Just Another Girl On The IOT...

 First, a note on this title, which I chose not for "Issue Organizing Team" which is what it means at work, but forLeslie Harris' brilliant film from the 90s, that, on top of everything I loved about it back then, might just give Ron DeSantis a lifelong ice cream headache if it has a resurgence, which he richly deserves.(and, yes, America, I've been waiting a long time to work this in. )

I was so glad my digestion held out for the disability and labor training Wednesday. I have to agree that principles ofDisability Justice sound much more affirming(and can I even say exciting?) than the inch-by-inch haggling that discussions regarding the ADA, considered by most as a useful tool, but kind of a baseline rather than an end for an inclusive society., have turned into in recent years.

Much was also discussed about the extractive nature of capitalism and how it makes even disabled people fetishize productivity, as well as pitting groups of the working class against one another.

The pandemic was listed by some panelists as a sore spot for hidden ableism, as some immune-compromised panelists are feeling more disposable than ever three years out, especially as workplaces return to a normal that never worked for everyone, anyway.

Maybe I can work with some of these people again...I'd like to try.

Stuck With...

serious thoughts all day.

On Pump Up The Volume...

 

 I don’t write this to claim that “Pump Up The Volume” is great art or that I was egregiously wronged by the little petty things that kept me from finishing watching until now.Nope, not even my stepdad and all of his revved-up revulsion at Hard Harry’s masturbatory antics.  Even though I have not learned as much about life, or men, or much else as I hoped by this age, I should have been obvious to any adult that all of that was, frankly, Talking Shit, and if he had been more patient instead of making us bring it back, there’s a clear contrast between Mark’s real character and what Harry does. Not to rub it in—that’s what she said—I do think putting up with a little cinematic smut is closer to high-ground behavior than making a whole family trust you and then “working late” by hollering online at some skank from the Rust Belt. That’s just me, though.

The movie looks different when you’re not…well, I was going to write “under my parent’s thumb”, but that would imply that I pushed and they shoved me in there. Here and there, maybe, but mostly not. Mostly, we didn’t have that kind of relationship, both because they were gentler on me and because I didn’t really have sufficient sense of myself as separate—as we’ve covered before, I felt often like The Littlest Boomer—to have pushback.

In 1990, I was in my parents’…dishwater, or wherever else hopeless goody-goodies go when they’re not looking for gold stars for acing stuff.  Not all my fault. I hadn’t really come to grips with the ways disability meant that all the things they were casting off as the oldest hat(school, clubs, extracurriculars) was something I was always fighting to *get in and stay in*. I wasn’t a generational traitor cause I didn’t learn to slack till I was over 30; I was, literally, in a different place than most of the young women who braved the fumes of popcorn, Red Vines, and Teen Spirit to view it.(The movie was more right about the fact that homework doesn’t save than the people I got advice from in high school.  Even now I wonder if that would be true if I were in the absolute top of my class, instead of the top 20%, but that seems to be moot now.)

Say what you will about my generation, at least the suicide in the movie didn’t take anyone down with him.
In some ways, I think it predicted the internet, both pro and con.

Possibly Careless Crosspost...

 about writing from Dreamwidth

Working out several first drafts at once, not to #humblebrag, but I just got late. Probably the first time the Crosspost went in this direction.

Bohemian Crip And The Mystery Of The Good Personality...

 

By the time I wrote that first dating profile, the internet had given me a lot, including the first chance at having a crew since my choir experience made me attach myself to the tail end of the theater crowd in high school.  Part of me wondered if I could date one of them, feeling as if my features, as well as my quips, had rearranged in a new, more attractive dimension, but nobody was single at the same time, especially not with ties to my maligned desert metropolis.

And of course, though I hated to notice how different it made my life(especially approaching someone I hadn’t met) I had to prepare for Wheelchair Drama: Questions and all: What went wrong? Could it get better?(and my question—knowing the answer to the other ones, what was I gonna do about not letting  my life pass by out my window while I was  online taking quizzes?

Wishing it was this easy to take the struggle out of my real life,  I wrote my profile as if I didn’t have a body. Which means I could still write about books and movies and stuff as long as it didn’t bother me to picture the head I stuffed all that info into…kind of floating in space. Although the temptation was almost insurmountable(and “Catfish” hadn’t come out yet to label that specific hoax) I didn’t make myself a rock climber or a cyclist. I told myself it was all a test to see if  I had that most persistent of all dating cliches: a good personality. If it was copy, or research, I guess I could ask unaskable questions, and, yes, I think my personality is fine, although I suppose I scrubbed off the moody or obsessive bits—as well as the parts that were even ever-so-slightly bi, so it was a few very ordinary young men who ran the not-so-flattering gamut from disgust to “Funny story…” when my full self was revealed. I told myself it was as expected, given a pretty major omission, but it took me a long time to face up to the girlish, optimistic, sitcom-nurtured part of me that hoped somebody wouldn’t have given a damn.

Still wonder about the guy who told me “I could never have dated someone with a disability” and wonder if his life stayed as perfect as he wanted it to, and if I want it to.