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Ask Gerianne has faced a few roadblocks but is still in the works! Please be patient and keep your questions coming!
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It’s about damn time.
Over 40% of Canadians who live in poverty are disabled. Let that sink in. Disabled Canadians are the largest minority group in Canada, representing 22% of the Canadian population yet they make up almost half of the number of Canadians living in poverty.
On June 22nd, 2021, the Government of Canada tabled a bill, Bill C-35, aimed at reducing poverty and supporting the financial security of disabled people by providing the Canada Disability Benefit. Though the legislation is only in it’s second reading and no dollar amount has been set, we have hope that the government will move quickly on this and ensure that disabled Canadians start receiving this benefit as soon as possible.
Built into the legislation is the commitment to engage the disabled community to determine how to create the Benefit. It is also to be modeled on the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors, which is distributed alongside Old Age Security. This would mean that accessing current federal and provincial supports for disabled people, such as the Canadian Pension Plan disability benefit, will not impact eligibility and distribution.
I would prefer to see Universal Basic Income but the Canada Disability Benefit is a massive step in the right direction towards income equality in Canada.
For more information, visit Disability Without Poverty.
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By Mary Wilson
The Oscars for 2021 are pending and there is a huge slate of movies that have been nominated, with a record-breaking number of films centered on or staring people with disabilities.
Guess how many it took to break that record?
Three.
There are three films that are about the experiences of disabled people. One, Sound of Metal, is a feature film about a drummer who is losing his hearing and does not have any hearing-impaired or D/deaf actors in leading roles (there are minor roles and extras who are hearing-impaired). Crip Camp is a documentary that extensively features disabled people about a summer camp for disabled people that helped lead to the disability rights movement in the US. Feeling Through is a short film that features a deafblind supporting actor about an abled young man helping a deafblind man get home.
I don’t want to shit all over the strides made with actually seeing representation of real disabled people in film that are made with these three films. It’s an achievement that needs to be commented on but I will stop short of celebrating something that should have happened a very long time ago.
I have seen, loved and shared Crip Camp with everyone I thought would enjoy it. It addressed so very many things in a very human way. It was everything I could have hoped for in a documentary about people.
I have not seen Sound of Metal but I want to. I will probably engage in serious suspension of disbelief to get past the “Riz Ahmed isn’t HoH or Deaf” thing and I will probably have THOUGHTS and FEELINGS about it but… I’m a punk and metal fan so I’m willing to deal with those when they come.
That leaves the third film, Feeling Through. I made the decision to watch it after reading criticism of it from deafblind attorney and activist Haben Girma. I wanted to know if I should be annoyed at it or if I should be mad at it. I try really hard not to hate films without seeing them (except films by very specific directors-that-shall-not-be-named. Those I outright refuse to watch, no matter their artistic or cultural merits) even when I’m fairly certain there will be things I find, at best, to be misrepresentations and, at worst, to be absolute bullshit. Feeling Through is beautifully shot and the actors are very good. There’s a decent amount of chemistry between Tareek (Steven Prescod), an abled but housing-insecure young man and Artie (Robert Tarango), a deafblind middle-aged man.
That’s the end of my positive takeaways. Turns out, I should be mad at Feeling Through and you probably should be mad too. Lisa Ferris has an amazing analysis of the wide variety of problems with this movie from the perspective of someone who is herself deafblind. I encourage you to read her article on it. I am mostly just going to be echoing her sentiments with my own interpretation.
First and foremost, I strongly believe that Feeling Through is inspiration porn. If you are unfamiliar with the term, “inspiration porn” was coined by writer and activist Stella Young (https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much/transcript?language=en). It’s a way to describe images and stories of marginalized people, almost always disabled people, doing normal daily activities, participating in “regular” life. These images and stories are implicitly used to “inspire” abled people because if a disabled person can do something, why shouldn’t or can’t you? I could go into why this is problematic but I will leave that for a later time. If you don’t see why such images are problematic, please, just trust me for now.
Artie himself is almost a caricature of inspiration porn but the way he is written lacks the awareness of the potential problematic nature of this characterization. He is just going about his daily life, trying to get home from a date (yay for giving some hints at sexuality in disabled people I guess). I call this a caricature because even for inspiration porn, Artie’s “struggle” to participate in the world is unbelievably naïve and lacking any fundamental understanding of how self-reliant and independent disabled people are/have to be.
Artie is portrayed as relying completely upon the support of strangers to help him navigate his attempt to get home from his date. The only tools he seems to have available to help himself are a series of pre-printed questions or requests and a notebook where he can write more specific information or questions. Although that may have been the norm for deafblind people 20 years ago, the proliferation of and inexpensive access to cell phones and digital braille display devices are an inescapable demonstration of the deliberate efforts of the filmmaker to keep Artie as “helpless” as possible to help the plot.
Because Artie is demonstrated to be virtually helpless without the intervention of strangers, his presence in the film makes it feel like he is a prop, not a person. He is objectified as someone who is there to help and, in being helped, he facilitates Tareek’s growth and change. He is not even the source of the inspirarion part of the story. Tareek is given that role and Artie is the object that allows Tareek to inspire us.
My final problem is that the main character is a housing-insecure young black man. I personally want more diversity of all types in film however, in this particular case casting a black actor is the opposite of what that means to me.
Spoilers ahead.
One of the first things Tareek does when Artie requests his assistance buying a drink in a bodega is rob Artie. He uses Artie’s money to buy himself a chocolate bar and pockets $10 of the change. Yes, Artie just thoughtlessly handed over his wallet to Tareek so he could pay for Artie’s drink, showing a disturbing level of naiveté but that’s problematic for other reasons. Tareek robs Artie. That’s what happens. A young, housing-insecure black man robs a disabled dude. The role could just have easily been played by any other young actor but the director chose a black actor. He chose to have a young black man rob someone. For the record, the writer/director appears to be an abled white guy. This is the first time in my life I’ve asked out loud why this role had to be played by a black actor because I could see no other reason for it than the writer/director having unexamined racist stereotypes playing in his head while casting.
Artie, because of the manufactured naivete in this narrative, does not notice the missing money. He is so oblivious and helpless that he apparently can’t even keep track of his own cash and the theft does not impact his reliance on and trust in Tareek for the rest of the evening.
But don’t worry. After helping Artie all night, Tareek realizes that he is not entitled to Artie’s money but instead of admitting to Artie that he stole from him, Tareek leaves the $10 in a homeless man’s empty coffee cup.
Spoilers over.
So, to sum up my feelings about Feeling Through in a more concise way; This is a piece of inspiration porn that objectifies and infantilizes a grown deafblind man for the purpose of villainizing and then granting absolution to a housing-insecure young black man. There is not one bit of this story that I find unproblematic. This is not the representation I want to see of anyone in film, especially not groups who have been consistently ignored or vilified by mainstream filmmaking.
Courtesy of https://disability-memorial.org/
Every year on March 1st we acknowledge the Disability Community Day of Mourning. This year, more than any other, will mark a very different look to the way we mourn as a community. In the face of a pandemic that has had a disproportionate effect on disabled people and their communities, it is more important for us to honor the lives of disabled people murdered by those closest to them. Disabled people in our communities are generally ignored and it has become even more difficult to raise awareness of the problem of filicide of disabled people with the constant onslaught of tragedy caused by Covid-19.
Disabled people are receiving significantly less support than non-disabled people when it comes to healthcare specifically related to Covid-19. With ICUs being forced to prioritize life-saving measures based on criteria that is beyond the understanding of laypeople, including taking into account perceived “quality of life” as a determining factor in some cases. Disabled people are far too often seen as having less “quality of life” than non-disabled people which leads doctors to place them further down the priority list when it comes to finite resources in life-saving measures. This specific criterion frequently demonstrates that even (or especially???) doctors do not have a fundamental understanding of what it actually is to be disabled.
In Canada we are also facing the enshrinement in law of the assumption that disabled people have less “quality of life” in the amendments being proposed to Canada’s Criminal Code and Medical Aid in Dying laws through Bill C-7 which is currently being debated in Parliament. Bill C-7 includes expanding MAiD to people who experience “grievous and irremediable medical condition” but do not have an immediately foreseeable risk of death due to their condition. The United Nations has come down on this proposed amendment, citing that as a signatory nation on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Canada would be in violation of that convention if the amendment to our Criminal Code is passed.
When it comes to the murder of disabled people by family and support people, we see the “quality of life” argument brought up in almost every single case. How often have we heard someone who murdered a disabled person defend themselves (usually to very sympathetic audience) by proclaiming that the victim was suffering? That their life was miserable, sad, pain-filled, and restrictive. That the murderer would want someone to do the same (kill them?) for them if they had been disabled.
The idea that some lives, especially disabled lives, are “less than” other lives is a terrifying and dangerous one. Subjective criteria like “quality of life” and “grievous and irremediable” open the door for increased discrimination, decreased social support, and as demonstrated by the ongoing pandemic, decreased access to resources that will sustain or improve a life for people who don’t conform to the “standard model” of what personhood is perceived to be.
The ongoing pandemic and Canada’s Bill C-7 are just large-scale demonstrations of what can happen when peoples’ lives are assigned “value” by some arbitrary set of criteria. We see smaller demonstrations of the same every time a disabled person is murdered by someone they are supposed to trust. It will be difficult to mourn the disabled lives lost to MAiD and the pandemic because there will be so many and it will be in a hospital or under a doctor’s care. We will continue to mourn disabled people who die violent deaths at the hands of trusted individuals and hope that the parallels are drawn between the three types of event.
Today, we remember and mourn:
Terri-Lynn Thompson – murdered by her husband October 14, 2019 in Belleville Ontario
Florence Girard – neglected by her paid attendant until she starved to death on October 13, 2018 in Vancouver British Columbia
Douglas Fischer – murdered by his daughter’s ex partner, part of a multiple murder, March 29, 2018 in Bluevale, Ontario
Levi Illingayuk – killed by his son in a fight, February 3, 2018 in Clyde River, Nunavut
Ninon Hardie – murdered by her son, December 6, 2017 in Toronto, Ontario
Richard Dubuc – killed by his brother, October 5, 2017 in Montreal, Quebec
Ryanna Grywacheski – murdered by her boyfriend, September 16, 2017 in Marystown, Newfoundland
Kaylie Lis-Lalande – neglected by her mother until she died from complications from starvation and dehydration, September 4, 2017 in Oakville, Ontario
Jocelyne Lizotte – killed by her husband February 20, 2017 in Montreal, Quebec
Lydia Whitford – died from unknown causes suspected to be the result of homicide or neglect at the hands of her foster mother, July 14, 2016 in Stonewall, Manitoba
Ronald McCabe – murdered by his son, March 7, 2016 in Kitchener, Ontario
Irene Carter – murdered by her daughter, January 13, 2016 in Lethbridge, Alberta
Jessica Hagan – murdered by her mother, September 8, 2015 in Cranston, Alberta
Anne Schmidt – murdered by her son, July 5, 2015 in Vineland, Ontario
Emily Janzen – murdered (along with her mother and aunt) by her father, May 7, 2015 in Rosedale, British Columbia
By Mary Wilson
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The topic for this year’s International Day of People with Disabilities is “Not all disabilities are visible.” The awareness and discussion of invisible disabilities is close to my heart and always on my mind. Invisible disabilities are varied and, as the name suggests, frequently hidden. This makes them hard to broadly define and changes the conversation around what disability means. There is still significant stigma around mental illness, neurological disorders, and other disabilities that have not immediately identifiable components.
I, personally, define disability as something inherent to a person that disables their interactions with and inclusion in society. It’s not just about encountering barriers to physical spaces, it’s not about medical issues that require frequent intervention or monitoring. It goes far beyond and far deeper than the physical and medical aspects of illness, injury, or other bodily variations. It is something unchangeable about a person that makes their inclusion and participation in every day activities impossible, unlikely or difficult.
I am the parent of two children with invisible disabilities. Labeling my children as disabled is still something I struggle with and frequently just dance around while juggling multiple medications, specialists, appointments, classroom and learning adaptations and ensuring that my kids have the emotional support and tools to deal with the knowledge that they are “different.”
My struggle with the label comes from a feeling of not having earned the right to it. Because our needs and challenges aren’t “serious” or severe even though we deal with them every hour of every day, my kids don’t face major barriers to access, they can play and socialize and attend class. They have what I would consider “passing rights” as non-disabled which I’ve internalized as having less claim to the label and being reluctant to use it. I have met numerous families who have faced SIGNIFICANT barriers to their inclusion in activities I and my children take for granted and I feel like appropriating the label, even in the context of disability pride, may not be the most sensitive thing to do.
This is a common problem amongst people with invisible disabilities. Because they don’t have to face obvious physical barriers, because some days their disability doesn’t affect their lives much, because the world outside their closest circle doesn’t perceive them as “other” those with invisible disabilities are prone to rejecting or downplaying the label of “disabled.” As my involvement in the disability pride movement has grown, my relationship with the label has changed.
Being able to embrace the label “disabled” is a journey and an adventure. Making sure my children are able to share that label with people we love and admire is a privilege. I will continue to grow my relationship with invisible disabilities and with my children, allowing the experience of parenting to develop under the lens of invisible disability. I will allow my children to chose their own labels and develop their own relationships with their bodies and minds, to explore what makes them disabled and identify how their disability provides them a unique viewpoint and experience.
