Ally Maintenance and Upkeep

There is a really provocative graphic going around about allies lately.  (I am not sure of a source to link, but it was a solid series of tweets about being a QUILTBAG ally. If you have the source, please let me know so I can credit and link, thanks!) It got me thinking about allies and ally-ship. Let me share my brain drippings with you!

I think that allies are part of the community like suburbs are part of the city. They are in the same vague area (say, disability rights) but their experiences are markedly different (by, you know, not actually being disabled) and usually less intense. They both take shit for thinking that disabled folks are full and complete people rather than drains on the system that should have been set on ice flows. One is having their own humanity questioned; while the other is just being told they are wrong, even if it is about something they deeply believe.

I do think that allies of any community should have a safe space... to themselves. They should not intrude on a core community, and most certainly not feel entitled to the core safe spaces, or the time and energy of members of the core community. They should not place themselves above or superior to their core group. But they do have needs that they can support each other to handle. Those needs are not the same as the core folks anyway. Someone being called a racial slur is experiencing something much different than I experience when called a race traitor. We may both need a hand and support, but of vastly different types. Which means that intruding on an oppressed group's safe space is not only a jerk-ass move, but would not give an actual ally what they may need, anyhow.

For anyone reading this with a raised eyebrow or proto-side-eye, I understand. Who the fuck am I, anyway?This is only based on my personal observations as a racial justice ally, an immigration/DREAM ally, an ally to the other folks in LGbt, for starters. Also, I see it a member of the QUILTBAG community, the disability community, a woman, a person of low fixed income et al... I have intersections, and I bet you do too! 

Sometimes it needs to be said that being oppressed and/or being an ally of an oppressed group does not make one exempt from being an asshole. Let me emphasize that real quick: statuses of privilege or lack of it are not indications of being a good person or a bad person. Which is why I mention sincerity. Have it, get it, or get the fuck out of the way. I have been called out when I was wrong and accepted it with what grace I could muster. I have also had someone use oppressed status to power insults and social maneuvers, which I took... with less grace. If you are a minority dealing with an asshole, my advice is to walk away and make your group aware so the asshole blowback is minimized (ewww!). If you are an ally dealing with an asshole that also happens to be oppressed, go somewhere else. Do your research instead and do not assume that the whole group is made of assholes. 

In oppressed communities we bristle at the idea of allies needing support from us. It is not our responsibility, true. I think that they can, and should, support each other. It should be acknowledged that allies can and do have needs and sometimes require social support to avoid burnout and continue the work, share resources, commiserate. Frequently allies do look to the core community for where to go and what to do, which is sometimes simple attention seeking behavior, but it can be a sincere request, too. If someone seems sincere when asking, say, how to get ally fellowship from my militantly bisexual self, I point them at PFLAG or something similar, or in other instances give them good terms to use to Google to get them started if I have the energy to do so for them.

So let us approach each other with mutual respect and care.  I am not claiming a special insight here - most folks have an oppression and in some other way benefit from the oppression of others (even if we would rather not). We each have to decide what to do here ourselves, and respect that right even if we disagree. I will not sacrifice my own peace of mind or self care to lead someone that is ostensibly supporting me, nor should I or anyone else be expected to do so. If I can, I will. Allies are people, people trying to do right even though they could go through life not giving a damn. If I suspect sincerity, I will always at least point them in the right direction. There is not a group I belong to that could not use another good ally. 

Have something to add? Read my comment policy and then start typing if you can respect it and me.

"Solidarity Is For White Women"

This post assumes that you have a least seen some mention of #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen and skips some 101 ideas. I am not much of an online presence, but I want to do something useful, something purposeful,  contribute something good. I will talk a little about my own opinions, but that is not my focus. What follows are pointers to some really good work you may not have seen: work by folks involved, works by women of color, works that give background. 

If you have found or produced something I should link here, please let me know below. My spoons are limited, and there is a lot of stuff out there about this. If you are here, reading me, then you probably already know that it can be rough for women on the internet.

The key person you should know about in all of this is brownfemipower. This was not her first rodeo, as it were, and her fortitude and class is amazing. Flavia Tamara is another writer I have admired from afar, when she was writing (wrote? Not sure what is up at TB) for Tiger Beatdown. BlackAmazon is on Twitter and so is Jamilah Lemieux, writers I have seen and respected but was not following 'til recently.

Speaking of terrific women, go to this great article from the Guardian, written by Mikki Kendal, that sums up a lot of what was going on around this hashtag. #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen is her doing, and I congratulate her for it and thank her for the hard work of dealing with the fallout. You can also see her in this interview, where she mentions the erasure of intersectional activists that are disabled, "lower" class/poor, non-Western... you get the idea.

Jamie Nesbitt Gordon wrote about this for Salon. This Week In Blackness talks about it here. Angry Black Lady had already rightfully and righteously gone to town on the sexist. This is another good piece (I have met and like the authoress). Also left out were feminist disability folks, feminist QUILTBAG folks, poor feminists... you get the picture. Gradient Lair has a terrific piece up that highlights the voices of of the people harmed in all of this. 

Student Activism has a whole lot on Schwyzer, but I will just point out one article  It has enough links that also have links to give you a good rundown on the man's career of upsetting folks. AJ's The Stream has a solid piece up.

The HG meltdown is captured on a "Men's Rights" page, but you can Google the pdf if you want to do so. I make it a general policy to not link to MRA sites. No, I have no idea why MRAs would even care, except maybe to celebrate the pain of women, particularly feminists. These guys are the mustache-twirling villains of the equal rights set. 

Feministing attempted to apologize and explain their position here and in a less triggery way here. Both of those links have long comment sections, (and in this rare case on the Internet) I believe you should read the comments. The efforts met with mixed results. There is some doubt as to whether this was motivated by honesty or capitalism. In the places I have linked, you will see opinions vary. I am giving credibility the women that were right about everything in the first place. 

If we are going to take feminism and make sure that it is for everyone, then we are going to have to look at white power in feminism. Yes, I include me in that we. That societal power is given to every white, yes - that is undeniable. HG could not have gotten away with any of this had he not been male, straight, and most of all: white. During his career numerous women of color called out his bad behavior only to be ignored and or discredited and further marginalized. They were right, but they were silenced.

One of the best things I have read about intersectionality in real life: My Feminism Will Be Intersectional or It Will Be Bullshit. 

Note: not every link is an endorsement. Some may contain good information, but be otherwise problematic. Be careful out there.

EDIT: spelling fix at post.

Get Out and Vote!

I do not need to tell you that I am adamant about getting out the vote. Even if I do not agree with how you will vote, I think you should get out there and exercise your Constitutional right and obligation to vote.

Check out your state's voting rules and regulations at your Secretary of State's web page. Indiana voters can go here.  Here is some more Indiana information.

You can find information about voting with disabilities there, and you can find more voting with disability information here.

Know your polling place, and know your ID rules.

Are the rights of LGBT citizens on your ballot? Find out!

Check out Actually... if you need more motivation to vote. Here are some motivational voting posters that kick ass.

Here is the Planned Parenthood voting guide. Here is the ACLU's guide. Bold Progressives/MoveOn put together a guide too. You can find your polling place here.

If you have trouble voting, then immediately contact Election Protection, either via their web page or by calling their number: 1.866.OUR.VOTE. The ACLU Voter Protection Hotline is: 877.523.2792.

Remember that people have fought and died so that you can cast a ballot: DO IT! I am in a flare, but I had my husband bundle me up so I got to my polling place, which will likely still be only barely was actually handicapped accessible, and cast my damn ballot, you can too!

Gimpy Gamer: The First Three

So I nearly jumped for joy when I read this: Halo 4 Creators Introduce Lifetime Ban for Sexism. Wow, that is a hell of a step in the right direction! As a lady gamer raising girl gamers, this is such welcome news that I cannot even tell you. Here is the Gamespot article.

One of the problems with bans like this is that in order to make it work, often other paying gamers have to remove themselves from the game in order to file a report/complaint about a gamer ruining everyone's good time with sexism, racism, homophobia, or their social ill of choice. 

It is an unfair expectation of someone paying to use a service to have to take some of that paid time to essentially work for the service instead. But this is the world we live in now. Since it is silly to expect any service like Playstation or XBox Live to be able to monitor every gamer in every game at every moment of every day, we have to do our part.

I want to see a movement where those of us paying to use a service like XBox Live vow to do our part. I want us to promise that we will take the first fifteen minutes of online game time to report it when trolls are being trolls. Or, say, your first three Matchmaking games of a night - promise that you will do your part and allow your games to be interrupted while you report someone making sexist rape "jokes" in your Matchmaking. Or promise to report the first three trolls of your night.

Once your three games, three trolls, or first fifteen minutes are done, then you can sit back and enjoy your flow, unless someone is so bad, so inhuman to their fellow players that you simply have to report them no matter how good your gaming flow has been up to that point.

Gaming flow is important to gamers: once you settle in, set the real world behind you and get your head in the space of your game of choice, you want to stay there if you can. That is reasonable. I argue that if you have some homophobic bigot ranting and raving through your Big Team Battle, then your flow has already been interrupted, and taking a moment to report the troll can help keep that particular troll from messing with not only your flow, but the flow of everyone else that plays too!

So please stand with me in taking The First Three pledge. Let us make multiplayer a better place for everyone, and show that we actually care about the community we play and live in! I know that after the election is over, I will be as immersed as I can be in Halo 4, both campaign and then maybe even matchmaking with strangers (usually I only play with folks I know). I will take the First Three pledge!

Gun Culture and Privilege

(This is kind of rambling. I apologize. I am swimming through a mess of fog and phlegm with suspected strep throat. Read or disregard at your leisure.)

Wow, gun culture is some taking some swats lately. Some deserved, some not. I do want to say that I do not know a single gun owner that is an NRA member or has two nice words to say about that organization. I know they are out there, let me tell you about my last gun show. I do not really feel bugged by these swats, because I know I am not their target. I only worry that others will think that it is me.

I carry because I am a crippled lady that simply is not able to physically defend against even the average foe. I carried when able bodied because I was a woman driving on highways and country roads at night alone. I have carried because my personal defense is my personal responsibility. My self defense is my own civic responsibility.

And you know what? At the range, practicing to end a life if necessary, I can honestly tell you that 100% of the time I am imagining a white person at the other end of my barrel. Usually a man, but there have been a couple of women in my life that have altered that for brief periods of time.

I mentioned because it keeps sticking in my head. One of the reasons that people fight the idea of privilege is that if you are a woman, or poor, or disabled, or LGBTQIA - it is hard to feel it like the people telling you about privilege want you to feel it. They will point up the hierarchy and say that's who you want to talk to if you want privilege.

This is because there is a funny thing about whiteness: it seems that it must have something to destroy. The days of open colonialism are rapidly closing in favor of "nation building" and "fighting them over there." But our dirty little secret is that in the absence of non-white folk to destroy, in any single or combination of physically, economically, spiritually, mentally; we destroy ourselves. There is no greater cannibal in history than whiteness.

Without a state of non-whiteness to unite against, whiteness turns in and eats itself: the disabled, the non-straight, the poor, the non-Christian, the non-Western, even the non-male get consumed and suppressed. And so, it becomes difficult to explain to a poor, USian, disabled, Wiccan, trans* lesbian that she has white privilege. Because Whiteness, as an entity, only includes her among it's ranks against some Other.

She does have privilege, and it does matter; all of her other states matter too.

I think we need a new vocabulary, one that that can talk about privilege without stigma. One that can acknowledge oppression without pity. A new language, or a new attitude about language needs to be born. Soon. I thought #Occupy would birth it, but it seems not. But maybe something will come after #Occupy, or inspired by - I do not know. But I think it will play it's part. I think we are still building those bridges, and it feels like we are approaching some sort of apex.

No, Not All Sides Are Equal: Sexism

So the false equivalency thing is making the rounds again. That both "sides," liberal and conservative, are the same. I just have a thing about the false   equivalency. Here I am going to treat you to some material I have written about sexism on the liberal "side."


Bill Maher gets letters every time he pulls that misogynistic bullshit even though he has a long career of transgressive political stand up where, yes, the standards are a little, a little more relaxed - but not when it comes to misogyny. And, of course, his persona is an asshole (no idea of that comes from his personal life, or is on stage only). Some highlights from my own letters include things like "...if you have to point out that someone has (or is?) a vagina as an insult then you should have retired years ago, because not only are you a cad, but you aren't funny anymore, either." Or there is this: "You are blurring the line between you and them sir, stop it." And there is plenty of material about how Maher screws up on sites like Shakesville. Just because the push back does not get a lot of flashy press does not mean that it does not happen.


Ed Schultz took himself off the air for an unpaid week - he took it to MSNBC less than 24 hours after it happened, and said this is what I want to do: I am going to take an unpaid week off the air after I apologize live on my show and tell my audience what I am going to do. He was not suspended, but if they wanted to punish him further, he was open to it. That is about as much class as a human can have and still managed to screwed up in that way, I think. It did not erase what he did, but it did set a good standard for how to behave after. And effective damage control, too - that was so quick there were only rumbles of a letter writing campaign to him or MSNBC or his radio bosses before he was acting on it himself.


The left, or at least the patch of left I camp out on - is indeed consistent. Even if I otherwise like or respect a performer, politician, or other mucky muck I will loudly and enthusiastically let them know when they screw up. When it comes down to it, I and a lot of other liberal or progressive folks are harder on liberal figures because, goddammit, we expect better from them than the likes of Limbaugh. And the feminist and womanist blogs I read? They HATED defending Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Ann Romney and their ilk - but every time someone went after their gender or gender performance with some sexist garbage, they stood up and yelled about it! Just like they did for Sandra Fluke.


Both sides are not equal. And when my "side" screws up, a lot of us push back. It feels a lot like being consistent is also being invisible. I do not know what that push back seems to not get the same coverage. Maybe it is a non-story because it is expected, or it is quick, or the stories are small in scope, or it is boring.

Gimpy Gamer

Hallo! I have several drafts I am working on, some of them thanks to you all chiming in on my Ask the Readers post. I want to take a moment to thank you folks that chimed in, I appreciate it and I am working on what you indicated that you wanted to read!


Today I want to talk about gaming. I am a Gimpy Gamer. I am a Mom Gamer. I am a Girl Gamer raising two more Girl Gamers, living with two additional guy gamers. I am sometimes a hardcore gamer, but usually a medium core gamer. I play Xbox games, I play social games. I have played tabletop RPGs, I have played LARPs. I live in Indiana, so you know I play euchre. I can play some other card games. I have played blended games like Zombies!!! I have enjoyed some really terrific ARGs. I have a set of Pirate Farkle which saw some great use during a power outage.


I have some great satisfactions and concerns about the state of gaming today, particularly as it involves politics. Gaming does not have to be political, but it often is and that is not necessarily a bad thing. I do not see any serious political message in, say, Bejeweled. (And I have played the hell out of some Bejeweled, to be sure.) But gaming can be highly political. Some political games off the top of my head: Star Wars: The Old Republic (franchise, two RPGs and an MMO), the whole Fable series, the Mass Effect franchise, and the Bioshock series.


You can play any of the games I have listed and not notice the politics, or not care - but it is in there, and goes to the very heart of some issues that sometimes games can best address. The first Fable questions the nature of heroes. The third Fable address the right to rule. The Old Republic's handling of the truly murky nature of morality shines best in the second game, and this is why it has earned a place on my imaginary shelf of Best Games Ever. Mass Effect forces the player to wrestle with the concept of "the greater good," how to serve it, and what personal sacrifices it may require.


Last night I was playing Star Wars: The Old Republic with my Menfolk and got a face full of politics written so well that it warranted repeated mentions by us. We, as our characters, had to decide what to do about a person illegally imprisoned and tortured for the crime of attending rallies and reading materials produced by a group disagreeing with the local government. We had to face a squad of soldiers that had been abandoned to die by the intergalactic government and the price they wanted that administration to pay for it's crime. Our quest line felt like a Law and Order script (ie: "torn from the day's headlines," and I mean that in a good way. It lead to a lot of discussion about those issues as they pertain to our current and most recent Presidential administration and how they handle these sorts of issues.


What I want to do with this post is start to establish not just my own interest in gaming, but to establish games themselves as worthy of further focus. My life does change how I few games: as a woman, and a person with disabilities, as a bisexual - all of these things and more are part of how I view games and influence my opinion. Lucky you, I will be sharing my opinions with you and asking you for your opinions. But while we dissect them for meaning and influence, I want us to not forget that the point is to have fun! Speaking of, I have a bit of housekeeping (both personal and literal) to do before I finally get to try out Deepak Chopra's Leela. Once I do I will share what I find here!


Have fun!

Help for ALL Surviving Domestic Abuse

Republicans Back out of Domestic Violence Help


All they had to do was renew the damn bill.


In a discussion online about this article it was mentioned that undocumented working women that were being abused would be "rewarded" by the proposed changes. I got really angry and responded:


... REWARDED?!? REALLY? What kind of "reward" is it when you have to get your ass jacked, sometimes for years, before you can get it? And lawbreakers?!? Give me a goddamn break! We have protections in place for mass murderers on DEATH ROW but some lady that came here for a better life and can't navigate the multi thousand dollar convoluted piece of shit we call an immigration system is fair game?!? Holy hell!


So then I took a deep, cleansing breath while waiting on a reply. I am not posting the other side of the conversation here because it was casual and there was no shared understanding at the time that I might extrapolate on my responses for my blog.  


Okay. Human rights are not contingent on being a citizen. Full stop. And there is nothing about DV/DA help that actually makes one a citizen. So no crime is "washed away." Offering a minuscule number of undocumented women visas only gives them a bit of temporary help, moving one issue out of the current stressors while one works ones way out of the living hell that is domestic abuse and/or violence. It will not make these women citizens, not by a long shot, and to argue that it is a reward of any kind is disingenuous at best, and  out and out lying manipulation at worst.

I am so fucking tired of people acting like a accident of birth that put them within the fabricated and stolen USian boarders some how makes them special or better than other people. Or that other human beings are some how less human or their suffering is less important because their moment of birth put them (usually, in these arguments) south of an artificial line made of murder and theft. The fact that we are having these "rights of birth" arguments in a country founded on the idea that birth status does not make one better or worse than any other person is disgusting.

My point above, about mass murderers, is not to say the people in our prison system should not be protected from the tyranny of the system or their peers. They should be subjected to the cruelty of their sentences but not a jot more. My point was to juxtapose one "law breaker" with another, highlighting the differences in protection each receive. One has been convicted of taking lives, the other committed, or their parents committed, a crime of geography.


But there is nothing in our laws that makes one birth better than another, something that seems to be missing in every one of these arguments I have seen. If your main focus regarding help for the survivors of domestic violence is illegal immigration, I have not no help for you. I believe that this serves as an illustration of exactly how much some people are being distracted from the issues at hand. All people surviving domestic abuse, assault, and violence deserve help. No one deserves to live in fear: man, woman, child, citizen, non-citizen, cis or trans, disabled or TAB. This is about human rights, and and what we do about it will show who we are as a country.

SmartAss Commentary: Liberal Crip Goes to the Gun Show

The Indy 1500 has a terrible web page – there is very little you can do there but find out the dates of upcoming shows, sign up for a mailing list and $1 off $10 admission, and see some photos of previous shows. However, it is a decent show as far as I can tell. I had a decent time there. I want to talk about my own gun history, some of the social issues at the gun show, and the accessibility for people with disabilities.

I should probably spell a few things out here before we get started. I am a Second Amendment liberal. I believe in both state protection via police and sheriff departments and self defense. I find the arguments about the intent of the Second Amendment to be more semantic than practical. When the Bill of Rights was created, the gun was simply a tool of survival in early American culture, as in many others. Small, unfunded local defense militias depended on each member to have their own arms. They did, both for hunting and defense. So I find that if a person has a solid answer to the separation of militia and culture – that answer may well be their opinion on the matter rather than a historical fact.

I grew up around gun folks. My mom’s first husband (my adoptive dad or ADad*), her father and several of her brothers all served in the military. The first gun stories I heard were from ADad as he explained the AK scar he acquired in Vietnam. He was shot in the shoulder by a [enemy combatant – I will not use the word he used] and he returned fire, killing the man. My mother was very anti-gun. My grandfather and multiple uncles were enlisted military men. My husband was a military kid, and very comfortable with guns. My boyfriend grew up in a rural social network that was also very easy with firearms – his father was a police officer and is now a correctional officer.

I am intimidated by guns. I am also proficient in their use. I am not a pleasure shooter – you know, the folks that can relax by going to the range for an hour. I cannot get away from their purpose. When aiming at a target, all that is on my mind is why I would be doing this for real – to end the life of another living being. The moral weight and sadness of that is always on my mind if a gun is around. There is no pleasure for me in being able to put six forty-four caliber bullets in a three inch diameter circle.  I can, and do, shoot very well. I hope to never actually need to do so. I do have fun with AirSoft weapons, though – they shoot soft BB-type ammunition powered by gas or springs or batteries.

Now that you know some of my gun history, time for the gun show! (Do I kiss my wimpy biceps here? Probably not…)

Admission was $10, you received a $1 off coupon if you were on their mailing list. Security appeared heavy, but was actually very light. Police were all over the place, as security and patrons. Loaded weapons were not permitted, although we were simply asked if we had any. D had a pistol that needed the sights repaired, and he was directed by the ticket takers to a booth where his pistol was strategically fitted with plastic zip strips to prevent it from being useable. If a patron was found to be carrying a firearm without this treatment, the penalty was immediate ejection from the premises.

Recording devices were not allowed. Although that made writing this piece much more difficult, I followed the rule. Honestly, other than catching someone in the act and ejecting them, there seemed to be no other way of enforcing that rule in this day and age of cell phone cameras, PDAs, and micro cameras.

The building itself (a part of the Indiana State Fairgrounds) was perfectly accessible. Accessibility issues included florescent lights, no scent policy, lots of random noise (no, no gunfire, except on the soundtracks of some videos being shown), and no quiet areas. While some of the table-made aisles are more narrow than others they are still passable in my manual wheelchair… except when some jerk vendor decided they need to set out yet more product, and pushed out over the ends of their tables, or shoved their long gun cases 6-12 inches out into the walk way, or put up spinning displays that eat half of the available aisle space. Arg! 

TL;DR: the building and the planning covered some accessibility basics, but some of the vendors were terrible about it!

There were several areas where one could buy snacks and drinks. Two were permanent booths, and one was more of an open café - larger with displays and seating.

Not every person at the gun show is straight off of People of WalMart. Most folks are dressed in casual middle class or rural attire. The clear majority of attendants were white males. Attendants that appeared to be African American or women were not the majority, but were numerous enough to not be surprising - which may surprise some of you. Obviously disabled folks like me were numerous in chairs or scooters, and there were a comforting amount of cane-users.  A lot of families were in attendance. The vendors were overwhelmingly male, around middle-aged and white.

I have never been to a gun show that did not have some vendors peddling hate. I have spent entire gun shows feeling like I would get shot if I talked about my politics. I was really surprised at the small amount of hate on sale at this gun show. While one pro Nazi booth is too many, there was only one at the show. I saw maybe three booths with small collections of Nazi memorabilia. I sat and stared at the Nazi booth for a while, dumbfounded. This booth was shoved into a corner where it was easily avoided, we almost missed it. They had mouse pads, t-shirts, bumper stickers, jewelry and accessories.

There was a lot less First Nations appropriation than I expected from my previous experience. The generalized, white washed “Native American Aesthetic” is very popular among the survivalist, hunter, preparedness, and gun cultures. There was one booth that was using a dream catcher motif to raise money for disabled children to enjoy outdoor sports and experiences, I think.

Of course, there was a Tea Party presence, but far less than I had feared. One vendor had walls of vitriolic bumper stickers accusing President Obama of just about every thing you can imagine. Someone had passed around flyers I saw at several booths with showed a picture of the President and the First Lady saying “I’m with stupid.” There was one booth selling anti-UN pins, copies of the national and state constitutions with wild interpretations of them. I have copies of them, and may write about those booklets specifically at some point.

 

You have not really thought this stance through, have you?

(Picture description:  a small, round lapel pin or button showing the blue UN emblem, surrounded with a red circle and divided by a red line from upper right to lower left. The intended message is clearly "NO UN.")

As a liberal, all the hate, appropriation and ignorance made me feel threatened, angry, sad, and deeply uncomfortable. Parts of it were like walking back into the Bush administration, were disagreement was equated with treason and only violent, blind patriotism was an acceptable response to any slight at all. But it was much, much better than my previous experiences at gun shows. I do not think that some improvement is enough, to be sure. It does make me happy to see improvement though, and I want to encourage that improvement.

I did not patronize the hate-booths, and still felt fairly free to shop. I picked some targets for AirSoft practice, some great medical stuff (a brass mortar and pestle, glass bottles and tubes, and first aid supplies), two really well priced pieces of luggage, and some camping supplies. I did pick up some of the materials, including the more fantastic stuff to share with you. This included a flyer for an organization that is fighting for you to keep your right to .50 cartridges, an application for the Sons of Confederate Veterans (yes that is exactly what you think it is), the Indiana Citizens Volunteer Militia, advertisements for NRA courses and retreats, flyers for militaria shows, Indiana Gun Owners pamphlets, and material on the Oath Keepers…

*I have a total of three dads: my biological father, or BDad; my mother’s first husband who adopted me when I was five, ADad, and my mother’s second husband (now divorced), ExSDad (ex-step-dad). Also, my mother’s first husband remarried, so I also have a step-mom out there, SMom. Of the five, ExSDad and I have the best relationship, and he is the one I would call in an emergency.

Slurs Are Slurs But Are Not Other Slurs

So, Glee is doing things again – or so I thought. Sigh. I have not talked about Glee here because I do not watch it. Yes, I am aware of it as a subcultural phenomenon. That fact actually upsets me somewhat – I find their treatment of the issues of people of disabilities to be atrocious and disgusting. I know stupid, hateful people I can hang out around if I want to feel that way, thank you very much. So no Glee here, outside of watching clips to share solidarity with the people that are hurt when they watch it.

On Twitter I saw that Elon James White had tweeted about an article describing Glee’s latest screw up.

I completely agree that these slurs are not equal.

Now normally I am in the first wave of people to jump on Glee’s ass and point and laugh at the hole. This is not Glee’s project, though, it is the R-word’s project, part of the foundation that supports the Special Olympics, so I took a breath, went to their site, combed through it,  and thought about it some more…

My brain pan, let me open it for you.

First, I think that both the creators of the clip and some of the people decrying it seem to be ignoring all of the intersections at play. There are people with intellectual disabilities or neuroatypical lesbians, gays, Germans, Latina/Latinos, and blacks; I want to acknowledge that here.

Second, I went through their available content, and I think their point is poorly made but valid. The point is not a moral equivalency, but a resultant equivalency, I think. I believe that what they wanted to do was show people that may not otherwise consider it that this slur also delivers that sick, just punched in the gut feeling. That this word instantly conjures up a history of discrimination and oppressive so odious that even now people refuse to acknowledge that it even exists... if they even know about it in the first place.

Third, it is hard not to feel alienated by the line of reasoning used by some critics. Apparently, some folk feel that “retarded”, and likely also “lame,” “gimp,” “crip,” etc., are just not “as bad.” This is exactly the same wrong reasoning the commercial itself uses! The fact that there is no moral equivalency works both ways – it is hate speech. It hurts. That purpose is to wound. Do not try to feed me that “Oh, but I don’t mean it that way!” bullshit – if it was not meant negatively, you would not be using it to describe something you view negatively, okay? Okay.

For those of you thinking that “retard” and “retarded” simply do not have the same impact because they lack history, you are mistaken.  Retard is a word that went from a specific diagnosis to slur in our most recent century – but discrimination against folks with mental disabilities has a long and sordid history. This is just one of the more recent slang insults used in conjunction with a fear and hatred that is so old and so widespread that the origins of it may never be found (the above link sites the first technical writing about it to 5 B.C.E.).
 

(I am not even going into all the bullshite that still happens today to people with disabilities: the discrimination, the forced treatment, the "good cripple" and super-crip memetic weapons, the "mercy" killings, the astonishing rape, abuse and murder statistics, "angel babies," and so on and so on... The fact that this is still mostly invisible disgusts me.)

People perceived as being outside of some generally accepted social norm of mental capacity and thought have been discriminated against forever – tactics have extended to banishment, forced sterilization, torture, and even death. And until fairly recently (historically speaking) other “trouble makers” such as homosexuals, uppity women, and political minorities (to name but a few) have been labeled mentally incompetent in order to silence and discredit them while also subjecting them to the same treatment.
 
Forth: remember what you learned about the Holocaust? Do you remember learning about the six million Jews, a terrible atrocity that should have never been allowed to happen, right? Right. But you should have also been told that the grand total of people slaughtered was closer to ELEVEN TO SEVENTEEN MILLION.  I am not even going into the military and civilian deaths caused by the war itself; just about purposeful exterminations at this moment. All those other people included, but are not limited to the following: homosexuals, political dissidents, other religious dissidents, Romani, and… people with disabilities! It is a sorrowful thing to see all of those people forgotten almost every time the Holocaust is mentioned. I will never, ever degrade the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust – I want people to remember that they were not alone. 


Are disability slurs the same as racial slurs? No.

Are sexual orientation slurs the same as disability slurs? No.  

Each slur is unique, designed to hurt one specific group of people in specific ways - to justify atrocious treatment with little to no guilt on the part of the abuser.

Do they all carry long, dark histories of discrimination, oppression, and murder? Do they all carry the inherent intent to dehumanize, to "other", to separate?

Yes.

They are all wrong.

Thank you for sticking with me through this piece, I appreciate it. Please do not see my limited linking above as a indicator of sparse information - there is plenty out there if you make even a basic effort to look for it. I am just out of spoons...