feminist blogs

(I am writing this ahead of time, as I will be away most of tomorrow attending the wedding of a good friend.)

I want to thank all of you for my time here.

Jill, Holly, Cara, Jack — and kactus and piny (come baaaaaack!) — thank you so much for letting me share your space. Having spent time monitoring the comment moderation queue now, my respect for all of you is significantly deepened! You all help shape an interesting and valuable community, and I am honored to have been able to use the platform that you (and past contributors) have built. I’ve always admired you as writers, but now I can appreciate you as community organizers as well. And I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to a wider audience. Again, thank you.

To the commenters, I extend my heartfelt thanks! It took a while to find my footing, but I think we have had very good and productive discussions, and yes, that includes those who added their criticisms. It was all of you who helped make my posts interesting and productive conversations, and I greatly appreciate all your contributions. I didn’t quite expect to write as much as I did, or as stridently as I did, but it came from the heart, and I do think I have learned quite a lot — both by looking into my own self, life and history and by listening to you all tell yours. I have been chastened in several areas and challenged to rework and refine even those most deeply-held views. And most of all, hearing such a wide range of experiences has been a learning moment for me, and I hope for everyone else who was reading too.

I have always enjoyed sticking my nose in on the conversations around here, but I have a deeper appreciation for the community here now and I’m glad to have had the chance to earn that.

My blog has been empty for these two weeks — I’m too much of a flake to cross-post consistently — but I will be updating regularly again. Again, I didn’t quite expect to end up writing all that I did here; I cover a somewhat broader range of subjects in my general writing. Still, if you have enjoyed my posts, or you just like to see a lot of kitty photos, please do subscribe to my blog feed and stop by for a comment once in awhile. I liked hearing from all of you very much; I hope to hear from a lot of you over there too!

Several subjects I didn’t cover here, but am working on piece by piece and hope to post at my site:

• What I like to call “Second shift for the sick”
• Strong womyn in a patriarchal system, complaints about them, and how it all ties together
• Poverty and “financial responsibility”
• The idea of diluting legitimacy and why it is a tool of the dominant classes to wield against individuals of an oppressed class who threaten the social order
• Class and career paths
  

Like I said in my introduction: I can’t promise any of these will get done, or when — but at least they give you a general idea of what I will be writing about in the future. There is a widget on my blog’s sidebar with a few of my own favorite posts picked out, if you feel like reading them.

Peace.

And miscellany.

• I am in the middle of a job search. You know how most job applications ask if you have any friends or relatives working for the company? The state prison sent me an application, and they asked the same thing… sort of. They didn’t ask whether I knew anyone who worked there. They asked whether I knew anyone being jailed there.
• When you see the word “local” and read “lolcat,” you know something has gone terribly wrong. (Specifically, “the lolcat police.” That’s an interesting prospect.)

Kitty pictures below the cut.

Coaxing Buddy out from behind the couch. (It actually worked!)

You all know that no open box can go vacant in the presence of a cat. What, then, is a cat to make of the availability of a box within a box?

A blanket fort, that’s what.

Mitsy and her teddy mouse, Ratticus.

Hey Mitsy, have you ever tried yoga? I hear it’s very relaxing…

I’m sure fellow cat owners will recognize below what we call, simply, the Mood.

Well, what’s the risk?

A lot of people took this tack in response to my PSA post. If I minorly annoy 49 people, but save one life!, isn’t it worth the risk?

Psssst: your privilege is showing.

See, here’s your thought process: If there’s a one-in-fifty chance my drive-by suggestions will help, it’s worth it!

But aren’t you forgetting someone? Forty-nine someones?

What’s the risk?

Here’s the risk. People with disabilities face a constant affront on their personal autonomy. Especially any time they are visibly disabled in public, there are the stares that people don’t even try to hide; the comments; the questions, the assholes who get it in their little pea brains to try to convince you that you can’t really be disabled, or not that disabled, or it can’t be that bad anyway; by corollary, the assholes who react as though you were dying in front of them, cooing and fawning and making sad eyes and telling you how sorry they are and how awful it must be; and then the assholes who see “person with disability” and read “person who NEEDS MY HELP!” — having the presumption and gall to take and push your wheelchair, or hold open doors far past the point of creepiness, or forcibly take from your hands whatever you were carrying, or, well, presume to tell you how they think you can “fix” your disability.

The blog you are reading is titled Feministe, so I can assume that most of you consider yourselves feminist, right? You can use that framework to understand a little bit of what it is like to live life with a disability: the “thousand little cuts” that make up one huge painful wound that we are trained from birth not to see.

And face it: as a temporarily abled person, you hold a vast amount of privilege in this culture. So when I tell you that there are so many things you do not see, please do not write me off.

Because there are so many things you do not see. You do not know this person’s medical history. You do not know this person’s family history. You do not know this person’s history, full stop, the whole of their experiences as a human being. You do not know what medical conditions this person has. You do not know how many they have and how any of them might interact. You do not know how disabling they are. You do not know how much of a person’s disability is physical and how much mental. You do not know what treatments are available for this person’s condition, and you do not know what treatments are available for this person. You do not know what allergies this person has. You do not know how any given treatment might affect this person mentally or physically. You do not know what therapies this person has already tried, and to what degree of success. You do not know what all this person has to do every day, and what may get in the way of doing those things.

And that’s just the beginning.

There are fairly rigid standards for diagnosing each medical condition, but don’t let that fool you; each individual person with that condition has their own individual life, and the condition takes on an individual form shaped around the outlines of that person’s life. Disability is a very fluid concept, despite popular conception, starting basically when a condition is interfering with your ability to conduct your life. But what is interfering, and what is that life? Again, I cannot emphasize enough, disability is a very fluid concept, taking a specialized form for each person it affects.

All this means that even though your work buddy’s grandma’s friend down the road shares whichever particular medical condition, that does not make your work buddy’s grandma’s friend down the road’s experiences transferable to mine.

Those of us with disabilities have, chances are, dealt with them for years already. We have already taken the time to learn about our condition, to understand how it works, to be able to spot how it might affect our particular lives. We have looked into a wide range of treatments available and have tried at least several. With some of those we may have dealt with some moderate to severe fallout: side effects, bodily reactions, or even psychological trauma.

I reiterate: We are far more likely to know what is going to help us live our lives than you are, however informed you think yourself on the subject. (And if that is “not very,” then, well, I am going to let you extract your own set of conclusions from that information.)

And even that aside, it can be dangerous to be constantly on-the-ready for whatever new tip, trick, herbal supplement, voo-doo diet, self-absorbed practitioner, or, yes, drug that any random acquaintance can come up with.

Yes, I said dangerous.

I don’t think a lot of people have any appreciation for what life with disability means. For how much has to change. Most PWD significantly restructure their everyday lives in ways that are invisible to even the most well-meaning of outsiders. The little idiosyncratic things we do: arrange our furniture a certain way, walk in a certain path, arrange our schedule certain ways, change when we sleep, eat, shower, or travel, perform tasks in a manner and order a normal person would not. We cut corners, don’t make the bed, don’t “do” our hair, rewear items of clothing, don’t wear certain items of clothing, wear items of clothing considered “inappropriate” for the setting. We make battle plans for every day in our life, micro-managing all those little things, enumerating all those little trade-offs, carefully managing the cost of every factor in every action.

Hang on, I’m going somewhere with this:

The first six months I lived in Orange (California) I didn’t have a car. Fortunately Orange County funds a decent public transportation structure, and I was able to take the bus whenever I needed to go anywhere. And the bus stops were common and the routes were frequent, but still, consider grocery shopping. It was either a mile’s walk to a bus stop for a route that took me straight down that street to the nearest grocery store or 3-4 blocks to a bus stop where I would have to take two separate routes to get to the store. And after all that walking and waiting in the hot sun on the hard cement (yes I sat) and then all the walking across the street and parking lot to the store’s doorway and then all the walking and stopping and standing around the store, half of which was painfully cold, and then all the standing and waiting in line and the energy it took to be sociable to the clerk and whoever else thought it was just dandy to strike up a conversation, and then, and then! I got to go out the door and do all that (minus the shopping part) over again, but this time carrying several bags of heavy groceries on my arm, worrying that my milk and meat might go bad in the hour-and-a-half it took to make it back to my front door.

And the dilemma I was faced with was: I only have the strength to make that trip every week and a half, two weeks. But if I buy enough groceries to last that time, that increases the load I have to handle on my way back (especially taking the first route, which would cut my time down to an hour) so much that I won’t be able to make the trip that often. But if I only carry the amount of groceries that I am able (and I use “able” very loosely) then I am going to run out and have to return to the store five or six days from now. And I am already making the simplest and easiest-to-make meals I can without compromising my nourishment. So what do I do?

I wanted to break that story down — into its most basic factors, I note; there were many more — to make you understand exactly how much thought goes into even the most basic of actions, and how much we have to change just to get those basics done. Although really, this doesn’t tell you what I had to change to accommodate those trips in my schedule: the activities (including, eventually, school/work altogether) I had to give up, the meals I had to skip, the socialization I had to avoid, the pain I went through.

See also: showering. And I bring in my own experience, which is not by any means representative (but which is not as out-of-the-ordinary as some might protest) because it is all I have to speak from, and because it helps put these concepts into human stories. It takes the hypothetical into reality. And it shows exactly how much I have to change when attempting to negotiate life with my disability.

What a lot of people don’t realize about their off-hand treatments is how much trying a new treatment messes with our already-set routines. Just to start off with those controversial little drugs: I might have to come off some, or all, of my current medication to try it. Then I have to deal with the side effects, which may fade off after several weeks or months, or may persist. Then I get to wait a period of time before it even begins to “kick in,” that period of time being anywhere from one week to six. I may have to titrate the dosage up, depending on the medication, which may take months. And then I get to wait until I’ve used it while it’s doing something long enough to have an informed opinion about how much it helps me. And then if it isn’t what I need it to be, I may have to titrate that dosage down or else go through a very scary withdrawal period (and I’ve done it).

That can be six months of my life. Months spent in pain and discomfort, months perhaps without being able to use other effective treatments, months dealing with side effects and reactions, months where I may be cranky and irritable and impaired cognitively. Months where, depending on the type of medication, I may be “out of it” emotionally so much as to render me a hermit (as which I have, fwiw, spent probably a year cumulatively). Months where I am taking comments wrong, imagining things, and possibly being preoccupied with death for lack of an effective treatment.

For some people it is simply not feasible to give up their current treatment to go be “open-minded” about other available treatments; they could very easily end up dead. And even those who don’t are denied weeks or months of time that could have been spent functional, without pain, without worry.

Are you willing to “suggest” people give up that time?

Even non drug treatments: say, for instance, exercise. You may have gathered from above that physical activity has significant cost for me in particular. How does one trip to the grocery store compare, on an objective level, to energy spent on one session doing cardio, weight lifting, yoga or tai chi? Isn’t the latter usually significantly harder? And I am to fit this into my schedule at least a couple times a week, how?

Of course, the sort of activity recommended for fibromyalgia is usually gentler; my current physical therapy has me doing very basic stretching as a means of building muscle strength. And it is usually done for a shorter period of time. But even ten minutes of stretching or walking takes away far more than ten minutes of my time. It takes away energy that could have been spent doing something far more important (like scooping the clumps of piss and shit out of my cats’ litter box) and creates pain, building exponentially the more time we’re talking about, that will be inhibitive later on down the line (to say nothing of, well, what it means to feel that pain in the real time).

And all this is purely physical cost; something else I feel is under appreciated by most people is the toll that all these things take on us emotionally. I only have so many spoons to use on physical tasks every day, but when it comes to mental aptitude a lot of people still expect me to have unlimited capacity. It doesn’t work that way. Again, the thousand little cuts: for every further thing to which I have to pay attention, for every further thing I have to change, for every further ounce of pain, fatigue, frustration I have to feel, I am sapped of mental energy. Sapped of spirit, you might say.

So when someone proposes that I go and research this New! And! Exciting! treatment, and learn how to use or perform it properly, and spend my time practicing, and incorporate it into my usual routine, they are often unaware of exactly how much it is they are asking me to do. And that’s after I tend to their fragile feelings of rejection if I fail to make positive noises about their Oh! So! Helpful! suggestion.

I only have so many things I can hold in my mind all at once. Which is why, sometimes, though I read your email and I haven’t forgotten you, I haven’t responded for a couple weeks now. Or why, sometimes, I put off making important phone calls, because I don’t have the energy to fight right now, even if it’s a simple task, I’m just tired of having to struggle and struggle to get even the simplest things done, I’m just so tired of facing so much resistance at every step. It’s like if every time you moved an inch you slammed into a brick wall. WHAM! Another inch. WHAM! Another inch. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Oops, had to repeat that one for good m–WHAM!

At some point you just want to collapse to the ground and shout to the world, OK, I’M DEAD ALREADY!

And again, remind yourself that you don’t know their history, their current condition, their emotional state.

Because, well, I’m just one person. And let me tell you a little bit of my history.

I have fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia was the “waste basket condition” in the 90s. It was what every doctor would throw at that pain-in-the-ass patient (usually a woman) who just wouldn’t shut the  fuck up about how they hurt and stuff. Even though they weren’t showing anything up on tests. These women would return and they would whine and whine and be all, like, hysterical and stuff, so finally you’d throw this name at her and shuffle her out the door and on to some poor unexpecting specialist.

People with fibromyalgia have a complex about this. Because they have been told for ages now that it is “all in their heads.” That they are imagining their pain, or exaggerating it, or just looking for things to complain about. (Is that ringing any bells for you, feminists?) That it is psychosomatic, or that they are pathologizing all the small things that don’t matter in the long run.

And this condition is already very vague and nebulous. You can’t always point to a clear line where your inability stops and unwillingness kicks in. You “can do” something now, but how will it affect you in the future? But outsiders look at you and just see “lazy.” And, again, nothing shows up on any tests. So how are you supposed to prove your pain to these people? And… how are you supposed to prove your pain to yourself?

And the market is ripe for exploitation, moreso several years ago before the new class of drugs came out to treat fibro with some degree of efficacy. It’s altmed on crack. There’s not a diet program out there that hasn’t been sold as a “cure” for fibromyalgia at some point. And there are any number of doctors, nurses, chiropracters, fabricators, and just plain wanna-bes who are pushing their treatment for fibromyalgia even when it fails to stand up to scientific analysis. Herbs, vitamins, and nutritional supplements, exercise programs, pseudo-religious/Eastern-appropriative hand-wavey woo, and many others are regular characters on the cast of alternative medicine solutions for fibromyalgia.

I’d say I’d already been pitched every one of them at some point or another, but that understates the sheer vastness of this field. Probably a hundred new “treatments” have popped up in the time it took to type this sentence. Needless to say, I think I’ve got the general concept down pat, thanks.

What makes it dangerous when someone tries to sell me one of these treatments, and hell, not even just the “alternative” ones, is very similar to why it can be dangerous for a sexual assault survivor to read past a trigger warning. It chips away at the defenses you have built to protect yourself from future trauma, and it whisks you back to the trauma you have already experienced, and abuse survivors will know what I mean when I say it returns you to the frame of mind that you had when the abuse occurred. You don’t just remember the event(s), you remember the way you thought around the time the event(s) occurred.

In my case, it takes me back to the frame of mind I was in when I was first diagnosed. It’s the frame of mind that says, you’re normal. The frame of mind that says, nothing is wrong with you. The frame of mind that says, push forward. The frame of mind that says, you’re imagining things. The frame of mind that says, you can’t trust your own perception.

And really, that’s what it boils down to. It’s an assault on the protective framework I have built for myself. It tells me that I can’t trust myself and the way I see things right now. It tells me that other people’s perceptions are more important than my own. It tells me that other people’s opinions override my own. It tells me that other people get to decide my life.

And you aren’t really trying to decide my life when you make these suggestions. You don’t feel that way, anyway. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that I spent the better part of twenty years saying “yes” to every invitation, taking seriously every criticism, and spending all my time worrying what other people thought of me. I spent that better part telling myself I was faking it, exaggerating it, imagining things, while also taking to heart every suggestion that I just think positive/get some sun/take a walk/write a journal.

I spent that better part mired in self doubt, always questioning my own thoughts, experiences, and feelings, while immediately accepting everyone else’s without a second thought.

Over the past five or six years, I have slowly, carefully, and deliberately built a protective wall around myself, re-trained myself to think, behave, act, and react in certain different ways, and made a concerted effort at re-gaining my own trust.

The thing is, though, as any survivor will tell you: That wall is not impenetrable. In fact, every little assault chips away at it, slowly but surely. And sometimes, I have enough of a buffer built that that one casual comment won’t faze me, all told. But sometimes, the world has not been so kind, and my defenses are significantly worn down, and all it takes is that one stray comment.

And I’m back in that frame of mind again. I feel OK right now, why don’t I go move around all my furniture? or I’ve been very absent lately, people might suspect me, I’d better not decline any requests or invitations for a while or you know, this person was just trying to be nice, and maybe they’re right, I should have an open mind, maybe I should try whatever it is they’re suggesting even if “what they’re suggesting” is “just stop thinking about it so much” or “don’t sleep so long” or “exposure therapy.”

And even a very small time in that frame of mind can have very long-lasting effects. It isn’t just a couple moments of self doubt and then move on. The decisions I make when I am under the influence of that kind of thinking means I am going to be feeling those “couple moments” for a long time.

That’s just one person, and that’s just one condition. But my bet is that the same general thing also goes on in people with depression. Or with lupus. Or a lot of other “invisible” conditions. But even some of the “visible” ones sometimes too.

Certainly a few of those 49.

You say you care about the well-being of people with disabilities. What about those?

Or do they not matter if they are not stroking your ego in the process?

It’s harsh, isn’t it?

If I’m going to have to carry around a stash of pills tucked away in my pocket or purse (in other words, if I want to leave home, ever), then damnit, I am going to have a little bit of fun about it.

When I worked at the Camera Store, rather than using my break to buy and eat crappy and expensive mall food, I would wander around and window-shop. One day, dawdling about Hallmark, I ran into this little pill case.

It was $8. Eight friggin’ dollars.

I had to have it.

Recently a friend of ours had her father pass away, and she was taking his death rather hard. We went to the viewing to support her. When I saw her fumble around in her little black “formal” purse to take out a bottle of xanax while talking with my husband, I knew what I just had to do. I reached down into my purse, grabbed my little bee case, unceremoniously dumped all the pills out into my purse, and pressed the empty case into her hand. She hugged me.

Later she told me that it was one of few things that really made her smile during all the public ceremony surrounding his death.

I was glad to hear it, because, well, it was really hard to give up that case. I loved that thing to death. It was a small joy to see it every time I had to pop another pill to be able to keep going, whether I was shopping, working, visiting a friend, visiting a doctor…

And really, it was just cute, and stylish. And so often, the objects and devices that we, people with disabilities, depend on to help us through life, are purely functional beasts. They are large and clunky, plastic, dirty and old from years of use. They are designed to do their job — not to look nice. Which is perfectly fine, and all, but sometimes, dammit, you just like to have something pretty.

A lot of pwd go for decorative canes to walk with, for instance. Hell, kids have been decorating the casts they have over their broken bones for ages. It’s not like it’s out of place to have the desire for something that is well-designed in both form and function.

So. My pill case. I actually sought out another one (and it took some effort) just because, well, sometimes there are those things that you just become so attached to — there was a keychain I got while I was at Cal State Fullerton that lasted me years, and I had to ask the in-laws to retrieve it from the keys when we junked the car I totaled last December. There aren’t many things I get attached to that way — I can’t really think of any other item that is important to me in quite the same way.

I never did find one on eBay and Hallmark had them in clearance when I got the second one, so I can’t link you to any place where you can buy it yourself, unfortunately (I believe it to be that awesome). But a hop on the Google bus will land you a few places that are providing the same basic product, and I’m sure you can use your imagination to dream up ways to apply this concept to different assistive devices.

It’s just not living if you can’t have a little fun.

But when I am hopped up on pain killers (OH NOES!) I get babbly.

So we’ve all at least heard of John McCain’s campaign ad mixing images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in with images of Barack Obama while calling him a “celebrity,” right? I think we can agree for the most part on all the racist and misogynistic bs wrapped up in that, so we’re just going to move right on, because I’ve got something awesome here for you. Paris hits back!

PWNed.

Loves it.

I wanted to thank all the commenters who have left me encouraging notes, and everyone who chimed in to the discussions over the past couple days. You can really tell when you struck that tuning fork just right, because everybody comes out to talk about it :)

There were also more than a couple people who expressed surprise/relief to find people who are facing the same issues they face every day. I wanted to encourage you all to keep talking about these things.

I started my blog mainly because our experiences are kept in the dark like this so often. It is considered inappropriate to discuss certain experiences, and pretty much anything involving disability falls into that column. It is a “private” matter. And even where it isn’t necessarily considered inappropriate, sometimes it seems out of place, talking openly about such personal things when most of the conversation focuses on the abstract, the theoretical.

Remember: the personal is political.

The more we speak up about our experiences, the more people we find who have gone through the same thing, and the more we can learn from each other, and discover exactly how common some of those experiences are — and thus, understand that those experiences are not our own personal failures, but the result of a society-wide approach to the issues we face.

And the more we speak up, the more other people, who don’t share those experiences, hear. The more information they have, straight from the people affected, rather than the (very limited) mainstream conversation that tends to exclude those people de facto. And thus the better understanding we can all form about these issues.

You are not obligated to speak. You can share exactly as much as you are comfortable sharing. But to those people who feel relief upon meeting another person who understands all of those “private” things that weren’t “relevant” to the conversation before: Speak up. I want to hear you. Start a blog. Comment on other people’s blogs. Make no secret of your day to day, minute-to-minute experiences, even when speaking with people in “real life.”

Don’t consider your condition a secret, or a severely personal matter, which doesn’t affect anyone else, and therefore interests no one else. Because a lot of us are interested. And their issues affect you. Don’t let that street stay one-way.

There are understandable circumstances where one would not want to be so open. I am trying to keep my disabilities as hidden as possible while searching and interviewing for jobs. Maybe a family member has a thing about the subject and you don’t want to rehash things over and over again. Maybe another person reacts negatively, or you sense that they would, and you don’t feel like dealing with that. That is all perfectly fine. But the oath of secrecy we are all made to take seems to extend to situations far, far beyond these. And I want to break down those barriers.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so satisfied in my life as when people step of the Google bus, or a link from another site, or whatever, to read my writing, and write to say that they have gone through the same thing and they had never heard anyone talk about it openly before. It gives me hope.

There are people out there right now who are going through the same things you face, every single day. And a lot of those people have no idea that there are other people out there going through those same things. Because we’re taught not to talk about it.

But maybe, if you talk about it, one of them will hear you. And their life will be a little bit easier, knowing that they aren’t the only ones.

Start talking.

[BRAIN FOG ALERT] I have been writing this one bit by bit, and having trouble reworking it quite to my liking. I didn’t want to let this go unsaid, so I decided to post it as is. Things might be a little clunky and unclear. If so, please feel free to bring it up in comments. Thanks. [/BRAIN FOG ALERT]

I would like to register a complaint, and I hope that all who hear it understand it in the lighthearted context in which it is intended. It is a serious concern, but it should be understood that it is not a placing of blame nor actually a complaint about the people involved: only the script that society has given them to read from.

Today I would like to consider the cause and the community of Fat Acceptance, Size Acceptance, Body Acceptance, Body Positivity, et al. This is a cause which holds at its heart that no person should be judged or maligned based on hir physical appearance, that size and shape are not moral conditions, that fat is a matter far more complicated than Calories-In-Calories-Out, and that both individuals and society are better off when bodies are treated as a respected comrade rather than a homicidal adversary.

If you are new to these topics, try reading this first. Comments on this post will be restricted. See footnote.

When a person discovers FA, sie is introduced to the idea that food and physical activity are not, or should not be, things associated with a person’s body size first and foremost. But what should they be considered instead?

Two common answers are:

1. What should matter is what your body does for you.

It is absolutely lovely that you have strong legs for running, and running gives you energy and purpose. It is similarly lovely that your hands can create intricate works of art, visual or audible or tactile. It is also lovely that your breasts are full with milk that nurtures and nourishes your young child, and offers you the time and space to spend together, forming a strong foundational bond between one another, which can then grow into a beautiful and complex human relationship.

It is lovely that your muscles stretch and bend and enable you to do yoga, which gives an amazing sense of refreshment and flexibility. It is lovely that you can stand and move your body in dance, aligning your movement with the beat of music, and finding that place of awe and transcendence.

There are a number of unendingly complex systems that make up your body, respiratory and nervous and digestive and musculoskeletal, which are things of marvel and beauty. And it is absolutely lovely that those systems all function independently and interdependently, cooperating to good effect, functioning with an amazing degree of accuracy, every second of every hour of every day.

These things, they are all lovely, and I am happy that your body does this for you.

But I have a problem with building a value system that has, at its core, that basic functioning of your physical self. Because, while your body performs wonderfully for you, not every person is so fortunate.

I may stand tall on strong legs, but I cannot count on them to take me every place I need to go. Another person may have arthritic joints that make it very difficult to do anything requiring any degree of dexterity or nimbleness. Infertility is not that uncommon in women, and even those who are able to conceive may face trouble at some point during their pregnancy and early motherhood when their bodies do not function according to the ideal.

My muscles are stiff and sore, making yoga hard on me — and I do it anyway, but I do it because I need that stretching and balancing and strengthening, so as to prevent even more pain down the road. And I cannot celebrate the fact that I can do that yoga, because my body is unpredictable, and I may find myself incapable of the necessary stretching and movement at any time. And what am I to celebrate then? Am I then deficient? Am I then of less value than my neighbor who can perform that activity?

It is a problem today that our bodies, especially as female bodies, are valued primarily based on their conformity to an ideal of beauty that is out of reach for the vast majority of us. And one of the primary factors in that ideal is your body’s size: the bigger you are, the less you are valued.

This is wrong and this is harmful. But in our zeal to construct a more equitable and just system, we may be leaning on certain values that will prove just as wrong and harmful if they are to take over.

2. You should eat, drink, move, and behave with an ideal of bodily and psychological health in mind.

This is a similar complaint, but slightly different.

In this case, the issue is not how we value certain physical traits. Instead, we are privileging certain behaviors.

Make no mistake: it is good to eat the foods we understand as healthful. These foods provide nourishment to our bodies, which we need to keep living. It is good to stand and stretch and move your body, for any number of reasons — the benefits of physical activity are many, and it is good to seek them for yourself. It is also good to be mindful of your well being in areas beyond the physical: to maintain some level of control over the stresses you face, for instance.

These things are all good and beneficial to us. However. When we frame this set of values as being in pursuit of health, we give short shrift to our friends and neighbors who are not pictures of perfect health.

Again: we should not determine the worth of a person based on hir body shape or size, or other visible physical traits. But attempting to replace this value system with one based upon the health of a person is a dangerous move.

There are many of us whose bodies do not work the way the ideal body does. They process food differently, they grow differently, they respond to physical exertion differently, they follow different patterns of thought.

And if we are to give up the pursuit of thinness and replace it with a pursuit of healthfulness, those people will be as left-out as fat people are today.

In fact, they already are. There is a growing health-consciousness movement in this country, and while it does bring with it certain benefits, the boundaries of that discussion are drawn such that people with significant medical conditions that make said healthfulness an impossible goal are pushed outside the boundaries.

I don’t particularly want to feed that tendency.

***

So: if we are to deconstruct the current societal structure built around our bodies, what they do and what they are, we might find ourselves displaced. Where do we go? The two value systems detailed above are common proposals, but I believe they are too problematic to seriously pursue. So… where do we go instead?

Honestly, I don’t have the answer to that. Body positivity is made all the more difficult in a society that saturates certain traits with meaning that they should not necessarily have. But I’m not sure how we’re supposed to do things instead.

But I wanted to get this out there. FA is an importance cause to me, and I want to see it continue to move forward. I just don’t want to leave ableism unchallenged. I truly believe that it would hurt not only the disabled, but the FA movement as a whole, as well — to move forward on a shaky and unstable foundation. Hopefully we can all pitch in to repair the cracks and fissures together.

***

Footnote: I want this conversation to focus on issues that build upon the basics of fat acceptance and disability activism, rather than arguing over those basics themselves. So: I don’t want to hear “obesity epidemic” or “fat kills” or any wordy workarounds driving toward the same brick wall. You can join the conversation even if you are new to either theory, but I expect you to have done some reading and satisfied those niggling curiosities elsewhere, and be ready to talk about the specific ideas, complaints and concerns brought up in this post.

And any bigotry is going to be deleted. And I am not going to bother giving a warning. I have better things to occupy my time and energy with. Thank you for your understanding.

Some commenters touched on the subject in my previous post and I wanted to open up a thread to talk about that particular bent in the conversation.

Often, when someone learns that another person lives with some sort of medical condition, slight or severe, their first reaction is to suggest to that person some way they could make their condition better.

On behalf of all those persons, let me say: Stop.

Think.

That person has had that condition for months, years, or even their entire lifetime. You, on the other hand, have possibly heard of that condition — and possibly not! — and certainly have no experience living with it. Maybe you know someone else who has it, and maybe that’s a person you actually know fairly well (but that is a very small minority out of those who make these comments).

Which of these two people, do you think, knows a broader range of treatment options for said condition?

Don’t you think that person has already tried more treatment options than you even know exist?

And don’t you think, therefore, that such a suggestion is a bit of an insult to this person, who has, more than likely, struggled and fought with their condition for years already?

How do you think this person feels when sie has to tell you — especially if you are someone who is dear to hir, like a friend or family member — that sie has already tried that and it didn’t work, or sie has done the research on that treatment and it’s total bunk? Or that hir condition doesn’t work the way you think it does, and it’s actually caused hir a great amount of harm to try to think of it that way?

Maybe one time in fifty, you are bringing to light a treatment that this person was not previously aware of. Those other forty-nine times, you are putting this person in a bad spot, having to refuse a well-intentioned suggestion without insulting you in the process.

Certainly, you were only trying to be helpful. Sie knows that.

But maybe, if you thought about it a bit more, you would realize that if you really want to help this person, you can start by not insulting hir intelligence.

I have encountered these well-meaning people many, many times. They suggest this diet, or that exercise program, or this doctor, or that web site. But what they are doing in actuality is acting on the assumption that I have not put effort into learning about my condition, what causes it and how it works, and spent a significant amount of time looking into all of the treatment options, and continually trying new ones in an attempt to find something that works in my life.

And I know, I know you are trying to be nice. But having to confront people over and over again, especially people who are only trying to be nice!, with the facts about my condition and how it has affected my life, gets tiring after awhile, and makes me feel like a rotten jerk.

And I can tell you from experience, having talked with other folks with a variety of conditions, that I’m not the only one who feels that way.

So, again: Stop. And Think. Disability in particular, but illness in general, are subjects that are never really examined on a deeper level in mainstream society. This means that you have most likely been taught mechanisms to deal with the subjects that are very broad and superficial. But if you are serious about facing up to your own privilege and being a friend to those people without it, you will put a little more thought into the assumptions you rely upon when approaching these issues. Trust me, it will be appreciated.

(There isn’t a “brain fog” category here. Consider this your warning.)

We spent Sunday at the in-laws for dadw’s birthday. Spending time with his family is refreshingly easy — shooting the breeze, playing a couple of silly party games (highly recommended!). Still, when everyone settled in front of the tv I grabbed the copy of Consumer Reports on the table to page through.

One of the feature stories detailed the problems Americans have with sleep. We all know that adults in this country are having problems getting enough sleep every night (to say nothing of teenagers). The angle CR chose to take for this article was medication: what sort of meds are out there to help you sleep, and how they totally don’t work. According to CR, one in five Americans takes some sort of medication to get to sleep at night!*

Oh, how awful. People taking medicine.

… wait, what?

Stop. Seriously, just stop. Think about it.

What is so awful about people taking medicine?

It’s not just CR — that’s a mild example. I encounter this sort of foreboding in quite a lot of writing, to begin with. People pull out the Scary Statistics about drug use, for this or that medical condition or this or that group of drugs, using those numbers to make a point about Big Pharma or to insist that the people taking that drug could just do some yoga and be like, totally cured of their debilitating depression!

As a society, we have a complex about this whole drug thing. We have no problem with modifying our brain’s regulation of certain chemicals streaming through our blood with the intent of altering this or that function when the thing doing the modifying is, say, food, or physical activity, or orgasm, or incense, or sun exposure, or, hey, sleep! But when you cut out the middle man people start getting all jumpy.

Really, though, that’s not it. It’s not the drugs that make people nervous. The drug panic is just the superficial manifestation of a much, much more deeply-rooted fear.

The fear of disability.

What is it, really, that people are trying to say, when they express distaste for teh drugzzz? When they insinuate that such-and-such condition is just a bunch of hooey anyway? When they assert confidently that this-or-that condition could be managed — exclusively — with alternative solutions? When they evince clear anxiety about how a certain drug meant to change their disposition might take over their personality?

What is it that people really mean when they refuse to consider medication a legitimate treatment for whichever condition?

They’re scared. They’re scared. They know the idea of disability is rearing its head and they don’t want to look it square in the eyes. So they have to close their eyes tight because to see is to acknowledge and to acknowledge is to accept. And they can’t handle that.

They visualize a patient with whichever condition and they want, desperately want, to believe that this condition cannot, will not affect them. They want to believe that there is no chance they will ever have to deal with it. And failing that, they want desperately to believe that nothing will change even if they end up with it. They are grasping out for the most anemic of threads by which to dangle from the rocky cliff, because they know they are traveling this rocky road and they know that this idea of a smooth ride from point A, birth, to point B, wedon’twanttothinkaboutthat, is a lie. They have been sold a lie, as they stumble over the stones in their path and realize that this path seems to lead over the edge and it’s a rocky ride just to get even there.

They clench tight that idea to their chests, shivering, not wanting to even acknowledge the raw and powerful fear that has a hold on them. No, no, they aren’t worried about it at all. They just know that if they were in that situation, they would find a way to make everything right again, to reconcile all their differences.

They don’t want to face up to the fact that they, like you, like me, are frail, frail creatures traveling a rough and unpredictable road, and they don’t even know where it’s leading.

Lift your head up - breathe - settle back in to your seat, here in reality.

OK, then, you say. We’ve cleared individual patients of moral culpability. But we still haven’t dealt with the problem that is Big Pharma.

And I say: no, we haven’t.

The medical and pharmaceutical fields are incredibly problematic industries. They do some seriously corrupt and scary stuff. They should most certainly be more strongly regulated; they are already founded on the concepts of capitalism and profit, which are hard to reconcile with help and aid to those in need, and then we go and give them a practically unlimited leash on which to roam, which, well, causes problems.

But you know what? All that shit doesn’t mean that the products of their deviance and manipulation don’t actually help actual people, right now.

I know how advertising works. I know that the path to riches in marketing rests upon creating a need and then providing a product or service to fill it. I’m not fucking stupid.

And I’m also not a fucking dupe.

It is possible to simulataneously loathe some of the things a person or group does while not stepping on the toes of millions of people who have actually derived benefit from the services of that person or group.

Because, fucking hell, people, my feet are damn well shattered at this point and you’re working your way up my shin.

So think about it, next time you invoke those millions of people, and those tens of millions of toes, in service to your point about, well, whatever. Our feet are hurting.

*Lindsay brought this up in comments, and I wanted to make it clear, since I really didn’t in the post before this: I’m not criticizing CR’s overall point in the article. I’m not making a point about whether anybody should or shouldn’t use any treatment. What I’m getting at here is a cultural anxiety that I’ve seen in various places; the CR article tried to tap into that anxiety in service of their point, which is why I used it — I struggled with making my point clearly. (See brain fog notice.)

’cause I’ve been collecting these stories for a couple days.

Fellow guestblogger Renee hits one out of the park: No More Penis Envy. I think I scared my cats laughing so freakin hard.

I am not sure if Nezua is guestblogging this summer but I am sure some of you remember him from last year. He wrote a piece this weekend on age, power, culture, authority and respect that takes a little longer to chew on, but the flavor is rich and the savor lingers long.

A bunch of parents in Fairfax County, Virginia, raised $125,000 to sue the school district for reworking the boundaries so as to integrate the local schools (on an economic basis). The kids were assigned to South Lakes High School, but the parents wanted them to go to the richer Oakton High. It will surprise precisely none of you, of course, that OHS is also whiter. (SLHS: 46% white, 20% black, 16% latin@ and 11 asian. OHS: 67% white, 11% black and latin@.) They argue on the basis of SAT scores for the schools overall, but here’s the thing: when you run the results for white kids in both schools, the SAT outputs are, respectively, 1730 and 1734. This is true on a general basis; in schools that are socioeconomically diverse, minority and poor kids do much better, and white kids do about the same. But, well, what do you really think those parents were suing over? Were they fighting for the right kind of education? Or were they fighting for the right kind of people?

Sir Charles taps into his righteous anger:

So much of the general public, including most of us in the blogosphere, are completely removed from the danger and physical difficulty of this kind of work.  That’s why you hear people talking about raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 — they have no idea what it’s like to hump it on a construction site for 30 or 40 years, no idea what it is like to pick up and lay down cinder block, one after the other for eight hours a day in 90 degree heat or 30 degree cold, no sense of what it takes to walk the iron or hoist re-bar or climb ladders and scaffolding when you’re 58 years old and your back is bad and your knees are screaming and your body is just broken down.  It’s easy for some asshole editorial writer or some glibertarian blogger to talk about working until you are 70 — but my feeling on this is that if the heaviest thing you lift every day is a cup of coffee or a bulky file — just shut the fuck up on this subject.

Preach it, brother.

And let’s wish Cara a happy belated birthday! She thought she was going to get away without mentioning it here, but ha-ha! I will catch up several days later and use my guest-blogging privileges to bring it to light! Take THAT, Cara! (Happy birthday, too. ;))

I have a post coming up that’s riffing off of the complaints in that post. In the meantime, let’s break out the little tooty toys and party hats, and I’ll go get the trick candles…