

I mean, if I feel like it.

I don't know if I feel like it. I have not decided yet.

I have two other books with @HarperCollins before I get around to writing abt you

There's no way in hell I'm going to interrupt my current memoir to suddenly pay attention to some standard abuse that we disabled faculty (and students and staff) receive all the time. Abuse so standard? I already wrote about version of it

No, the memoir will not be about you.

What do I mean by "I already wrote about version of [standard abuse of disabled ppl inside higher ed]" ?

Here's "Some Husbands I Work With." It appears in @epiphanylit and these are tags & content warnings : #EmilyDickinson #SpousalHires #Censorship #Disabled #AcademicChatter

That photo and the photo of the cover are readily avail to me bc I sell the essay as PDF in my Etsy shop. Very glad I made that choice, to sell PDFs, on Etsy. Because now here I am: in a hotel nowhere near my home nor workplace. Because white cis male co-workers harmed me.

I'm thinking of the woman who was an administrative assistant in Strode Tower, who I did not know that well, and who decided she could no longer work and live under the conditions that she was in, at Strode Tower, and in her personal life.

That essay I wrote? That essay honors her life. That essay is for her. I know what kind of culture she was in bc I was in that culture right alongside her. Just one floor up. In another department. And her death affected me greatly.

And you know what we did to honor her death?

Nothing.

We did nothing to honor her death.

We did nothing to change the system.

We went to a football game that week. The President sent out an email telling us to be good sports to the opposing team, or some shit.

But worse than nothing? Some of us said: "Well, she was a drunk." So we blamed her. That's what we did. That's what made some of us feel better. That helped some of us sleep good at night. But not me. I was troubled by all of that. So I wrote about it.

Reading back over this: I do not wish to sound sanctimonious nor holier-than-thou. That's not helpful to anyone.

I am disturbed by my own complicity in an academic system that expects me, a disabled person, to witness abuse, take abuse, and do nothing to change it.

I am disturbed that my colleague at my former workplace did what she did, of her own free will and autonomy and choice, under pressures I don't even know, and what did I do? I just kept working.

I am disturbed that my best answer is: "well, I wrote an essay." That's not good enough for me. I'm not satisfied with art as a panacea for widespread academic abuses of disabled people. Art is not enough.

I am disturbed by how long I have been: not disturbed. Not disturbed at all. Just minding my business. Just knowing of abuses against disabled people in academic settings. And pretending like that's not my business. Like just another day in the academy.

Do I have answers for myself on why I stayed complicit in this system for so long? No.

Do I have a cure for how to rid academia of its abuse problem towards disabled people? No. I don't even believe in cure.

Do I love that June Jordan poem? Yes, I do. poets.org/poem/calling-a…