Trouble Is Everywhere

Hey Everyone! Let's play a fun game! Let's play "How much hatred towards people with disabilities can one location support?" A fun and exciting game that leads to wondering how many people sitting in the same room as you wish you would die.

(Exclamation Marks are Sarcasm Indicators.)

( I am a cut tag for your scrolling-by enjoyment! )

Hey so-called Progressives: Disability is not your fucking punch line and I hate you.

Wherein Wonkette dedicates a whole fucking post to mocking Trig Palin for being "r#tarded", because it's very progressive to mock children with disabilities! Seriously, it's a disgusting article. Read this description at adage instead.

(Oh, but see, they're mocking SARAH PALIN for "using her son as a political prop". Which is why they put up a post that implies that Trig is the product of incest between his father and sister, say that children with intellectual disabilities don't dream, and implied that he was born disabled because his mother drank while she was pregnant. Not, you know, just saying "This shit where Palin uses her son as a political prop is wrong." No no, they're mocking her by making him - and all children with disabilities by extension - the butt of the joke. Ha ha ha ha. ha ha. So creative. Gosh, those progressive sure are on the side of people with disabilities, right?)

And, of course:
Lady Gaga Calls Madonna Plagiarism charges r#tarded.

GOSH I'M SO GLAD THAT I HAVE PROGRESSIVES ON MY SIDE. It's been mere hours since I was last told that ableism wasn't a real thing because people with disabilities are treated with "kid gloves".

Online because I am foolishly updating my list of ( discussion of murder of pwd by family members )

Okay, so.

Yesterday I phoned twice and got different stories each time I phoned. Last night the repair company called Don and said they'd drop the wheelchair off today, if that was okay with him. Don said "Fuck yes", except in Don speak (so something very polite, to which I responded with "Fuck yeah, wheelchair!").

The wheelchair has just arrived (yay!). Basically everything we were told on the phone is not what is evident in the chair or from what the actual repair person said. We were told what was holding it up was fixing the "pivot" on the seat, which is the incline (electric wheelchairs have a tilt that allows you to raise or lower the incline of the seat). The repair person who actually worked on it said that it was a loose wire and they've spliced it. (In doing so they've reversed the switch so now you push up to make it go down.) They person on the phone said the "cushions" were still damaged. None of the cushions on the chair are damaged. They replaced the legs, which are difficult to get in. Had they consulted Don (which they never did), they would have learned he didn't want the legs replaced at this stage because they're difficult to get in. (A lot of Don's height is in his legs, and so he has to get in special order legs for the chair.)

From what we can tell, everything we've been told in every single contact with this company has been incorrect.

Don has a meeting with the OT on Friday. He's going to talk to them seriously about some other option for repair, because this is fucking ridiculous.

Now that the gun registry debate is dead for another year or so, obviously all the pundits and bloggers and tweeters from the Left are going to turn their energy towards bringing national attention to the shameful government waste of going to court to argue against making websites of government services accessible to people who use screen readers or other technology, right? People on my twitter feed are going to be using that #cndpol hashtag, they're going to use the #disability #accessibility hashtags, they're going to be @pmharper even though they know he's not actually behind that twitter account... Ignattieff and Layton are going to be pulling out all the stops, on the news, in the emails, making totally accessible video content, etc, all in the name of bringing attention to this important issue, right? Right? Because we all know that accessibility is a big deal to everyone here in Canada! This isn't a political hot potato, this is a serious issue and those bits on everyone's website about how they care about Disabled Canadians are totally true, right? Right? Right?

Right?
Maybe?

no, huh?

On Tuesday, Jodhan will argue in federal court that her inability to apply for a position on the federal jobs website or complete the online version of the 2006 Census breached her equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

She will also argue that this violation and her ongoing inability to access the government’s online information and services constitute a breach against all blind and partially sighted Canadians, said Jodhan’s lawyer David Baker.
...
American and European governments have adopted the latest international web accessibility standards for their websites as have Canadian banks and many businesses, he said. But the Canadian government has not — even though the changes would not be difficult or expensive to implement, he said.

Internet access to government services and information is not a right guaranteed in law, the government says in its written submission to the court.

DID YOU KNOW: People with disabilities had to campaign heavily to have their rights guaranteed under the Charter, but those rights are there, and those rights include equal access.

This is something I wrote for FWD that won't be going up for a couple of days:

John Stossel, if your business doesn't accommodate wheelchair users chances are you don't have many customers who are wheelchair users.

(Gentle reader, I cannot believe I just typed that sentence 20 years after the ADA passed into law.)

(There is more than that in the post, I promise.)

Today is Jerry Lewis Hates Cripples Day!. (He really did tell people with disabilities that if they don't want pity they should just stay in their homes. I'm so happy he got a humanitarian award for his work with "the disabled", aren't you?)

I was reminded by this post by Bad Cripple about new ways to create social change about how much I want to do some things on campus, like block the front access to the main admin building and advise people to "find another route" (without a sign), and go around one day and put up signs in front of every inaccessible building with "This building does not allow wheelchair users to enter".

Of course, I also want to write in chalk in front of various buildings in Halifax "Wheelchair Users Not Welcome".

You should now talk me out of this.

*epic-length incoherent screaming*

OH YAY! Gentle reader, I'm here to inform you that once again Tracy Latimer's murderer is in the news, which means we can deal with another week or two or months or years of people wibbling on about how Tracy Latimer's murderer is such a sweet innocent man who only murdered his disabled daughter because Tracy wasn't really a person and deserved to be murdered, and how he's such a victim of the system, and woe is poor him, and how cripples really DO have no life and it's totally okay for people to murder disabled children, as long as they don't have a disability and murder their own non-disabled children. Those people are menaces and should be locked up forever!!!!!!!!!!!

This reminds me, once again, of who's considered to have worth in this society.

Look, to be a bit more reasonable, I do think it's reasonable that Tracy Latimer's murderer be up for parole. We have rules about that in this country, and I'm not arguing about that. What I hate is every time Tracy Latimer's murderer is mentioned in the news, the same damned thing happens. Can we just ignore him until his prison term is up, and then keep him away from all children everywhere since he obviously thinks they're disposable? (Oh, wait, only the crippled children. That's okay then.)

Tracy Latimer. She laughed, she smiled, she had friends, she went to school. And he murdered her while the family was at church, in a way we've deemed is inhumane when applied to dogs. What an innocent woobie he is.

I sometimes wonder if we should start a "dead from harassment" list of feminist & social justice focused blogs. Maybe if we have a long list of blogs that have gone silent, have locked every post, or have, as This ain't living did today, as Avalon's Willow did over a year ago, just turned comments off rather than deal any longer. At the beginning of this month, two disability-focused blogs shut down due to harassment.

For myself, dealing with drive-by trolls is irritating, but not impossible. They usually leave something silly [my fav this week: "You dumb whiney bitch, I hope she exercised her right to ignore you."] and then leave, never to return. Sometimes they come in huge waves, like after the EE debacle, which leaves me shaking and frightened by the vitriol so many people can spit out in such a short period of time.

Then there are the campaigns some people seem to invest in. They don't just leave comments that are harassing. They send emails. They complain about the person they are harassing at other blogs. They question the other person's status. They start whispering campaigns. And every day, or every other day, they leave another harassing comment, write another harassing email, and then, when that comment isn't responded to, isn't approved, that email isn't acknowledged, it's added to the pile of sins. And since we, as Nice Bloggers, are not supposed to talk about the harassment, it looks very suspicious. "So, why didn't you approve that comment from Anna on your post? It's on topic! It's about the subject! It's very polite! Geeze, do you have something against Anna? Cuz Anna says you do."

I'm going to tell you something about me that is not good.

I have participated in some of the above activities. I've left angry comment after angry comment on a blog that I had formerly liked but eventually loathed. (I am not talking about Feministing.) I participated in one locked-conversation about how angry I was with the blog owner, and have had emails back and forth with people about how angry I still, quite frankly, am. I participated in one open conversation, that I know the blogger in question saw because she commented on that conversation as well. I've read and followed many threads that ultimately end up discussing how much people loathe this blogger.

As someone who has since become the subject of a similar campaign, I am so deeply ashamed of myself. I had no idea how incredibly horrible this stuff could become. I had no idea how much it could leave you shaking and upset, how much it could hurt. I felt that somehow or another being a "Big Name Blogger" would protect someone from the pain of being speculated upon in public.

I don't tell you the above so anyone can pat me on the head and tell me I did the right thing or that I'm a good person or that I'm being brave by talking about it now or anything of that nature. I write it because I think it's important to realise that we can be participating in harassing behavior, even if that's not our intention. I didn't want to harass this person off the internet. I just wanted to talk about her. I just wanted to "have my say". I just wanted to be sure that people knew "how I felt". And while I am far from the worst of people who have done this, I participated in this hazing because I wanted to. Because it was more important to me that people see how this person was doing blogging wrong than it was that I just ignore someone who so pissed me off.

There is a difference between questioning what someone has said, and questioning who that person is. And there's a difference between saying "Okay, I'm done with this. Your stuff is not what I want to be reading and supporting right now", and repeating that statement many many times, both to the person you mean, and to others when you talk about them, over and over and over in a public space.

There seems to be a theory in the blogosphere that some people can just take it; that somehow this type of harassment is okay because they're getting something out of it. They're "big enough" that talking about them - as opposed to their ideas - is okay. They're getting attention, right? They're Big Names, and Big Names don't deserve the same respect or response you'd give to someone smaller.

Of course, none of the above is limited to Big Name Bloggers, and I don't mean to imply otherwise. I've known of smaller campaigns against very small blogs that, just due to the sheer relentless nature of them, have driven the blogger in question underground. Because it ends up being every day - every time you check your mod queue, every time you check your inbox. And sometimes, without meaning to, other people will help the harasser. They'll ask, without knowing the background, why you aren't approving the comments. They'll be quizzical in the harassers blog about why their comments haven't been approved, because they don't know.

And as Nice Bloggers, we're not supposed to talk about it. That's "causing drama". That's "giving them power". That's "playing their game."

Just ignore them, they'll go away.

The harassment that drove s.e. smith to close comments on ou's blog started in September. It has been ongoing since then, and has including harassment at FWD. Ignoring it has not made the harassment go away, but it has made ou not blog about certain subjects, and now just shut down comments rather than deal with it anymore.

Ignoring it has not made it go away.

Now what?

Oh 3 a.m. It's been a mere 24 hours since you last darkened my experiences. *sigh* Insomnia is more fun when it involves baking cookies.

The wheelchair repair people showed up today, took the wheelchair away, and assured us that we'd hear by by this afternoon about how long it would take to fix, and what it would cost.

At 3:30 Don called them to find out what was up, and was told "Oh, no, we're not even going to look at it before Monday."
( this is random life-blethering, mostly very down )

Okay, enough of that. Tomorrow = free trial yoga, perhaps Mandatory Togetherness Time with Katie & Emmy, and Don has promised I can buy a new book. (He has also, cleverly, told me which book I can buy from my "I MUST HAVE THIS BOOK OR I WILL DIE RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW" list, because otherwise book buying will take three days and a pony.)

Here, have a picture of a cow (and me!):