More Anna, elsewhere
Nov. 17th, 2009 10:13 am![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troubleMy post on Jordan's Principle, which was also published during IBARW, is up at FWD/Forward. If you recall the post I did about First Nations children dying 800 miles away from home while Provincial and Federal governments bickered about who would pay for their care, it's that post. Although I'm thinking I need to just start tagging certain things on FWD/Forward with "Anna is bitter" or "bitter Canadian warning", since wow. I write bitter stuff a lot. There's a post coming up this week where I go on a parenthetical rant about Nova Scotia, too.
My post, How to make your blog accessible in five not-very-complicated steps went up yesterday at Bitch. Unlike the post about Glee, the comments are not full of fail like "but it's so hard to think about other people's experiences!"
The comments on the Glee post over at Bitch are kinda making me despair. I'm always amazed at some of the pushback on such simple things like "Artie is poorly acted, doesn't know how to use a wheelchair, and maybe if they had an actor who was in a wheelchair, the plots wouldn't be damned stupid and offensive" (emphasis on the maybe). Primary objections:
"Everyone keeps saying that only people with disabilities should play characters with disabilities!" (Nope, they aren't.)
"Then we'd end up hiring less talented actors just because they had disabilities!" (Because, obviously, actors with disabilities are less talented than their able bodied counter parts, right? Also fun when people agree that Kevin McHale isn't actually a good actor, so I don't even know for what reasons they're defending his choice to play Artie.)
"You didn't talk about how so few shows have characters with disabilities in them!" (Probably because we're talking about Glee, not the entirety of television, but if you really want my Supernatural rant, you're welcome to pay me as much as Bitch is to write it)
"Stop being so mean and critiquing this show I like!" Ah hah. I think this is the real problem people have. I would be so much happier if they'd just say that, it's easier.
Right now what's burning my biscuits is the person on Bitch making it out like I said something really offensive by pointing out that people who have actually used wheelchairs on a regular basis do not act as uncomfortable in them as Kevin McHale does. I think that's lovely - she's trying to make it look like I said something like "all people in wheelchairs act in a certain way". Which, no - but they certainly wouldn't look as uncomfortable in the chair as McHale does after four years of using it every single day. Which is what I've said. Twice now. But hey! It's much easier to dismiss that comment if you turn into something bad.
(Just as an aside, I was thinking the other day about the first day Don got the chair, and how it was this huge big Thing in how we both behaved, and how it took us a few weeks to really settle into its presence. Now I never try and catch him when he's going over curb cuts.)
Anyway, yeah. I have written things. That Jordan's Principle post was supposed to go up at 1:00 p.m., not a.m., but that's just the way things go sometimes.
My post, How to make your blog accessible in five not-very-complicated steps went up yesterday at Bitch. Unlike the post about Glee, the comments are not full of fail like "but it's so hard to think about other people's experiences!"
The comments on the Glee post over at Bitch are kinda making me despair. I'm always amazed at some of the pushback on such simple things like "Artie is poorly acted, doesn't know how to use a wheelchair, and maybe if they had an actor who was in a wheelchair, the plots wouldn't be damned stupid and offensive" (emphasis on the maybe). Primary objections:
"Everyone keeps saying that only people with disabilities should play characters with disabilities!" (Nope, they aren't.)
"Then we'd end up hiring less talented actors just because they had disabilities!" (Because, obviously, actors with disabilities are less talented than their able bodied counter parts, right? Also fun when people agree that Kevin McHale isn't actually a good actor, so I don't even know for what reasons they're defending his choice to play Artie.)
"You didn't talk about how so few shows have characters with disabilities in them!" (Probably because we're talking about Glee, not the entirety of television, but if you really want my Supernatural rant, you're welcome to pay me as much as Bitch is to write it)
"Stop being so mean and critiquing this show I like!" Ah hah. I think this is the real problem people have. I would be so much happier if they'd just say that, it's easier.
Right now what's burning my biscuits is the person on Bitch making it out like I said something really offensive by pointing out that people who have actually used wheelchairs on a regular basis do not act as uncomfortable in them as Kevin McHale does. I think that's lovely - she's trying to make it look like I said something like "all people in wheelchairs act in a certain way". Which, no - but they certainly wouldn't look as uncomfortable in the chair as McHale does after four years of using it every single day. Which is what I've said. Twice now. But hey! It's much easier to dismiss that comment if you turn into something bad.
(Just as an aside, I was thinking the other day about the first day Don got the chair, and how it was this huge big Thing in how we both behaved, and how it took us a few weeks to really settle into its presence. Now I never try and catch him when he's going over curb cuts.)
Anyway, yeah. I have written things. That Jordan's Principle post was supposed to go up at 1:00 p.m., not a.m., but that's just the way things go sometimes.