Archive for the 'Disability' Category

Beijing Paralympics 2008

Published
by
Kim
1 day, 2 hours ago
in Australiana, China, Disability, Film, TV, Video etc, International, Media, Nationalism and Sport
. 11 Comments

I stayed up late to watch the Paralympics Opening Ceremony on the telly last night. A tad schmaltzy (to put it mildly), but it certainly pushed the spectacular spectacle buttons. To my mind, at least, the Paralympics represent something a lot closer to the “spirit of sport” than the Olympics, and I’ll be following the Games as much as I can. Not having digital tv, I’ll be a tad disadvantaged as I’ll miss the live coverage on ABC2, but ABC1 will be showing a highlights package at 6pm and 11pm every night which can also be streamed on demand from Iview. I’m happy to do a bit of Paralympics blogging from time to time if folks are interested.

One thing that disappointed me about the coverage of the Sydney Paralympics was the way camera angles were used to implicitly normalise the athletes’ bodies (people in chairs were shot in interviews from above the waist, and arm amputees often from above the shoulder!) and the endless repetition of certain super-crip “overcoming adversity!” narratives in commentary. Although that does have the unintended advantage of crowding out some of the hyper-nationalism stuff that disfigures the Olympics! I’m hoping there’s been some progress in both the willingness to represent difference openly and in appreciating elite athletes as elite athletes in the intervening eight years. Incidentally, many are that in a different sense from Olympic athletes - it’s not uncommon for Paralympians to switch from say, swimming to athletics, and you’ll find that there are a lot of athletes who’ve participated in multiple sports, and even some who compete in both Winter and Summer Paralympics.

I’m also not sure what the funding differential (if any) is in Australia, but there’s some coverage in the New York Times which suggests it’s a big problem in the States. It would be nice if some of the “OMG! Britain beat us! Let’s spend more dosh!” dosh goes the way of the Australian Paralympic Committee. Finally, I’d like to point to the fact that the Australian Paralympians have their own YouTube channel, and over the fold, I’ve embedded a promo package and an interview with Australian leg amputee sprinter and long jumper Christine Wolf.

Continue reading ‘Beijing Paralympics 2008′

Pension review paper prompts calls for immediate increase

Published
by
Mark
3 weeks, 6 days ago
in Disability, Economics, Government, Policy, Politics and Poverty
. 81 Comments

Unsurprisingly, the release of the government’s discussion paper on the pension system has prompted calls for immediate action. Perhaps the opposition were all waiting for Godot Costello somewhere because The Greens appear to have been first out of the starting block, with Senator Rachel Siewert calling for an instant $30 increase and damning “yet another review”.

The discussion paper emphasises the fact that 77% of Australians over 65 rely to greater or lesser degree on income support. It also highlights the fact that on current projections, the percentage of the population over 65 will rise from 13% now to 25% by 2047. Few aged pensioners currently supplement their income with paid work, but that can be expected to increase, and there may also be debates about the age cut-in as the labour supply situation alters and health outcomes improve. Because the income support system costs 6.8% of GDP, its sustainability is very relevant, and increases are also very expensive because of the very large number of recipients. The paper also considers those on Disability Support and Carer pensions, where the issues are different for many - with fewer having substantial assets and more receiving some income from paid work.

Continue reading ‘Pension review paper prompts calls for immediate increase’

Michael Savage is a drongo

Published
by
tigtog
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Disability, Feminism, Levity, Masculinity, Parenting, Philosophy, Politics, Relationships, Science and Women
. 29 Comments

I could have used many harsher terms, but I was exhausted from outrage and despair after reading his latest, and couldn’t really give him my best invective.

Apparently, despite decades of study from medical and childhood health professions, Michael Savage knows better than all of them when it comes to autism. (Like so many of his fellow cultural warrior pundits, an awful lot of it boils down to WIMMIN R DOIN IT RONG (AS USUAL (COZ WIMMIN R LOOSRS)), but there’s a nasty side-dish of JUST SNAP OUT OF IT)

That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’” Savage concluded, “[I]f I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, ‘Don’t behave like a fool.’ The worst thing he said — ‘Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.’ That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.

Basically? F*ck you and that ablist, misogynist high horse you’re riding, Savage. Continue reading ‘Michael Savage is a drongo’

Disability and body image and reality tv

Published
by
Kim
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Activism, Advertising, Consumerism, Culture, Disability, Ethics, Europe, Feminism, Film, TV, Video etc, International, Life, Media, Photography, Sexuality, Sociology and Women
. 128 Comments

I’m not sure if it’s in the BBC’s charter, but the venerable public broadcaster is allegedly trying to reach out to people with disabilities, and to increase social awareness of disability issues. Through such charming initiatives as their online Paris Hilton like trash celeb persona - “Disability Bitch”:

“Hi, I’m Disability Bitch. I’m disabled and I love it. Everyone should be disabled. Everyone should be like me.

“I own an extensive collection of colour-coordinated wigs and an even more extensive collection of colour-coordinated mobility aids, all of which complement my natural beauty…

Whatevs, darl. But there’s more. She’s not an all purpose disability bitch, but part of a reality tv franchise. In pursuit of its social inclusion agenda, the BBC is running a reality tv show - “Britain’s Missing Top Model” - the premise of which is that chicks missing limbs or in chairs can also be teh hotness and get to be in glossy fashion mags. It’s “Stylish, sassy, chic … disabled?”… The idea, I guess, is supposed to be that disability is no barrier to objectification. Continue reading ‘Disability and body image and reality tv’

Lisa Bufano

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Culture, Disability, Feminism and Film, TV, Video etc
. 5 Comments

I’ve been wanting for ages to find a pretext for posting this, but I can’t, so I’m giving up and just posting it. Hey, it’s Friday night! Check out the amazing dance work of Lisa Bufano, a quadruple amputee who lost all her fingers and had a bilateral below knee amputation at age 21 due to toxic shock. I’ve been following her work as an artist - including her amazing dolls and her various performance art intertubes endeavours - for quite a few years now. It’s fabulous to see her now coming into her own as a recognised and celebrated dancer. You can read an article about Lisa at Girlistic Magazine’s Feminism and Fashion issue (scroll down through the pdf to page 24) - which looks at the feminist politics of her work - and you can have a look at her more recent dance work via vodcasts downloadable from her website.

Originally focused on animation and doll making as a means to explore her body, in 2005 she turned the tables and made her body the focus of her creative expression, exploring dance and performance.

Image courtesy of Strange Dolls.

She and I share a leg. In a way!

Continue reading ‘Lisa Bufano’

In defence of Britney Spears

Published
by
Paul Norton
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Culture, Disability, Film, TV, Video etc, Health and Media
. 32 Comments

I am not an admirer of Britney Spear’s music, and even less so of the persona of what may be termed “conspicuous Christianity” which she and her family hawked around during the earlier part of her career. Nevertheless, I think it’s past time someone called a halt to the current media exploitation of her current personal misfortunes and the morbid, schadenfreude-drenched voyeurism of the audiences which watch and read about them.

What is at stake here? Let me explain anecdotally. At both the primary and the secondary school I attended, there was one child who obviously suffered from a psychiatric disability - in one case an autism spectrum disorder, in the other case an extreme sensitivity to teasing by the other kids which would often end in an explosion of crying and screaming. Both boys, particularly the latter, were treated mercilessly by the other children as sources of amusement and would often be surrounded by packs of boys gleefully anticipating, and stoking up, the spectacle. This behaviour, disgraceful as it was, was nevertheless symptomatic of the times (the 1970s) and the culture - it was considered OK, and even good fun, to taunt and ridicule people with obvious psychiatric disabilities who were in no position to strike back or defend themselves.

As much as we would like to think we have moved on, and without denying that attitudes towards mental health have become less unenlightened in recent years, I can’t help seeing a similarity and a continuity between the current media circus surrounding Britney Spears and the behaviour of my Melbourne schoolmates in the 1970s. It is almost certain that the woman is suffering from a fairly serious psychiatric disability (and perhaps related disabilities of substance dependence), and that this is a large part of the cause of her well-publicised unusual and/or dysfunctional behaviour. An enlightened and compassionate culture would regard this as a matter for sadness, concern and sympathy, and would want to support any efforts towards recovery by Spears and those around her. Instead, her plight is a source of endless public mirth and of fat profits for the commercial media which feed it.
Continue reading ‘In defence of Britney Spears’

Cherry Darling

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 1 month ago
in Culture, Disability and Film, TV, Video etc
. 17 Comments

The representation of people with disabilities in cinema has long been a bone of contention with both cultural critics and people with disabilities. [There’s a nifty bibliography with many links here.] Too much of the time, disabilities are portrayed within the bounds of three narratives - the evil crip, the super crip and the piteous crip. More recently, questions have been raised about why able bodied actors are used to portray people with disabilities. For example, there’s an interesting testimony by amputee actress Anita Hollander on how she got bounced from the Sopranos cast and ended up as a “consultant” and a “stump double” for the actress who portrayed the Russian amputee hired as Tony’s mom’s nurse. There are some notable exceptions - such as the casting of Amy Purdy in What’s Bugging Seth, but you wouldn’t have seen that film outside the North American indie film festival circuit.

At the San Diego Comic Con recently, Lacey Henderson got a fabulous reception from the assembled geeks for her portrayal of Cherry Darling with the machine gun leg from Grindhouse. Which kinda begs the question - although she doesn’t have the star power of Rose McGowan, wouldn’t she have been a better pick to portray Cherry Darling in the first place?

Continue reading ‘Cherry Darling’

Disabled in a disaster? Just wait until we’ve helped all the real people, all right?

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 1 month ago
in Disability, Disasters and Transport
. 11 Comments

Lauredhel had a post a few days ago noting the plight of a quadriplegic man abandoned while the ablebodied passengers were evacuated during the train breakdown on the Sydney Harbour Bridge recently and told he would be evacuated “in two or three days”. (Luckily nearby construction workers showed some initiative and rescued him using a forklift.)

Apparently this was not just a regrettable lapse or someone’s wires getting crossed about emergency procedure, it’s standard operating procedure for CityRail: CityRail’s new generation of passenger carriages have been designed with no facility for evacuating wheelchairs at all.

A CityRail spokeswoman confirmed last night wheelchair passengers would not be able to access the evacuation ramps and must wait for a stretcher in an emergency on the new public-private partnership-funded trains.

The Paraplegic and Quadriplegic Association of NSW and Spinal Cord Injuries Australia fear the system will place wheelchair passengers at greater risk than able-bodied passengers.

They are worried that disabled travellers would be forgotten in a terrorist incident like the July bombings of the London Underground.

ParaQuad spokeswoman Deborah Schofield said evacuating wheelchair passengers from the side of the train posed a problem inside tunnels. Continue reading ‘Disabled in a disaster? Just wait until we’ve helped all the real people, all right?’

QUT: The university for the surreal world

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 2 months ago
in Brisbane, Disability, Education, Ethics, Media and Politics
. 66 Comments

Not only does QUT Vice-Chancellor Peter Coaldrake apparently think that humanities and social science are an unnecessary piece of flim-flam for a real world institution, he seemingly also completely fails to grasp the value of freedom of speech. I was critical, in an earlier post, of the actions of QUT academics John Hookham and Gary MacLennan in attacking a PhD student’s thesis (then titled Laughing at the Disabled) in the pages of The Australian. I still think their actions were wrong, both in terms of how the student was treated and in using his thesis as a pretext for a beat-up about the evils of post-structuralism. However, suspending those two academics for six months without pay seems a totally over the top reaction. QUT appears determined to trash its own reputation, and to act in any fashion other than what would be reasonably expected from a university.

Andrew Bartlett has a must read and comprehensive post including links to the extensive discussion of this affair on YouTube. Andrew’s conclusion:

I still believe that suspending people for six months without pay for being publicly critical is excessive and very dangerous. I’m sure QUT didn’t like being criticised so publicly and harshly, or the people behind the thesis, but it’s hard not to get the feeling that all academics are being sent the very strong message that academic freedom of speech and debate ceases to apply when it comes to any criticism of one’s own University, and presumably their funding sources and opportunities too. As the Courier-Mail editorial notes, it will make every academic think twice before speaking out.

Update: It’s been pointed out to me via email that Coaldrake hasn’t actually justified the decision of the disciplinary tribunal in detail. If it is the case that there are other grounds than those that are apparent from the reaction from Hookham and MacLennan, then the onus really is on him to specify what those are. A bit of transparency might help unravel this whole affair.

Further update: More comment from John Quiggin. Peter Black rounds up the links around the blogosphere.

The Australian reports today:

TWO academics suspended from Queensland University of Technology have been warned they may face possible further misconduct charges.

Another update: The comments on the Courier Mail blog’s post on this issue are well worth a read.

International CFS Awareness Day

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 4 months ago
in Disability, Life and Medicine
. 8 Comments

is today, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.

Too many people flippantly dismiss Myalgic Ecephalitis and/or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as “yuppie flu” and a mere psychosomatic illness, despite mounting evidence that CFS is a genuine disorder of the immune system and leads to chronic debilitating metabolic impairment.

The immunological and metabolic abnormalities associated with CFS are measurable, so long as one can convince one’s doctor to have the tests done. This is not an imaginary disorder based on lack of willpower or seeking attention.

Next year, any one of you could be incapable of reading this blog anywhere other than your bed.

Further reading

From Robyn Riley at the Herald Sun: Cruelty of Chronic Fatigue

From my new co-blogger at Hoyden About Town, Lauredhel:
Stop and think: invisible access for invisible disabilities

MPs shocked, utterly shocked

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 4 months ago
in Disability, Health and International
. 6 Comments

A cautionary tale from across the ditch: Maia, of Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty, has a post up in the sad told-you-so category, Politicians Shocked About Predictable Consequences of their Policies. The policy in this case was New Zealand’s public health system privatising the provision of disability support, with contracts for assistance services put out to tender to for-profit companies.

Surprise, surprise. Disabled people are not getting the services they are entitled to, and the contractors who won the tenders are complaining that they can’t find enough employees willing to do the necessary work, especially on late shifts and weekends. As Maia points out, the news article she links has missed some important words in their reportage here on the absence of willing workers here, and those words are “when they pay near minimum wage”.

The MPs who were shocked, shocked I tell you, are either fools or liars (usually both). When you subcontract services out to companies with the lowest tender you drive down wag[e]s. In fact that’s usually one of the main points of this subcontracting.

Quite.

crossposted at Hoyden About Town

Reprise: What’s it like to have one leg?

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Culture, Disability, Life, Philosophy and Technology
. 13 Comments

I don’t blog on disability issues very much, but I noticed at tigtog’s place a link to a blog that’s new to me - The Gimp Parade, and also via that link, I became aware of one of the very many multifaceted blog carnivals that tigtog has also previously blogged about here - in this instance, the disability carnival. So I thought I might give this post a rerun, originally written (with the aid of quite a few gin and tonics, so please be kind to me) almost two years ago, because I’d like to participate. I hope reposting it might also be justified because I think LP has a wider and different audience than back in July 05. LP was a bit more of an intimate place back then, and the post feels a bit raw to me now, but I’d still stand by it. Hope it’s of interest to folks who may not have seen it the first time around.

Continue reading ‘Reprise: What’s it like to have one leg?’

Dear NSW Liberals and your media mates: judge not lest ye be judged!

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 year, 4 months ago
in Disability, Federal Elections, Health, Howardia, Media, Politics, Religion and State/Territory Elections
. 31 Comments

Let me begin this post with a sad, potentially very sad, story which turned out to have a happy ending.
Continue reading ‘Dear NSW Liberals and your media mates: judge not lest ye be judged!’

“Laughing at the disabled”

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Culture, Disability, Education, Ethics and Politics
. 35 Comments

Update: I’ve written a post on the latest development in this affair, the suspension of Hookham and MacLennan for six months without pay, which I think is a completely over the top reaction, and says something very dodgy about QUT. I still hold to my original criticism of the two academics, but the chilling effect of this over-reaction on freedom of speech is deeply worrying.

The latest entry in the culture wars comes from QUT academics John Hookham and Gary Maclennan, who wrote an op/ed in The Australian yesterday, which in true Donnelly-esque style, was recycled in the same rag as news.

A PhD student’s TV comedy about disabled people has sparked outrage from senior academics and prompted an investigation. Michael Noonan’s thesis, “Laughing at the disabled: Creating comedy that confronts, offends and entertains”, has been attacked for its reality TV-style depiction of two intellectually disabled men interviewing locals in a country pub.

Gary MacLennan and John Hookham, of Queensland University of Technology’s film and television school, believe that work such as Mr Noonan’s is being validated under the rubric of postmodernist or poststructuralist thought, where “you abandon any idea of individual worth”.

“For us, this is symptomatic of a wider intellectual and moral problem,” Dr MacLennan said.

I want to make two points about this. One about the ethical questions raised by the op/ed itself, and the second about the politics of laughter and disability.

Continue reading ‘“Laughing at the disabled”’

Concern trolls

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Disability, Disasters, Elections, Ethics, Health, Life, Media, Politics and USA
. 11 Comments

The vileness of the American conservative noise machine is unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is the fact that the mainstream media constantly picks up on right wing talking points (saves journos and hosts from having to think for themselves). The latest case in point is the new stock anti-Edwards line - he’s placing ambition over compassion by continuing to run for President while his wife, Elizabeth, has incurable cancer. The sub themes are “what about the kiddies?” and “he won’t be an effective President if his wife is dying”. All of this is to second guess an incredibly difficult decision, and perhaps worse, to totally ignore Elizabeth Edwards’ own will.

It started with Rush Limbaugh:

Political people are different than you and I. And, you know, most people when told a family member’s been diagnosed with the kind of cancer Elizabeth Edwards has, they turn to God. The Edwards turned to the campaign.

That’s where it should have stopped, but it didn’t.

Cancer survivor Jane Hamsher tracks the spread of this meme at Firedoglake. And Crooks and Liars writes on its wholehearted and sickening transmission to Katie Couric on 60 Minutes. Atrios cuts to the quick:

I think one of the worst habits we have is telling other people not just how they’re supposed to live their lives, but what the appropriate emotional responses to life events - births, deaths, triumphs, tragedies - are supposed to be. While we’re not all twisted freaks like Rush Limbaugh, I think the impulse is a fairly universal one.

People who get a serious illness, or become disabled, lose both their agency and their humanity in the eyes of many. They become freaks who have to prove they are human in every interaction, and have to reassert their own agency at every moment.

For some reason the most natural and seemingly healthy impulse - to go on with your life as you had intended to the best of your ability - seems to be the most alien to those not experiencing a tragic illness.

As someone who has been through cancer, I can only nod and wholeheartedly agree.