medical model

This #NDEAM, Let’s #Consent to #EndTheTelethon and Dismantle the Charity Model – Again

/ Ingrid Tischer / 2 Comments

This post is part of a blog-weekend protesting the re-emergence of the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Telethon. Sadly, Kevin Hart and MDA are bringing the charity model and Jerry Lewis back like Zombies of Ableism on October 24. We, the Not-Walking-Not-Dead-Yet, have to use our social capital to stop them in their tracks as the Hartless Crips we are.

I’m proud to be one of the disabled activists organized by disabled filmmaker, writer, and activist Dominick Evans to once again protest an event that perpetuates disability stereotypes, spreads misinformation about neuro-muscular diseases to increase donations, and utterly ignores structural ableism. In 2015, I wrote about the end of the Telethon that inexplicably ran every year on Labor Day and was presided over by the guy who claimed his “kids” could never go into the workplace.

This post revisits portions of it with an eye to the continuing issue of employment – if only because disabled children will once again be working at the Telethon for their health care, and potentially taking some very concerning lessons away from that experience about consent and power.  Thank you, Dominick, for your leadership!

Hands-OFF Fundraising in 2020: Consent, Consent, Consent

Telethon screenshot. Lewis has his hand grabbing a young girl's knee. "that we are about to present and it's for her and a million other of my kids"

→ In 2020, we need to critique this 2010 image from the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Telethon in terms of consent as much as we do its infantilizing attitude and fundraising tactics that use disabled people as charity props.
→ MDA needs to be held accountable for their broader transactional narrative in which disabled children are expected to allow strangers to touch their bodies as part of obtaining money for their health care.
→ The “new” Telethon is being held on Oct. 24, during National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM). There is a connection between the MDA Telethon and employment. What we learn as children is carried into adulthood. The lesson here  can too easily become, “I need my paycheck so I have to put up with my boss touching me.”
Past KFC/MDA print ad saying, "On May 24th, show this child you care," with an explanation of why buying KFC will help kids. Lewis has his arm wrapped around a small boy in a wheelchair

MDA, Jerry Lewis, KFC, and a bucket of reasons why disabled children shouldn’t be used as props in cause marketing charity campaigns.

BONUS! Go here for “Stuff I Know As a Fundraiser Who Has Muscular Dystrophy and Why It’s (Past) Time for MDA to #EndTheTelethon”

BUT WAIT – WE’VE GOT EVEN MORE BONUS! Go here to read why Girls Scouts are better fundraisers than MDA’s executives

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There’s No Cure for Gretchen Lowe: Whoever Wrote the Regs Was a Frigging Genius

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment

When the new Beetles came out, Gretchen had kicked around the idea of ditching all of the cab business and getting a car. Since cars came with lots of options but none that made the car driveable by her, she and the Recluse realized the car would have to be modified. Gretchen heard that lots of disabled people got financial help for such things through Voc-Rehab.

Look. You work. You’re not really eligible to be disabled. Air-quotes.

One sleepy post-lunch hour in her clinic office, she gave in to an impulse and looked up the number. When no one picked up at the main number, she worked her way through the extensions until a deep, annoyed voice said hello. That one call into the San Francisco office of Voc-Rehab pretty much cured any hope she had of even minimal financial assistance. The call also showed how employment was a universal solvent on the human stain of disability, at least where government agencies were concerned.

The counselor had more to say, nasally, on the overall lack of money available and went on to say that he himself was legally blind and had been waiting five years for a computer he could use. To do his job. Voc-rehabbing people who were legally blind, for example. So complaining to him was not really something he would be real open to hearing. If she didn’t mind.

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#WSPD2019: Suicide Is a Problem, Not a Solution for Living With a Disability. Yup, Even One That’s Neuromuscular, Progressive, and Degenerative

/ Ingrid Tischer / 2 Comments

2018 2019 UPDATE: STILL ALIVE

STILL OPPOSED TO EUPHEMIZING DISABLED PEOPLE BY NORMALIZING OUR SUICIDES THROUGH LANGUAGE

I’m still disabled, still degenerating, and still filled with joie de crip, but even if I weren’t, I still wouldn’t be buying the double-speak that calls my suicide “a rational choice,” “death with dignity,” and “ending my life on my own terms,” while a (seemingly) nondisabled person’s suicide is “a public health problem.”

The terms we use in talking about an issue set the terms of the debate. Suicide is a public health problem. Distorting that through sophistry marketing language feeds suicide contagion.

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day. But for a disabled person like me, it’s just not my day. Literally.

Increasingly:

What would be a “threat of self-harm” for you, is a “personal choice” for me.

What calls for an intervention for you, calls for a pre-suicide party for me.

Your movie is It’s a Wonderful Life. My movie is It’s a Wonderful Death.

When it comes to people like me, suicide is rapidly becoming normalized. Or more exactly, suicide is being erased through re-branding. “It’s not ‘suicide’! It’s ‘ending your life on your own terms’!”

But I want a great pre-end of life. I want to live on my own terms.Ingrid posing with her Respironics Bi-Pap S/T

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There’s No Cure for Gretchen Lowe: The List of Lives That Suck

/ Ingrid Tischer / 1 Comment

“I’m not really looking to change, Mom.”

“Your life could be easier if you didn’t have muscular dystrophy. What I would have given for this Genetic Reparative Therapy when you were little.”

Gretchen poured water in the coffee maker. “Yeah, I’m well aware that there’s a list out there of Lives That Suck and — of course! — my name is on it.”

Alice continued. “I can’t believe you would even consider not being part of this study.”

“Well, jeez, Mom, I have to consider not doing it.” Gretchen leaned against the counter. The machine hissed and steamed. “Remember when they wanted to fix my foot and didn’t mention they’d be removing half of it? Good thing we pressed for details on that one.”
Silence.
“I have to live with the results of this experiment – I will be the result of this experiment. And I gotta tell you – just because something can be done is not necessarily a good enough reason to do it.”

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#WSPD2016: Suicide Is a Problem, Not a Solution for Living With a Disability. Yup, Even One That’s Neuromuscular, Progressive, and Degenerative

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day. But for a disabled person like me,  it’s just not my day.

Increasingly:

What would be a “threat of self-harm” for you, is a “personal choice” for me.

What calls for an intervention for you, calls for a pre-suicide party for me.

Your movie is It’s a Wonderful Life. My movie is It’s a Wonderful Death.

When it comes to people like me, suicide is rapidly becoming normalized. Or more exactly, suicide is being erased through re-branding. “It’s not ‘suicide’! It’s ‘ending your life on your own terms’!”

But I want a great pre-end of life. I want to live on my own terms.Ingrid posing with her Respironics Bi-Pap S/T

Continue reading →