Walking With A Friend

A friend and I went for a walk on an unexpectedly hot, sunny day: a high pressure system stared down the usual Spring grey and warmed the Bay waters. It was a perfect day to share.

Post here includes a picture of my friend; she's standing smiling at the camera. Her orange t-shirt glows against the grey green of the native grass and brown grey of the marsh. The sky is that perfect blue. All the pictures in this post are taken by her. She whipped out a phone and made a record of this moment.

Actually, we don't get to meet all that often. Our lives are neither parallel nor functionally intersecting; we have to make the time ... to sit, to eat, to talk ... and, on this occasion, to walk. Technically speaking, as you can see from the pictures, ours wasn't a hike, nor even much of a walk. The original meeting was for lunch -- a sitdown time to connect and revisit the contours of our lives over the past couple of months. But the sun was shining. The outside beckoned. Could we go for a walk? We gathered enough food for provisions for ourselves and, judging from the size of the bags we are carrying, for all of you. So, here: grab a bite to eat. Come join us.

Post here contains an image of me taken while out on our walk. I've smudged out my face because I am having weird qualms about my face on the net at the moment. Not that it isn't already there, but ... allow me a little uneasiness, will you? As I look at the picture, I notice that my hair kind of looks like a smaller explosion of the bush that is behind me to my right. Same colours, same kind of shape. Eerily, the grey-ish erasure of my face seems to blend me even more into the heathered landscape. It's a picture of me, in my chair, with a great big grocery bag of food on my lap. The sun shines into tussocky grasses and plants. I'm sitting on one of the tarmac bits; this is just before we get going.

It's true at home in the UK but, for some reason, it seems even more true in the US. No one can just walk; because very few people just do. Walking has become an event -- something more than simply traversing the local landscape from point A to point B. It's something you have to stop and do. When people say, "Oh, I went for a walk," I always expect to hear that they went somewhere other than the pavement just outside the doors. They went out.... To nature. To take a walk. And so it was for us; we piled into a car, hung our hands out the open windows, and allowed the wind to style our hair as we sat in the traffic jam, inching towards the grass, gravel, and Bay.

A crip spot, the schk-tunk as my axles lock into place, a distribution of baggage -- LUNCH! -- and we're off.

Except that we aren't really.

We can't stop talking. We've not stopped talking since we met at the grocery store. We're already high from hunger and giddy on our conversations about language, connection, our futures, and the way we've lived in the past months. Our voices ring out, loud, into the breeze. With every face that passes us, I'm conscious of the fact that we are different; we're not dressed in exercise clothing -- we're not "out for a run" -- we're not taking a walk. Why do people "take" walks ... do we have to rob the environment of even this? Can't we simply walk? No taking, just a simple physical act that is rooted and deeply grounding? We're not on a quiet walk with a professional colleague, family member or lover. It's a nature preserve, but we're not even appreciating the nature with the kind of subtle expert knowledge that you see so often around here.

No. We're here -- 2 black girls -- and, yes, I am aware of that. Despite the diversity of where we live, I don't often see black people out walking -- and we are visibly and actively enjoying our surroundings and celebrating being with each other. We aren't murmuring meditatively; should we be? It's open space, a special spot. Other people, with the exception of a child, seem quiet. Should we be in that place of quiet respect -- like a concert hall?? It's a beautiful day. Our voices and laughter sound above the wind.


Post here includes a picture of our surroundings. The sky is a deep blue that is offset by the blue-grey of the water and the white tips of the tiny waves and the salty leavings on land. The inlet itself is surrounded by grass that in the foreground is green and slightly gold, but as your eye progresses towards the centre of the picture and the water, the blades turn grey and the plants more wild and tussocky. Between the water and the sky sits the East Bay Hills, one of the hills is particularly in focus.

I am conscious of the noise my wheels make as they strike the ground beneath me. Some of the area -- the main bike paths-- has tarmac over it; other parts are graded almost level and covered with a kind of shale/gravel. The stone is not so deep that I can't roll on it a little way, but it is not easy going, by any means. I've been coming here a while. I've never seen another wheeler, white or black. The crip spots are occasionally occupied, but still I've never seen another wheeler. I wonder what they think of us as we pass by. Is my friend a carer who has taken me out for a special trip? Are those glances of pity -- so nice that you can be out? I know disabled people go out, but where *are* you all? Or are people shining on us their glances of interest and curiosity? There are books on accessible trails in the Bay Area; people do go out and want to go out. But I never see anyone on wheels. What is it about walking that it remains so firmly a privilege of the on-foot-walkers? Do we really think walking is about the feet?

Beyond these philosophical concerns, the most pressing question is the food that we're carrying. Unconsumed food is heavy. We look for a bench really close by. But we don't even get there before it strikes us. We are moving and talking, talking serious stuff about mental health, pathology (squirm, don't worry we were careful with the word), consent, commitment, legality, disability, feminism, race .... And in that moment, in our intensity, we have built a small community with bfp and Jess.

Ours was scheduled to be a lunch break; now, it is a walk. It is a walk that is now connected to the work of the re-thinking walking project. We're stunned. And then my friend takes these pictures. Our individual physical movement is now part of a political movement. The recognition of how radical this walk and our conversations are silences us for a second; our next step will be meaningful. It will be powerful simply because we have intentionally acknowledged our presence in this environment and our connection to those other women walkers.

We eat, talk, and pack up the remaining crumbs. It strikes us as funny that even here at the salty, marshy edges of the land and sea, there are trash cans. We both make some kind of "America indeed" comment. Then, we turn right; I pull my shoulders back, feel my hands rise; I breathe down, and my hands strike the rims. My wheels sink slightly into the welcoming ground.

x-posted at flipflopping joy.

design meets disability: a review, II

This is the second part of what has turned out to be an epic engagement with Graham Pullin's design meets disability. I'm not sure how I got so knotted up in the text, but this is the last part of my essay.

design meets disability has seven chapters -- fashion meets discretion, exploring meets solving, simple meets universal, identity meets ability, provocative meets sensitive, feeling meets testing and expression meets information. These are followed by a series of discourses that are meetings with designers -- Tomoko Azumi meets step stools, Michael Marriott meets wheelchairs, Martin Bone meets prosthetic legs, Graphic Thought meets braille, Crispin Jones meets watches for visually impaired people, Andrew Cook meets communication aids, and Vexed meets wheelchair capes -- and some shorter imagined encounters -- e.g., If Phillippe Starck met bottom wipers or if Stefan Sagmeister met accessibility signage.

Fascinated? Yes. Me, too. This is awesome stuff. Totally out of the ordinary and really damned exciting. But here's what happens. Let's follow just one of the chapters/discourses to see how design, disability, and inspiration all work out.

A more extensive and colloquial statement of Pullin's argument might be:

A) You didn't know this, but some of the most important and some really cool stuff that you now use everyday came from design for disability. (Quite how one is supposed to react to this, I don't know -- something along the lines of ... "Oooh. Seriously? Disabled people are more than a niche market? Design for cripples is useful!)

B) All too often, design for disability is narrow, semi-functional, and ugly; it could benefit from conversation with the larger design world. (Almost any end user of almost any piece of assistive technology could tell you that.)

I'm a wheelchair user with an interest in fashion and clothes; wheelchairs and fashion happens to be one of the traceable threads through the book. Pullin observes how glasses have become "eyewear," an optional and carefully chosen fashion accessory, as opposed to an assistive device. Analogically, he wonders what would happen if we made wheelchairs "chairwear" on a par with HearWear (25-7) and body wear (28) prosthetic limbs. Recognizing that chairusers might like a little Aimee Mullins legwear style in their equipment (29-33), Pullin goes on: "If spectacles have become eyewear and hearing aids earwear or HearWear, what shift in approach might the term chairwear inspire? Could it inspire thinking of someone as a wheelchair's wearer, not just its user, rider, or passenger? A wheelchair is a frame in which you and your clothing are seen. It is the place from which you receive guests. It is what you go out on the town in." (57)

If this were possible, if wheelchairs weren't so expensive that you could pick and choose a chair at will, this might be interesting. I don't see a chair as easily achieving the discretionary status of glasses, however -- the social and cultural worlds we inhabit would have to change significantly before I see anyone choosing to give up their walking capacity as a fashion statement. But suppose it's possible. It might even become cool: a professor friend has observed students taking ASL because they can talk to their friends in bars (!!) So, OK, let's roll with it. My questions would concern the use of "inspire" as the verb to describe this process and the erasure of the disabled-ness and the culture of disability if we adopt chairwear as the conceptual framework of choice.

Pullin forefronts design; I seek disability. It's not that I am either separatist or isolationist in my politics. No. Not by any means. It is that I believe there is something important and unique about disability and disability culture. I like the Tobin Siebers point that I raised in my previous post on Pullin and this book. Siebers asks (link is to an earlier post with full citation info), "What would it mean to esteem the disabled body for what it really is?" What if we design for disability as it is? And with that question at the forefront of my mind, I see even more clearly, a need to sort out the distinction between impairment and disability.

Disability and impairment are, of course, terms with which Pullin claims familiarity. He gives definitions early in the text based on the World Health Organizations's classifications (1). But the WHO definition of disability doesn't extend to acknowledging disability as a culture in itself or as a political force, produced in relation to an individual's impairment and the political and social mainstreams. In that regard, many activists and scholars find the WHO definition limited at best and problematic at worst. Pullin's choice means that he mostly ends up talking about design in relationship to impairment and to the tensions made visible when impairment enters the world.

In other words, by his terms, Pullin is talking about design for disability, but his definitions are so limited that they constrain him into talking about designing for impairment than designing for disability in its widest and most wide-ranging senses. This narrowness is a hole at the heart of his book, and "inspiration" is his tool for filling it in. If design and disability just get talking, then the resulting inspiration will enable designers to come up with new ideas that will bring disability more recognizably into the world of design and design into the world of disability.

Unfortunately, as it comes across in dmd, inspired design is design that moves past disabled-ness and disability culture to design that maximizes functionality and either flaunts or masks the signs of impairment. These are not bad things per se; I love Aimee Mullins' legs as much as anyone. I also think there has to be a tangible connection to disabledness as a cultural and political force (not just in functional terms) as well.

Here's some of what I mean. I love the idea behind the discourse where Vexed meets wheelchair capes. I *hate* wheelchair capes. I have a useless blue piece of plastic that is more signifying of my disability than my damned blue placard. I keep it in the car; I never take it with me; I can't stand the idea that I might be seen in it. I know I am not the only wheeler who, caught short in the rain, has rushed into a shop to ask for a trash bag; I've even sunk so low as to keep a trash bag in my backpack (ohh, the agony and humiliation... how is this better than the cape?) In Pullin's words, Vexed brings "an edgy, urban perspective to highly practical and technical clothing" (291). My kind of company.

Vexed founder, Joe Hunter's, first thought is to design a wheelchair cape such that it is a "must-have" fashion item even if you don't use a chair (295). Good thinking -- it replicates what Pullin sees as the success of glasses. Hunter runs through some of Vexed's work and offers the idea that "wheelchair garments that allow movement need not look ill fitting; they could look deliberately look confining" (295). To my mind, this is probably not the best solution. If we spend all this time working on undoing the wheelchair-bound/confined to a wheelchair effect, it doesn't help any if we appear "confined" by our clothes.

I don't think its coincidental that Hunter comes up with this notion of confinement. Bound and confined are part and parcel of the non-wheelchair user's understanding of wheeled life. These ideas also travel hand in hand with the inspiration thing. We've all seen the newspaper articles that trumpet the wheelchair bound person's inspirational effect -- I actually wonder whether you can be inspirational if you aren't bound and confined to your chair. Bound, confined, and inspirational are a set of attitudes that work together and reinforce each other; they play out to dangerous effect here.

Acknowledging that they could not do it without help from wheelchair users and without spending a week in the rain, in a chair, Vexed's founders (Joe Hunter and Adam Thorpe) both run through some other options -- a skirt over the chair to which you could zip a jacket, a cape that would work for bicycles, wheelchairs, and scooters (296). None of them are yet practical options, but Pullin is excited. He concludes, "wheelchair capes inspire Vexed." That's the subheading for the concluding paragraph of the discourse. We've transitioned from Vexed meets wheelchair capes (the title of the discourse) to the capes inspiring Vexed. This is the goal of the book, but somewhere in the process, we've managed to erase the disabled-ness of disability.

The last paragraph bears quoting at length:

They may not yet have designed specifically for disability, but Thorpe thinks "our clothes are assistive technology."* They [the designers] are conscious of the need to learn more from disabled people, yet their years of experience makes them, like many other designers, experts in many of the issues that could redefine design against disability. Most of all, talking about wheelchair capes, Vexed is passionate yet down to earth, challenging yet respectful. Once more disability inspires design. "Ask a different question and you get a different answer, " says Hunter.* This is true for both cultures: just as disability could inspire fashion design, so urban culture could inspire design for disability.

If you take the first sentence at face value, all clothes are assistive technology; they enable us to enter and survive in the world. The point of assistive technology is that the design is rooted in something more than the ordinary. It is design specifically for disability. My experience with, now, 5 architects and 2 designers is that you do need dedicated experience/education/awareness to design for disability; most architects and designers don't have a freaking clue how to make something work, even if they think they have a grasp on the issue. Disabled people may not be designers, but we turn out to be better experts in our own issues. Simply knowing your materials, knowing what the ADA recommends, and/or that a client has issues with her grip, for example, does not guarantee good design.

"Once more," Pullin writes, "disability inspires design." It wouldn't have to be this way if the argument could advance beyond inspiration. My eye is drawn to the preposition "against." I know Pullin means this neutrally -- in the backdrop of, with regard to. But I also see a tension there that the book betrays, a tension that he doesn't acknowledge. That "against" revels that disability and design do not always go hand in hand. Pullin would like to see inspiration as the outcome of an encounter of disability and design; perhaps tension would be more accurate?

I believe in disability and disability culture. In Pullin's book, I see "inspiration" as being a force that erases the disability in order to accommodate -- and, yes, not necessarily conceal -- the impairment. This perspective doesn't mean that dmd isn't a good book; the encounters real and imagined are fascinating. I would love to see any real designs that come of them. I'm just worried that disability in design ultimately is lost in Pullin's text. Nor am I sure disabled people are among Pullin's desired/projected audience. That's a pity: designers won't get very far if we -- in our fullest selves -- are not equal participants in the conversation.

the * are to footnotes in Pullin's work.

design meets disability: a review, I

A while back, I blogged about Graham Pullin's new book, design meets disability. Here's my review. As I wrote, I found myself becoming more and more involved in my reactions to the book; it's a long 4,000 and counting essay. Part I is here; part II tomorrow. Hopefully, that will be it. If I'm going to write 5,000 words about someone else's book, I may as well get started on my own. Gentle smile.

"Disability inspires design" (xiii). That's the header for the preface of Graham Pullin's book, design meets disability. If you sense an imbalance in those two phrases, a kind of inspirational impulse that perhaps tips how Pullin will balance his story of how the larger world of design encounters the marginal world of disability, you'd be right. It's all about the inspiration. Pullin's book opens, "This is a book about how the worlds of design and disability could inspire each other" (1). Perhaps, I should not take such exception to a word that in this context describes how change might come to two overlapping but all too frequently isolated from each other worlds. Change, after all, is good, no?

It's just that "inspire" doesn't offer a particularly strong road map to positive change. And, further, that "inspiration" is not a particularly productive analytical lens for a book that has a serious conceptual point to make. Pullin obviously meant that the two worlds could bring much to each other, but he's off his game when he relies on "inspiration" to bring this potential to the fore. The trouble is that "inspiration" has a long and mostly negative history in the disabled world. It's the word people use when they can't deal with disability; it's a way of simultaneously erasing the person and the disability. (Selected earlier "inspiration" inspired rants here and here.) It's a way of reinforcing able-bodied superiority. "Oh, I am so inspired by you; you manage to get out of bed every day and go to work and still you smile."

To rely on "inspiration" as both a key process in his work and to prioritize it as the central desirable result of his explorations is to endanger the project as a whole. Sure enough, Pullin falls "victim" to the inspirational narrative. The word starts out as being a neutral/optimistic term that describes how disability and design might connect with each other; it then slides over into being an emotional word that describes the author's reaction to what he sees (see tomorrow's post). It doesn't stop there. By the end of the book, "inspiration" is the goal. Disability inspires design. Pullin makes this statement explicitly -- again, see tomorrow's post -- and it is a central and repeated theme of the project.

This book is not "disability meets design," but design meets disability. The difference is significant. That we encounter the word "design" before the word "disability" is meaningful. Somehow in that priority, I detect design as a normalized force that encounters this thing, this disability thing, as it passes on its course. It's because, grammatically, we attach design as the subject -- the meeter -- and disability as the object -- the met. We journey with design to this thing, this disability. That encounter, with all of its implied strangenesses and frissons of alienation, is mediated by both the technical and emotional definitions of inspiration.

As an object, design meets disability is a beautiful book. Though I can't say the glare from the somewhat shiny (but oh so sensuous to the touch) paper does much for me (headaches), the book itself -- typeface (Joanna and DIN), layout, balance, images (so clean, so pretty, so beautiful) -- demonstrates how thoughtful design adds to the value of an object. The design is there if you look for it and present (but invisible) if all you want to do is read the text as a book.

And dmd is immensely readable -- probably too readable. Academic publishing is caught in this bind; size and spread of readership versus scholarly complexity. To my mind, dmd errs on the side of general readability. The book has clearly been written by someone with academic credentials; the scholarship shows through in the creation of the contexts in which Graham Pullin examines the relationships between disability and design. But the arguments about design, market, context, bodies, materials, theory, etc., all of which exist in design scholarship and in universal/accessible design scholarship are not here brought into conversation with each other. Pullin frequently talks of tension, but the book does not address or explore in any significant depth the histories and wherefores of the tension, the advantages, disadvantages, and ... It is, instead, a series of lightly contextualized musings about a series of meetings, some imagined, some not. It skates in generalizations and flat pronouncements over the conflicts, the theorizing, the politics and, as such, it is not a scholarly book in the traditional sense. I wonder if Pullin and publishers might have done better to consider a different format.

Before you get on my case for dinging someone's work for what it is not and not what it is, give me a moment. Pullin has a single argument: design for disability could open up more mainstream contexts and provide advances in technology and design; this could benefit both disabled and non. It's not a particularly sophisticated argument. And it doesn't get any more complicated as the book goes on. In fact, Pullin proceeds (I say proceeds rather than argues) by example, accretion, accumulation, and, a little, by extension. The absence of academic development and probing analysis means that things progress by juxtaposing ideas next to each other rather than by logical connection arising from argument. Indeed, the argumentative structure is so weak that I even found myself reading the sentence, "It is inspiring to see Robins search for a new visual language appropriate to a body that is different..." (119). OK. It's only one sentence, but it demonstrates how the argument actually does not develop and how inspiration becomes the point.

Similarly, it's not enough, in a conversation where Michael Marriott (a furniture designer) "meets" wheelchairs and slips to bicycles and engineering to say, "Being inspired as much by the engineer as their engineering, the reference points veer from analogous details to more diverse projects, and the trains of thought are more radical as a result" (211). It's merely pleasant and intriguing reading. We get the point that wheelchairs are a useful starting point and that Mr. Marriott's mind is now running on new tracks, but what about the wheelchairs themselves and the wheelchair users. It's cool and exciting to spark new ideas, to see inspiration at work, but when disability is seen only as a spark that ignites other more exciting stuff, it's hard to see disability itself.

The book makes this point repeatedly. Each context is new and fascinating. But the absence of development in the argument -- the sparking of inspiration is the point -- makes me think that the material could have been more productively and equally as beautifully packaged and distributed in a different format. It might have been far more exciting (and argumentative) to have held a web conference on some of these contexts, distributed the material beforehand and recorded the conversations (in accessible formats, of course). I would have been happy to have subscribed to an RSS feed of Pullin's which, over the course of several months, released this material, engaged its readers in conversation, and left the material and the conversations publically available.

When I buy a book these days, particularly a book from an academic press, I have certain expectations (rightly or wrongly) about the relationships of content to format. I think Pullin and MIT -- a place dedicated to technology, a place that just had the h2.0 conference, a conference at which Pullin even seems to have been present, dammit -- misjudged the relationship of format to audience in this particular case. The disabled community is online in ever increasing numbers; the design community is online (in who knows what kinds of numbers); even the medical equipment design community is online. The place to reach all these groups is online. The place to hear all these voices and watch them collide into the conversation and with each other is online.

In tomorrow's post, I'm going to follow up on the dangers of inspiration, disability, and design.

Disability is Man-Made ... for Real Dove Women

H/T Ruth@WheelieCatholic for this one.

I've been bugged for a while (like many women) by the Dove self-esteem project. You remember this? It's the Campaign For Real Beauty. It aims to tackle low self-esteem in women by using *real* women's bodies to sell Dove products. The Dove landing page alternates between flashing images of products to buy -- hair conditioner, etc. -- and "information" on low self-esteem, images of women in advertising, conventional notions of beauty, and what you can do about it. Mothers? Talk to your daughters. There's a work book of tools, even. (It's all script driven so nothing opens in a separate URL - you have to click through the links on the main page).

I hated the campaign because it implied that models aren't real -- they are. And they and their bodies are subject to all kinds of pressures that are just as real and as harmful as those we, the non-model women, experience. And, on top of that, I hated the bodies of the women they actually chose. If you are going to go for "everyday" bodies, people, don't choose conventionally beautiful everyday bodies, choose those that the everyday disdains. Most of all, though, I hated the disingenuousness of it all. Self-esteem for women! A worthy goal! "real" beauty ... and, yes, products for real beauty, for real women. Nauseating.

Dove does it again in this campaign: Self-esteem: A Man-Made Disability.

OK. They use an actual disabled person. That's about the only thing positive to say about this thing. From then, the story is sort of like this.

Two friends. One disabled, one non try to meet up with a bunch of other friends to sit and talk and have fun. The disabled girl comes to pick up her friend, Katie, but Katie can't leave the house. Disabled girl goes on alone and later gets a text which she shows to the rest of the group. Katie can't leave the house -- because of her self-esteem issues. Her self-esteem, the video shows, is at rock bottom because she is pressured by conventional ideals of beauty -- after putting on her makeup, she falls dramatically back onto a bed littered with beauty magazines. The resulting lack of self-esteem means she can't leave the house and that it takes her three hours in the morning to get ready.

Where to begin. One of the messages I see operating is that "even this physically disabled girl is less disabled than her able-bodied friend." I bristle at the "even." They wouldn't have had to choose a disabled person to show the "plight" of Katie -- the disability angle is just a ploy. Even this disabled girl has more self-esteem. Ugh.

The second thing is that the ad assumes Katie doesn't actually have a disability. There are any number of cognitive or psychological disabilities that might mean Katie takes 3 hours to get ready and then can't leave the house. AND this really torques me. The ad assumes that it is all in Katie's head -- that somehow this isn't a "real" disability, that even if she didn't have an underlying diagnosis like, say, agoraphobia ... FridaWrites is really good on this in the comments to Ruth's post ... Katie's body dysmorphia (link is to a brief Mayo Clinic definition) issues are somehow not really a disability -- they are man made, i.e., external to Katie herself. How can this be? I can see perhaps saying that impairment arising from an automobile accident or massive chemical disaster might be classed as "man-made," (but even then it's a pretty useless classification), but how, what would it mean to say psychological disability is man-made?

And then there's the contrast. The "poor" disabled girl whose name we never get to learn doesn't have a man-made disability. EDIT: OH WAIT. It's JESS. She's born "that way" -- and even she (there's that even again) can get out and go to the mall/cafe/wherever and have a good time. So crippling is that lack of self-esteem brought on by images and pressures of conventional beauty that this beautiful, fashionable young woman doesn't go out. And to make the point, Dove dresses Katie in contemporary clothing; her disabled friend, well, there's a tale. Are these two women supposed to be the same age? Katie at one point wears disabled girl's coat to cover herself. Disabled girl wears an ugly pink dress with fluffy sleeves and a pink headband. She looks generally less fashion aware than all the other women and, more troubling, she looks young. She's not hip, trendy, well-dressed... she's kinda young and naive looking. Yet. Yet. She goes out, despite everything, bless her ... and her hip friend can't.

Remedy? Oh yes. Buy Dove, people. Cuz that makes it all better.

Two Thoughts About Dance

So, I'm not done with physical therapy; I suspect I will be doing much more of it for a long time. But I am over the acute post surgery phase. And in some respects, I am stronger now than I have been in over a year. So... dance is on the horizon again.

I attended a presentation on physically integrated dance; the speaker showed some clips and asked what the audience saw. The first respondent said that he didn't see that the woman in a wheelchair was dancing. I was surprised, of course, but it turned out to be a really good question. Because, really, what is dancing? And how do you know when someone is doing it?

I don't know how you define dancing vs, say, wiggling, because even wiggling can be dancing. Perhaps it is something to do with intention, quality ... perhaps something to do with control? I don't really know. And that's my point. Once you move beyond forms of dance that have set movement vocabularies, it is really hard to distinguish a kind of movement that could not possibly be dance. If your definition of dance is only that movement that can be described by French ballet terms, you mostly likely don't see the dance of physically integrated dance.

At the other end of the scale, I was in a conversation in which a choreographer said the phrase "pure movement." Which somehow, I immediately opposed to dance. There's dance and then there's pure movement. I'm not sure what I had in mind -- probably the same thing that was meant by the audience member but from the other side. Pure movement would be something like picking up an object, opening a door, scratching a leg... The same is true here, of course. You could have a dance of "pure movement." Street pushing, for example. Or transferring. Or...

There are certain things I *like* to do. I like to run across stage, but I don't want to dance mostly pathways. I like gestural stuff, but I am not necessarily enthused about all upper body gestures. My favourite kinds of work does all of the above, seamlessly transferring the focal point of the movement between body and chair. Hooray for the return of dancing. Fingers crossed that the body holds.

Happy One Liners

You can follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/wheelchairdancr (hooray!)

Physical therapy is working! Hooray! I am strong and flexible.

The house looks and feels unbelievable -- whew.

West Coast is looking at work by new choreographers -- awesome.

West Coast will be going to France (amazing!)

The heat will break tomorrow. That's the first time I have been grateful for the ice cuffs.

My garden didn't die during the winter. That's a first!

Send In The Clowns

It's been a weird couple of representations of disability and disabled artists month ... at least if you are disabled artist, presenter, performer, competitor. First Cerrie Burnell from CBeebies, then Scott MacIntyre on American Idol, Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent, and Liu Yan (article in the NYT). And it's all been the same kind of thing. Just when you thought the NYT had got it in their coverage of GIMP, for example, comes the worse than usual.

It's a vicious circle. Bad news on the usual media side, justifiable outrage/anger/analysis/correction on ours. Predictable. Even the language on both sides is predictable. We are all caught in a cycle, and to the extent we continue to respond to each other in these old, old ways, that cycle will remain the same; we will never be free from the same-old, same-old roles. I used to hope that some of us would come along and that their talents would be such that they would be free to perform/work in the public eye, trouncing forever the usual kind of crap. But with each artist, work of art, performance of excellence, the stereotypes seem more entrenched. It is almost as if there is no possible way forward in the framework as it currently exists.

Today, you might say, I don't have the energy to skewer another critic, another bad piece of journalism, etc; I'm looking for something to take its place, a new kind of public conversation -- no, wait, a more beautiful language in which we can have a public conversation about disability, disability in public, and the performing arts.

It isn't over, 'til it's over. And it ain't over. I think I am going to start a new tab/label/thread that attempts this project. It's all fun taking apart the language of the public sphere, but after 3 years of this, I'd also like to offer some examples of how it could be done.

Why Am I Only Seeing A Few Lines???

Sorry about that folks.

When you receive only a couple of lines of a post, it's because I have used a summary form of FeedBurner (the thing that delivers my posts to you). I've been trying to keep posts that have content which might be NSFW (not suitable for work) from automatically being present in your feedreader/email inbox (at the request of a couple of you). This time I forgot to turn it off.

This one should show as a short, short full post.

3 Year Blogiversary

So, folks! I've been doing it for three whole years. 3 years and 750 posts later. What to say?

Well, thank you!

Seriously, it's been great. I've come to know some of the best people on the internet. And I've met some of you offline, too. You are supportive, provocative, challenging, and wow. I love how you all send links for stuff that I can blog about. smile. Inspiration is some percentage perspiration and some percentage community. I love it when you leave comments or write to me about my posts. I love being able to see how my ideas become part of a larger 'sphere conversation. Blogging is awesome.

I asked the Wizard what he would say about my blog. He came back with some luridly purple coolness: "Authentically analytical, WCD incisively skewers bad journalism and perceptively offers a mix of criticism and observation about bodies, dance, and design." Or "Wheelchair Dancer's blog offers engaging views into her not-so-ordinary disabled life." Honestly, who needs a word cloud?

I've noticed in the past months (since the surgery) that my entries have become less frequent, but much longer. I don't know of a causal connection; I don't think I am out of blogging energy or anything. It's more that the blog has become more of a space to work out more complicated ideas. I'm still into "skewering" the NYT (and others who should never be deemed journalists), but the blog is a way of working out what I think about abstract questions as well as a place for me to write about dancing and my daily experience. That kind of complexity sometimes takes more time.

I care about what I write here. Am I writing a book? Sometimes, I think I might. But I can't figure out what that book might be. Nor do I think I can commit to another formal book project. I like the idea that I can blog and let go. Hit the "go" button and go on with something else. I am committed to blogging as an art and as a form.

In other words? I plan to keep writing; I hope you will keep reading. In the meantime, thanks for your company.

Did You Give Your Consent?

Possibly NSFW. Do most of you work in places where even the mention of porn and/sex is a problem? I know my personal boundaries are set a little more wide of everyone else's marks, so I'm going to tag it. I'm not going to be discussing the rights and wrongs of porn -- that's for another day -- my take is first that there is porn, disabled people have sex, disabled people participate in porn (as actors and consumers), and second, that all that is true for seniors as well.


When I was growing up and when I was in college, sex education on the notion of consent was pretty minimal. I remember the "no means no" campaign, and I also remember heated discussions about coercion and impaired judgment. But I don't remember any awareness about how to recognize a yes as a yes. We were taught to give and respect no. We were taught how to recognize when yes might be no, but it is not the case that not-no equals yes. We were never taught to recognize consent.

My reasons for writing will become clearer later. For a second, though, I want to think about consent. My first pass at the problem is that we tend to construct consent on a case-by-case basis and understand it as an agreement between (usually) two parties, (usually) two individuals who mutually agree to do whatever it is they agree to do. And our focus on the individuals involved obscures the ways in which consent has a cultural context and ways in which I think that the giving of individual consent and the contexts in which it can be found mesh with each other. True, only the consenting parties do the whatever happens next, but before we get to that moment, before we even get to the yes/no (as if it were only that simple) comes a whole lot of stuff that complicates the giving, reading, and understanding of the yes and no.

Because the absence of consent gives rise to abuse, violation, and exploitation, we rightly focus on how to protect and care for non-consenting parties and how to punish the wrong-doers. That is right; who could question that?

But, for my money, I would like to hope that education about non consent and consent might help to reduce the number of awful incidents. And that means sex education. I grew up in the UK where sex education was routinely given in my school. Everything was discussed: sex, contraception, pregnancy -- I am one of a small group of former hormone addled teenagers who now eyes household appliances and electronica with a certain gleam: A school sex ed teacher suggested various kinds of uses for them; everyone, even those not in her class, knew. My point? Sex, sex education, and consent happen in a cultural context. I can't imagine a place in the US where this kind of transmission of information and experience could have happened.

But being in the US doesn't mean that education about sex (wherever it happens) shouldn't include the sexuality of all people including that of disabled people and seniors. (Has anyone attended a class that discussed either or both?) It doesn't mean that there shouldn't be discussion about how moral and social values play into how and when people give their consent and/or are denied the right/opportunity to consent. Because once your patronizing prejudicial beliefs about certain groups of people pass not only as cultural knowledge but also as the fundamental information that underpins legislation, you risk denying everyone their human rights. And, yes, sexuality is a human characteristic; sexual freedom a human right.

Without both a cultural understanding and an absolute understanding of consent (both the yes and no), all kinds of stupidity can happen. A friend sends along links to the following proposed legislation and discussion at the Legal Satyricon. The idea is to afford elders (defined as people over 60) and people with disabilities the same protections under the law as those accorded children who are posed or exhibited in "state of nudity." Chapter 29A of Mass General Law reads:

Section 29A. (a) Whoever, either with knowledge that a person is a child under eighteen years of age or while in possession of such facts that he should have reason to know that such person is a child under eighteen years of age, and with lascivious intent, hires, coerces, solicits or entices, employs, procures, uses, causes, encourages, or knowingly permits such child to pose or be exhibited in a state of nudity, for the purpose of representation or reproduction in any visual material, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of not less than ten nor more than twenty years, or by a fine of not less than ten thousand nor more than fifty thousand dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

(b) Whoever, either with knowledge that a person is a child under eighteen years of age or while in possession of such facts that he should have reason to know that such person is a child under eighteen years of age, hires, coerces, solicits or entices, employs, procures, uses, causes, encourages, or knowingly permits such child to participate or engage in any act that depicts, describes, or represents sexual conduct for the purpose of representation or reproduction in any visual material, or to engage in any live performance involving sexual conduct, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of not less than ten nor more than twenty years, or by a fine of not less than ten thousand nor more than fifty thousand dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

(c) In a prosecution under this section, a minor shall be deemed incapable of consenting to any conduct of the defendant for which said defendant is being prosecuted.

(d) For the purposes of this section, the determination whether the person in any visual material prohibited hereunder is under eighteen years of age may be made by the personal testimony of such person, by the testimony of a person who produced, processed, published, printed or manufactured such visual material that the child therein was known to him to be under eighteen years of age, or by expert medical testimony as to the age of the person based upon the person’s physical appearance, by inspection of the visual material, or by any other method authorized by any general or special law or by any applicable rule of evidence.

Deeply frustrating. In essence, the new law would include elder and PWD in any instance where child is mentioned. The only internet discussion I've seen is here@the Legal Satyricon and at Volokh Conspiracy. Both are on target when it comes to discussions of age and sexuality. Volokh has only one disability related comment that I could see with a quick scan. It's sort of OK. More problematic is Legal Satyricon. While I agree with the general analysis of the proposed legislation and while I note that the slightly sarky tone is part and parcel of the analysis, it's not a helpful discussion, at least as far as disability is concerned.

Take this stunning piece of insight: "There are nightmare scenarios where people, due to mental infirmity, might not be able to give truly informed consent — and in those cases, I too would support measures to punish those who might exploit them." Mental infirmity? Who knows? More sophisticated an answer would be to explore how education might help the "mentally infirm" develop their sexuality and give consent. Because consent is possible. More helpful analysis: "My mom does have a bit of a disability (as defined by Massachusetts law). She has a lung condition that is a “long-term physical … impairment that prevents or restricts the [her] ability to provide for … her own care or protection.” Uh oh. " Uh oh, indeed.

But the central discussion makes its point: the law prevents the development of porn starring disabled actors (Encarna Conde would be out of a job), the distribution of porn starring disabled actors (lord, the intertubes), even possession (and thus production?) of a private set of photos or movies (just as well that we don't live in MA). It thereby denies people the power of their consent.

That said, it's a better discussion than that of the Boston Herald: "Pervs preying on the elderly or disabled could soon face harsh new penalties under a first-of-its-kind proposed law that would punish sicko peddlers of geriatric and handicapped porn the same as child pornographers."

Absolutely, anyone, disabled or non, should be protected from abuse. But laws that prevent people from being able to give consent are also no good. People over the age of 60 have sex, act in and consume porn. People with disabilities have sex, act in and consume porn. Not to allow people this kind of autonomy is to deny them their humanity.

Design/Disability

Since I write about it so often, I'm starting a new thread for posts on design.

I recently went with Wizard to choose some new glasses frames for him. It was pretty easy. We went to the shop, opened the door, walked in, and selected some absolutely stunning frames. It was easy because EVERYthing in the shop had grace, style, and beauty. The connection of glasses and disability resonates deeply in the disability world because of the way in which Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer used them in a Supreme Court decision about the ADA. In trying to decide whether or not the ADA applied to those people whose impairments had been mitigated by, say, blood pressure medication or insulin, Scalia and Breyer made the following observations (NYT):

''If we were to say, 'You're right, your client is disabled,' is it then necessary to say that everyone who uses false teeth or glasses is disabled, or is there a way of drawing a line?'' Justice Breyer wondered.

Justice Antonin Scalia, removing his glasses and waving them in the air, observed that ''I couldn't do my current job without them.'' He continued: ''I guess it's nice if a majority of Americans can claim the benefit of the law. It's comforting. But it doesn't square with what Congress seemed to be talking about.'

Good questions? Perhaps. I prefer the twist that Tobin Siebers gave it in his essay, Disability In Theory (link is to google books PDF of the text; the essay was originally published in American Literary History.4 (2001): 737-54.). Siebers argues that we should not be trying to scale disability and resources in these ways; it is pointless trying to limit access to accommodation by trying to define who is and isn't disabled. When resources are scarce, access to the basics is dehumanizing. People become 'greedy' because they have to fight for every last drop of assistance that enables them to participate in the world. When that happens, the very world that we inhabit comes into question.

Anyway, that's a digression; I am more and more coming to see glasses signify on a more complicated level. The beautiful frames and technical lenses come to stand for another issue with which we deal on a daily basis: beauty. You can get beautiful glasses everywhere. Beautiful assistive equipment is another matter.

A reader sends along this article about Graham Pullin's Design Meets Disability. This paragraph grabs me: "Other than wearing glasses Pullin is not disabled himself, and he doesn't claim to speak for the disabled. "The issues around disability are very political and complex and loaded, and I'm not trying to make any statements about disability per se," says Pullin. "The message I'm simply trying to get across is that by actually embracing disability, and the issues disability puts to the forefront, it can unlock ideas about universal design."

The glasses and disability thing again? OK. It gets more tricky. When asked about models for disability and good design, Pullin answers:

I think eyeglasses are really interesting, in that they're so successful as exemplars in this area that we cease to think of them as design for disability. We don't think of them as the same as hearing aids or prosthetic hands. . . . I mean, there are statistics available for how many eyeglass frames are actually bought with just plain glass in them, with no prescription, for purely aesthetic and fashion and cultural reasons, which I think is remarkable.

I don't see glasses as design for disability; they are design for impairment. In the same way that a well-designed cane is design for impairment. It's an overemphasized distinction in our disability studies, right-on world, but in the outer world not marking the distinction leads to all kinds of tangles. Such as the one above. By designing for the impairment without the stigmatization that comes with disability, it has been possible to make glasses that are fashionable, unique, individual and individuating.

The same is true (though perhaps less so) with canes. The world of canes has seen design for impairment and or function. The result: beautiful hand carved canes/walking sticks, high tech hiking canes/walking sticks, funky, pretty, cool. The same is NOT true of the world of crutches. There's your basic ugly hospital crutch which rarely becomes a permanent fixture of anyone's life these days and your somewhat more individual Canadian/Lofstrand version. You can get them in different colours, sure, but the variety and coolness of canes is much more so than crutches. Why? Canes designed are for impairment and for enhancing athletic and everyday function; crutches are designed for disability and for compensation of broken parts. The conceptual difference is critical to the design.

Pullin continues: "Disability could actually be a source of incredible inspiration for design, not just the looming legal obligation the design industry is bracing itself for. . . . Disability can force some new questions onto the agenda that can actually open up new ways of thinking, and not just in terms of better accessibility."

I agree with the perception that disability might be seen as a "looming legal obligation" (alliteration is so effective, no?), but I don't think that this is the way to go about better design for either the disability community or the wider world. The "inspiration"-thing is my tip-off. If you repeatedly use disability (and not impairment) as an "inspiration," you may end up with great table legs and white Macs. But if you do, it is not necessarily because you have made a concerted conscious effort to work with what disability teaches; it is, rather, because randomness and chance opportunity have gifted you with their presence. These examples are exceptions, not the rule. That hit or miss process does nothing for either disabled people or the larger world.

Siebers asks in that same essay, "What would it mean to esteem the disabled body for what it really is?" I ask, "What would it mean to design for disabled bodies for what they really are?" Here, I think the choice of disabled over impaired body is more important. I am asking what it would mean to design for the impaired body that participates in disability culture, arts, rights, politics, friendships, worlds (and is thus disabled). It seems to me that designing for this kind of creature would create a different kind of experience than designing for that person who can't walk and thus uses a wheelchair.

What about the non-disabled world? It irks me that the central marketing points for universal design seem to be that we all may become disabled one day -- you will need this (i.e., fear) and we may all see something different and better (true, but not enough). Fear is not good enough for all the obvious reasons. But I also insist that the "disability will inspire us to things that are better for all over us argument" is as weak and as ineffective as the fear point. While, factually, it is true that certain products designed initially for those whose bodies are less than perfect have succeeded (think all the OXO hand grip products), such items only succeed in the larger marketplace if they have been detached from their crippled origins. Everything/anything that even whiffs of disability will fail. I worry about access. Will the disabled still have access to/benefit from these new inspirations or will we be further isolated not, this time, by the way society responds to impairment, but by the designers themselves, the designers who want their ideas and products to succeed in a world that is repulsed by crippledom?

What should a designer do? Go with disability in *our* sense. And expand it so that you are designing for a world in which people are fully functional beings, a world in which a single product responds to all our senses (or as many as possible). Make human variation part of your plan! Make a multidimensional product that enhances our function in all of our dimensions -- even the ones not immediately relevant to your understanding of the function of the product.

Oh, and, Mr. Pullin? Assistive technologies tend to be part of the disabled person, yes. But they are part of "our" bodies; we see them as part of our bodies. It is true that other people may see them as part of our bodies, as well, yes. But other people don't matter; they don't live with our technologies. Fundamentally, initially, principally, and in principle, they are ours; we own them. In all senses. We may request stuff based on our interactions with others, but we are the users. Design with us in mind, and things will go a lot better.

I've ordered a copy of Pullin's book. My hopes aren't high, but I'll let you know.

(re)thinking walking -- a response

If you don't know the rethinking walking series by bfp and Jess -- a collection of stunning, awesome posts over at bfp's flipflopping joy -- run, don't walk over there to read them -- link to the whole series is here. The posts started as a partial response by bfp to the "way she was 'doing' media," to her deconstruction of white feminist arguments, and to the way she was thinking about "movement making." In their collaboration, bfp and Jess have taken on these and a variety of other critical life-forming questions (women, nature, the outdoors, colonialism, bodies ... to name just a few). The series has grown into a collection of some of the most wide-ranging, interconnected and thought-provoking writings I have read in a while.

So compelling is the collection that others have been inspired to join the conversation by writing on their own blogs. Bfp invites this kind of community participation; I suppose you'd say that this is my contribution.

As I read the walking posts, I am over and over captivated by how frequently and how powerfully the idea of walking (including its cultural functions), the experience of walking, and the body (and, in particular, its failings and pains) are connected. And I'm not just talking about the so-called curative effect of walking/being out in nature in the fresh air, walking 30 minutes a day kind of stuff. I am talking about the actual biomechanics and physical experience of the body.

Bfp remarks on the pain of Sacagawea: "A vast part of Sacagawea’s travels were also made while in severe pain–bad enough pain that Clark notes it often in his journals." Julie notes that her post about pain and her body is influenced by bfp's and Jess's walking series; specifically, she's had trouble walking over the years and her post "crystallize[s]" her thoughts about these experiences. Kai talks about her hip tendon injury, ankle surgery, and her experiences of walking.

My first reaction is to want to understand (yeah, I picked that word deliberately) what is happening beyond the kinesthetic experience of not being able to achieve the biomechanics of walking without pain. What is going on here? What can we glean from these vignettes of difficult walking; what can we learn from pain and disability as elements of a walking story? Because it seems to me that the personal experience of these women walkers might also open a door to a different understanding of walking. So, that's where I am going.

In an earlier post, I wrote about figurative speech, cognition, meditation, sitting, and walking. It was January 2008, my body was changing, and I wanted to put down some ideas about walking and walking language; my post was also a silent goodbye to an old blog that I had taken down a long time ago, but only recently deleted. I was never going to be using walkinggirl.blogspot.com again. My post finally landed on the point that our culture is all about standing and standing movement as precursors to knowing (and as a kind of brightline between bipedal walking and quadripedal). Sitting still was just as important to knowledge, I decided. And, moreover, it was essential to a kind of knowledge that could not be accessed from either standing or standing movement. (Though as Kay reminded me, wheelchair users are in something of a unique position here -- we get to sit-move in ways that no others really can.)

Now, I am curious about the next conceptual push, the next figurative step both with regard to my thinking and, literally, in my reality as I attempt to regain some of my own walking skills. The hip surgery has stabilized my hip nicely, and my lower body (including my legs) is stronger than it has been in forever. I have a rolling walker, and I am learning to use it -- more on the connection between walking and rolling in a sec.

Bfp asks, " When did walking transition from meaning “to roll, toss, journey about” to putting two feet on the ground, lifting one, then lifting another…? Why did it transition in such a way?"

What if that transition never completely happened or at least did not happen the way our culture likes to think it did?

When I walk, I stump and hip hike. I don't really use my lower legs or feet except as poles and plates on which I stand. "You're doing it wrong," the PT explained. "Use the water and remember that you are aiming to roll through your foot." Roll. Roll through the gait cycle. (Longer explanation here). I can't do it. Strike with the heel. yeah, I know. But I STILL can't do it. My biomechanics apart, walking, as a non-disabled body knows it, is a roll.

We can learn a lot from our bodies -- but the rolling effect is also there in the very meaning of the word, too. Rolling, curliness is at the very semantic heart of the letters that we acknowledge as the word "walk." From the OED (subscription only: sigh):

Old English gewealc rolling or tossing (of waves), struggle, contest. Y- prefix + the Germanic base of WALK v.; compare Middle Low German walch fight, Middle High German walc struggle, fight (early modern German walc), Old Icelandic válk tossing (especially of waves), trouble, worry (Icelandic volk tossing (of waves), toil).

With sense 1 compare Middle Dutch walc tangle, knot of hair or wool, German regional (Low German) Walk knot of hair, Old Danish walck small clump, hair-pad (Danish valk plait, curl, hair-pad), Swedish valk hair-pad (16th cent.). With sense 2 compare use of Old English gewealc:

Walking, as we think about it culturally and socially, has been straightened out. It's kinkiness (think hair, not sex) flattened. It's been verticalized -- we don't talk so much about the "cycle," we talk about "steps." All the round, rolling, roiling has been ironed out. It's been systematized, serialized, yes, even logicalized. By way of contrast, I'm struck by the chaos of the early Germanic words. Walking is a passionate, forceful/forcefilled activity. None of this meditative serenity in nature stuff. More OED examples:

Middle Dutch walken (weak verb) to knead, work with the hand, to press together, to full (cloth) (Dutch walken to knead, work with the hand, to full (cloth), (regional, reflexive) to roll), Middle Low German walken to knead, to full (cloth) (German regional (Low German) walken to knead, work with the hand, to full (cloth), to beat, thrash), Old High German walcan (strong verb) to press or mat together, to felt (attested only in past participle giwalcan, and in the prefixed form firwalcan, in the same sense; Middle High German walken (strong verb, later weak) to roll up, (reflexive) to roll, (transitive and intransitive) to move back and forth, to go (rare), to full (cloth), to beat, thrash, to fight, to stamp out, German walken (weak verb) to full (cloth), to beat, thrash, (regional) to move back and forth), Old Icelandic válka (weak verb) to toss about, to toy with, to ponder over, (reflexive) to wallow (Icelandic volka to rumple, mess up), Norwegian valke (weak verb) to full (cloth), Norwegian (Nynorsk) valka (weak verb) to press, squeeze, Old Swedish valka (weak verb) to roll (something) about (Swedish valka to full (cloth)), early modern Danish valcke (weak verb) to knead, work with the hand,...

Ironically, our contemporary flat, physical view of walking constricts our bodies. And this intellectual, rational view of walking means that walking is a site at which disability is easily located. It's not about the body so much as about how we value the achievable movement of a body.You can walk? Not disabled. You can walk 40 feet? OK. No ultralight manual for you. You walk inside only? No powerchair for you -- but perhaps you could qualify for a scooter. And on and on.

With the cultural understanding of walking as this flat thing, it is easy to see how walking becomes attached to stories of body pain. It's not that walking always causes the pain; it is more that the anatomical understanding of walking limits us to one kind of appropriate body motion. As Kai put it, what if, instead of doing walking meditation, we did moving meditation? Her "move" here is to take the emphasis of the anatomical, bipedal thing to a kind of travelling, an impulse to move. Doesn't matter how -- wheels, canes, crutches? -- all good.

Transitioning from walking to moving is an important maneuver for me in a number of ways. Yes, it takes the emphasis off "pure" physiologic walking. And for that I am grateful. I can imagine a world in which I return to gimping happily around the house, but pop into my chair when I leave or when it gets painful. I'd appreciate there being no stigma about the way I move. But equally as important, it opens the door for a different understanding of disability and walking.

As it features in these posts, disability is identified and identifiable in what I have come to call the "boundedness" of the pain and difficulty walking. It is intricately but immovably connected to the experience of difficulty and the "can't" that comes with body fragility. I'd like to make an argument by analogy. If you've followed me thus far in shifting the critical and interpretive weight from bodily walking to a body moving, from foot planting/stumping to rolling as experiences and philosophies of walking, can you follow me also in gathering together the many disability studies/disability rights cultural, social, political and still embodied understandings of disability as being more than the failure of the body? How can we apply these ideas to this act, this walking, that so many of our fellow people and our social and political institutions use as a dividing line between disableds and nons?

When dancers, choreographers, and critics talk among ourselves, we tend to focus on a dancer's body: He's got beautiful feet; her hips can make that line. Some of the immediate consequences of our gossip are a discourse of “can and can't.” There’s also an understanding of good dance as a function of physicality, and an unassailable set of aesthetics which makes no sense for a disabled dancer. I am very skilled, but my hips won't ever make that line; my wheels will never point. Does that devalue my movement?

By definition, movement is not a static thing, but I wonder if we have got hung up on how to move and what movement is? Yes, movement is fundamentally concerned with change, with motion and with dynamic. Movement is the act or process of moving. Movement is a noun. It is what is. I'm concerned with the verb, i.e., with what movement does. Movement has the sense of setting in motion. I don't care how big your movement is or how small, how many people, how controlled, how pointy, rolly, clumpy, stumpy.... I want to know what you are setting in motion.

The rolling motion of walking is its own impetus. That's the whole point. Once the movement has started, it is almost more difficult to stop it than to keep going. Once the rolling gets going, it is infinite. There's no clear beginning nor obvious end; there is only what the act of rolling sets in motion: the movement itself.

Vive la revolution!

Iphone Controlled Wheelchair?

that is a cross between a segway and an iglide/ibot? Gimme one now. Now, that the Wizard has hooked the house electronics, appliances, heat, locks, etc. to my iphone, it seems only appropriate that my chair should be.



The chair/car/personal thing would return power to the grid (yay) and be able to communicate using GM's On Star technology with other vehicles (so you don't have to worry about driving and parking - that will eventually be run by the computer, too). My only concern would be reliability, support, and availability. Anyone remember how often the Iglide needed support (due to be withdrawn, soon), the Ibot has been pulled off the market, and, then, there's the whole GM thing.

Can't wait. I'd definitely want to go for it, though. Yay, Project PUMA!

Guns Don't Shoot People...

Back in 2006, I wrote about Ms. Margaret Johnson who, under circumstances that are unclear at best and made more murky by the NYT reporting, shot someone who appeared to be attempting to mug her.

Ms. Johnson, you might remember, is a scooter user whose building had seen a wave of robberies. When she felt someone grab her and her stuff as he passed her, she shot her assailant. The NYT article goes on to commit all kinds of disability and race-based crimes; it assures its readers that Ms. Johnson's building has professionals in it (Translation: this isn't a burned out crime infested high rise where these things are par for course. shock horror. Bad things can happen to nice people, too.) Readers are more than twice reminded of Ms. Johnson's helplessness and aloneness (apart from her Bichon -- that guarantees she's a nice, wheelchair using, disabled lady. In the most recent Mail article, it's a shih-tzu). Powerless disabled lady fights back. Take that!

Now, it turns out that the alleged mugger is suing Ms. Johnson (and the apartment complex) for a meager 5 million USD. Mr. Deron Johnson (no relation) was acquitted after his lawyer argued that " her dog attacked him and he was shot after he kicked the pet in retaliation" (Metro). What that nice fluffy little puppy went on the attack? Just as well it wasn't a big German Shepherdy-pitbully-thing. What happened to the NYT claim that Mr. Johnson managed to get the necklace?

Mr. Johnson's lawyer claims that Ms. Johnson has a permit for the gun but that that permit doesn't allow her to carry it on the street (hence the stress on the firing range in the original NYT piece? NYT doesn't cover the story this time around).

Whereas, before, the powerless disability stuff was coming from the NYT, Ms. Johnson is now left with no defence other than her vulnerability (and that deeply saddens me): “Actually I feel sick about the whole thing,” she said. “Picking on a handicapped woman is about as low as you can go. I feel sorry for him, but it was a choice he made.”

And finally, the papers swoop in for the kill. Ms. Johnson may be a nice person, but her grandfather was a well known criminal, and criminal behaviour apparently runs in the family? I contrast the New York Post's extensive discussions of Mr. Ellsworth Johnson's criminal history with their abbreviated mentions of Mr. Deron Johnson's rap sheet. What one actually does seems to be less important than who or what one's family is.

It's a mess in which no one wins. Mr. Deron Johnson claims permanent nerve damage; Ms. Johnson must feel pretty vulnerable. And the papers have a field day. Speaking of which, compare the original NYT photo of Ms. Johnson (with a grey-ish natural curl peeking from underneath a baseball cap, she sits on a dark red scooter (a bunch of the usual crap in her basket). On her nose are a pair of plain round framed glasses. Her clothes are ordinary; she might even have a wrist support on her left hand) with the recent NYP one. Gone is the average disabled lady. There's a blond, mostly straight, but lightly curled wig/hair extensions? Big bling sunglasses cover her eyes; her top (all that is visible) is a dynamic black and white design cut across the diagonal and cutting across the other diagonal is her gun. OMG! That's a .357 handgun? That thing is MASSIVE. She's got her finger on the trigger and the thing points to the sky. WTF? She looks like something -- some glamourized vigilante? -- from a movie.

Depositions are due April 8th.

Free Speech, Comfort, and Safety

The apartment complex in which I live is relatively easy on the whole political speech thing. I'm always surprised about that, given the strictness with which Homeowners' Association enforces a whole set of petty rules about the appearance of the buildings. But I recognize that political speech is a protected category and one that seems to float pretty close to the top of American public consciousness. It's funny that, though. I will declare my political (and otherwise) opinions far and wide, but I find it unseemly to attach them to my house.

For the most part, no one in the complex exercises this right assiduously; in election seasons, a couple of signs go up, but they are always removed (decorously) once the results have been announced. There is one exception: a former HOA president, someone with a great deal of authority (and, I think, respect) in the complex.

Over the past couple of years, the posters in his inner and street facing ground floor windows have been both against the Bush Administration's prosecution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for the idea of the wars themselves. They have called for support for the troops (but not for their withdrawal). There have been pictures of flags, pictures of soldiers, pictures of tanks, guns, and other parts of the war effort. War and elections are the main themes. During local and previous national elections, the windows have sported standard campaign material. If this person has displayed more than the average resident, it has usually registered with me as a kind of fervid anticipation of/participation in the political process. It's disagreeable to me, because I don't agree with his political opinions, but in the past, I have been able to dismiss it without concern. This is what people do to express their opinions, and it is their right to do so -- even if it always seems somewhat strange to me.

Then came the election of last year.

At first, there was explicit support for McCain/Palin, and the anti- Obama posters were kind of funny. PUNCH (British magazine) and the word "lampoon" came to mind. Then, McCain-Palin became the object of a kind of tart/viciousness; I agreed with the protest itself, but not with the tone (not that my opinion mattered -- but I have standards for civic discourse. Slowly, however, the anti-Obama posters became less political, i.e., less oriented towards the policies of the Democrats, and more and more ad hominem. I don't think the posters were/are issued by any campaign per se; each poster looks homemade (printed out), but the graphic design and cartoon skills are quite elegant.

Yesterday's poster crossed a line for me. Besides a savage image of a white female -- I couldn't tell whether it was Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton, so distorted was the drawing -- it sported an almost TimeMagazine-OJ like demonization and exaggeration of President Obama's African features (you can see the faked photo here and discussion here -- wow, 1994: the blogosphere was just starting). I saw it and I felt unsafe/scared.

That feeling has got me thinking. Why exactly do I feel scared? What am I scared of? There's no specific threat. Granted, as far as I know, I am the only black person living in this complex, but it's not an all-white community, by any means. Granted, this person was at the forefront of the difficulties I had with the HOA allowing me to put a ramp in to my door, but I thought that went away when he asked me about the ramp and other wheelchair things (a family member had had a stroke or something?). So, what is it?

It's not that I am scared of people who don't share my political opinions -- I am sure many of you don't/wouldn't agree with me on half the things I think. I am not scared of you (though perhaps I should be?) or of the idea that I might be wrong. I've never been scared of this guy before; he's been awkward, but jovial. I don't actually think I am in physical danger. Nor do I think it is personal. I don't think he hates me. I don't think he is going to do anything to me. It's just that the pictures are disturbing enough to have gone beyond the norms of political expression to what I am beginning to think of as a suggestion of hate.

That's it. I feel a brewing hatred emanating from behind the walls of this place. It's stewing. Some of it may be racist. It might not. Some of it might be misogynist. It might not. And, honestly, I don't care to know its origins; it's just a sense of a large brewing, stewing thing that at some point no matter what its motivation (political discontent, personal unhappiness, social awkwardness, racism, financial fear? -- I couldn't even begin to guess) will become its own thing; it will feed upon itself, and, I fear, it will explode.

I'm not going to do anything about it. The free speech right is not absolute, but political speech is the most protected category -- you have to go a long way and argue hard to get someone else to assent to the harm of political speech. And these posters do function as political expression. I'd be hard pressed to explain to the HOA Board anything racist about the images, much less convince anyone with any legal training. And given my disability experience, I don't want to venture out and stick out my neck with these people. I am in no mood to fight a battle on turf that is as unclear as this. I plan to duck down, bide my time, and wait until we move. But I do wonder about the people in that unit; we pass it on our walk into the restaurant neighborhood, we pass it on the way to the mailboxes, we pass it everyday we leave the place for a walk (we never walk in the other direction because of the roads). The unease. The fear. They are mine and mine alone. They probably don't add up to anything major. But all the same: they are there.