ableism

HEY! YOU! MEDIA!: Let’s Make Suicide Awareness Month and World Suicide Prevention Day Inclusive of People With Disabilities

/ Ingrid Tischer / 1 Comment

5.  Why is suicide being presented as a solution, rather than a problem, when the people involved have disabilities?

September is Suicide Awareness Month and September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day. I’m writing this because media coverage over the past year alone seems to warrant an explicit reminder that:

  • We don’t lack awareness of people with disabilities committing suicide; we do allow vulnerable people to feel shame over chronic pain and depression.
  • Our suicides deserve prevention, not encouragement and cultural misrepresentation, as in films such as Me Before You.

What’s the context beyond the medical? What are the underlying attitudes guiding how the media’s coverage of people with disabilities who have committed suicide or who are planning to do so?

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Depression and Suicide Do Not Come Standard With the Progressive Disability Package

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment
A few weeks ago, Alice Wong asked me, a fellow person living with a progressive neuromuscular disease (NMD), how I would respond to someone with an NMD who was saying they wanted to commit suicide.  This was my answer.

Depression is not a standard feature of living with a neuromuscular disease (NMD) or other progressive disability.Depression & Suicide Do Not Come Standard With the Progressive Disability Package Depression is not a standard feature of living with a neuromuscular disease (NMD) or other progressive disability. Do people living with disabilities also experience depression? Yes. Anyone can have depression and you are no different in deserving treatment and relief for it. Thinking that you alone can help yourself with your depression through suicide is a tragic form of “overcoming.” If finding the right treatment for your depression proves difficult, it’s not proof that your disability makes you different from other people. It’s not proof that, for you, suicide is a rational choice. No. It’s proof that depression is difficult to treat for vast numbers of people. Like you. It's free and confidential to contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline anytime. You are not a medical prognosis or a checklist of functional abilities. You're a person. Who is in terrible pain now and deserves relief. Like everybody else. If you're in crisis: 1-800-273-TALK (8255), 1-800-799-4TTY (4889) https://www.facebook.com/800273talk/ @800273TALK © 2016 talesfromthecripblog.com

Do people living with disabilities also experience depression? Yes. Anyone can have depression and you are no different in deserving treatment and relief for it. Thinking that you alone can help yourself with your depression through suicide is a tragic form of “overcoming.”

If finding the right treatment for your depression proves difficult, it’s not proof that your disability makes you different from other people.

It’s not proof that, for you, suicide is a rational choice. No. It’s proof that depression is difficult to treat for vast numbers of people. Like you.

It’s free and confidential to contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline anytime. You are not a medical prognosis or a checklist of functional abilities. You’re a person. Who is in terrible pain now and deserves relief.

If you’re in crisis:

1-800-273-TALK (8255) , 1-800-799-4TTY (4889)
@800273TALK
 

What #CripLit Means To Me (and How It Differs From #DisLit)

/ Ingrid Tischer / 9 Comments

Crip Lit Let disability entertain you www.talesfromthecrip.org

Crip lit entertains you. It doesn’t explain disability.

Too basic?…

What #CripLit Means To Me (and how it differs from #DisLit) 1. In #CripLit, at least one main character has a disability and the narrator is aware of its political dimension. 2. In #CripLit, living with a disability can be described through the narrator's point of view, not just the character's, and this can provide stylistic opportunities. 3. In #CripLit, a disabled character can be deeply flawed, unlikable, or foolish, and is not obligated to be an advocate, inspiration, or role model in fictional clothing. 4. In #CripLit, an anti-hero can have a disability that is integrated into their character. 5. In #CripLit, the story does not seek to educate the reader about the mechanics of living with a disability and does seek to describe a fullness of experience, whether wholly or partially imagined. © 2016 talesfromthecripblog.com

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#CripLit Excerpt from “The Copier God Unleashes the Flood Waters”

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Another Excerpt From There's No Cure for Gretchen Lowe a novelAs the West-Hesperidan Free Clinic’s Administrative Manager, Gretchen was the closest thing they had to fundraising staff now that their Director was on stress leave. She was supposed to represent the clinic at these house party things but here she was wandering on the edges, again, frankly worn out just from hauling herself in the door. Here was a question: Why does philanthropy so often require climbing stairs?

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#LiveBoldly on 6/2! Join Growing Wave of Protest Against Euthanasia Rom-Com “Me Before You” in Berkeley, CA

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment

ACTION ALERT: DISABILITY SNUFF FILM “ME BEFORE YOU” PROTEST

WHEN: June 2, 2016, 6:15PM-7:15PM PT

WHERE: Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck Ave (at Kittredge), Berkeley, California 94704

WHAT: Peaceful demonstration and leafletting

WHY: To oppose the film’s ableist message that people with disabilities are better off dead and that we are a burden to others

“Me Before You” is the latest Hollywood film to grossly misrepresent the lived experience of the majority of disabled people. In the film, a young, white, and wealthy man becomes disabled and falls in love with his “carer” who has been hired by his family to cure his suicidal depression with romance.

Despite her opposition, however, the hero does the “honorable” thing by killing himself at the Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas – leaving his fortune to her so she can move on without the “burden” of a disabled partner. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, “Me Before You” is little more than a disability snuff film, giving audiences the message that if you’re a disabled person, you’re better off dead.

For more information, see the following articles:

Spare me, “Me Before You”: Hollywood’s new tearjerker is built on tired and damaging disability stereotypes
Why Some Disability Rights Activists Are Protesting ‘Me Before You”
People Are Annoyed About How “Me Before You” Represents Disability
Hollywood Promotes the Idea It Is Better To Be Dead Than Disabled
A Second Class Existence: Me Before You Gets It All Wrong
Why Are You Complaining? Some People Actually Feel That Way: A Critique of Me Before You