Another myth that is firmly upheld is that disabled people are dependent and non-disabled people are independent. No one is actually independent. This is a myth perpetuated by disablism and driven by capitalism - we are all actually interdependent. Chances are, disabled or not, you don’t grow all of your food. Chances are, you didn’t build the car, bike, wheelchair, subway, shoes, or bus that transports you. Chances are you didn’t construct your home. Chances are you didn’t sew your clothing (or make the fabric and thread used to sew it). The difference between the needs that many disabled people have and the needs of people who are not labelled as disabled is that non-disabled people have had their dependencies normalized. The world has been built to accommodate certain needs and call the people who need those things independent, while other needs are considered exceptional. Each of us relies on others every day. We all rely on one another for support, resources, and to meet our needs. We are all interdependent. This interdependence is not weakness; rather, it is a part of our humanity.
“
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AJ Withers Disability Politics and Theory p109 (via dandyfied) This, this, thisssssss. (via goldenheartedrose) |
the only people i’ve ever heard saying that autism is the “next step in evolution” are allistic people
fuck off if you’re blaming autistic people for that shit.
My mom says this sometimes and it always makes me roll my eyes a little.
I wish there was a way to play Cards Against Humanity with you guys.
http://pyz.socialgamer.net/game.jsp
Online Cards Against Humanity!
spanish and italian: So THESE words are feminine and THESE words are masculine, and you ALWAYS put an adjective AFTER the noun.
french: haha i dont fuckin know man just do whatever
german: LET'S ADD A NEUTRAL NOUN HAHA
english: *shooting up in the bathroom*
gaelic: the pronounciation changes depending on the gender and what letter the word starts and ends with and hahah i dont even know good fucking luck
polish: here have all of these consonants have fun
japanese: subject article noun article verb. too bad there's three fucking alphabets lmao hope your first language isn't western
welsh: sneeze, and chances are you've got it right. idfk
chinese: here's a picture. draw it. it means something. it can be pronounced three different ways. these twenty other pictures are pronounced the same but have very different meanings. godspeed.
Arabic: so here's this one word. it actually translates to three words. also pronouns don't really exist. the gender is all in the verb. have fun!
Latin: here memorize 500 charts and then you still dont know what the fuck is happening
Sign Language: If you move this sign by a tenth of an inch, you'll be signing "penis"
““Ms. Norman” another kid called, “Have you heard about that rape case in Ohio? Those guys got convicted. They have to go to jail. They are going to lose their scholarships. They were going to D-1 schools!”
“Well…”I responded, feeling the heat crawl up my neck, “maybe they are going to jail for rape because THEY ARE RAPISTS!” I yelled those last three words at my kids and watched as some of them blinked in surprise. Apparently, the thought had never occurred to them that these athletes who were convicted of rape, were in fact rapists.
It is a strange thing about looking into the face of a 15-year-old, to really see who they are. You still see the small child that their mother sees. You see the man or woman they will be before they graduate. They are babies whose innocence you want desperately to protect. They are old enough to know better, even if no one has taught them.
I realized then that some of my kids were genuinely confused. “How can she be raped?” they asked, “She wasn’t awake to say no.” These words out of a full fledged adult would have made me furious. I did get a good few minutes in response on victim blaming and why it is so terrible. But out of the face of a kid who still has baby fat, those words just made me sick. My students are still young enough, that mostly they just spout what they have learned, and they have learned that absent a no, the yes is implied.
It is uncomfortable to think that some of the students you still call babies have the potential to be rapists. It is sickening, it is terrifying, but it is true. It is a reality we have to face. My students have lived in a world for fifteen years where the joke “she probably wanted it” isn’t really a joke, they need to unlearn some lessons that no one will admit to teaching them.
Standing in front of my classroom and stating that a woman’s clothing choice is never permission to rape her should not be a radical act. But only a few heads nodded in agreement. Most were stunned, like this was a completely new thought. The follow up questions were terrifying in their earnestness. “Ms. Norman, you mean a woman walking down the street naked is not her inviting sex? How will I know she wants to have sex?” A surprisingly bold voice came out of a girl in the back “You’ll know when she says, you want to have sex?!”
If you want to keep teens from being rapists, you can no longer assume that they know how. You HAVE to talk about it. There is no longer a choice. It is no longer enough to talk to our kids about the mechanics of sex, it probably never was. We have to talk about consent, what it means, and how you are sure you have it. We have to teach clearly and boldly that consent is (in the words of Dianna E. Anderson) an enthusiastic, unequivocal YES!”
-A selection from an excellent blog post by Abby Norman, a 9th grade teacher who, after introducing a poem to the class for discussion, accidentally found herself teaching them about consent.
This is why it is SO IMPORTANT to talk about consent as a yes instead of a lack of no. And why we must TEACH it instead of assuming that people already understand.
This teacher deserves an A+.
