A Couple of Petitions:

I'm going to get a little bit more [formally] political than I normally do at this blog and as you to sign a couple of petitions which I feel are rather important to my rights as a transgender individual.

The first petition is from IFGE and is to the American Psychiatric Association asking them to drop "transvestic fetishism" from the next revision of the DSM. My thoughts of the clinical model of psychiatric disability in general aside, it's very clear how pathologising any man who wishes to put on women's clothes while at the same time trying to introduce "autogynephilia," which is used to deny trans women our womanhood should we *dare* to express any eroticism at all, is harmful to me as a transgender woman. Please sign this petition asking them to abolish the "transvestic fetishism" diagnosis from the DSM V. It shouldn't be a psychiatric "crime" to crossdress.

Sign the IFGE petition here!

The second petition is in response to the film "Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives" being included in the Tribeca Film Festival. This film, which is a self-proclaimed "transploitation" film, dredges up about every horrid stereotype about trans people imaginable for the purposes of a cheap laugh and a cheap thrill while at the same time invoking *real* victims of *real* violence, specifically Gwen Araujo and Jorge Mercado, to sell tickets in their trailer. It is beyond despicable. Please watch the trailer and sign the petition.

Watch the trailer here
Read GLAAD's response and sign the petition here

EDITED TO ADD NEW PETITION:

This petition is to try and stop some of the abuses going on regarding sex work in New Orleans where police and prosecution are using far-outmoded, felony laws to prosecute and brand sex workers with sex predator status. People who know me personally know I support commercial sex and, in particular, the rights of sex workers; yet however your personal stance may be regarding prostitution I hope that it is obvious why people who are interacting with other consenting adults, for whatever reason, do not deserve to be treated like rapists, child molesters, and other dangerous criminals.

In addition, the fact that this law is predominantly leveraged against people of colour and transgender people further underscore why action must be taken in order to realise equality.

Please sign the petition to help the sex workers of New Orleans here.

Advocating for Institutional Education?!

I want to preface this post with the general comment that the person I'm talking about in this post is actually fairly awesome when it comes to her views on autism and psychiatric disability. Especially when taken in light of her background. Nonetheless, I felt our interaction illustrated some common autism stereotypes in a rather interesting way.

Today my college hosted representatives from our graduate program to speak to undergraduate students about their programs, admittance, etc... There was a representative from Experimental, Industrial/Organisational, and Clinical. Being an undergraduate student hoping to get into grad school and also having helped set up the event, I was there. After the short introductions, of course, people were given the opportunity to ask questions.

After the event I approached the representative from the clinical program and asked her some questions pertaining to the medical model of disability and the interactionist model of disability. I got some good answers but I felt that she didn't really understand my question. Communication barrier, that's okay. What's important is the attitudes behind the language rather than whether or not a person can speak the same jargon as I can.

So I decided to apply the question in a very specific case and I proceeded to give her a kind of case study of an autistic 14 year old who's failing to make eye contact and engaging in stimming behaviour, asking her opinion on what she would do. Turns out, I got what I would consider a very positive response: She told me she would consider whether or not the behaviours were harmful to the child such as self-harm stims and then work from there to determine what function the stims served such as relaxation, communication, ect... but that she wouldn't consider such a behaviour in and of itself a problem. The stim was a tool to help the client rather than a pathology. Which is good, it's what I wanted to hear. (Yay!)

This, of course, got us talking about applied behavioural analysis, because how can you talk about stimming and clinical psychology without talking about ABA. Naturally, I criticised ABA and we got into a lively debate, which was good.

What got me was when she criticised me for taking the side of the educational industry.

To her, she assumed that I was criticising ABA from the grounds that it was too expensive and therefore a problem for limited special educational budgets. I of course told her that, no, I was not arguing against ABA because of an economic, or any other, practical stance, but that I was advocating as an autistic adult questioning the actual clinical value and ethics of the treatment.

It's nothing overt and it's certainly nothing that speaks to the representative's character or attitudes towards autistic people. But it does make a point, I feel, about the inclusion of autistic people in the discussion regarding our own care that someone would automatically jump to the conclusion that I'm arguing from a non-autistic perspective.

Of course, it very likely was just due to recency effects or any other number of factors that could have primed her to think about economics and the educational industry. It, of course, wouldn't surprise me if it was just because the self-advocacy perspective is so drowned out by other special interests in our current medical culture. Nonetheless, it's something to think about.

All of that being said: From what I have seen of the graduate clinical program at SJSU I would be very seriously considering it if my professional emphasis was more in line with the clinical bent of the degree. As it is, I'm much more interested in community organisation such as designing and operating harm-reduction programs than working as a clinical psychologist.

Patronising me to Death

The bus is a dangerous place for me. It's not unusual for me to be the recipient of a great deal of inappropriate behaviour aimed my direction because I'm disabled/transgender/a woman. I've had everything from people blatantly mocking my disability to asking me about my sex life out of the blue, to yelling slurs, to trying to buy sex, to following me off of the bus with intent to rape me. The list goes on. I'm not here to talk about any of those things today. Today I want to talk about what happens when people want to be "nice" to me and end up putting me in jeopardy.

I'll give you an example: Tonight somebody, after watching me convulse for a few minutes, caught my eye and winked at me.

Here's the thing: when someone pays attention to me in that way, when someone is unusually friendly towards me, when someone is patronising, I don't know what their intentions are. I don't know if they've just had a good day and are feeling like being very friendly to people around them. I don't know if they think I'm cute and just want to innocently let me know they find me attractive. More troubling, I don't know if they're interpreting my disability as cognitive disability, insanity, generalised "speshulness," or other some such category of people whom they like to look down on and feel that it would be a good idea to patronise me to make me feel good about myself.

More importantly: I don't know if they're a predator looking at me as a vulnerable person to take advantage of and potentially rape. It has happened, I have had people follow me off the bus, or try to follow me off the bus several times. Another time, I was almost raped by a predator who picked me up while riding the bus and followed me off. This is a very serious issue for myself and people like myself.

It doesn't matter if you're a good guy, I have no way of knowing you're a decent person. So yes, this does apply to you, too.

When someone winks at me, or pays excess attention to me, or keeps smiling at me, whatever: they make it more difficult for me to protect myself. I don't know when it's safe for me to get off the bus. I don't know if I need to feign an earlier bus stop and transfer buses or double back in order to keep a predator from knowing where I live. I don't know if someone wants to rape me or just thinks I'm oh so adorable. Add on to al of this the fact that I'm autistic. It makes it hard for me to spot the actual predators, the actual people who want to do me harm (and people do want to do me harm). It overwhelms me and forces me to overlook real danger just to be able to get though my day.

Patronisation removes my ability to assess me social environment and in doing so it removes my ability look out for my own safety and defend myself. This hurts me and causes me real harm.

STOP IT!

ps: it's condescending and insulting as well.

I'm Still Alive

I realised I haven't posted anything here in a while. I know I've been absent for considerably longer than I had ever wanted. The fact of the matter is, I've been extremely busy with school lately given my very heavy load and the fact that it's midterm season again.

But not to worry, things should be back to normal soon!

In the mean time, I've rediscovered signed music which I've concluded is the best thing since sliced bread (the good stuff, with butter). It almost feels like a combination of hearing music and dance, two things I'm extremely passionate about. Not only that, but the motion of the singing has very specific meaning which makes a little part of my brain smile (and probably light up under an MRI machine as well).

Finally, it made me aware of this very talented BSL singer who learned sign language to cope with the same disabilities that I have, autism and Tourettes, for pretty much the same reasons I did: an attempt to control his tics. Furthermore, according to him, it works. Very, very cool!

It's nice to feel like you're not alone sometimes.

So, I suppose I just wanted to say I'm Still Alive (different artist):

On Safe Space and Accessibility

This post was originally a comment that I made over at a FWD/Forward thread asking about accessibility. I thought that it deserved its own spot:

For me, in many ways the idea of “accessibility” is a lot like the idea of “safe space.” Someone asked me the other day what it means to be in a “safe space.” I told them that, for me, the concept of safe space isn’t necessarily a place where people understand me or are even necessarily friendly to me. A safe space is a place where I’m accommodated, by which I mean I’m in a place where I feel empowered to stand up for myself as a full and equal human being and assert who I am and what I need.

To describe what I meant, I made the analogy of being on a playground full of bullies who are hitting you: for me, an accessible place is a place where I’m empowered to do something about it, not necessarily a place where things like this don’t happen.

In this way, I feel, accessibility or safety is more than just accommodations or opinions which make it easier to be in society but an overarching, holistic attitude which fosters empowerment.