Respect

I have asked people in my life to be much more careful about the language that they use and to be more cogent of the implications that their words carry. I have asked people in my life to avoid using disability words in an ableist way. I have asked people in my life to stop casually equating who I am as a disabled person with undesirability or unworthiness in their speech. I have asked people to avoid using certain words altogether, like invalid or retarded, because of how insidiously ableist and harmful the words have become.

Almost every time I try and bring this up I'm met with resistance. I'm told that I should stop trying to police what people say. I'm told that I'm oversensitive. I'm even told that I'm self-righteous. I'm told that they shouldn't have to be "politically correct." But most of all I'm met with anger because whoever I'm calling out "didn't mean it that way."

Yes, yes I know you didn't mean it in a way that was discriminatory. I know that you didn't mean to equate disability with worthlessness. I know you didn't mean to hurt people with disabilities (very rarely do people consider they might be hurting me, personally). I know that wasn't your intention. If it were, we would have been having a very, very different conversation.

But it's not about intent. It's not even about the very real impact that such language has on people like me. It's not even about the fact that what you said is hurtful.

It's about respect.

I have asked you to be more careful with the way you use language and to avoid hateful words. Many, many people are asking you to speak carefully. An entire community of people, human beings with dignity and self-respect, have asked that hate filled words be abolished and that who we are not be co-opted as a pejorative or a dirty euphemism. We are asking you to respect us enough to not defame us.

We are asking you to respect us enough to let us define, for ourselves, what is and is not defamatory to our community. We ask you then to listen and take heed.

When you choose to ignore us and to use defamatory language you are not respecting us.

Respect us.

~~

I could just as easily have written this about transphobic language or racist language. I could have written this about language directed at any number of groups. Ableism is just forefront in my mind right now. Nonetheless, the message stays the same.

The Trevor Project

As you may know, The Trevor Project is a national (US) crisis line specifically for queer and questioning youth. I truly believe that culturally competent crisis counseling for the queer, including transgender, communities is hugely important. Knowing that when you call the person on the other end will respect your sexual orientation and gender identity, especially when you're not yet comfortable being out, could mean the difference between someone getting lifesaving support and a suicide attempt. This is a good thing.

There's only one problem: their website is not accessible.

Below is a letter I will be dropping in the mailbox later today:

September 25, 2010

To whom it may concern:

I learned about The Trevor Project a couple years ago in my late teens when I was struggling with coming out about my own gender identity and sexuality. I was lucky, I had someone who I could talk to and who knew how to listen. I never had to call. However, I feel that, had things been different, having access to a queer crisis line such as The Trevor Project could have very easily saved my life. Access to what you provide can be of lifesaving importance and it is for this reason that I write to voice my concern.

Because of the inaccessible nature of your website to blind and visually impaired users as many as one in two hundred individuals who are in need of your potentially lifesaving services may be unable to access them.(1) Some of these people may attempt suicide because of it. This is preventable through the careful adherence to accessible web development standards. If doing so is capable of reaching even one youth in crisis or averting even one preventable suicide I am sure you will agree that it is worth it.

Please, research accessible web design and incorporate it into your website wherever possible. If you are unable to do so yourself, please find someone who can. A good place to start your research is with the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.(2) I feel that we can both agree that not excluding people and making your potentially lifesaving services available to everyone who needs them is both a worthy and important goal.

Finally, I would like to commend The Trevor Project for already making considerable headway in making queer friendly crisis support accessible for people with disabilities, such as deafness or autism, with Trevor Chat. Nonetheless, The Trevor Project still has a long way to go before it is able to claim that it is accessible to all.

I look forward to supporting a fully accessible Trevor Project in the future.

Sincerely,

[name and contact information redacted]

(1) Statistic calculated using data provided by the National Federation of the Blind correlated with United States population statistics of the same time period. The National Federation of the Blind's statistics can be found on-line here: http://www.nfb.org/nfb/blindness_statistics.asp
(2) The W3C guidelines are available on-line at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

Hopefully their web inaccessibility is an oversight rather than a willful omission and my letter will bring it to their attention. I'm also planning on sending similar letters to their corporate sponsors petitioning them to request full accessibility as well if my letter is not enough to persuade them to action.

If you would like to contact their office their phone is 1-310-271-8845 and their address is:

The Trevor Project
Administrative Offices
9056 Santa Monica Blvd., Ste. 208
West Hollywood, CA 90069

To email, contact info@thetrevorproject.org.

If you are a gay or transgender youth who is in crisis or questioning, please contact their crisis line at 1-866-488-7386. They also have a text-based service at http://www.thetrevorproject.org/chat

People First Language

For those who don't know what person-first language is, it is where you place the individual before the condition. In other words, instead of having a "disabled person" you have a "person with a disability." I can't stand it!

It's not that I feel that there's anything necessarily wrong with saying "people with disabilities," in fact I do it all the time. My problem is that person-first language goes beyond that: Person-first language holds that placing the condition before the individual is dehumanizing in language and that by placing the person before the condition you reinforce the fact that the condition does not alter the fact that the individual is still a human being.

Great! Swell! We could all use more dignity and humanity in our lives, right?

Well, I call a big, loud bullshit. I say that the only time that sticking an adjective before my noun is dehumanizing is when that adjective is seen to be dehumanizing in the first place! Saying that I am a disabled woman is only demeaning if you believe that disability is dehumanizing! Would you consider it dehumanizing if I described someone as an intelligent person?

No, you wouldn't. That's the point.

I fight so that who, and just as importantly what I am is seen with respect, dignity, and equality. I don't fight so that people will be seen as human despite their differences and that, fundamentally, is what I feel person-first language does.

So, for what it's worth thats what I think of people first language.

Dismayed... Again

I finally got enough money to buy a couple of my text books. At least, enough money to buy some of the textbooks I feel I really need. One of those textbooks that I bought is the main book for my history class.

It's called "Created Equal."

I cried when I got home and skimmed over it. Why? Because I thought the book was going to talk about how the different people in America have had to fight and secure our civil rights. I thought the book was going to talk about how we are, in fact, all created equal, just like the book's title would suggest. I looked in it. I wanted to see what the book had to say about Disabled Americans. Do you know what I found?

This is the extent of my textbook's discussion of disabled civil rights:

Other groups also organized and entered the political arena. Indians, disabled Americans, California farm workers, and gay men and lesbians all formed organizations to counter discrimination and advance their civil rights. [Goes on to talk about womens' rights.]

That is the extent of it. The fact that the men and women who came before me fought, struggled, and died to secure my legal right to be an equal in society is reduced to not even a sentence. My history, and my rights as a human being are reduced to nothing more than a mention in a list in an afterthought. Who I am, my rights, and my history aren't even afforded a paragraph thrown in as filler.

The Americans with Disabilities Act isn't even in the bloody index!

So here I am, having shelled out seventy dollars for a textbook which I had to buy as part of a class which I am permitted to attend because I have civil rights which were secured for me by my forebears during our civil rights movement. It's almost ironic and if it weren't for the fact that society sees people like myself as being so, so far from having been created equal it might even be funny.

It's not funny.

Jokes don't bring tears to your eyes.