Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Disability comes in all shapes, sizes, modes, and effects. There are legally-recognized versions, emotional varieties, and indeterminate cognitive and psychiatric manifestations that interfere with intimate relationships and social interactions. People look at me and see a woman with a mullet who appears physically fit. What do they know? No, I don’t meet the federal criteria of “impairment of a major life function” (Americans with Disabilities Act 1996). I can breathe, walk, gesture, talk (both in spoken and signed language), feel, think, and otherwise function within the range of physical action deemed normal. Who decided these things were “normal”, and that they thus represented a meaningful baseline for judging character or the potential worth of one’s contributions to society? No individuals will claim responsibility, of course. Such boundaries and markers of difference are established ‘out there’ by impersonal forces of culture and propagated through the media, religion, and a disturbing range of incidental, informal taboos and negative sanctions. My questions have historically (as in, over the course of my lifetime to date) been construed as problematic, disruptive, unpleasant: people’s responses indicate clearly: I am a deviant.

“Could you refill my water glass?” “Would you mind changing into scent-free clothing?” Where does one draw the line between a reasonable request and one that asks too much? How much courage does it take to ask for help in a society that prizes independence above all else? I’ve pondered and debated these questions with disabled friends and nondisabled allies, as well as with people in the Deaf community who consider that they are not disabled but rather members of a unique linguistic culture. Our very bodies – the ability to move, the parameters of our range (space) and endurance (time) – shape us as essentially as culture. Disability brings everything into question: aesthetics, potential, possibility…what is valuable if the body itself is constrained?

Body is not all, of course. There is also emotion, and mind. Shall we privilege one of these over the other? I have never consistently been able. I fail much more frequently than I succeed. I celebrate small triumphs with all the gusto of national championships. Why not?! The odd thing is that movement lends itself to speed, haste, rushing … things overlooked, cues missed, opportunities lost: wisdom becomes elusive. Stillness inspires depth. How much have I learned from my friends who contemplate the same “able” horizons, and those who immerse themselves in the nuances of power in its most intimate manifestations? I lament how long it has taken me to learn to enjoy listening for its own sake!

To me it is a matter of communicative alignment. I have to want to know what you think, what you mean, as much as I want you to understand what I think, what I mean. Adaptation is required. Can I moderate the pace of my mind, the flight of my passions, the painful insistence of my emotions, and calibrate to these comparable forces within you? Language is the medium. Halting, rapid, interrupted by silence, punctuated with questions; through your language I come to know you as inevitably as you come to know me through mine. Can we connect past first impressions, historical associations, competing or congruent goals?