capri0mni | *Sings* Five (random) things! (Reply)

Yesterday, was the UN International Day of Disabled Persons. I did not have spirit to post anything on it, but today, I came across this great essay in the LJ Comm "No_Pity" by dwgism (reproduced below the cut, because some people on my access list have computers that can't handle LJ's inflicted advertising):

I sail, I fly gliders, I go white-water rafting. I did draw the line at jumping off a mountain (even with parascending chute attached), but there are few things I won’t try if given the opportunity. I’m also that proverbial forty-something, middle-class, white guy who is least at risk of anything of any part of the population. And yet in the past fifteen years or so I’ve been physically assaulted once and verbally abused at least six or seven times. You wouldn’t think I was an obvious target, all of the attacks have been in broad daylight on well travelled streets, and in the main I’ve been taller and heftier built than most of my abusers, not really someone you would attach the label ‘vulnerable’ to.

Yet mention that I walk with crutches and that whole assumption changes.

To judge from the viewpoints we hear parroted by the police and the authorities, as a disabled person, and therefore inherently ‘vulnerable’, I am some frail, ethereal, slip of a figure, risking serious damage just by daring to be out in public, never mind actually interacting with society. And there is something to that, no attacks on me until I reached thirty and started to use crutches, then about one every couple of years since – and I don’t spend much time on the streets compared to many. But ‘vulnerable’? Let’s not be shy, ladies and gentlemen, let’s call a spade a bloody shovel and label it for what it really is, hatred of me for having the audacity to be out on the street as a disabled person.

I am not ‘vulnerable’ because I am disabled, I am targeted because I am disabled. Each attack has specifically and deliberately singled out some aspect of my disability to focus upon. As I said, I have been taller and heftier than pretty much all of my abusers, but taller and heftier doesn’t count for much when the bigots run in packs. If I was ‘vulnerable’, then it would have been me who was injured when a bigot thought it would be funny for he and his friend to knock me to the ground, rather than the reality that left him gasping for breath around bruised ribs. With one exception, and he was drunk out of his mind, every attack on me has involved two or more people. There isn’t a person in the country who isn’t vulnerable when facing odds of two or more to one, so why apply that label specifically to disabled people?

Or does that ‘vulnerable’ label reveal more about the people conferring it than the people it is applied to? If we are ‘vulnerable’ to them, then are we not, inevitably, seen as less than adult, less suitable to be out on the street unsupervised, flying in the face of good sense, responsible for our own downfall? Doesn’t this label suggest someone who thinks that opening the locks that kept us safely shut-away in society’s collective attic was a bad idea, who, deep down, is profoundly uncomfortable with someone who doesn’t meet his definition of ‘normal’. We know those attitudes predominate in the community at large, it is unreasonable to expect that they aren’t also present in the deeply socially conservative police and legal authorities.

So when someone listens to our experience of hatred and catalogues us as ‘vulnerable’, they aren’t being part of the solution, but establishing themselves as part of the problem. If we want to solve the problem of disability hate crimes, then we need to stop the crimes, but that means routing out the fear of disability wherever we find it. And when someone labels us ‘vulnerable’, that’s undoubtedly the language of fear.
I just realized, last night, that only one of my neighbors in my cul-de-sac has any Christmas lights up -- one bright green bunch of lights in one upstairs window. I honestly can't remember what last year's displays were like, but two years ago, every window and bush, it seemed was outlined and sparkly before the leftover Thanksgiving turkey was in the fridge.

When I made the realization, I got a little down.
- Of course, I haven't put up any lights since Christmas, '05; I was keeping them up until my dad came down for my birthday visit, so I could share them with him, and he could help take them down. Of course, he never came down for that visit again, because just before he was planning to, he fell, broke his leg, and discovered he had lung cancer.
  
  It's not that I miss the decorations. I miss having someone else to share them with. Putting them up for just me seems a bit pointless.
At the Art Garden after-gathering, Irene O'Garden asked me if I was still active in the neo-Pagan community, and that's when I tried to explain how I shifted from polythesism to agnosticism bordering on atheism. And she urged me to write it down-- really! I've written about various aspects of that process a few times, here in my journal. But I might try polishing up a single coherent version, here, over the winter.
A discussion of "How to approach Santa" in a friend's journal, yesterday, reminded me of a pet peeve my mother had about the Santa Culture: The "Be good, or Santa won't bring you anything!" threat.

I remember we were in a hospital waiting room (it was actually just a couple of benches in a wide, brick-walled hospital hallway-- kinda dark), and there was a mother and a kid of about seven across from us (I think I was about ten, iirc). And the kid was whining and crying and on the verge of a temper tantrum, and the mother said: "If you're not good, Santa won't bring you anything!"

And Mother said, aside to me: "Santa is the spirit of love, and generosity! Love doesn't stop just because you misbehave!"

My mom was the coolest.

(Plus, there's the implication that poor children are bad, or [as explicitely stated in the film version of The Polar Express] suffering from insufficient "Belief"). :::Shudder:::

I want to bring back the late 18th- early 19th Century tradition of bands of wild "Santas" harrassing the wealthy until they give money, toys, and treats to be handed out to the poorest kids in town: Comfort the Afflicted, and Afflict the Comfortable!
I've started over on my monster story. I drew a watercolor pencil portrait of my main character, and today, I'll do hand-written/drawn wordwebs for my characters. Doing Internet research, yesterday, I discovered, that nearly every part of the process, there are still individual people putting their hands and eyes on the plush toys. So now I'm wondering if I should alter my origin story which relied on computerized machines malfuntioning...