Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015 will be on Friday, 1st May

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015 is now underway. Please click here to see this year's blogs.

The tenth annual Blogging Against Disablism day will be on Friday, 1st May 2015. This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination (known as disablism or ableism). In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we've made.

How to take part.

1. Post a comment below to say you intend to join in. I will then add you to the list of participants on the sidebar of this blog. Everyone is welcome.

2. Spread the word by linking to this site (http://tinyurl.com/BADD2015), displaying our banner and/ or telling everyone about it on blogs, newsgroups, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and so on (we are using the hashtag #badd2015). The entire success of Blogging Against Disablism Day depends entirely on bloggers and readers telling other bloggers and readers in advance.

3. Write a post on the subject of disability discrimination, disablism or ableism and publish it on May 1st - or as close as you are able. Podcasts, videos and on-line art are also welcome. You can cover any subject, specific or general, personal, social or political. In the previous nine BADD, folks have written about all manner of subjects, from discrimination in education and employment, through health care, parenting, family life and relationships, as well as the interaction of disablism with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. Every year I have been asked, so it's worth saying; the discrimination experienced by people with mental ill health is disablism, so naturally posts about that are welcome.

You can see the archives for previous years here: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Blogging Against Disablism Day is not a carnival of previously published material. The point about doing this around one day (or there abouts) is that it is a communal effort and all the posts connect to one another. You can of course use your own post to promote other things you've written in the past as you wish.

4. Come back here to Diary of a Goldfish on the day to let everyone know that you've posted and to check out what other people have written. I shall post links to everyone's posts (slowly) throughout the day, creating an archive. However, I do need you to comment and leave the URL of your post or else I shan't find your post and won't be able to link to it.

We have both a Twitter account @BADDtweets and a Facebook Page where there will be notifications of new posts and updates to the archive during the day.


Accessibility

Naturally, Blogging Against Disablism Day invites contributions from people with all variety of impairments and none at all. You are welcome to contribute with podcasts, video-blogging or anything else that allows you to take part. And whilst May 1st is when this all takes place, nobody who happens to have a bad day that Friday is going to be left out of the archive.

If anyone has any questions about web accessibility, I recommend the Accessify Forum. I am not an expert on web accessibility myself, so if there are any suggestions about how I can make this day more accessible, please e-mail me at diaryofagoldfish at googlemail.com


The Linguistic Amnesty

Whilst discussions about language and the way it can be used to oppress or empower us are more than welcome, please respect the language that people use, particularly to describe themselves in their own contributions. We all have personal preferences, there are cultural variations and different political positions which affect the language we use. Meanwhile, non-disabled contributors can become nervous about using the most appropriate language to use, so please cut everyone as much slack as possible on the day.

At the same time, do not feel you have to use the same language that I do, even to talk about "disablism". If you prefer to blog against disability discrimination, ableism or blog for disability equality, then feel free to do so.

I've written a basic guide to the Language of Disability which I hope might explain some of the thinking behind the different language disabled people prefer to use about themselves.


Links and Banners

To link back to this post, simply copy and paste the following code:
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2015">Blogging Against Disablism Day</a>

These banners have seemed popular over the last couple of years and I am yet to think of anything better. If anyone fancies editing these images or coming up with something new, then please do so. You are free to use and mess with these as you like, so long as you use them in support of Blogging Against Disablism Day. If you already have the banner, you just need to change the URL that it links to from last year's BADD. Otherwise, you simply need to copy the contents of one of these boxes and paste it on your blog, in a post or on the sidebar as you like. The banners come in two colour combinations and two sizes. The sizes are a 206 pixels square or 150 x 200 pixels.

This is the black and white banner which reads "Blogging Against Disablism". Here's the code for the square one:
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2015"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlG7-IWPr3hTnOQRB2JGxQEMcAR_-gcvKeTsVg66maM-aWdNlvZHwzE0wy3gZEWpA-4tRiHo0I63s706PAhbYLzsbsxPq-jbK47kDJlAgI0WfPFpuISLDGcc5iju9JPbclNl0y/s320/bad01.gif" alt="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2015" title="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2015" border="0"/></a>

And here's the code for the narrower one (which can be seen here):

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2015"><img src=" https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBcSXhbGbBoyrY0-GAalrKdtUWPwWQTlGr_KGjwqaib4Vx7LulQ5Rs1vsOqW7dpMR6Xeu3aMYUcD3C706N8H0VQjVudXHd8aF7WjybL3oQvvs279oLeFzlw_EI6Gj39jdGTxWa/s320/narrowbanner1.gif" alt="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2015" title="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2015" border="0"/></a>


This is the colourful banner which reads "Blogging Against Disablism". This is the code for the square one:

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2015"><img src=" https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh26LD1wFZHKQUjLZVidcpqpMYIShd5fQv1SdOqhq_sEBzfge8XPkjKt7lzKqF8z074XxcSMV_tBokCZNqwvhsL7XoQUHT-uTmlRXUmXLRyaZN7gwx9_GK3px24NqZJtqtWNyxJ/s320/bad02.gif " alt="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2015" title="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2015" border="0" /></a>

And here's the code for the narrower one (which can be seen here):

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2015"><img src=" https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8W6vcwqHTdo6DFd43RZLo-I2dW4AtRPUIUUfs4WRgR8Z8zWP7h6Rbv7p1O7xk0S_piFLUpD1MHHPvmEP9c5jgAeFLBvldADkcq97LRRHBN2199lTJs6P2BXnTGWBQVV8te0bL/s320/narrowbanner2.gif" alt="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2015" title="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2015" border="0" /></a>

Please leave a comment (including the URL of your blog) to let everyone know you are joining in and I shall add a link to you on the sidebar. Also, if you have any questions, please ask.

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014

Welcome to Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014!

Thanks very much to everyone who helped to spread the word and to everyone who has blogging against disablism, ableism and disability discrimination these last few days.

If you have a post for Blogging Against Disablism, please leave a comment including the URL (web address) of your post and the catergory your post fits best. Please also link back here, wherever possible (we're at http://tinyurl.com/BADday2014).

We'll carry on updating this post as any late-comers arrive. We've also been posting links to every blog using the Twitter stream @BADDtweets and these will automatically be posted onto our Facebook Page.

Blogging Against Disablism 2014

Employment (Disability discrimination in the workplace, recruitment issues and unemployment).  Benefit Scrounging Scum:  Hard Working Species, The 'Striver Scrounger' EmsyBlog:  Access To…oh forget it Murder of Goths:  Employ me? Work and disability hurdles Random Happenings and Observations:  Attitudes towards Disabled People Scope:  ‘You’ve got so much stacked against you’ This ain't livin':  Sheltered Workshops Education (Attitudes and practical issues effecting disabled people and the discussion of disability in education, from preschool to university and workplace training.) Friendly crips and our friends:  How ablism stopped me learning how to teach against ablism Queen Cakeface:  Academic Ableism - How Formal Education is Failing the Disabled and Chronically Ill Rolling with the Punches:  Academic Battles That Crazy Crippled Chick:  One Year Ago - What Ableism Didn't Do Yes, That Too:  Not what I was planning on but it's ableism and I'm against it Other Access Issues (Posts about any kind of access issue in the built environment, shops, services and various organisations. By "access issues" I mean anything which enables or disenables a person from doing what everyone else is able to do.) Black Telephone:  The Prom Dress A Blind Man's Journey:  Housing for All Crippled, Queer, Anglo-European Ranter: Product Packaging Problems & Solutions?) Damn the Muse:  Service plans gone haywire Planat Community Blog: Accessible travel - issues and solutions World of Accessible Toilets:  Dignity Down the Pan Definition and Analysis of Disablism/ Ableism The Bardo Group:  Still Here bottomfacedotcom:  Are you disablist/ableist?  Low Visionary:  From disableism to human rights Making rights make sense:  Blogging against ‘disablism’ pseudoliving:  Nothing About Us Without Us? The Language of Disablism(Posts about the language which surrounds disability and the way that it may empower or disempower us.) Murder of Goths:  Worst things you can say Disablism Interacting with Other 'Isms' (Posts about the way in which various discriminations interact; the way that the prejudice experienced as a disabled person may be compounded by race, gender, age, sexuality etc..) Indigo Jo Blogs:  Dudes Disablism in Literature, Culture and the Media Bridgeanne art and writing:  Thoughts re writing ‘Girl with a White Dog’ Cracked Mirror in Shalott:  I'm Not a Side Story Diary of a Goldfish:  Against "Awareness" Funky Mango's Musings:  Writing semi-autobiographical fiction about disability A Hot Bath Won't Cure It:  Invisible Disability – disablism from different perspectives Kink Praxis:  Imagining Disabled Characters in Erotica Maijan ilmestykset:  Nasevaa ableismia / Snappy ableism Thoughts of a crinllys:  Rejection in a sci-fi world Tsana's Reads and Reviews:  Blogging Against Disablism  Visibility Fiction:  Getting it wrong – Writing disability in fiction A Writer In A Wheelchair:  Not such an equal “ism” History Disability Studies, Temple U.:  Wikipedia Against Disablism Relationships, Love and Sex Journeymouse:  Teaching Someone Else to Live With An Invisible Disability Living Disabled:  Peace, Anger, and Other (blasted) People Sport AthletesFirst:  A challenge to coaches AthletesFirst:  Not quite visible Other Feminist Sonar:  Valuing the Life Criptastic I (heart symbol) the Phylum Chordata:  Repercussions Philip Patston:  Blogging against blogging against disablism Powerful Bitch:  The Big BADD Cripple The Social Worker Who Became Disabled:  Are Social Workers Part of the Problem?  Poetry and Fiction against Disablism As Your World Changes:  Weary Words from a White Cane Warrior Ballastexistenz:  When we died, we found each other Diary of Mister Goldfish: Clippity Cloppity Goat and the Dragon Here be Prose:  Someday Same Difference:  Disablism is Everywhere Untitled:  BADD14

General Thoughts on Disablism Accessibility NZ:  Don’t use disability as the bogeyman AZ is Amazing:  Don't put words in my mouth Bigger on the Inside:  The fundamental interconnectedness of all things The Chronic Chronicles:  Ignorance, Exclusion and Invisibility - the reality of being disabled in the UK Dannilion.com:  Internalised Disablism Diary of Mister Goldfish:  Need for Speed The eGremlin:  Things are not always what they seem The Haps:  The Question Journeys:  Disability Stories - Resistance, Resilience, and Community Meriannen Mielessä: Pyörätuolityttö | The Wheelchair Girl  Minister of Propaganda for the Decepticon Empire:  Blogging Against Disablism Day More Than Disorganised:  Internalised Disablism Naked Vegan Cooking:  Special Blogging Against Disablism Day Post Nightengalesknd:  Why it matters that "ablism" isn't in spell-check Stand Tall Through Everything:  I’m A Reluctant Advocate Sticking the Corners:  Tried and True Ways to Eliminate People with Disabilities The Notes Which Do Not Fit:  That is such an obscure... Rolling with the Punches:  Support and Independence This Is My Blog:  Less hostility, please! Words I Wheel By:  Dis/Ableism, Privilege, and Assumptions yetanotherlefty:  In-between Parenting Issues(whether disabled parents or the parents of a disabled child.) Will Write for Tomato Pie:  Blogging Against Disablism Impairment-Specific Prejudice Blogging Astrid:  Mental Illness Is Real Illness Too Brain under construction:  Monster in the Midst Endocrine Gremlin:  Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014 The Eternal Pursuit of Love and Laughter:  Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014 The Hidden Village of Aspergers:  Crying On The Webcam Life In Deep Water:  The Relationship Between Depression & Alcohol & Its Effects On Relationships Mitäpä jos sä pelkäät turhaan:  Bloggaus vammaisuuden ennakkoluuloja vastaan The Not-So-Simple Life:  It's Time To Talk  Sticking the Corners:  Just Say No to Needy Busybodies Personal Journeys Posts about learning experiences and realisations authors have had about the nature of disability discrimination and the impact on their lives. Ballastexistenz:  I am not your fairy tale miracle cure story Katherine Hayward, my life with cerebral palsy:   Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014  My thoughts. About me, and ME:  Help! Never That Easy:  Hulking Out People Aren't Broken:  An InConvenient Truth Disablism and Politics (For example, the political currency of disability, anti-discrimination legislation, etc.) Write To Protest:  The Right to Life Bullying, Harassment and Hate Crime Ballastexistenz:  After this, I am never again putting up with bullies telling me that my medical conditions are imaginary The F-Word:  Disablism and microaggressions Radical Neurodivergence Speaking:  Parents are the worst ableists That Crazy Crippled Chick:  Disability Is Not Your Get Out of Jail Free Card Disability, Life and Death Ange's blog:  Carers should act in solidarity - not martyrdom  Ballastexistenz:  Love, Fear, Death, and Disability The Voyage:  Stop Excusing Murder

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014 will be on Thursday, 1st May

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014 is now underway. Please Click Here to see this year's contributions or share your own.

The ninth annual Blogging Against Disablism day will be on Thursday, 1st May. This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination (known as disablism or ableism). In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we've made.

How to take part.

1. Post a comment below to say you intend to join in. I will then add you to the list of participants on the sidebar of this blog. Everyone is welcome.

2. Spread the word by linking to this site, displaying our banner and/ or telling everyone about it on blogs, newsgroups, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and so on (we are using the hashtag #badd2014). The entire success of Blogging Against Disablism Day depends entirely on bloggers and readers telling other bloggers and readers in advance.

3. Write a post on the subject of disability discrimination, disablism or ableism and publish it on May 1st - or as close as you are able. Podcasts, videos and on-line art are also welcome. You can cover any subject, specific or general, personal, social or political. In the previous eight BADD, folks have written about all manner of subjects, from discrimination in education and employment, through health care, parenting, family life and relationships, as well as the interaction of disablism with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. Every year I have been asked, so it's worth saying; the discrimination experienced by people with mental ill health is disablism, so naturally posts about that are welcome too.

You can see the archives for previous years here: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

Blogging Against Disablism Day is not a carnival of previously published material. The point about doing this around one day (or there abouts) is that it is a communal effort and all the posts connect to one another. You can of course use your own post to promote other things you've written in the past as you wish.

4. Come back here to Diary of a Goldfish on the day to let everyone know that you've posted and to check out what other people have written. I shall post links to everyone's posts (slowly) throughout the day, creating an archive. However, I do need you to comment and leave the URL of your post or else I shan't find your post and won't be able to link to it.

We have both a Twitter account @BADDtweets and a Facebook Page where there will be notifications of new posts and updates to the archive during the day.


Accessibility

Naturally, Blogging Against Disablism Day invites contributions from people with all variety of impairments and none at all. You are welcome to contribute with podcasts, video-blogging or anything else that allows you to take part. And whilst May 1st is when this all takes place, nobody who happens to have a bad day that Thursday is going to be left out of the archive.

If anyone has any questions about web accessibility, I recommend the Accessify Forum. I am not an expert on web accessibility myself, so if there are any suggestions about how I can make this day more accessible, please e-mail me at diaryofagoldfish at googlemail.com


The Linguistic Amnesty

Whilst discussions about language and the way it can be used to oppress or empower us are more than welcome, please respect the language that people use, particularly to describe themselves in their own contributions. We all have personal preferences, there are cultural variations and different political positions which affect the language we use. Meanwhile, non-disabled contributors can become nervous about using the most appropriate language to use, so please cut everyone as much slack as possible on the day.

At the same time, do not feel you have to use the same language that I do, even to talk about "disablism". If you prefer to blog against disability discrimination, ableism or blog for disability equality, then feel free to do so.

I've written a basic guide to the Language of Disability which I hope might explain some of the thinking behind the different language disabled people prefer to use about themselves.


Links and Banners

To link back to this post, simply copy and paste the following code:
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2014">Blogging Against Disablism Day</a>

These banners have seemed popular over the last couple of years and I am yet to think of anything better. If anyone fancies editing these images or coming up with something new, then please do so. You are free to use and mess with these as you like, so long as you use them in support of Blogging Against Disablism Day. If you already have the banner, you just need to change the URL that it links to from last year's BADD. Otherwise, you simply need to copy the contents of one of these boxes and paste it on your blog, in a post or on the sidebar as you like. The banners come in two colour combinations and two sizes. The sizes are a 206 pixels square or 150 x 200 pixels.

This is the black and white banner which reads "Blogging Against Disablism". Here's the code for the square one:
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2014"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlG7-IWPr3hTnOQRB2JGxQEMcAR_-gcvKeTsVg66maM-aWdNlvZHwzE0wy3gZEWpA-4tRiHo0I63s706PAhbYLzsbsxPq-jbK47kDJlAgI0WfPFpuISLDGcc5iju9JPbclNl0y/s320/bad01.gif" alt="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2014" title="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2014" border="0"/></a>

And here's the code for the narrower one (which can be seen here):

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2014"><img src=" https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBcSXhbGbBoyrY0-GAalrKdtUWPwWQTlGr_KGjwqaib4Vx7LulQ5Rs1vsOqW7dpMR6Xeu3aMYUcD3C706N8H0VQjVudXHd8aF7WjybL3oQvvs279oLeFzlw_EI6Gj39jdGTxWa/s320/narrowbanner1.gif" alt="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2014" title="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2014" border="0"/></a>


This is the colourful banner which reads "Blogging Against Disablism". This is the code for the square one:

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2014"><img src=" https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh26LD1wFZHKQUjLZVidcpqpMYIShd5fQv1SdOqhq_sEBzfge8XPkjKt7lzKqF8z074XxcSMV_tBokCZNqwvhsL7XoQUHT-uTmlRXUmXLRyaZN7gwx9_GK3px24NqZJtqtWNyxJ/s320/bad02.gif " alt="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2014" title="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2014" border="0" /></a>

And here's the code for the narrower one (which can be seen here):

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/BADD2014"><img src=" https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8W6vcwqHTdo6DFd43RZLo-I2dW4AtRPUIUUfs4WRgR8Z8zWP7h6Rbv7p1O7xk0S_piFLUpD1MHHPvmEP9c5jgAeFLBvldADkcq97LRRHBN2199lTJs6P2BXnTGWBQVV8te0bL/s320/narrowbanner2.gif" alt="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2014" title="Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2014" border="0" /></a>

Please leave a comment (including the URL of your blog) to let everyone know you are joining in and I shall add a link to you on the sidebar. Also, if you have any questions, please ask.

Lisa Egan for the 2012 Pink List.

LGBT Disabled Heroes: Frida Kahlo, Lisa Egan and Lord Byron (also feat. Betty the Cat)

"Is there really anything brave and wonderful about wanting to get drunk and stick your tongue down someone else's throat?"

It was with this line, in an article called Locked Out Lesbian about the physical inaccessibility of gay night clubs, that Lisa Egan joined the ranks of my personal heroes.  She later told me that it was through this piece on BBC Ouch! that her father first learnt that she was gay.

A pretty young wheelchair-user with
a purple hoody and a drink, probably Absinthe.

A stand-up comedian and post graduate student in TV and Film, Lisa wrote about issues such as how disabled people are much like movie vampires and the horrors of Christmas shopping as a wheelchair user, until illness forced both her comedy and academic career into indefinite hiatus. As well as being a massive personal blow, this was very bad timing. A good few decades have past since it was quite such a bad time to be chronically sick in the United Kingdom.

In recent years, Lisa has become one of the hardest working disability activists fighting the punishing benefit reforms which are threatening the lives and quality of life of disabled people. She founded and runs Where's the Benefit?, probably the largest active disability group blog, as well as the Where's the Benefit Podcast?.  She has made radio and TV appearances, as well as writing for the Guardian, the Huffington Post and the Independent about disability, welfare reform and the Paralympics (having been a Paralympic hopeful herself).

Last December, Lisa wrote very bravely about the harsh reality of her own situation and the how the abolition of Disability Living Allowance may leave her without a life worth living, leading to a surge in signatures to Pat's Petition against benefit cuts (which you can still sign, if you haven't already).

Lisa (bottom left) and fellow campaigners at an anti-cuts
march last year.

Even in the face of such gloom, Lisa remains passionate about pop culture and the importance of disabled and LGBT people's representation within it.  She keeps a Tumblr Lisy's Thoughts on Disability in Film and TV, took on Ricky Gervais, Jodi Picoult and once wrote about how Katy Perry (who also kissed a girl and liked it) brings her close to tears.

Lisa has major problems with modesty, once stating, "Being fat, ugly and fairly dull makes me unattractive. Being disabled is one of the few things about me that I'm actually confident in."

This is the only reason why she's not one of the most prominent faces of disability campaigning, instead working and organising others behind the scenes.

As you can see, Lisa really ought to be on The Independent on Sunday's Pink List, a list of the 101 most influential lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Britain, nominated by members of the public. As well as giving Lisa the recognition she deserves, it would be great to have a disability activist (or indeed any disabled person) on that list. And quite seriously, can you think of 101 more influential queer people? I certainly can't.

So if you would, please pop over to the nominations page before Sunday and write a few sentences about why Lisa should be on that list.  Thank you.

Recall To Pride - Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012

For Blogging Against Disablism Day
There are closed captions (click the CC button) but if you have trouble playing the video, here's a transcript:

The disability movement saved my life.

In my hour of despair (a little more than an hour) the disability movement taught me that my problem had two parts. One part was my illness, the suffering that causes and the things that stops me doing. The other part was people's attitudes and the way our society is set-up. Only one of those was something I had to deal with on my own.

Before then, whenever I met prejudice or poor access, I thought it was because I was broken. Whenever I read something in a newspaper condemning people like me or reducing people like me to a set of negative experiences, I thought it was because I was broken. I thought that I owed the world an explanation. I thought I had to explain why I couldn't do certain things, and explain how much I wanted to, and how I really really couldn't help it. Honest. I thought I had to constantly explain about being broken.

I am not broken. I am just not very well.

In recent years, the disability movement in the UK has been on the defensive. Being denied the financial and practical means to live a full and meaningful life, people have been scared. Some have been scared to death. There's nothing wrong with talking about suffering, about poverty. There's nothing wrong about the things we've lost and the things we're going to lose. There's nothing wrong with people who are in fear of their lives expressing that fear. Sometimes, we owe it to ourselves to be honest with the world about what we're going through.

But essential benefits and services are not a matter of compassion. We don't need to persuade anyone that we're all good people who suffer dreadfully and are therefore deserving of charity. We don't need to express gratitude that we are allowed to exist. We don't need to constantly refer to ourselves as genuinely disabled, as if there's any other kind. These things only play into the hands of people who think that there are deserving and undeserving disabled people and no matter what happens, the most needy people are bound to be looked after.

Cuts to essential benefits and services are a matter of social justice. Whoever we are, whatever the nature of our impairments, whether or not we are good patients, whether or not we were ever hard-workers, tax-payers, whether or not we are suffering or actually get a lot of pleasure out of life, or both, we are entitled to respect and dignity and the means to survive.

Disability pride is not about saying, “Hooray, I'm disabled!” It is not about saying, I don't suffer or I wouldn't change this about my life.

Disability pride is about saying, we're often up against it but

I am proud of who I am.
I am proud of my friends.
I am proud of the disabled community, which like any family has a few eccentric aunts and that half-brother we must never ever speak about.

It's about saying,

I will not apologise.
I won't apologise for having these limitations.
I won't apologise for the medical events that happen to me.
I won't apologise if my presence embarrasses you
I won't apologise if you don't understand my situation. I don't need you to. I don't understand yours either, but you have my respect.

Disabled people never got anywhere by begging. Disabled people changed the world in which we live by recognising our own inherrent value. This is why, collectively, we mustn't despair, however bleak things get. Because having equal or equivalent opportunities, having the dignity of being clean and fed and sheltered even if we need help from others, being treated with respect rather than abuse or condescension. These things are not a prize we won in a draw.

That's social justice. It's what everyone has a right to. And it's what we have a right to too. Too.

Which isn't always easy to recognise. And that's why, when we do...

We should be proud.

The Graduate

Stephen did his degree with the University of London International Programmes, working entirely at home, taking his exams by himself at the local college. So there was a big question about whether he should even attempt to attend his formal graduation, at the Barbican Centre, in the middle of London.

Stephen in his graduate gear. A very  handsome young man
in black gown and mortar board, looking wistful.
(He was actually watching the parakeets).

Well, last week, we did it and it was great. It's so difficult when you do any kind of work or study from home to get the full warm fuzzy from a job well done. Because of the modular nature of the course, and because he lost a year due to a downturn in his health, only one of Stephen's student friends finished the degree at the same time as he did. When he got his results last summer, we drank a bottle of Welsh champagne, but the enormity of six years work, finally complete, didn't really sink in (unlike the champagne).

You can see the very moment that Stephen graduates if you go here and fast-forward (goodness knows I wished I could have) to 278 minutes. He looks very serious, on account of his gravitas, now he has a BA (Hons) after his name and all. You'll also notice that he got an extra loud clap, on account of how well he did. Or possibly because of the wheelchair. After all, it is notoriously difficult to study Classics if you can't personally re-enact the twelve labours of Heracles.

In order to manage this, we had to get into London, stay over night, then get home after the graduation the next day.  We're in Surrey at the moment, so we paid for a hotel in the middle of London - less than an hour away, in good traffic - with a heavy heart. As it was, the traffic wasn't great and we took a scenic detour (wrong-turning), an experience which reminded us why we couldn't have possibly done the whole thing in a day.

When I was a kid, London was a terrifically romantic and exciting place and when I was a teenager, the city felt like destiny itself. I was going to go to drama school in London. I used to look at the Tube map and street maps of London, planning trips to the important places I should visit. London was at the centre of everything I was interested in, such a lot of creative work going on, so many interesting stories unfolding on every street corner, thousands of creative minds coming together to create the hippocampus of the British cultural hive mind. In Ipswich, where I grew up, a town of over a hundred thousand people, there were few book shops, let alone art galleries and no professional theatre for much of my youth.

Part of me still feels that way. Part of me was silly-excited about going into London, just to see it and be in its midst for twenty-four hours. I often have stretches of weeks or months when I don't leave the house, so in one hour in a car in London, I see more people than I might normally see in a year. What's more, I've always come into London from the North before, so there are all kinds of things I've never seen, coming in from the South West.

But it's massively inaccessible to me. I don't know how sick people cope with living in London at all. I don't know how an otherwise healthy person could survive a cold, if the symptoms started in the middle of the city. Too much is going on, too much noise, too many people moving way too fast - you'd lose all sense of direction, collapse on the pavement and get trodden to death! The only reason the pavements of London aren't strewn with the bodies of people who have died from minor infections or dizzy spells is that there are so many people passing through that the corpses get completely broken down and washed away real quick.

Sinister wheelchair picture! Two wheelchairs,
strewn with ladies' underwear.

I'm also disturbed by the contrast between conspicuous wealth and conspicuous poverty. Goodness knows that rural England and Wales have plenty of both, but when the two sit so physically close together, it makes me nauseous. And the dirtiness of London - far dirtier than any other city I know - exacerbates this contrast. You get these posh shops and hotels with freshly-polished glass doors with gleaming brass handles and immaculate hulking doormen stood outside, but if you look up to the higher floors, or down the side of the building, there's dirty walls, broken windows, rubbish floating about and occasionally far-from-immaculate people sifting through that rubbish.

Being a car passenger, in London, is wearying enough. My back and neck were thoroughly done in by the sudden jolts and halts as other drivers changed their minds. I tried to ignore what other people were doing around me, much as I do when I'm being pushed in a wheelchair through a crowd. I tried to ignore that, in London, there are billboard ads which refer to the fact that the viewer is most likely stuck in traffic. They have slotty ones which change the ad every few minutes, on the basis that you're going to be sat there long enough to take in several adverts.

Anyway, we somehow made it to a Travelodge which was very well placed for us, had a staff who treated us like we were staying in a five star hotel and a lovely big accessible room with soundproofing on the windows, a wet room and a big bed. We had a picnic tea and slept pretty well considering that, despite it being a Monday night and the room overlooking a back street, the traffic and noise of people on the streets outside never quietened down.

Stephen, graduated. The same
handsome young man holding
a glass of champagne and smiling.

The next day, we trundled along to the Barbican, parking just along from Princess Anne's Bentley (she's the chancellor of the university). We had our photos taken and Stephen was fussed over by a small regiment of staff who didn't know quite how or when to get him onto the stage. At one point, in their confusion, they thought we were both graduands, and I almost saved a great deal of time and money by being graduated at the same time. Trouble is, I couldn't make up my mind quite what I wanted a degree in. Divinity sounded like fun.

They planted Stephen and his Dad on the stage and left them sitting up there for about twenty minutes, in front of a full auditorium, entirely by themselves. I've been on the stage at a few theatres, but never anything so grand as the Barbican. I once saw the Royal Shakespeare Company do Romeo & Juliet there. It was dreadful, but even so.

When the graduation did get underway, it was as tedious as I imagine most graduation ceremonies are, except for the bit when Stephen finally got to cross the stage. It was an extremely international affair, being the International Programmes, and it was great to see so many different ideas from around the world of what you wear for a graduation. It was also quite funny to hear the English woman, who announced each person, struggle with names from all corners of the globe. As a result, when she did have an British-type name to work with, she said it with ten times the volume and confidence.

Me, looking tired and proud. A woman
with a glass of champagne and a very
lovely tartan jacket.

On our way out, we pinched the free booze and cupcakes, which Stephen's sister became so enthused about that she planted five on Stephen's lap before escaping to the carpark. Stephen is gluten intolerant and allergic to dairy. I think each of us could write a book about "Things I have had other people place on my lap, when using a wheelchair."  I've certainly had small children, electrical appliances, rolls of wallpaper and important documents. Perhaps one day, I'll have cupcakes.

Oh and Stephen left his walking stick on the stage. He e-mailed the Barbican after to suggest they donated it to the props department, by way of thanks for accommodating him so well.

Heart-Shaped Plectrum

(Click the CC button for Closed Captions).

I wanted to write a blog post about ukuleles, so Stephen and I spoke about what photographs we could take to accompany the post - ukuleles being very beautiful instruments.  This conversation evolved into a great deal of messing about and all of a sudden (many weeks later) we had produced a music video. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'm still going to publish the ukulele post, but for your information, the first ukulele is a concert uke, the second is a soprano we made ourselves in the summer of 2010 from a kit like this and the third is a tenor.

The great picture of the rock-hopper penguins is by Liam Quinn.

Heart-Shaped Ukuelele Plectrums can be bought from this eBay shop.


Stephen says: Love's a funny thing. It can drive you to do all manner of strange things.

 I think the thing about true love, though, is that once you've done that thing (even if it's taken weeks) and you've had time to look back at it and understand the mind-boggling oddness of it all, you still feel proud. It still warms your heart and gives you a sense of completeness.

That said, if you haven't yet made your peace with the infinite, then I suggest you think twice before pressing play.

So, I hope that whoever you are, and whatever it is that you love (a special person, pet, food-stuff, view, group of people, artwork etc), that you spend the day cuddled up with a comfortable... comforting... sense of the oddness of all things and the truly humanising effect of affection.