I've been trying to write a piece about Assisted Suicide (AS) for years. I've been collating links and quotes here and there. I've written the odd paragraph that's popped into my head. I've compiled statistics, made notes on documentaries and generally tried to write a well researched, fact-based post.
Maybe I'll actually post it some day. Today I'm not using quotes from other people about why they think legalising AS is bad; today I'm writing purely about my own thoughts and experiences. The rest of this post is behind a jump due to talk of suicide and probably other triggery things too.
Showing posts with label gayness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gayness. Show all posts
27 March 2014
25 February 2014
♫...What else should I be? All apologies. What else should I say? Everyone is gay...♫
Both the mainstream media and the gay press have been writing vast amounts of articles over the last couple of days about Uganda's new homophobic law, punishing gays with up to life imprisonment for having the audacity to love. Rightly so; it's an outrageous law that needs to be condemned internationally.
But there's been one remarkable fact omitted from all the write ups I've read in the pink press, and that's the disablism written into the law.
First-time offenders will be sentenced to 14 years. But people found guilty of "aggravated homosexuality" which means 'repeated gay sex between consenting adults and acts involving a minor, a disabled person or where one partner was infected with HIV' will be sentenced to life. The mainstream media will write about it - that link takes you to The Guardian - but not the gay press.
(Note I said "all the write ups I have read". If you've seen an article in the gay press that I've missed, please post a link in the comments.)
As David pointed out in a post on my Facebook wall with regards to the law itself:
I'm sure the press don't think it's worth reporting the extra sentencing for shagging a disabled person because disabled people are seen as so disgusting that the authors of the articles themselves would never dream of doing one of us. You have to remember that 70% of people would never have sex with a disabled person, and I've never seen any evidence to suggest that gay people are less disablist. I'm sure that journalists writing for gay publications can imagine themselves going on assignment to Uganda and winding up spending 14 years in jail, but they just can't envisage hooking up with a hot crip; because they refuse to see disabled people as sexual beings.
So I'm an aggravated homosexual alright.
The weirdest thing is that it's not the gay disabled person that's going to get the increased sentence; it's their partner. The press usually suddenly give a crap about disability issues when they start to affect non-disabled people. Like how the papers didn't give a damn about disability hate crime until the death of Fiona Pilkington. But once a non-disabled person had taken her own life because of the disablist harassment her family faced; the press were all over it. Most people still call it "the Pilkington case", despite the fact that she murdered her disabled daughter Francecca Hardwick who'd been on the receiving end of the hate crime.
This isn't the first time the gay press have ignored issues where gayness and disabledness intersect. When disabled gay teenager Steven Simpson was first killed, the gay press wouldn't touch the story. That particular news story for Huff Post's Gay Voices was written when his killer was sentenced nearly a year later (and several other gay outlets did deign to report it at that point too).
The one place that reported the story at the time of Simpson's death was The Daily Mail. Remarkable considering they usually hate both gay people and disabled people in equal measure.
At the time I did Email a gay website drawing their attention to Simpson's death and the reply I got was:
Because an openly gay kid getting set on fire suddenly can't be connected to anything gay if he also has an impairment. Disability is like the ultimate gay remover. (But no-one tell Museveni that or he'll go around snapping the spines of suspected homos to sanitise the gay away.)
This same website that doesn't think that there's a gay enough connection when a gay kid gets killed is the same website that once devoted an entire article to the fact that the toilet above Ben Bradshaw's Parliamentary office was leaking.
It wasn't gay urine leaking from a gay toilet dripping through a gay ceiling. It wasn't a gay interest news story. Gay kids getting immolated? That's a gay interest news story.
Unsurprisingly I had a bit of a Twitter rant about this yesterday morning. And I got a reply from a gay website. At the risk of sounding like Upworthy: You'll never believe what they said.
You'd think that anyone with a modicum of nous would either ignore my rant or say "you know what: We could do better." Instead the reply was a link to an article. The article was a write-up of a wheelchair user's experience of bad access at a Pride festival.
One article. One. And they expect a fucking commendation cookie for being inclusive?
As a disabled lesbian, the gay press's determined ignorance of topics where gayness meets disability is a personal matter. But I'm not some unique special snowflake. Around 18% of the population have some kind of impairment and that's going to be higher among the gay community due to the increased incidence of mental health problems and rates of HIV. By sticking their heads in the sand where the two issues intersect the gay press are snubbing probably at least a fifth of their audience. The gay press is mostly an online business, and that means they need pageviews to make money from advertisers. By failing to cater to such a sizeable chunk of their prospective readership they're pissing away ad revenue. You'd think the economic benefits of including the whole gay community in their content would be enough to convince them to stop ignoring us.
But there's been one remarkable fact omitted from all the write ups I've read in the pink press, and that's the disablism written into the law.
First-time offenders will be sentenced to 14 years. But people found guilty of "aggravated homosexuality" which means 'repeated gay sex between consenting adults and acts involving a minor, a disabled person or where one partner was infected with HIV' will be sentenced to life. The mainstream media will write about it - that link takes you to The Guardian - but not the gay press.
(Note I said "all the write ups I have read". If you've seen an article in the gay press that I've missed, please post a link in the comments.)
As David pointed out in a post on my Facebook wall with regards to the law itself:
the Ugandan law considers gay sex with a disabled person to be equivalent to sex with a child, so it's simultaneously equating being gay with being a paedophile, and being disabled with being a child. Absolutely massive bigotry fail for the Ugandans.
I'm sure the press don't think it's worth reporting the extra sentencing for shagging a disabled person because disabled people are seen as so disgusting that the authors of the articles themselves would never dream of doing one of us. You have to remember that 70% of people would never have sex with a disabled person, and I've never seen any evidence to suggest that gay people are less disablist. I'm sure that journalists writing for gay publications can imagine themselves going on assignment to Uganda and winding up spending 14 years in jail, but they just can't envisage hooking up with a hot crip; because they refuse to see disabled people as sexual beings.
So I'm an aggravated homosexual alright.
The weirdest thing is that it's not the gay disabled person that's going to get the increased sentence; it's their partner. The press usually suddenly give a crap about disability issues when they start to affect non-disabled people. Like how the papers didn't give a damn about disability hate crime until the death of Fiona Pilkington. But once a non-disabled person had taken her own life because of the disablist harassment her family faced; the press were all over it. Most people still call it "the Pilkington case", despite the fact that she murdered her disabled daughter Francecca Hardwick who'd been on the receiving end of the hate crime.
This isn't the first time the gay press have ignored issues where gayness and disabledness intersect. When disabled gay teenager Steven Simpson was first killed, the gay press wouldn't touch the story. That particular news story for Huff Post's Gay Voices was written when his killer was sentenced nearly a year later (and several other gay outlets did deign to report it at that point too).
The one place that reported the story at the time of Simpson's death was The Daily Mail. Remarkable considering they usually hate both gay people and disabled people in equal measure.
At the time I did Email a gay website drawing their attention to Simpson's death and the reply I got was:
I wasn't quite sure we could draw the connection clearly enough to warrant a story
Because an openly gay kid getting set on fire suddenly can't be connected to anything gay if he also has an impairment. Disability is like the ultimate gay remover. (But no-one tell Museveni that or he'll go around snapping the spines of suspected homos to sanitise the gay away.)
This same website that doesn't think that there's a gay enough connection when a gay kid gets killed is the same website that once devoted an entire article to the fact that the toilet above Ben Bradshaw's Parliamentary office was leaking.
It wasn't gay urine leaking from a gay toilet dripping through a gay ceiling. It wasn't a gay interest news story. Gay kids getting immolated? That's a gay interest news story.
Unsurprisingly I had a bit of a Twitter rant about this yesterday morning. And I got a reply from a gay website. At the risk of sounding like Upworthy: You'll never believe what they said.
You'd think that anyone with a modicum of nous would either ignore my rant or say "you know what: We could do better." Instead the reply was a link to an article. The article was a write-up of a wheelchair user's experience of bad access at a Pride festival.
One article. One. And they expect a fucking commendation cookie for being inclusive?
As a disabled lesbian, the gay press's determined ignorance of topics where gayness meets disability is a personal matter. But I'm not some unique special snowflake. Around 18% of the population have some kind of impairment and that's going to be higher among the gay community due to the increased incidence of mental health problems and rates of HIV. By sticking their heads in the sand where the two issues intersect the gay press are snubbing probably at least a fifth of their audience. The gay press is mostly an online business, and that means they need pageviews to make money from advertisers. By failing to cater to such a sizeable chunk of their prospective readership they're pissing away ad revenue. You'd think the economic benefits of including the whole gay community in their content would be enough to convince them to stop ignoring us.
23 January 2014
♫..."But don't look back in anger" I heard you say...♫
2013: What a piece of shit year that was. If I was of a superstitious inclination I'd postulate that with a "13" in the name, it was bound to be doomed. But I'm not; it was just a shit year. I mean more shit than usual that is: Life has been shit for me for a very long time.
The year started with what I thought was a brilliant idea. I was in the bath one night and I had an idea for a short horror film. The idea was accompanied by something one of my lecturers said during my MA that "the pulp is political" and it made a horror film about the cuts seem even more sensible.
To be honest, I expected daylight to come the following morning and to realise what a daft idea I'd had the night before. Instead, more ideas came. Before I knew it I had all the scenes plotted out in my head and much of the dialogue too. So I decided to type it up and ask a few producer friends if they thought it was viable.
At one point it looked like I had a producer on board and all systems were go. I got in touch with a few actors who I thought might be into it. Liz was especially amazing; she put me in touch with so many people who could be involved either in front of or behind the camera.
It really looked like it might happen. Like my daft idea might come off. I was struggling a bit under the stress, but nothing too bad.
Then the project lost a producer. I don't blame them at all; I totally understand a need to pay the rent over and above a not-for-profit, anti-cuts film. I started looking for a new producer...
... And that was when I really went mental. I can quite honestly say that I have never been so close to having a full-blown breakdown. I questioned the point of my existence when I was too useless to even be able to find a film producer on at least an hourly basis.
I also hated myself for not being able to produce it myself. I don't have the skills required or the sanity to be able to do it; and that was another thing I regularly berated myself for being so useless about.
So many people had offered their skills or given their time, and I couldn't pull it off. And I was getting crazier by the day.
On Good Friday I met with Wendy who'd kindly edited the script. And that was the last work I did on the film. Her handwritten notes on a print-out of the script are in a pink bag about 3 feet from where I'm sitting right now, and they're just sitting there, not typed up.
A few months later I was having a conversation with a friend about my failed foray into screenwriting. "It sounds like you need a producer to help you find a producer," was how she succinctly put the problems that had driven me round the twist.
It still seems so wasteful that there's a script ready, actors keen on the project, a fundraising strategy, etc, and it's all going to waste because of the dearth of producers out there. But I can't keep producer-hunting when there are none to be found; and making myself mental in the process. So I guess that's that.
It took a while after giving up for my sanity to be restored; I continued to question what the point of my being alive was when I couldn't pull off something so seemingly simple. In fact, it took until about the summer: And then it was my body's - rather than my brain's - turn to fail on me.
I royally fucked up my left knee....
Hang on! I'm getting ahead of myself! Before there was the knee; there was the digestive discovery.
My stomach has been fucked for years now. Worse than the acid reflux, worse than the stomach feeling like it's on fire, worse than my ability to eat being totally dependent on my stomach's whims has been the belching. I have spent the last few years feeling like I've swallowed the contents of several helium balloons. Gastroenterologists have giving me drugs to speed up my digestive transit which just forces the belches to come out as farts instead. So I quit those because, frankly, the constant belching was better.
But having a stomach perpetually full of air was horrific. It was painful because my stomach was always so distended with gas. Sometimes I even had trouble breathing because my stomach was so full of air that it impaired my lungs ability to inflate properly. Sleeping was impossible because air rises so you can't belch when you're lying down flat. I had to wake up several times a night, sit up, and beat myself on the chest until I'd expelled most of the air so I could try sleeping again for a few more hours.
In May I decided to experiment with going lactose-free. Holy fucking shit, what a relief. Yes, I miss cheese. And milk chocolate. But it's a small price to pay for the relief of not having my breathing compromised by such an inflated stomach.
But back to the knee. It was about July I think that it went wrong. I have a pretty high pain tolerance. I'll walk around on broken feet without taking painkillers. In fact I fractured a metatarsal while my knee was knackered and it totally didn't bother me. But my knee; that was a different story. It wasn't a bony injury; I could tell that. My GP sent me for an x-ray to rule out bone damage, and I was vindicated. It was something tendony, I don't know exactly what: I never got a proper diagnosis. For about 2 and a half months I needed morphine just to be able to walk to the toilet in my teeny tiny flat.
Not only did I have the drugs making me drowsy; my knee itself was also exhausting. Different types of pain and injury have different effects. Some pains will keep you awake all night with their agony; other pains will drain all your energy and make you sleep 12 hours a night. My knee fell into that latter category.
Also over the summer I had to say farewell to my beloved 5 year old netbook. Almost everything I've written that's worth reading over the last 5 years was written on that machine. It was a cheap thing I picked up in the supermarket to take into hospital with me when I had surgery in Nov 08, but it provided 5 years of loyal service. I had to replace it with this temperamental piece of shit running Windoze 8. It's slow, moody and a pain in the arse. I suppose we at least make a matching pair. Though I'm sure that one day I'll lose my patience with this and throw it out of a window.
The autumn saw a return to depressive form; although not quite as severely as earlier in the year. I had a realisation that it was October and I had absolutely nothing to show for the year that was nearly finished. I may not have the health to hold down a job, I may spend a lot of my time sitting in hospital waiting rooms. But at least in 2012 I'd done quite a lot of blogging on my "good" days. 2013 was almost over and I'd done almost nothing. I'd written a film which I couldn't find a producer for; and that was literally all I'd done. No powerful blog posts, no going to protests. There were several protests during the summer that I couldn't go to because I didn't have enough painkillers to be able to stray that far from my bed. Once again I found myself considering what the point of me being alive was when I offered no value to anything.
I really didn't help my sanity thanks to a spur of the moment decision in September: I decided to join an online dating site and paid for a month's membership.
I've tried online dating before: Everyone is disablist. As you click through profiles you realise they all say:
No crazies.
No crazies.
No crazies.
No crazies.
No strange limps.
No crazies.
Obviously the spur of the moment decision to sign up didn't result in me meeting anyone. I didn't hear from even one person. But I'd paid for a month's membership so I stuck with it for the whole month; every day hating myself more and more. Partly for being so repulsive, and partly for being stupid enough to spend money on online dating knowing that all that would happen would be that I'd be reminded that everyone thinks I'm repulsive.
But back to the lack of productivity: The fact that I'd done nothing all year apart from a couple of TV and radio interviews was what made my presence on the 2013 Pink List such a shock. The year before it was an honour and a pleasure; but not a surprise. (I'd gotten advance notification from someone at the paper because they needed me to provide a headshot.) On my good days I'd done things that I felt proud of and I was honoured to have them recognised. Reading the Pink List again just now while getting the link to post here I sort-of expected to find 86 had gone blank because it had all been a mistake and I wasn't really supposed to be on there.
The year ended on a bacterial note. Given the frequency with which I usually get sinusitis I actually did pretty well in 2013. And I only had the infection for about 5 weeks before I got to see a GP for antibiotics. (I've had to put up with sinusitis for a couple of months before now.) Something else which sapped all my energy and left my splayed helplessly on the couch because the bacteria in my face were sucking all my spoons. I literally finished the antibiotics a couple of days before Christmas. So that was that, 2013 effectively over. And all I had to show for it was a lactose-free diet and the script for a film which will probably never get made.
There are several people I owe blog posts to; promises I made months ago but haven't had the energy to write. Yet. So far 2014 has been a bit of a crazy whirlwind of hospital appointments (they started on Jan 2nd and this is the first week all year without one). But hopefully - hopefully - I can get all caught up in the near future.
And on the subject of hopes: Please just let 2014 be a bit better than 2013. I know my life is always going to suck. But it'd be nice if I could have a year that sucked slightly less.
The year started with what I thought was a brilliant idea. I was in the bath one night and I had an idea for a short horror film. The idea was accompanied by something one of my lecturers said during my MA that "the pulp is political" and it made a horror film about the cuts seem even more sensible.
To be honest, I expected daylight to come the following morning and to realise what a daft idea I'd had the night before. Instead, more ideas came. Before I knew it I had all the scenes plotted out in my head and much of the dialogue too. So I decided to type it up and ask a few producer friends if they thought it was viable.
At one point it looked like I had a producer on board and all systems were go. I got in touch with a few actors who I thought might be into it. Liz was especially amazing; she put me in touch with so many people who could be involved either in front of or behind the camera.
It really looked like it might happen. Like my daft idea might come off. I was struggling a bit under the stress, but nothing too bad.
Then the project lost a producer. I don't blame them at all; I totally understand a need to pay the rent over and above a not-for-profit, anti-cuts film. I started looking for a new producer...
... And that was when I really went mental. I can quite honestly say that I have never been so close to having a full-blown breakdown. I questioned the point of my existence when I was too useless to even be able to find a film producer on at least an hourly basis.
I also hated myself for not being able to produce it myself. I don't have the skills required or the sanity to be able to do it; and that was another thing I regularly berated myself for being so useless about.
So many people had offered their skills or given their time, and I couldn't pull it off. And I was getting crazier by the day.
On Good Friday I met with Wendy who'd kindly edited the script. And that was the last work I did on the film. Her handwritten notes on a print-out of the script are in a pink bag about 3 feet from where I'm sitting right now, and they're just sitting there, not typed up.
A few months later I was having a conversation with a friend about my failed foray into screenwriting. "It sounds like you need a producer to help you find a producer," was how she succinctly put the problems that had driven me round the twist.
It still seems so wasteful that there's a script ready, actors keen on the project, a fundraising strategy, etc, and it's all going to waste because of the dearth of producers out there. But I can't keep producer-hunting when there are none to be found; and making myself mental in the process. So I guess that's that.
It took a while after giving up for my sanity to be restored; I continued to question what the point of my being alive was when I couldn't pull off something so seemingly simple. In fact, it took until about the summer: And then it was my body's - rather than my brain's - turn to fail on me.
I royally fucked up my left knee....
Hang on! I'm getting ahead of myself! Before there was the knee; there was the digestive discovery.
My stomach has been fucked for years now. Worse than the acid reflux, worse than the stomach feeling like it's on fire, worse than my ability to eat being totally dependent on my stomach's whims has been the belching. I have spent the last few years feeling like I've swallowed the contents of several helium balloons. Gastroenterologists have giving me drugs to speed up my digestive transit which just forces the belches to come out as farts instead. So I quit those because, frankly, the constant belching was better.
But having a stomach perpetually full of air was horrific. It was painful because my stomach was always so distended with gas. Sometimes I even had trouble breathing because my stomach was so full of air that it impaired my lungs ability to inflate properly. Sleeping was impossible because air rises so you can't belch when you're lying down flat. I had to wake up several times a night, sit up, and beat myself on the chest until I'd expelled most of the air so I could try sleeping again for a few more hours.
In May I decided to experiment with going lactose-free. Holy fucking shit, what a relief. Yes, I miss cheese. And milk chocolate. But it's a small price to pay for the relief of not having my breathing compromised by such an inflated stomach.
But back to the knee. It was about July I think that it went wrong. I have a pretty high pain tolerance. I'll walk around on broken feet without taking painkillers. In fact I fractured a metatarsal while my knee was knackered and it totally didn't bother me. But my knee; that was a different story. It wasn't a bony injury; I could tell that. My GP sent me for an x-ray to rule out bone damage, and I was vindicated. It was something tendony, I don't know exactly what: I never got a proper diagnosis. For about 2 and a half months I needed morphine just to be able to walk to the toilet in my teeny tiny flat.
Not only did I have the drugs making me drowsy; my knee itself was also exhausting. Different types of pain and injury have different effects. Some pains will keep you awake all night with their agony; other pains will drain all your energy and make you sleep 12 hours a night. My knee fell into that latter category.
Also over the summer I had to say farewell to my beloved 5 year old netbook. Almost everything I've written that's worth reading over the last 5 years was written on that machine. It was a cheap thing I picked up in the supermarket to take into hospital with me when I had surgery in Nov 08, but it provided 5 years of loyal service. I had to replace it with this temperamental piece of shit running Windoze 8. It's slow, moody and a pain in the arse. I suppose we at least make a matching pair. Though I'm sure that one day I'll lose my patience with this and throw it out of a window.
The autumn saw a return to depressive form; although not quite as severely as earlier in the year. I had a realisation that it was October and I had absolutely nothing to show for the year that was nearly finished. I may not have the health to hold down a job, I may spend a lot of my time sitting in hospital waiting rooms. But at least in 2012 I'd done quite a lot of blogging on my "good" days. 2013 was almost over and I'd done almost nothing. I'd written a film which I couldn't find a producer for; and that was literally all I'd done. No powerful blog posts, no going to protests. There were several protests during the summer that I couldn't go to because I didn't have enough painkillers to be able to stray that far from my bed. Once again I found myself considering what the point of me being alive was when I offered no value to anything.
I really didn't help my sanity thanks to a spur of the moment decision in September: I decided to join an online dating site and paid for a month's membership.
I've tried online dating before: Everyone is disablist. As you click through profiles you realise they all say:
No crazies.
No crazies.
No crazies.
No crazies.
No strange limps.
No crazies.
Obviously the spur of the moment decision to sign up didn't result in me meeting anyone. I didn't hear from even one person. But I'd paid for a month's membership so I stuck with it for the whole month; every day hating myself more and more. Partly for being so repulsive, and partly for being stupid enough to spend money on online dating knowing that all that would happen would be that I'd be reminded that everyone thinks I'm repulsive.
But back to the lack of productivity: The fact that I'd done nothing all year apart from a couple of TV and radio interviews was what made my presence on the 2013 Pink List such a shock. The year before it was an honour and a pleasure; but not a surprise. (I'd gotten advance notification from someone at the paper because they needed me to provide a headshot.) On my good days I'd done things that I felt proud of and I was honoured to have them recognised. Reading the Pink List again just now while getting the link to post here I sort-of expected to find 86 had gone blank because it had all been a mistake and I wasn't really supposed to be on there.
The year ended on a bacterial note. Given the frequency with which I usually get sinusitis I actually did pretty well in 2013. And I only had the infection for about 5 weeks before I got to see a GP for antibiotics. (I've had to put up with sinusitis for a couple of months before now.) Something else which sapped all my energy and left my splayed helplessly on the couch because the bacteria in my face were sucking all my spoons. I literally finished the antibiotics a couple of days before Christmas. So that was that, 2013 effectively over. And all I had to show for it was a lactose-free diet and the script for a film which will probably never get made.
There are several people I owe blog posts to; promises I made months ago but haven't had the energy to write. Yet. So far 2014 has been a bit of a crazy whirlwind of hospital appointments (they started on Jan 2nd and this is the first week all year without one). But hopefully - hopefully - I can get all caught up in the near future.
And on the subject of hopes: Please just let 2014 be a bit better than 2013. I know my life is always going to suck. But it'd be nice if I could have a year that sucked slightly less.
06 November 2012
♫...Pretty in pink. Isn't she?...♫
I want to say "thank you" to those of you who put me on this year's Independent on Sunday Pink List: Their annual list of the most influential LGBT people in the country. There are a couple of people I need to give extra special thanks to.
Firstly to Eleanor for asking the question "How do we get a crip on the list?" after reading last year's and noticing how very non-disabled it was. Extra thanks also need to go to Goldfish and DavidG for actually asking people to vote for me. It was such an honour that people felt so convinced that I should be on the list that they not only filled in the nomination form themselves but actually said to other people "look: Lisa should be on that list so vote for her. Got it?"
The blurb describing me is quite hilarious. "Bravery and experience"? I've been known to phone my parents just to scream at them because my cat had given me a dead mouse. And "experienced" makes me sound like the town tart. But it's genuinely nice to be described as "popular" because so many people felt I should be on the list. It's the only time in my life I will ever get called that. Ordinarily "popular" would be the last word that'd come to mind when describing me. "Weird girl who sits in the corner on her own staring at her shoes" is usually more apt.
In the end it turned out that I was amongst company: Not only am I on the list but there are Paralympians at number 4 (Lee Pearson) and 100 (Claire Harvey). This is still, of course, not representative of society as a whole. Around 18% of the total population have some kind of impairment and that's likely to be slightly higher among the gay community because of the increased incidence of mental health problems and the rates of HIV. With that in mind, there being 3 disabled people on the list is a start, but it's not enough.
Of course, it's highly likely that a couple of the other 98 do have some kind of impairment like dyslexia or bipolar disorder but aren't out about that and/or don't identify as "disabled". That's absolutely their right to identify how they choose to and to be in control of what information they put into the public domain. But it's also important to be out. That piece by Stella Duffy is about the importance of being out as gay - just like the list is about the importance of being out as gay, bi or trans - but the need to be out about belonging to a certain group is an issue that spans all minorities.
On the other hand you could make the case that there shouldn't be any disabled people on the list because we have such a low social status and it is supposed to be the most "influential" queers in Britain. I'm listed as a disability rights activist but if I seriously had any kind of influence in our society then the Welfare Reform Bill would never have become the Welfare Reform Act because the public would have given a crap. But then you end up with a circular situation where disabled people lack influence because we're ignored by the media because we lack influence. Putting some disabled people on the Pink List is an important way of breaking that circle and acknowledging that disabled people exist.
Another reason it's so specifically important to acknowledge the existence of disabled LGBT people is because of the common misconception that we don't or shouldn't exist and the double discrimination we face. For the most part disabled people are viewed as being asexual or it's believed that we should be asexual. In 2008 70% of people asked told The Observer that they wouldn't shag a cripple and I've never seen any indication that gay people think any differently. If you visit a lesbian dating website you'll see that almost every profile states "no crazies". I even saw one "no strange limps" before deciding it was just futile and that I'd be better off watching CSI and wishing Sara Sidle were mine.
I think LGBT people with learning difficulties are probably the most oppressed of all. We live in a culture that likes to infantilise intellectual impairment ("he has a mental age of 6...") despite the fact that an adult with learning difficulties is just that: An adult. People who have the capacity for consent should be able to have consenting sexual relationships. Many straight people with learning difficulties encounter barriers with getting people the people in their lives to understand that; the process of coming out as gay can be nigh on impossible. Last year a court banned a man from having sex because he had a low IQ because he might get a girl pregnant. I'm pretty sure that that wasn't going to be a problem for the man he was in a relationship with.
Another very specific issue affecting LGBT disabled and older people is the problem of homophobic carers. If you're dependent on someone to get you out of bed and put you in your wheelchair, to feed you and to give you fluids and medication then your life can be endangered by being out. Direct Payments and Personal Budgets allow one the opportunity to choose who you employ to assist you, but not everybody has that as an option and some people still have agency carers inflicted upon them and they get no say in who is being sent into their home.
Such grave issues make the lack of physical access to gay bars and clubs seem to pale into insignificance. But improving visibility of LGBT disabled people, by letting us get onto the dancefloor with our peers, we can start to break down these barriers. Improving visibility of gay people improves attitudes towards gay people; it's a logical extension to accept that improving visibility of gay disabled people will improve attitudes to the minority within a minority. Those of us who are in a position where it's safe to be out need to do so to improve social attitudes and make the world safer for those who would be endangered by being out.
I know I've gotten a bit too old and boring for clubbing until 5am but I still can't think of any gay bars/clubs in London that are fully accessible. I can think of one or 2 with a bar area that's step free, but with no such thing as accessible toilets. Which is really just want you need when you're drinking alcohol. My local gay bar is under threat of closure. I probably should give a shit about the closure of a beloved community hangout but I really can't muster up concern given the flight of stairs to get into the place.
Three disabled people on the Pink List is such an important step towards dealing with these double discrimination issues, but it is only one small step. There's still so much more change we need to see. Hopefully next year we'll see further strides towards towards equality in both the list itself and the year building up to it. For now I'll just smile about the fact that Paralympic dressage gold medallist Lee Pearson came one spot on the list above Olympic dressage gold medallist Carl Hester. And about being the 78th most influential gay.
Firstly to Eleanor for asking the question "How do we get a crip on the list?" after reading last year's and noticing how very non-disabled it was. Extra thanks also need to go to Goldfish and DavidG for actually asking people to vote for me. It was such an honour that people felt so convinced that I should be on the list that they not only filled in the nomination form themselves but actually said to other people "look: Lisa should be on that list so vote for her. Got it?"
The blurb describing me is quite hilarious. "Bravery and experience"? I've been known to phone my parents just to scream at them because my cat had given me a dead mouse. And "experienced" makes me sound like the town tart. But it's genuinely nice to be described as "popular" because so many people felt I should be on the list. It's the only time in my life I will ever get called that. Ordinarily "popular" would be the last word that'd come to mind when describing me. "Weird girl who sits in the corner on her own staring at her shoes" is usually more apt.
In the end it turned out that I was amongst company: Not only am I on the list but there are Paralympians at number 4 (Lee Pearson) and 100 (Claire Harvey). This is still, of course, not representative of society as a whole. Around 18% of the total population have some kind of impairment and that's likely to be slightly higher among the gay community because of the increased incidence of mental health problems and the rates of HIV. With that in mind, there being 3 disabled people on the list is a start, but it's not enough.
Of course, it's highly likely that a couple of the other 98 do have some kind of impairment like dyslexia or bipolar disorder but aren't out about that and/or don't identify as "disabled". That's absolutely their right to identify how they choose to and to be in control of what information they put into the public domain. But it's also important to be out. That piece by Stella Duffy is about the importance of being out as gay - just like the list is about the importance of being out as gay, bi or trans - but the need to be out about belonging to a certain group is an issue that spans all minorities.
On the other hand you could make the case that there shouldn't be any disabled people on the list because we have such a low social status and it is supposed to be the most "influential" queers in Britain. I'm listed as a disability rights activist but if I seriously had any kind of influence in our society then the Welfare Reform Bill would never have become the Welfare Reform Act because the public would have given a crap. But then you end up with a circular situation where disabled people lack influence because we're ignored by the media because we lack influence. Putting some disabled people on the Pink List is an important way of breaking that circle and acknowledging that disabled people exist.
Another reason it's so specifically important to acknowledge the existence of disabled LGBT people is because of the common misconception that we don't or shouldn't exist and the double discrimination we face. For the most part disabled people are viewed as being asexual or it's believed that we should be asexual. In 2008 70% of people asked told The Observer that they wouldn't shag a cripple and I've never seen any indication that gay people think any differently. If you visit a lesbian dating website you'll see that almost every profile states "no crazies". I even saw one "no strange limps" before deciding it was just futile and that I'd be better off watching CSI and wishing Sara Sidle were mine.
I think LGBT people with learning difficulties are probably the most oppressed of all. We live in a culture that likes to infantilise intellectual impairment ("he has a mental age of 6...") despite the fact that an adult with learning difficulties is just that: An adult. People who have the capacity for consent should be able to have consenting sexual relationships. Many straight people with learning difficulties encounter barriers with getting people the people in their lives to understand that; the process of coming out as gay can be nigh on impossible. Last year a court banned a man from having sex because he had a low IQ because he might get a girl pregnant. I'm pretty sure that that wasn't going to be a problem for the man he was in a relationship with.
Another very specific issue affecting LGBT disabled and older people is the problem of homophobic carers. If you're dependent on someone to get you out of bed and put you in your wheelchair, to feed you and to give you fluids and medication then your life can be endangered by being out. Direct Payments and Personal Budgets allow one the opportunity to choose who you employ to assist you, but not everybody has that as an option and some people still have agency carers inflicted upon them and they get no say in who is being sent into their home.
Such grave issues make the lack of physical access to gay bars and clubs seem to pale into insignificance. But improving visibility of LGBT disabled people, by letting us get onto the dancefloor with our peers, we can start to break down these barriers. Improving visibility of gay people improves attitudes towards gay people; it's a logical extension to accept that improving visibility of gay disabled people will improve attitudes to the minority within a minority. Those of us who are in a position where it's safe to be out need to do so to improve social attitudes and make the world safer for those who would be endangered by being out.
I know I've gotten a bit too old and boring for clubbing until 5am but I still can't think of any gay bars/clubs in London that are fully accessible. I can think of one or 2 with a bar area that's step free, but with no such thing as accessible toilets. Which is really just want you need when you're drinking alcohol. My local gay bar is under threat of closure. I probably should give a shit about the closure of a beloved community hangout but I really can't muster up concern given the flight of stairs to get into the place.
Three disabled people on the Pink List is such an important step towards dealing with these double discrimination issues, but it is only one small step. There's still so much more change we need to see. Hopefully next year we'll see further strides towards towards equality in both the list itself and the year building up to it. For now I'll just smile about the fact that Paralympic dressage gold medallist Lee Pearson came one spot on the list above Olympic dressage gold medallist Carl Hester. And about being the 78th most influential gay.
14 November 2011
♫...Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night...♫
I had a problem with last week's episode of Glee. And for a change it had absolutely nothing to do with disability. I mean, obviously, there were a few awful stereotypes about wheelchair users because it wouldn't be Glee without them. My issue was actually about something even more sinister.
I've been asked why I watch Glee when all it does it raise my blood pressure. It's quite simple: The social politics of disability is one of my favourite topics. Television is another one. So representations of disability on TV is my specialist subject. And Glee is so awful and so offensive I watch it for the joy of ranting about how horrific it is. I need to get my righteous indignation from somewhere. And besides; my blood pressure is usually at the low end of normal, occasionally veering properly into low: Getting angry at the telly is probably good for my health.
Or at least, that used to be why I watched Glee. I'm gonna make a confession now and if anyone holds it over my head I swear I'll turn them into a human cannonball as part of a cheerleading display. And that confession is...
When Kurt and Blaine got together they absolutely stole my heart. They're just the cutest little couple. I started enjoying watching the show (or at least their scenes) and making high pitched squeeing noises when they were being all adorable. I think the last time I saw a telly couple so cute was in that episode of Torchwood when Jack met the original Captain Jack Harkness. (Which makes me wonder why the adorable telly couples are always gay men? Lafayette and Jesus in True Blood also stand out in my memory as sweeties. Where are the "awwwww" lesbians? Or even straight couples for that matter? OK, maybe Grissom and Sara were pretty sweet and my opinion was clouded by envy of Grissom because Sara Sidle is the woman of my dreams. Sure there's the budding Brittany/Santana romance in Glee; but Santana's a bitch and Brittany's a caricature: Hardly an "awwwwww" couple. Anyway...)
That Kurt and Blaine are just so adorable they can melt my cold, misanthropic, heart was what made one specific scene in The First Time (link contains spoilers) stand out as particularly horrific.
Double warning of both spoilers and triggers: Below the jump are both plot details for last week's episode and discussions of sexual assault.
I've been asked why I watch Glee when all it does it raise my blood pressure. It's quite simple: The social politics of disability is one of my favourite topics. Television is another one. So representations of disability on TV is my specialist subject. And Glee is so awful and so offensive I watch it for the joy of ranting about how horrific it is. I need to get my righteous indignation from somewhere. And besides; my blood pressure is usually at the low end of normal, occasionally veering properly into low: Getting angry at the telly is probably good for my health.
Or at least, that used to be why I watched Glee. I'm gonna make a confession now and if anyone holds it over my head I swear I'll turn them into a human cannonball as part of a cheerleading display. And that confession is...
When Kurt and Blaine got together they absolutely stole my heart. They're just the cutest little couple. I started enjoying watching the show (or at least their scenes) and making high pitched squeeing noises when they were being all adorable. I think the last time I saw a telly couple so cute was in that episode of Torchwood when Jack met the original Captain Jack Harkness. (Which makes me wonder why the adorable telly couples are always gay men? Lafayette and Jesus in True Blood also stand out in my memory as sweeties. Where are the "awwwww" lesbians? Or even straight couples for that matter? OK, maybe Grissom and Sara were pretty sweet and my opinion was clouded by envy of Grissom because Sara Sidle is the woman of my dreams. Sure there's the budding Brittany/Santana romance in Glee; but Santana's a bitch and Brittany's a caricature: Hardly an "awwwwww" couple. Anyway...)
That Kurt and Blaine are just so adorable they can melt my cold, misanthropic, heart was what made one specific scene in The First Time (link contains spoilers) stand out as particularly horrific.
Double warning of both spoilers and triggers: Below the jump are both plot details for last week's episode and discussions of sexual assault.
01 May 2011
♫...Somebody tell me why I'm on my own, if there's a soulmate for everyone...♫
Written as part of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2011.
...Is a sentence I hear all the time. And it's such a load of horseshit. Women want me about as much as they want a particularly severe case of haemorrhoids and all the confidence in the world can't change that.
On the couple of occasions in life when someone that I don't find attractive has told me they fancy me (I'm 32 this month and it has really has only happened a couple of times) I've been flattered. My ego has been known to break into a little happy dance. But whenever I tell someone that I think they're hot their standard response is to never speak to me again. I really am that repellent to others. It's not being unconfident when people really do think you're repulsive.
But also I'm not lacking in self-esteem; I would totally go out with me. I think I'm smart, funny, reasonably charismatic, interesting, I always smell nice and I enjoy my own company. If anything I'm over-confident to the point of being delusional because it's clear that other people do not view those characteristics in me.
I spent most of my adult life trying to look at the world through "people are innately not disablist bastards" tinted glasses. I wanted to believe that the only reasons people were so repulsed by me were because I'm fat, ugly and annoying. Then I read the results of the 2008 Observer Sex Survey in which 70% of respondents said they'd never shag someone with a "physical disability". And that's only the people disablist enough to admit it to the man from Mori with a clipboard. You can be sure that, actually, many more people would never do one of us but they're too ashamed to admit it because they know that being prejudiced isn't cool.
Accepting that most people would never go out with me because they're disablist was, in a weird way, an exercise in self-acceptance. It made me take off those tinted glasses and accept that the reason I'm perpetually single and haven't had sex for [mumblemumble] years probably isn't because I'm fat, ugly, and annoying (even though I am) but it's because they're discriminatory arseholes.
Of course there are many, many, disabled people in healthy relationships. They managed to find people from that 30% who aren't so prejudiced. With there being so few decent people around I presume that 30% can pick and choose from whoever they want because they're good people. Which does then kinda come back round to the "I'm fat, ugly and annoying" thing. If they've got the pick of the crop then they've got absolutely no reason to choose me.
With gay/bisexual women being a small sector of the population, and only 30% of them being willing to date me on grounds of my impairment there's only going to be a couple of thousand women in the country who would be willing to go out with me. Then you have to take away those that are in relationships, those that wouldn't go out with me because I talk too much, those that might be willing to see past my impairment but wouldn't date a fatty, those who might be willing to give me a chance but geography would make a relationship impossible, etc and there's basically about 12 women left in the country that might be willing to go out with me. And what are the chances that our paths will ever cross or that they'll actually fancy me?
You might think "but surely lesbians would be less disablist than straight people. After all, they understand and experience prejudice too?" Last year a friend cajoled me into trying online dating. It was not a successful experiment. So many women say in their profile "no crazies" and one even said "no strange limps". Disablism is just as ubiquitous among gay people as it is among the rest of the population. And then of course there's all the other reasons women wouldn't want to be with me; they're only interested in skinny women, they have a minimum height requirement (though in my case that's also disablism, my impairment is a form of dwarfism), etc. The experiment lasted a month. I gave up.
Because I've been single for so long people now see me as asexual. Yes there's the general cultural myth that disabled people don't do it, but the perception of me personally goes over and above that. People who know better than to be mythtaken (for example disabled people or people who are currently/have previously dated a disabled person) see me as asexual too. People no longer introduce me to their single lesbian friends because they just perceive me as someone that's alone in perpetuity.
Another area where I think disability/disablism is an issue is around "who is gonna wanna go out with someone who's ill all the fucking time?" You plan a lovely romantic evening out and at the last minute I'm too ill to go. I promise I'm going to cook you an amazing dinner and you get home from work to find me curled up in bed clutching the morphine and gibbering incoherently because I'm in so much pain. You get a cold and know you're going to pass it on to me and that it'll render me useless for 3 weeks because my immune system is so knackered. The only possible perk to dating me is that you know when I say "not tonight love, I've got a headache" that I'm really telling the truth.
If I'd been in a relationship with someone when I got sick I think it'd be a different story, I don't think they'd have dumped me for being ill. But when someone's out looking for their perfect partner is "chronically ill" really going to woo them?
Of course, being too ill to go out a lot of the time and being too poor to go out all the time (because my weekly income on benefits is £67 a week short of the amount recommended by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for a minimum standard of living.) does mean that my chances of crossing paths with those aforementioned 12 women who might be willing to give me a go is even slimmer.
Another thing that makes me unattractive is that I'm not good at being what I'm supposed to be. There's partly the fact that women are supposed to be quiet and nice and lovely, and I'm loud and sarcastic and rude. But the main issue is the disablist notions of what a disabled person is supposed to be. Disabled people are supposed to be seen and not heard. We're supposed to be all smiles and not tell people who patronise us to "fuck off". We're supposed to be grateful for scraps of access and not complain when we're treated unfairly. We're basically supposed to look and act like we've just rolled out of a Children In Need appeal.
I do make myself heard. All the time. I'm extremely loud and outspoken. I will swear at people who belittle me. I will complain about bad access or poor treatment. I'm rude and sarcastic and misanthropic. Even as a child I was never cute enough for CiN. Instead of getting picked for "make a wish" type trips to Disneyworld, I got banned from school holidays.
Last year I was at an academic conference and one of the speakers was talking about academic theories of cuteness. It was so interesting. One of the things she pointed out was that things that are considered cute are often rendered impaired and she gave the example of Hello Kitty not having a mouth. Hello Kitty is considered cute in part because she can't talk back. I talk back constantly and in a society that says disabled people should only be tolerated if they're adorable I'm a pariah.
As if all this wasn't enough to guarantee me a life of chronic singledom, I'm socio-economically unappealing thanks to the government's benefits bullshit which means that the only women I could ever live with are someone who is also on benefits or someone who's rich enough to "keep" me. And as anyone who's ever met me can confirm; I'm independent almost to the point of self-destructiveness. Me being a "kept" woman would almost certainly result in bloodshed.
At the moment if I were to move in with a partner who had a job I'd lose my Housing Benefit and my Income Support leaving me with my Incapacity Benefit for any contributions to running of the household and anything I wanted for myself (like my addiction to Lush). I'd also still have my DLA to cover the extra costs of being disabled. Losing Income Support would mean I'd lose my free prescriptions, my free NHS dentistry and my subsidised glasses. So I'd be a moderate financial burden on my other half.
But under the plans for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) I'd only get to keep the non-means tested bit (the equivalent bit to Incapacity Benefit) for the first year of us living together. Then my only income would be my DLA, which is already accounted for because disability is expensive. I would be a total financial burden on my partner. "If we move in together you'll have to financially support me completely," isn't going to win hearts.
A couple of months ago I was having dinner with my doppelgänger/clone/mini-me. She's planning to move to London when she graduates from uni. She said that my inability to get a girlfriend worries her. She'd assumed that being a lesbian in London was like being a kid in a sweet shop. I think that's a really good analogy...
Imagine you're staying at your diabetic dad's sugar-free house. You're lagging in energy, you've got stuff you need to get done and you need a sugar fix. You find a slightly dusty Werther's Original in the back of a drawer. It looks a bit gross but you eat it because it's that or nothing.
Imagine you're in a sweet shop. There's thousands of delicious looking sugary things wall-to-wall. In the corner you spot one lowly, dusty, Werther's Original. You wouldn't touch it with a bargepole when there are so many other wonderful things to choose from.
I'm that dusty Werther's Original. When I lived somewhere less well populated, and certainly with a smaller gay population, the odd woman was willing to go on a date with me. In London any lesbian has a plethora of women to choose from; so why on earth would she choose the sickly cripple who also happens to be fat, ugly, annoying, is rubbish at confirming to social rules and is a financial burden?
With 70% of people being too disablist to date me and the remaining 30% being put off by my looks, my behaviour that doesn't conform to the social roles expected of me, my being a financial burden or simply just not fancying me; how can those people who say "You could get a girlfriend, you just need to be more confident," really believe the words coming out of their mouths? Especially when I'm already confident beyond the level I should be given my lack of hotness?
It's quite depressing that with quite a high level of certainty my future involves dying alone and getting devoured by my 37 cats. There are lots of things that could change that, as a culture we could address the attitudes to disabled people that result in 70% of people being unwilling to shag me. We could fix the benefits system so I wouldn't be forced into being a financial drain on a partner. We could fix our social ideals of what a "good" disabled person is. But telling me to be more confident won't make any difference whatsoever.
"You could get a girlfriend, you just need to be more confident..."
...Is a sentence I hear all the time. And it's such a load of horseshit. Women want me about as much as they want a particularly severe case of haemorrhoids and all the confidence in the world can't change that.
On the couple of occasions in life when someone that I don't find attractive has told me they fancy me (I'm 32 this month and it has really has only happened a couple of times) I've been flattered. My ego has been known to break into a little happy dance. But whenever I tell someone that I think they're hot their standard response is to never speak to me again. I really am that repellent to others. It's not being unconfident when people really do think you're repulsive.
But also I'm not lacking in self-esteem; I would totally go out with me. I think I'm smart, funny, reasonably charismatic, interesting, I always smell nice and I enjoy my own company. If anything I'm over-confident to the point of being delusional because it's clear that other people do not view those characteristics in me.
I spent most of my adult life trying to look at the world through "people are innately not disablist bastards" tinted glasses. I wanted to believe that the only reasons people were so repulsed by me were because I'm fat, ugly and annoying. Then I read the results of the 2008 Observer Sex Survey in which 70% of respondents said they'd never shag someone with a "physical disability". And that's only the people disablist enough to admit it to the man from Mori with a clipboard. You can be sure that, actually, many more people would never do one of us but they're too ashamed to admit it because they know that being prejudiced isn't cool.
Accepting that most people would never go out with me because they're disablist was, in a weird way, an exercise in self-acceptance. It made me take off those tinted glasses and accept that the reason I'm perpetually single and haven't had sex for [mumblemumble] years probably isn't because I'm fat, ugly, and annoying (even though I am) but it's because they're discriminatory arseholes.
Of course there are many, many, disabled people in healthy relationships. They managed to find people from that 30% who aren't so prejudiced. With there being so few decent people around I presume that 30% can pick and choose from whoever they want because they're good people. Which does then kinda come back round to the "I'm fat, ugly and annoying" thing. If they've got the pick of the crop then they've got absolutely no reason to choose me.
With gay/bisexual women being a small sector of the population, and only 30% of them being willing to date me on grounds of my impairment there's only going to be a couple of thousand women in the country who would be willing to go out with me. Then you have to take away those that are in relationships, those that wouldn't go out with me because I talk too much, those that might be willing to see past my impairment but wouldn't date a fatty, those who might be willing to give me a chance but geography would make a relationship impossible, etc and there's basically about 12 women left in the country that might be willing to go out with me. And what are the chances that our paths will ever cross or that they'll actually fancy me?
You might think "but surely lesbians would be less disablist than straight people. After all, they understand and experience prejudice too?" Last year a friend cajoled me into trying online dating. It was not a successful experiment. So many women say in their profile "no crazies" and one even said "no strange limps". Disablism is just as ubiquitous among gay people as it is among the rest of the population. And then of course there's all the other reasons women wouldn't want to be with me; they're only interested in skinny women, they have a minimum height requirement (though in my case that's also disablism, my impairment is a form of dwarfism), etc. The experiment lasted a month. I gave up.
Because I've been single for so long people now see me as asexual. Yes there's the general cultural myth that disabled people don't do it, but the perception of me personally goes over and above that. People who know better than to be mythtaken (for example disabled people or people who are currently/have previously dated a disabled person) see me as asexual too. People no longer introduce me to their single lesbian friends because they just perceive me as someone that's alone in perpetuity.
Another area where I think disability/disablism is an issue is around "who is gonna wanna go out with someone who's ill all the fucking time?" You plan a lovely romantic evening out and at the last minute I'm too ill to go. I promise I'm going to cook you an amazing dinner and you get home from work to find me curled up in bed clutching the morphine and gibbering incoherently because I'm in so much pain. You get a cold and know you're going to pass it on to me and that it'll render me useless for 3 weeks because my immune system is so knackered. The only possible perk to dating me is that you know when I say "not tonight love, I've got a headache" that I'm really telling the truth.
If I'd been in a relationship with someone when I got sick I think it'd be a different story, I don't think they'd have dumped me for being ill. But when someone's out looking for their perfect partner is "chronically ill" really going to woo them?
Of course, being too ill to go out a lot of the time and being too poor to go out all the time (because my weekly income on benefits is £67 a week short of the amount recommended by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for a minimum standard of living.) does mean that my chances of crossing paths with those aforementioned 12 women who might be willing to give me a go is even slimmer.
Another thing that makes me unattractive is that I'm not good at being what I'm supposed to be. There's partly the fact that women are supposed to be quiet and nice and lovely, and I'm loud and sarcastic and rude. But the main issue is the disablist notions of what a disabled person is supposed to be. Disabled people are supposed to be seen and not heard. We're supposed to be all smiles and not tell people who patronise us to "fuck off". We're supposed to be grateful for scraps of access and not complain when we're treated unfairly. We're basically supposed to look and act like we've just rolled out of a Children In Need appeal.
I do make myself heard. All the time. I'm extremely loud and outspoken. I will swear at people who belittle me. I will complain about bad access or poor treatment. I'm rude and sarcastic and misanthropic. Even as a child I was never cute enough for CiN. Instead of getting picked for "make a wish" type trips to Disneyworld, I got banned from school holidays.
Last year I was at an academic conference and one of the speakers was talking about academic theories of cuteness. It was so interesting. One of the things she pointed out was that things that are considered cute are often rendered impaired and she gave the example of Hello Kitty not having a mouth. Hello Kitty is considered cute in part because she can't talk back. I talk back constantly and in a society that says disabled people should only be tolerated if they're adorable I'm a pariah.
As if all this wasn't enough to guarantee me a life of chronic singledom, I'm socio-economically unappealing thanks to the government's benefits bullshit which means that the only women I could ever live with are someone who is also on benefits or someone who's rich enough to "keep" me. And as anyone who's ever met me can confirm; I'm independent almost to the point of self-destructiveness. Me being a "kept" woman would almost certainly result in bloodshed.
At the moment if I were to move in with a partner who had a job I'd lose my Housing Benefit and my Income Support leaving me with my Incapacity Benefit for any contributions to running of the household and anything I wanted for myself (like my addiction to Lush). I'd also still have my DLA to cover the extra costs of being disabled. Losing Income Support would mean I'd lose my free prescriptions, my free NHS dentistry and my subsidised glasses. So I'd be a moderate financial burden on my other half.
But under the plans for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) I'd only get to keep the non-means tested bit (the equivalent bit to Incapacity Benefit) for the first year of us living together. Then my only income would be my DLA, which is already accounted for because disability is expensive. I would be a total financial burden on my partner. "If we move in together you'll have to financially support me completely," isn't going to win hearts.
A couple of months ago I was having dinner with my doppelgänger/clone/mini-me. She's planning to move to London when she graduates from uni. She said that my inability to get a girlfriend worries her. She'd assumed that being a lesbian in London was like being a kid in a sweet shop. I think that's a really good analogy...
Imagine you're staying at your diabetic dad's sugar-free house. You're lagging in energy, you've got stuff you need to get done and you need a sugar fix. You find a slightly dusty Werther's Original in the back of a drawer. It looks a bit gross but you eat it because it's that or nothing.
Imagine you're in a sweet shop. There's thousands of delicious looking sugary things wall-to-wall. In the corner you spot one lowly, dusty, Werther's Original. You wouldn't touch it with a bargepole when there are so many other wonderful things to choose from.
I'm that dusty Werther's Original. When I lived somewhere less well populated, and certainly with a smaller gay population, the odd woman was willing to go on a date with me. In London any lesbian has a plethora of women to choose from; so why on earth would she choose the sickly cripple who also happens to be fat, ugly, annoying, is rubbish at confirming to social rules and is a financial burden?
With 70% of people being too disablist to date me and the remaining 30% being put off by my looks, my behaviour that doesn't conform to the social roles expected of me, my being a financial burden or simply just not fancying me; how can those people who say "You could get a girlfriend, you just need to be more confident," really believe the words coming out of their mouths? Especially when I'm already confident beyond the level I should be given my lack of hotness?
It's quite depressing that with quite a high level of certainty my future involves dying alone and getting devoured by my 37 cats. There are lots of things that could change that, as a culture we could address the attitudes to disabled people that result in 70% of people being unwilling to shag me. We could fix the benefits system so I wouldn't be forced into being a financial drain on a partner. We could fix our social ideals of what a "good" disabled person is. But telling me to be more confident won't make any difference whatsoever.
25 April 2011
Pride and St George
If you've been hiding under a rock and not seen the flags everywhere, it might have escaped your attention that Saturday was St George's day; a day that's typically associated with racists and bigots, the EDL and the BNP.
This year I've seen several attempts from decent people to reclaim the day from the fascists, to take pride in England being the diverse place it is. After all, St George was Palestinian so he seems a bit of an odd role model for the EDL to revere.
The trouble is that I couldn't be less proud of being English.
And that list barely scratches the surface.
You could argue that the decisions made by the government don't necessarily reflect those of the populace as a whole, that the lies printed in the press aren't emblematic of the opinions of the nation. Except they are. We're a democracy, we voted for this government. Look at the sea of blue across England. It's the English that voted Tory rather than other parts of the UK. As for the press? If people stopped buying the lies, the papers would stop printing them.
So could someone, please, tell me why I should be proud of England when England so clearly isn't proud of me?
This year I've seen several attempts from decent people to reclaim the day from the fascists, to take pride in England being the diverse place it is. After all, St George was Palestinian so he seems a bit of an odd role model for the EDL to revere.
The trouble is that I couldn't be less proud of being English.
- Universities in England are charging ever increasing fees, this is not true for all other parts of the UK. The exorbitant amounts are a major disincentive for people from a background like mine to get an education.
- English older and disabled people are having to pay more for less home care. This isn't true of all of the UK, Scottish older people get free care.
- People living in care homes are facing bigger bills for less safe care homes and DLA recipients living in care homes will be losing their mobility component from 2013.
- The government are completely dismantling the welfare state. Disabled people are killing themselves because they can't afford to live.
- The government is planning to completely dismantle the NHS in England. I had one experience of NHS outsourcing to private healthcare providers; I waited a year to have my bust ankle MRIed.
- Stories of police violence seem almost daily while hate crimes against disabled people are frequent and rarely appropriately handled by the authorities.
- It's the 21st century and gay people can't get married.
- The government is considering scrapping our anti-discrimination legislation.
- We have misogynists, homophobes and disablists in parliament.
- Our newspapers tell daily lies about benefits claimants, which results in an increase in the aforementioned disablist hate crime.
And that list barely scratches the surface.
You could argue that the decisions made by the government don't necessarily reflect those of the populace as a whole, that the lies printed in the press aren't emblematic of the opinions of the nation. Except they are. We're a democracy, we voted for this government. Look at the sea of blue across England. It's the English that voted Tory rather than other parts of the UK. As for the press? If people stopped buying the lies, the papers would stop printing them.
So could someone, please, tell me why I should be proud of England when England so clearly isn't proud of me?
24 July 2010
The lowest of the low
Being female, gay and disabled1 you'd think I'd experience 3 times as much discrimination as a disabled but otherwise socially privileged bloke, right?
Wrong. All the discrimination I ever experience is disablism.
Not only is experiencing daily disablist acts (like not being able to get into a brand new café) frustrating, there's also the constant reminders that discrimination against disabled people provokes the least outrage among society at large out of all the isms.
Easter weekend 2009 there was the amazonfail brouhaha. It doesn't matter if someone from amazon.fr pressed the wrong button which "accidentally" meant rankings were stripped from any books to do with homosexuality or sex and disability. Where the conscious and deliberate disablism occurred was in the web/media frenzy. Everyone on the planet cried "homophobia" in their tweets, blog posts and news articles. Only a tiny, tiny smattering of people gave a crap that books on disability and sexuality had been affected too.
A couple of months ago the LGBT Labour party conference were refused drinks in a London pub. The story of homophobic discrimination spread across the internet like wildfire and was global news within a couple of hours. My gut reaction upon reading the story was to tweet Greencoat Boy: The gay in me is horrified. The disabled in me says "so what? Disabled people get refused service DAILY and it's not news.".
Two hours later my point got illustrated perfectly. I read this story of a wheelchair-using woman being refused service in a restaurant on the very same day. Naturally I tweeted the link. The story of a homophobic bar manager was tweeted and retweeted thousands and thousands of times. How many people retweeted the tale of a disablist restaurant manager? Two. Not two thousand; just two.
Yesterday it was news that a niqab-wearing young Muslim woman and her friend were refused entry onto a bus for "being a threat". I'm refused entry to roughly one in 5 of the buses I try to board because I'm a wheelchair user. Very often the driver doesn't even have the balls to tell me he's going to refuse me access, he just pulls up at the stop, doesn't get the ramp out, allows able-bodied2 passengers to board and then drives off.
Where's my news story in the top 10 on the BBC News website? Where's my "urgent investigation" into the discrimination I faced?
Superaleja once referred to "multiple layers of discrimination, like a crip-fail onion," which I think perfectly describes the 3 situations I've written about here. First disabled people get discriminated against, then there's the second layer of discrimination where we're denied the public outcry of horror that would be extended to the same discrimination being committed against any other minority group.
1 I have been told on many an occasion that it's a shame I'm not black too. During my stand up days (before I became too ill to carry on) I had an 'anti-fan' in Brighton who came to see me every time I gigged in the city to accuse me of being racist for telling the story of how daft people sometimes say "it's a shame you're not black." Being so hated really made me feel like I was doing the job properly.
2 I'm deliberately using the phrase "able-bodied" as the opposite of "physically impaired". There's a chance that some of the people boarding the bus are both disabled and able-bodied.
Wrong. All the discrimination I ever experience is disablism.
Not only is experiencing daily disablist acts (like not being able to get into a brand new café) frustrating, there's also the constant reminders that discrimination against disabled people provokes the least outrage among society at large out of all the isms.
Easter weekend 2009 there was the amazonfail brouhaha. It doesn't matter if someone from amazon.fr pressed the wrong button which "accidentally" meant rankings were stripped from any books to do with homosexuality or sex and disability. Where the conscious and deliberate disablism occurred was in the web/media frenzy. Everyone on the planet cried "homophobia" in their tweets, blog posts and news articles. Only a tiny, tiny smattering of people gave a crap that books on disability and sexuality had been affected too.
A couple of months ago the LGBT Labour party conference were refused drinks in a London pub. The story of homophobic discrimination spread across the internet like wildfire and was global news within a couple of hours. My gut reaction upon reading the story was to tweet Greencoat Boy: The gay in me is horrified. The disabled in me says "so what? Disabled people get refused service DAILY and it's not news.".
Two hours later my point got illustrated perfectly. I read this story of a wheelchair-using woman being refused service in a restaurant on the very same day. Naturally I tweeted the link. The story of a homophobic bar manager was tweeted and retweeted thousands and thousands of times. How many people retweeted the tale of a disablist restaurant manager? Two. Not two thousand; just two.
Yesterday it was news that a niqab-wearing young Muslim woman and her friend were refused entry onto a bus for "being a threat". I'm refused entry to roughly one in 5 of the buses I try to board because I'm a wheelchair user. Very often the driver doesn't even have the balls to tell me he's going to refuse me access, he just pulls up at the stop, doesn't get the ramp out, allows able-bodied2 passengers to board and then drives off.
Where's my news story in the top 10 on the BBC News website? Where's my "urgent investigation" into the discrimination I faced?
Superaleja once referred to "multiple layers of discrimination, like a crip-fail onion," which I think perfectly describes the 3 situations I've written about here. First disabled people get discriminated against, then there's the second layer of discrimination where we're denied the public outcry of horror that would be extended to the same discrimination being committed against any other minority group.
1 I have been told on many an occasion that it's a shame I'm not black too. During my stand up days (before I became too ill to carry on) I had an 'anti-fan' in Brighton who came to see me every time I gigged in the city to accuse me of being racist for telling the story of how daft people sometimes say "it's a shame you're not black." Being so hated really made me feel like I was doing the job properly.
2 I'm deliberately using the phrase "able-bodied" as the opposite of "physically impaired". There's a chance that some of the people boarding the bus are both disabled and able-bodied.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)