Two Short Thoughts

A couple of complete thought vignettes that are too long for Twitter and too short for real blogposts. They would have belonged on Friendfeed (but most of you aren't there and ff got bought by the evil fb). So, a couple of thoughts that I want on the internet record.


I think of us as a small secret group, those of us whose lives disability has touched. One by one, I see us connect on this topic, each with a story to tell. At our closest times, some of us were not particularly friendly; we were on opposite sides of important institutional, organizational, political arguments. We were split up by "generational divides" (generations here being 2 or 3 years). We dated, broke up, sided with the other person, dated other people. We lived together, abroad, on opposite sides of the country, a block or two away; our geographic distribution remains much the same. We cluster in groups of two or three, our configurations determined by other factors and interests. The rest of the members probably don't know I am watching, don't think of us as a group of people who could be allies -- far too many of them experience disability alone. Nonetheless, we are there: a small secret group of people whose lives disability has touched.

I went to a panel talk on disability and relationships the other day. I was a little worried, given that disability was advertised as the "elephant in the room." (sigh). But the panelists were all disabled and were pretty cool. There was a big divide in the audience members, though. The first group did not necessarily identify as disabled in the cultural political way; their disabilities were collections of impairments -- problems, illnesses and conditions to be overcome. The second set of peeps were my peeps -- those who identify as disabled in a political and cultural way, those who found positive joy in the quirks and idiosyncracies of their disabilities.