Standing on the corner of disability and asexuality, watching all the activists go by

[nightengalesknd]

This is my piece for the October 2013 Carnival of Aces, Disability and Asexuality, hosted at Yes, That Too They are still calling for submissions and I will link to the actual carnival after it goes active on October 31.

Standing on the corner of disability and asexuality, watching all the activists go byI’ve been standing on the corner, watching

Comments

[sammason]

This is excellent. I learned from it. Also, I want to quote from it - may I do that? - acknowledging you or not as you prefer? I particularly like your summaries. 'We don’t always need help. We aren’t children, so talk to us, not our companions. Don’t say wheelchair-bound. Don’t pat wheelchair-users on the head. And by the way, we aren’t [necessarily] asexual.'

One thing I'd ask you to remove is the word 'underlying'. My disability doesn't 'underlie' my sexuality or any other aspect of life. That makes it sound like some kind of secret.

Apart from that, I find this such a very good piece of writing. Please would you post it to friendly_crips?

[nightengalesknd]

Please share. I don't have the spoons to cross-post tonight but perhaps Thursday for the actual carnival.

I wish I had some of those pamphlets to show you online - mostly I was trying to summarize decades of catchphrases into a paragraph or two. What is sad is, the same things I read in children's books in the 80s and saw on pamphlets in the 90s are still being said on websites today because the same misconceptions are still going around. And yet I know things are better.

One reason I try to follow our history is that we need to know where we've been before we can get to where we're going. That's the optomist's view. The pessamist would say, they who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. There's probably some truth in both.

[sammason]

Some of the stereotypes do seem to have faded. 'Does she take sugar in her tea?' is one that I never hear. But I get the over-helping and the patting. Nobody has tried to pat my head but many have patted my shoulder or fondled my arm. Many have remarked that I'm 'struggling' and that I 'can't do' this or that.

I think you've been attending to these topics for longer than I have. In the 80s and 90s, I wasn't disabled so I'll have had a lot of the attitudes those pamphlets were designed to address. Now, I know how it feels to be one of 'them' instead of one of 'us'. I means a lot to me that you mentioned the patting and the 'wheelchair-bound' comments. I even have one friend who calls people 'wheelchair jockeys'! When I first heard per say that, I called per on it but didn't feel confident in saying that it's offensive. Now I do feel sure about it.

[nightengalesknd]

What's funny about how long I've been paying attention to this stuff is that it predates my own disability diangosis by decades. I first got interested in disability around age 4, trying to learn sign language from a Deaf character on Sesame Street, a children's TV show. As soon as I could read, I was reading Helen Keller biographies

[sammason]

Healthcare professionals often hesitate to call me Dr Mason. How can a patient be entitled to call perself Doctor? Often, they call me Sam without asking my permission to do that.

[ext_2758483]

I was fascinated by disabilities long before being diagnosed with one, too.

I think deep down, I knew I was different, and felt drawn to other people who were different as a result. I've always been a huge fan of stories where someone is hiding superpowers, for much the same reason. Although I tend to be more interested in 'supernatural drawbacks' than in 'supernatural powers', which is the main reason I like vampire detective shows so much.