Cary Tennis, the advice columnist over at Salon, has posted a response to a letter from a young woman who recently became physically disabled. The woman is struggling with adjusting to life with a disability, including the sometimes inconsiderate behavior of other people. Tennis’ response is a bit florid, but he demonstrates a surprising level of awareness in regards to disability rights and culture. He actually suggests to the woman to consider some kind of activism. He writes, “Further, I must say, when I see people in wheelchairs going about the city, I’m not glad they’re disabled, but I’m glad that they’re living life.” Which, really, is all we can hope for anyone.
Thanks to Susannah for pointing that out to me.
Lots of War of the Worlds hype out in Geek Land. Dark Horse is doing a serialized webcomic of WotW based on H.G. Wells’ original text. If the panels they’ve published so far are any indication, it should be supercool. Wonder if they’ll do a dead-tree version.
Ya know what pisses me off? People keep saying that we should be activists, that we should get off our butts and do something…like ALL people shouldn’t be doing that, or nobody else has to. Yeah, OK, a disabled person fighting for the rights of disabled people carries more weight and MAY be more informed. But it pisses me off that we are expected to be examples, or inspirational or whatever. That we have to fight to get the things that are the right of evey human being. I know, I know, things don’t change overnight, and SOMEBODY has to do something, and lots of people are trying. But it’s still unjust to expect us all to be extraordinary because we are disabled, that it’s such an unusual thing to see us just “living life”. End of gripe. 🙂