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.

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.