• • (dis)Ability
  • Guest Blogs

  Guest Series: Part 1 - Like a Fish Out of Water on the Doctor’s Floor

  May 22, 2013 • Guest Blogger

  by Jenny Blaser

  ---

  This is my most recent narrative. It is one that I am still living and experiencing in a number of ways. It is a story that undoubtedly will shape the person who I currently am and define how I continue to grow and live my life. I want to share it because it is a story not often told – one of disability, sickness, pain, support, and change. This is a story of forever shifting needs and mobility and how I have come to experience it as a Deaf, Disabled, Queer, young Woman. I hope to use my story and my experiences to open up a dialogue about support systems, internalization, mourning, pain, institutionalization and privilege within marginalization and oppressive systems.

  ---

  The story starts with me sitting in exam room two. It’s my family doctor’s office — a monotonous space that I have come to know quite well. The nurse is across from me talking me through the injection process. I am paying close attention, cross referencing what she says to the information I remember from the video I had watched. I am acutely aware that I am expected to do this to myself someday soon. My guide dog, Penny, has her head on my lap and I stroke her to help ease my anxiety. The nurse picks up the small insulin needle and explains to me how you pull air into the syringe, inject into the vial, and then draw up the solution into the syringe. The solution in question is methotrexate — a chemotherapy drug used in low doses to treat rheumatologic diseases. This was my next step towards achieving Behcet’s disease remission. Or so I thought.

  Before we keep going with this one, you may want a bit of background knowledge …

  Behcet’s disease is a rare autoimmune vasculitis that affects less than one in 1 million in North America. (more inside…)

• • (dis)Ability
  • Activist Report
  • Event Listings

  Mad Students Society Presents: Presents: Taking Care of Ourselves and Each Other Inside and Outside the Mental Health System

  February 28, 2013 • Julia Horel

  What? A peer support meeting in Ottawa
  When? Saturday, March 9, 2013 from 5:30 – 7:30pm
  Where? University of Ottawa. Email outreach@madstudentsociety.com for details.
  Who? Students (from any college, university, or adult education course/program) and people planning to return to school with personal experiences of psychiatric systems, madness, mental illness, mental health disability, emotional or spiritual distress, etc.
  Cost: FREE

  Join us this month for an informal conversation about navigating the mental health system to get what we want and need – and where we find support outside of mainstream recommendations.

  • Talk with people who’ve been there about our experiences with crisis lines, emerg services, hospital care, medication, case managers, counsellors, and psychiatrists.
  • Share info about CBT, the best self-help books, group therapy, intake processes, wait-lists, and good doctors.
  • Discuss with your peers how helpful (or not) music, pets, friends, sleep, sex, exercise, pizza, veggies,
  spirituality, meditation, television, sunlight, or activism is to your quality of life – and how you explain this to
  your mother when she wants you to see your GP.
  • What’s the most unusual “alternative” source of care and support in your life?

  Of course, we rarely stay on topic during our Mad meeting meanderings and look forward to hearing whatever else is on your mind! We welcome new members, frequent faces, and folks we haven’t seen in a while.

  Can’t make the meeting? Looking for other support? Join our active email discussion listserv to continue this and other conversations. The listserv is a private place for members to talk about our lives, support each other, discuss ideas, share info/resources/events/news, and arrange local gatherings wherever we happen to be.

  Questions? Directions? Nervous? Need Something? For further info, location details, to join the listserv, or if you have accommodation needs, want someone to meet you at the bus stop, or would like to chat with a member before the meeting, please email Alisa and Elizabeth at outreach@madstudentsociety.com.

  More about us: Mad Students Society (MSS), created in 2005, is a community of students who are attending or planning to attend post-secondary or adult education institutions and have personal past/present experiences with psychiatric/mental health systems. We meet monthly (in Toronto and Hamilton) and communicate through an email listserv to support each other, discover tools for self-advocacy, and connect with our history and broader social movements. Visit our website at www.madstudentsociety.com or find us on Facebook.

  Spread the word! Share this event on Facebook at www.facebook.com/events/425402874209784/. Email for other ways to support MSS.

• • (dis)Ability
  • Body Politics

  The Costs of Conforming

  December 31, 2012 • Shoshana Erlich

  One of the things that continually astounds me about being disabled is just how incredibly expensive it is. Almost no matter what area of life you look at, it costs more to be disabled. While it doesn’t surprise me, it also infuriates me how little recognition there is of that fact. There is virtually no recognition that as a young disabled person, my cost of living is exponentially higher than a non-disabled person’s.

  Despite the fact that I have multiple disabilities, so my case may be different from others, I’m going to use it anyway, because many people with disabilities have multiple disabilities.

  First case in point is medication. If you are healthy, your monthly medications may include some over the counter things, perhaps birth control, and maybe if you get sick, a course of antibiotics. If you are a student, most insurance companies, if you aren’t lucky enough to be covered under your parents insurance plan, cover about 80% of your medication costs. One of my drugs is $250 per month, and another, $150. Not too long ago, I was on a 10-day course of medication that cost $700. 80% coverage doesn’t go very far when you are looking at those kinds of numbers. Although there are programs in Canada to help with some drug costs and they can be claimed on income taxes as a tax write-off, when you don’t have the money in the first place, it is really hard. (more inside…)

• • (dis)Ability
  • Event Listings

  Reclaiming Our Bodies & Minds: Disability, Oppression, Action Conference

  December 12, 2012 • Julia Horel

  March 15, 16, and 17 2013

  Reclaiming our bodies and Minds: Disability, Oppression, Action! Is a collaborative space for communities to come together, learn, network and develop skills. As people with disabilities it is our time to reclaim our bodies and minds, take control of the services we use, and work with our allies to achieve the freedom and autonomy we deserve.

  Call for proposals

  We are welcoming proposals for all three conference streams:
  • Disability Activism and Resistance
  • Disability and Post-Secondary Education
  • Special Topics

  More information on how to submit a proposal or register for the conference is available at www.reclaimingourbodiesandminds.com

  Disability, Oppression & Action Conference

  Through a weekend of presentations, workshops, dialogue, arts and engagement, participants will gain skills and knowledge to apply to community organizing, self-advocacy, systemic advocacy, and experiences in post-secondary institutions.

  We will spend the weekend exploring concepts of freedom, autonomy, and empowerment in order to reclaim services, experiences and our bodies and minds!

  If we require additional accommodations for your participation please contact RyeACCESS at access@rsuonline.ca or 416-979-5000 ext 4504

  RyeACCESS is one of the five Equity Service Groups of the Ryerson Students’ Union which includes: the Community Food Room, RyePRIDE, Centre for Women and Trans People and Racialised students’ collective.

  

  

  
  

• • (dis)Ability
  • Body Politics
  • In My Opinion...

  A Disabled Haircut?

  November 26, 2012 • Shoshana Erlich

  Yesterday I got a haircut.

  For most people this sentence is seemingly innocuous, perhaps offered as a response to someone asking “What’s new?” or traded in other casual conversation. For me, it brought home a really powerful lesson of how no matter what I do, no matter how seemingly innocent or normal my activities might be, it is impossible to separate out me from my disabilities. While it would seem silly to say that I got a disabled haircut, that is in fact exactly what happened.

  To start off, where I get my hair cut is often fairly busy, and through the process of going there for years I have learned that the best way to make sure that I get an appointment to get my hair cut when needed is to book my next appointment when I am leaving the current one. For me though, this is always a moment of pause. I have a chronic illness that flares up, often with no warning, and while flares vary, a flare can easily put me in the hospital. It can sometimes very much be like a dice roll to know whether or not I will be well enough to actually go to the appointment that I make. In fact, had this particular appointment been a week earlier I would have been too sick to go. I’m not saying that planning in advance is a bad thing, and while appointments can easily be rescheduled if need be, when you have a chronic illness trying to make plans for your future with uncertain health can be difficult.

  Then, when I arrive at my appointment using my walker, my disability again becomes highlighted by the fact that the building is not in fact accessible. As I’ve been to this location many times I knew what to expect, and knew that the stairs in question were within my abilities. However, the angle of the door and the step to get in meant that I could not get myself and my walker into the building without help. Once I got inside the staff were excellent about consulting me about the kind of help I would need to get upstairs and providing it. I can’t say enough about how awesome it is when people are willing to ask what kind of help is needed/if help is needed and provide it under direction.

  To add to this, there is the appendage known as a hearing aid sticking out of my ear and the need to keep water out of it. Typically during a haircut the hearing aid stays out of my ear, and a swim plug to keep out the water goes in. This means that communication can be difficult. When you factor in getting your hair washed, and the sound of water near your head, communication can be almost impossible at times. Again, this time my hair dresser was awesome, repeating things that others said close to my good ear for me, making sure the water was off before she talked to me, acting as a communication facilitator while cutting my hair, perhaps even unknowingly.

  Yesterday I got my hair cut and I had a great time. The cut is incredible, the hairdresser and all the staff there were awesome as always, and it was a great experience. It was still however a disabled experience. I am always struck with the contrast when I see how non-disabled people approach seemingly mundane activities compared to what is involved for me. In this setting accommodations were seamless and I was fully accommodated, but something regarded as so simple and taken for granted is greatly altered by the presence of disability. For me the point that this story brings home more than anything else is that in any setting I am disabled, and when someone sees me they need to see my disability. Without seeing my disability and accounting for it I cannot be properly accommodated. I can’t be included. My voice doesn’t represent me unless it is understood to be a disabled voice. While it can be controversial, for me this extends to why I don’t identify with person-first language (ie. that I am a person with a disability) but rather as a disabled person. When others deny to see me as a disabled person, they deny to see that everything that I do has that ridiculous sounding (disabled) written in front of it.

• • (dis)Ability
  • Guest Blogs

  Guest Post: Language can be so Crazy-Making!

  October 1, 2012 • Guest Blogger

  by Jenna MacKay with special thanks to Kate-Christine Miller

  Crazy. Bonkers. Bananas. Disturbed. Maniac. Psycho. Psychopath. Mental. Nutter.

  Throughout history, people labelled with mental health issues have been stigmatized. This continues today and is inseparable from the language we use. Take for example the shooting of men with mental health issues by the Toronto police. The actions of the police are informed by labelling certain men’s behaviour as “crazy.” This label is accompanied by assumptions such as, “that person is dangerous.” The stereotypes of people labelled with mental health issues are countless and generally remain embedded in our language without question.

  Many words we use as descriptors (e.g., “She is so crazy,” “That is crazy!”) are linguistic means of maintaining the oppression of people labelled with mental health issues. Just as we have challenged other problematic words, it is important to reflect upon terms like “crazy” or “nuts,” by asking ourselves what they mean and whether we need to keep using them. Of course this is not easy, these words are so deeply ingrained that just when you think you made progress you call something “crazy.”

  We will briefly describe a few terms to illustrate how terms are historically rooted: (more inside…)

• • (dis)Ability
  • Event Listings

  Toronto: Abilities Arts Festival Takes it to the Streets!

  September 17, 2012 • Julia Horel

  Experience Toronto through a disabilities perspective
  September 20-October 11, 2012

  As part of the tenth annual Abilities Arts Festival launching September 20 with the ARTrageous! Gala and running September 21-October 11, three events look at our city from a unique perspective featuring a roster of visual and performance-based artworks by artists with disabilities.

  In keeping with the theme of storytelling, each event at this year’s festival, including a photography exhibition and book launch, a multi-media extravaganza as part of Nuit Blanche and a unique theatrical experience featuring “podplays”, remind us that “telling tales” lies at the heart of human creativity and in the search to find connection and community with others.

  ---

  Toronto: Street Level
  Photography exhibit and book launch
  September 21-October 11 from noon to 9pm daily
  Carlton Cinema Gallery, 20 Carlton St.
  Free.

  Ten talented photographers present their view of Toronto through a disability lens in the photography exhibition, Toronto: Street Level. The photography presented at this exhibit is the culmination of an 8-month master class with acclaimed Toronto photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo, and features the work of Ontario artists: Mark Brose, Allan Cullen, Nicole Flynn, Steve Kean, Mike Monize & Natalia Isak, Jeff Nolan, Peter Owasu-Ansah, Dylan Smith and Kathy Toth. The opening and book launch is Friday, September 21 from 5:30pm-7:30pm.

  ---

  A Queen Street Cartography
  Nuit Blanche multi-media extravaganza
  September 29 from 7pm-midnight
  Open Gallery (49 McCaul St.) and Queen Street storefronts, Queen Streetcar and environs.
  Free.

  A Queen Street Cartography is a heady mash-up of photography, performance, music and intimate “city” stories. Featuring live performances by the brilliant mulch-instruumentalist Donald Quan of Musideum. The action spills out of OCAD’s Open Gallery and onto Queen Street in shop windows, along laneways and green spaces and onto the walls of the Queen Streetcar for this immersive mixed-media event.

  ---

  The Listening Post
  Intimate mobile city stories told through “pod-cast plays” set in and around Queen St.
  September 30 from 1pm-4pm
  Leaving from Open Gallery, 49 McCaul St. and heading into neighbouring streets and alleys.
  Free.

  Audience members step into intimate tales of life in the city as they walk the Queen Street corridor, guided by the voices and personal tales of life in the city by a remarkable quartet of artists: Jan Derbyshire, Catherine Frazee, Janna Gorham and Izzy Mackenzie Lay. Each audience of one “attends” each short play, by listening to it on an MP3 player while walking through the setting of the story.

  ---

  Other programs running as part of the 2012 Abilities Arts Festival:

  ARTrageous!
  10th Anniversary Gala - A celebration of the last ten years. North America’s first artist-in-residence award for a disability-identfied artist to pursue their art will be announced.
  September 20 from 6:30pm-9:30pm, Toronto City Archives, 255 Spadina Road. $25.

  MIX
  September 21-23 - films and workshops
  Carlton Cinema, 20 Carlton St.
  Screenings $8/Attendants free.
  Desire. War. Court Fools. Speed Dating. All in a weekend of disability media! All films are open captioned. Workshops, panels and discussions are free; but pre-registration is required. If you require ASL or attendant care to be provided, call 48 hours in advance.

  Tickets and Info: Call 416-593-9475 or email info@abilitiesartsfestival.org
  Visit abililtiesartsfestival.org for full information

• • (dis)Ability
  • Body Politics
  • Rape Culture

  To the Guy at Yonge and Dundas

  August 15, 2012 • Shoshana Erlich

  To the Guy at Yonge and Dundas:

  Hi,

  I’m a bit new at this, having come a bit late to the physical disabilities side of this game, so forgive me if I don’t sound grateful for what you did or something. I think it’s part of the privilege that goes with having grown up in a disabled bodied that has always managed to pass as able-bodied. I have some expectation of my own independence and right to manage my own body instead of it becoming property for others to manage and manipulate for me, with dispassionate hands and voices.

  It’s been an adjustment for me you see, to have to figure out how exactly it is that I should act and behave. Shocking for me that I should be expected to spill exactly “what is wrong with my legs” to random strangers in grocery stores; on busses; in the drug store; everywhere that I go. I thought that I was entitled to a sense of medical privacy. Years of dealing with invisible illnesses has taught me that people don’t really actually want to know, it’s just some way of turning the disabled into a freak show. That our misfortune becomes the entertainment of the minute; hour; day; week.

  I don’t think I ever got the memo that disabled people were supposed to be passive, helpless and dependent. I go to school, I work, I’m an activist (even if it is sometimes just an armchair, or more likely bed activist because that’s all my huge fatigued activist heart can manage). In fact, yesterday when you so confidently inserted yourself upon my life I’d been spending my morning at the Ryerson library, working on a paper for publication, which is ironically focusing on how we as researchers can do a better job of working in the Deaf community because disabled people can contribute to the academic discourse now. I have goals and dreams and I’m getting out there and doing it. It’s been hard to reconcile that image with someone who uses a mobility device, who has to ask for friends and family to help me with certain tasks, but there are only so many times you can barely manage not to fall while using a cane before even a young person accepts the inevitability of needing a walker or more intensive interventions.

  (more inside…)

• • (dis)Ability
  • Guest Blogs

  Guest post: The psychological is political: Mental health as a feminist issue

  August 15, 2012 • Guest Blogger

  Currently, mental health is a hot topic in Ontario. Countless media stories along with governmental and professional groups have highlighted the importance of reducing stigma, identifying folks who need support and connecting folks in need of support to clinical services. There are aspects of this that are awesome. Many of us do suffer from some form of mental distress at one point or another and/or love someone who has/does. It is important that we do not feel embarrassment or shame about the behaviours, thoughts and feelings we are told are not “normal.” It is also important that we challenge all the stigma and oppression associated with being labeled with a mental illness (e.g., loss of employment, loss of housing).

  But if Shameless (and feminism in general) has taught us anything, it is that language is important and we need to critically examine understandings and norms, including those around mental health.(more inside…)

• • (dis)Ability
  • Event Listings

  TAKE A SICK DAY! At the AGO

  August 9, 2012 • Julia Horel

  TAKE A SICK DAY!
  At the AGO
  presented by Disabled Young People’s Project

  Come share your know-how and come to know how we deal with our bodies and our health on our own terms. This is an event filled with wisdom, colour and the noise of change for those of us (young) people of colour who live with disabilities.

  We will have:
  art
  food
  community
  strategy sessions
  Music
  attendant care
  ASL interpreters
  wheelchair accessibility
  gender neutral restrooms
  LGBTQ positive vibe
  Scent-free
  ALL INCLUDED WITH YOUR FREE ADMISSION

  When/Where:
  AUGUST 18, 2012
  10:30am-6:00pm
  ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO (AGO)
  317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, ON

  REGISTRATION IS OPEN UNTIL AUGUST 13th:
  Online Registration Form
  phone: 416-222-1153 x175
  Email: takeasickday@gmail.com
  twitter: @takeasickday
  facebook: dypp.proud
  blog: http://takesickday.wordpress.com
  CLICK HERE TO WATCH Take a Sick Day TRAILER

  send: chosen name, contact info and any accessibility/accommodation requests you require

  *NOTE: Registration is open to Indigenous and racialized youth who self-identify as disabled; we who experience or live with physical, cognitive, emotional differences; and/or who are critical of being labeled disabled, disordered, dysfunctional, sick. As In: It’s about doing you. fullstop. period. no comma. Allies (non-Indigenous and non-racialized peoples), please contact the organizers at the e-mail address above for opportunities to volunteer at Take a Sick Day!

  no shade. no shame. no apologies.

  This event is supported by Kwemto, Griffin Centre, Artreach and AGO

  

  
  

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