A Really Good Overview Of The Disability Rights Protections Threatened By Trump And How His Ableist And

Some people don’t want to hear this but sometimes accessibility is not sustainable or eco-friendly. Disabled people sometimes need straws, or pre-made meals in plastic containers, or single-use items. Just because you can work with your foods in their least processed and packaged form doesn’t mean everyone else can.

What is happening with section 504? And what you can do about it? Section 504 is under attack. If you live in any of these states, you can call your representatives.

DISABILITY INJUSTICE AFFECTS EVERYONE. You shouldn’t care “just because” you could be disabled one day. You should care *now*, because this will come back to everyone.

Images from @/myelasticheart on Instagram

Disability in Non-Fiction #1: Plain Text Edition

A plain text version of this post. Here you will find detailed image descriptions and easier-to-read versions of each book summary. If you think that any image descriptions/summaries need to be updated, please let me know!

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‘How to Live Free in a Dangerous World’- Lawson, Shayla

[ID: A book cover. The background is a pale orange colour. In the centre, a large photograph of a person with brown skin standing in front a desert under a blue sky. They have short braided brown hair swept over their left eye, and have their arms crossed over their chest, with one hand resting on the side of their face. The title “How to Live Free in a Dangerous World” is around them in large orange writing that covers the length of the photo. The subtitle “A Decolonial Memoir” is to the right their head in very small white writing. The author’s name “Shayla Lawson” is below the title, at the bottom of the photograph, in smaller yellow writing. Black text at the bottom of the cover reads, under the author’s name, reads “author of ‘this is major’, a national book critics circle award finalist”. /end]

Summary:

Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability.

With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self.

Through encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in the Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year’s Eve in Mexico City, Lawson’s travels bring unexpected wisdom about life in and out of love. They learn the strength of friendships and the dangers of beauty during a narrow escape in Egypt. They examine Blackness in post-dictatorship Zimbabwe, then take us on a secretive tour of Black freedom movements in Portugal.

Through a deeply insightful journey, Lawson leads readers from a castle in France to a hula hoop competition in Jamaica to a traditional theater in Tokyo to a Prince concert in Minnesota and, finally, to finding liberation on a beach in Bermuda, exploring each location—and their deepest emotions—to the fullest. In the end, they discover how the trials of marriage, grief, and missed connections can lead to self-transformation and unimagined new freedoms.

‘Being Seen’- Sjunneson, Elsa

[ID: A book cover. It is a dark black with faint, grey, writing over it. The writing, from top to bottom, reads: “Elsa Sjunneson” “Being Seen” “One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism” All in capitals. The “I” in “Being Seen” is designed to look like an opening of sorts, with a ray of light coming through. /end]

Summary:

A deafblind writer and professor explores how the misrepresentation of disability in books, movies, and TV harms both the disabled community and everyone else.

As a deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. While she cannot see well enough to operate without a guide dog or cane, she can see enough to know when someone is reacting to the visible signs of her blindness and can hear when they’re whispering behind her back. And she certainly knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be.

As a media studies professor, she’s also seen the full range of blind and deaf portrayals on film, and here she deconstructs their impact, following common tropes through horror, romance, and everything in between. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the deafblind experience, Being Seen explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all.

‘Disability Pride’- Mattlin, Ben

[ID: A book cover. The background is made of simple, colourful red, cream, white, yellow and teal shapes. Large text reads, from top to bottom: “Disability Pride” in large, black capitals, “Dispatches from a Post-ADA World”in smaller, black capitals, “Ben Mattlin”, in slightly bigger red capitals. /end]

Summary:

An eye-opening portrait of the diverse disability community as it is today and how attitudes, activism, and representation have evolved since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

In Disability Pride, disabled journalist Ben Mattlin weaves together interviews and reportage to introduce a cavalcade of individuals, ideas, and events in engaging, fast-paced prose. He traces the generation that came of age after the ADA reshaped America, and how it is influencing the future. He documents how autistic self-advocacy and the neurodiversity movement upended views of those whose brains work differently. He lifts the veil on a thriving disability culture—from social media to high fashion, Hollywood to Broadway—showing how the politics of beauty for those with marginalized body types and facial features is sparking widespread change.

He also explores the movement’s shortcomings, particularly the erasure of nonwhite and LGBTQIA+ people that helped give rise to Disability Justice. He delves into systemic ableism in health care, the right-to-die movement, institutionalization, and the scourge of subminimum-wage labor that some call legalized slavery. And he finds glimmers of hope in how disabled people never give up their fight for parity and fair play.

Beautifully written, without anger or pity, Disability Pride is a revealing account of an often misunderstood movement and identity, an inclusive reexamination of society’s treatment of those it deems different.

‘Crip Kinship’- Kafai, Shayda

[ID: A book cover. The background is light blue, with colourful pictures of butterflies, flowers and a house setting featured in the centre. Lower right centre of the image, a black figure in a long sleeved, billowing dress, holding a curved black walking stick in their right hand. Behind them, a drawing of a room with a table, chair, pink wall with a window, and a blank wall with an orange picture. Text on the book cover, from top to bottom, reads: The title “Crip Kinship” in large black font at the top of the image, The subtitle “The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid” in smaller black capitals, in the upper right corner of the image, The authors name “Shayda Kafai” in medium black capitals in the lower right of the image, partially overlapping the figure in the dress. /end]

Summary:

The remarkable story of Sins Invalid, a performance project that centres queer disability justice.

In recent years, disability activism has come into its own as a vital and necessary means to acknowledge the power and resilience of the disabled community, and to call out ableist culture wherever it appears.

Crip Kinship explores the art activism of Sins Invalid, a San Francisco Bay Area-based performance project, and its radical imaginings of what disabled, queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming bodyminds of colour can do: how they can rewrite oppression, and how they can gift us with transformational lessons for our collective survival.

Grounded in the disability justice framework, Crip Kinship investigates the revolutionary survival teachings that disabled, queer of colour community offers to all our bodyminds. From their focus on crip beauty and sexuality to manifesting digital kinship networks and crip-centric liberated zones, Sins Invalid empowers and moves us toward generating our collective liberation from our bodyminds outward.

‘Sounds Like Home’- Wright, Mary Herring

[ID: A book cover. The background is yellow. A black and white photograph in the centre shows two young black children and a dog in front of a car. The title “Sounds Like Home” is at the tope in large, curvy black writing. The subtitle “Growing Up Black and Deaf in the South” is written in small orange writing, on three black bars on the right side of the cover. The author’s name “Mary Herring Wright” is written in curvy black writing, slightly smaller than the title, at the bottom of the cover. /end]

Summary:

Mary Herring Wright’s memoir adds an important dimension to the current literature in that it is a story by and about an African American deaf child. The author recounts her experiences growing up as a deaf person in Iron Mine, North Carolina, from the 1920s through the 1940s. Her story is unique and historically significant because it provides valuable descriptive information about the faculty and staff of the North Carolina school for Black deaf and blind students from the perspective of a student as well as a student teacher. In addition, this engrossing narrative contains details about the curriculum, which included a week-long Black History celebration where students learned about important Blacks such as Madame Walker, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and George Washington Carver. It also describes the physical facilities as well as the changes in those facilities over the years. In addition, Sounds Like Home occurs over a period of time that covers two major events in American history, the Depression and World War II.

Wright’s account is one of enduring faith, perseverance, and optimism. Her keen observations will serve as a source of inspiration for others who are challenged in their own ways by life’s obstacles.

‘The Right to Maim’- Puar, Jasbir K.

[ID: A book cover. The background is white. A painting stretches from the bottom of the cover to bottom of top quarter. In the upper quarter of the cover, text reads: The author’s name “Jasbir K. Puar” is at the top in black writing. The title “The Right to Maim” is immediately below this in red caps. The subtitle “Debility, Capacity, Disability” is immediately below this in smaller, yellow caps. The painting is immediately below this. The background is a dark cream. It appears to show a humanoid figure climbing a mound. Two other figures appear to be falling off the mound. There are splashes of red paint around the mound and the figure on it. /end]

Summary:

In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”—bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors—to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar’s analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel’s policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability’s interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.

‘Uncomfortable Labels’- Dale, Laura Kate

[ID: A book cover. The background is a close photograph of some kind of knitted garment, and its label. The garment is blue. The label is in the centre. Text on the label reads: The title “Uncomfortable Labels” in large black caps The subtitle “My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman” in smaller black caps, lower left of this The author’s name “Laura Kate Dale” at the bottom of the label in black writing. A smaller label attached to the bottom has a single, black capitalised “M” written on it. /end]

Summary:

“So while the assumption when I was born was that I was or would grow up to be a neurotypical heterosexual boy, that whole idea didn’t really pan out long term.”

In this candid, first-of-its-kind memoir, Laura Kate Dale recounts what life is like growing up as a gay trans woman on the autism spectrum. From struggling with sensory processing, managing socially demanding situations and learning social cues and feminine presentation, through to coming out as trans during an autistic meltdown, Laura draws on her personal experiences from life prior to transition and diagnosis, and moving on to the years of self-discovery, to give a unique insight into the nuances of sexuality, gender and autism, and how they intersect.

Charting the ups and downs of being autistic and on the LGBT spectrum with searing honesty and humour, this is an empowering, life-affirming read for anyone who’s felt they don’t fit in.

'Brilliant Imperfections'- Clare, Eli

[ID: A book cover. A photograph of stones can be seen. Over it, a dark box stretching from left to right at the top of the image. Text in the box reads: “Brilliant Imperfection”, in large caps. “Brilliant” is in green, “Imperfection is in white. “Grappling With Cure”, in small, green caps. “Eli Clare”, in white caps. /end]

Summary:

In Brilliant Imperfection Eli Clare uses memoir, history, and critical analysis to explore cure—the deeply held belief that body-minds considered broken need to be fixed.

Cure serves many purposes. It saves lives, manipulates lives, and prioritizes some lives over others. It provides comfort, makes profits, justifies violence, and promises resolution to body-mind loss. Clare grapples with this knot of contradictions, maintaining that neither an anti-cure politics nor a pro-cure worldview can account for the messy, complex relationships we have with our body-minds.

The stories he tells range widely, stretching from disability stereotypes to weight loss surgery, gender transition to skin lightening creams. At each turn, Clare weaves race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender together, insisting on the nonnegotiable value of body-mind difference. Into this mix, he adds environmental politics, thinking about ecosystem loss and restoration as a way of delving more deeply into cure.

Ultimately Brilliant Imperfection reveals cure to be an ideology grounded in the twin notions of normal and natural, slippery and powerful, necessary and damaging all at the same time.

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A short list of 8 non-fiction books featuring and/or discussing disability!

I don't highlight the non-fiction section of the archive enough, so I think this is a perfect opportunity.

A plain text version of this post exists here, featuring more detailed image descriptions of each book cover and easier-to-read versions of every summary.

Books on this list:

‘How to Live Free in a Dangerous World’- Lawson, Shayla

‘Being Seen’- Sjunneson, Elsa

‘Disability Pride’- Mattlin, Ben

‘Crip Kinship’- Kafai, Shayda

‘Sounds Like Home’- Wright, Mary Herring

‘The Right to Maim’- Puar, Jasbir K.

‘Uncomfortable Labels’- Dale, Laura Kate

'Brilliant Imperfections'- Clare, Eli

All of these books and more can be found on the Disability Book Archive.

Happy Disability Pride Month!

Are you heading for a burnout without even realizing it? For neurodivergent folks, the warning signs of burnout may look different and be harder to recongize. 

Neurodivergent or not, we all need to understand our limits and boundaries. When you’re neurodivergent, you may not know you pushed yourself too far - until it’s too late!

Need help with some of the terms in this post?

😎 “Masking” or “Camouflaging": a coping strategy that many neurodivergent people use to suppress aspects of themselves to appear neurotypical. It’s important to note that social masking is a tool many neurospicy folks use to keep themselves safe, and usually starts in childhood. 🥄 “Spoons” refers to Spoon Theory, which is a metaphor describing the amount of physical or mental energy that a person has for daily activities and tasks. It is a helpful tool for disabled and neurodivergent folks to describe their energy. 👋 “Stim” short for "self-stimulation" is a term used to describe repetitive behaviors or movements that people may engage in to help cope with emotions. It may include rocking, flapping hands or twirling. 

If any of this resonates with you, try letting the “mask” slip a little! 

the Guardian

Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome hints at early humans’ compassion

Skull anatomy shows the boy or girl would have been severely disabled, yet survived until the age of six

WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE

While the researchers cannot be certain whether the fossil was that of a girl or a boy, they have nicknamed the Neanderthal child “Tina”. Tina’s combination of inner-ear abnormalities is known only in people with Down’s syndrome. “The pathology which this individual suffered resulted in highly disabling symptoms, including, at the very least, complete deafness, severe vertigo attacks and an inability to maintain balance,” said Mercedes Conde-Valverde, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Alcalá in Spain, lead author of the study, published in the journal Science Advances. “Given these symptoms, it is highly unlikely that the mother alone could have provided all the necessary care while also attending to her own needs. Therefore, for Tina to have survived for at least six years, the group must have continuously assisted the mother, either by relieving her in the care of the child, helping with her daily tasks, or both,” Conde-Valverde added.

This is a fascinating article about how the Medici, who had a hereditary mobility condition, adapted the architecture of Florence for disability access:

Florence’s Medici had a family curse: an agonizing hereditary medical condition causing torturous joint pain and severe mobility restrictions, so it was agony to stand, walk, or even hold a pen. Yes, Renaissance Florence, cradle of the Renaissance, was run by disabled people from a sickbed. The famous Cosimo had to have servants carry him through his own home, and used to shout every time they neared doorway. When asked, “Why do you shout before we go through a doorway?” He answered “Because if I shout after you slam my head into the stone lintel it doesn’t help.”

Reshaping Reality

A History Lesson: Disabled Activists and our Right to Exist in Public

For a History Lesson and reminder of the role Disabled people have played in activism, I singled out a few instances, but there’s hundreds o

"For a History Lesson and reminder of the role Disabled people have played in activism, I singled out a few instances, but there’s hundreds of thousands throughout America’s history. Many of the privileges and rights people have had are due partly to the fight of our disabled ancestors."

My article details the oppression we've faced for centuries (how it impacts disabled folks of different races, genders, orientations, citizenship status), it talks about the strikes organized by the Disabled Miners and Widows in conjunction with other union groups (and the solidarity this created across union lines). I also talk about the origin of the concept of Accessibility.

As a reminder, Disability is the one marginalized group you can join at any time. Everyone can become disabled, and that is not something to fear -- society taught us to fear it, but I am here to remind you that disabled people are worthy of care, dignity, and respect. We matter and fighting with us will help save all of us including non-disabled people as what impacts us will impact you.

I'd recommend reading it all! I pull out this one example since we're having to defend Section 504 yet again. These tactics used for Section 504 was also used to push for the ADA. I believe it is time for solidarity and more sit-ins/occupations of federal offices:

SECTION 504 Sit-ins

In 1972, Congress drafted the Rehabilitation Act, which was driven largely by the needs of Vietnam veterans. However, this act drew the gaze of the civil rights activists largely due to Section 504.

In Section 504, it stated that people with disabilities should not be “be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

The bill was first vetoed by Nixon in 1972, however, activists across the country from various disability advocacy groups and many student groups testified before state legislatures and Congress to push for the elimination of architectural, educational, bureaucratic, and other barriers. They argued heavily for elimination of these barriers and for the ability to be considered for jobs.

Despite Nixon vetoing the Rehab Act a second time, it passed in September 1973. Its section 504 gave disabled people legal and cultural frameworks to gain access to the parts of society they’d been denied prior.

However, these laws were not enforced. Through the lawsuit Cherry v. Matthews, activists pushed for enforcement regulations, and in July 1976 a federal judge ordered the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to develop regulations.

With the continued federal failure to enforce Section 504, Disability activists staged demonstrations in Washington D.C. and in each of the ten HEW offices across the country. This sit in lasted twenty-five days. Judy Heumann helped lead one of the largest sit-ins of federal offices.

“Oh deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome today,” protesters sang at the sit-ins.

These protests gathered allies from local and national labor unions who joined protestors and wrote statements of support.

When phone lines were cut, the Butterfly Brigade, who were a group of gay men who patrolled streets to stop antigay violence, smuggled in walkie talkies.

The Black Panthers provided one hot meal a day, and Chicano activists brought food regularly.

Chuck Jackson, who was part of the Black Panthers, joined the protest by provided attendant-care services for Disabled Black Panthers in the sit-ins and other protest members.

Increasing media attention brought the focus of the nation. Images and video of disabled people crawling up the steps to reach the sit-in were heavily publicized.

Four weeks into the occupation, HEW secretary Joseph Califano signed the enforcement regulations, thus ensuring all programs receiving federal funding could not discrimination based on disability.

READ THE FULL POST HERE.

Disability History Crash Course

Throughout history, disabilities has been viewed in many different ways, from curses and bad luck, to simply unfortunate differences some are born with.  In some ancient civilizations, disabled individuals were often marginalized or viewed through religious/superstitious lenses.  In ancient Greece and Rome, individuals with physical or mental disabilities were abandoned or ostracized from civilization. 

 In Europe during the Middle Ages, disabilities were often linked to sin, religious disfavor, or divine punishment, which lead to social exile.  Often, if the disabled individuals received care, it was from family members or religious institutions.  As the age of Enlightenment came to prominence in the 17th and 18th centuries, society began to shift towards medicalization, which changed the view of disability from punishment, to a natural defect, to be diagnosed and treated. 

The 19th and 20th century brought about the rise of sanatoriums, asylums, and institutions designed as a way to 'treat' people with disabilities.  This new approach of 'treatment' was, in reality, a way to hide disabled people from the public, and often lead to isolation and severe medical mistreatment of the patients.  This, along with the creation of Eugenics movements, lead to many harmful stigmas surrounding disability.

As disability rights movements gained momentum in the mid-20th century, different bills and acts were passed in order to protect disabled people.  Some  landmark events were the Independent Living Movement and the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990).  As the U.S. shifted away from seclusion and towards inclusion, equality, and accessibility, many of the stigmas surrounding disability began to easy, and people began to see disability as not just a medical issue, but as a social and political issue.

This is a friendly reminder that none disabled people often do benefit from the same accommodations disabled people benefit from.

I fucking hate that the general response to RFK Jr's eugenist take on autistic people is "autistic people do pay taxes, autistic people do work, autistic people do date!"

Some autistic people don't and that shouldn't make them less worthy of life. Some autistic people do need constant help and support and that shouldn't make them less worthy of life.

Once again we're falling in the right wing trap of :

They make a hateful, fascist statement

Instead of focusing on the fact that it is hateful and fascist we try to show them that they are factually wrong

We throw our own allies and the most vulnerable of us under the bus in the process

We legitimise an only slightly less hateful, fascist view as we go

They have completed their goal of making us accept the still hateful, fascist second version, hurrah. What a victory.

Right now what we're getting to with that is that autistic people who can work and pay taxes are okay, and the others aren't. Fuck this shit.

Same thing happens with the people who are being deported ("they have a visa!", "they didn't even have a criminal record!" -> even if they didn't have a visa, even if they did have a criminal record, deporting them and detaining them in what's essentially a concentration camp wouldn't be okay, you absolute tools of fascism.)