Every time that a new ad featuring a person with a disability comes out, I get ready to cringe. So when I learned that Duracell had released a video ad featuring Derrick Coleman, a fullback for the Seattle Seahawks and…
Read MoreI am finding it more and more difficult to use words like “accessibility” and “inclusion” these days. Much of the problem with these words is that they assume an inside and an outside. If you’re “accessible,” to whom are you…
Read MoreOne of the most difficult things for me about hanging out in Internet social justice spaces is the sheer amount of ableist language that gets thrown around there. Some of us point out the language and ask people to refrain…
Read More[The photograph shows ten open paper bags, standing upright, with five in the front and five in the back, against a white wall with grey shadow.] Today, when I was passing out lunches in the park, one of the people…
Read MoreOne of the ways in which I navigate the cacaphony of competing discourses about disability, mental health, and just about everything else is to remind myself that we humans are always storytelling and that these discourses are just a series…
Read MoreI was recently in a discussion about the ways in which people of color are disproportionately targeted by the police (think: stop-and-frisk, among other rights violations), disproportionately incarcerated, and disproportionately imprisoned for long stretches. As is often the case in…
Read MoreThe economy has been crippled by dept. You’d have to be insane to want to invade Syria. They’re just blind to the suffering of other people. Only a moron would believe that. Disability metaphors abound in our culture, and they…
Read MoreOn Love Meow: A Blog for Ultimate Cat Lovers, there is an article with the following title: Smoochie Paraplegic Cat Doesn’t Let Her Disability Define Her I kid you not. That’s a real headline. And it’s not on a parody…
Read MoreI’ve been having a conversation with my friend Julie Rose. Julie has just been diagnosed with Lupus and has become visibly disabled. In response to my piece about disabled people as help objects, she wrote to me and said that…
Read MoreI became a feminist in 1972. Back then, it was still called “Women’s Lib,” sometimes by other feminists (cringe), and sometimes by anti-feminists (usually with a dismissive sneer). My father described me as being on “a Women’s Lib kick” for…
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