Open Letter to My Body

Dear Body, By all appearances, you are pretty standard. I do not have major physical disabilities or chornic illnesses that impact your function or the way you look. Of course, I have my unattractive features, but I am not particularly self-conscious and, in fact, do not have any body image issues at all. Pretty surprisng [...]

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Solitary Confinement in Juvenile Prisons

Via @sesmithwrites on Twitter comes a horrible story of solitary confinement in juvenile prisons. The story provides some testimonies from girls who were put into solitary confinement for silly reasons, and in at least one case subjected to sexual abuse while secluded. The girls locked up in juvenile prisons have usually not committed major crimes, [...]

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Empowering People with Disabilities?: About Us, Without Us

I just received an E-mail in my mailbox inviting me to participate in a Bloggers Unite event next month: People First: Empowering People with Disabilities. This all sounds like a fabulous idea, and I thought I’d invite you all to participate. Here is the announcement: I just wanted to take a second and let you [...]

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Father to Plead Guilty to Shaking Baby

This is horrible. A father shook his baby at least 50 times in the first three months of his life, thereby causing what will likely be lifelong disabilities from so-called Shaken Baby Syndrome. Go figure, there’s even a specific name for the damage caused by a very specific, horrible kind of abuse. That is sad, [...]

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Seclusion Again and the Need for Individualized Educational Planning

On Twitter, I saw a tiny news clipping about an autistic child pulled out of a New Brunswick school. I didn’t pay much attention even though I was curious why a child being pulled out of school would make the news. Now, Harold L. Doherty of Facing Autism in New Brunswick comments on the story. [...]

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On Disability and Suffering

s.e. smith guestposted a starter’s guide to disability terminology at Feministe. In it, ou addresses language involving the terms “suffeirng” and “victim”. Disability is not a tragedy. Both of these framings assume that. Someone can be suffering and have a disability, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is suffering because of the disability. [...]

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Helen Keller Mythbusting: Of Politics and Disability

Today, Anna over at FWD/Forward is hosting a Helen Keller mythbusting blogswarm. It is surprising how ignorant even I, who definitely heard of Keller many years ago, was about her until very recently. I knew that she was the first deafblind person to earn a college degree, but that was pretty much everything I knew [...]

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Dutch Government Formation Comments

We had general elections in the Netherlands last week. The conservative VVD became the largest party in the country for the first time in its existence. Geert Wilders’ anti-islam PVV got 24 seats in the Lower House and thereby is also seen as a winner. However, Wilders won’t be on the government, because the christian [...]

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Thirty Months in Prison for Mother with Bipolar Who Killed Autistic Child

Six years ago, a mother who suffers from bipolar disorder drowned her autistic child. Now, she was sentenced to five years in prison. Because she had already served thirty months in pre-trial custody, she was given two-for-one credit for time served and released immediately. Five years is, in Canada, at the low end of the [...]

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Study Blames Childhood Behavior Problems for Victimization to Abuse

Back in 2005 and 2006, before I was diagnosed with autism, I always used to wonder how my emotional and behavior problems related to the things I’d gone through as a child. I always assumed there was a reciprocal connection, but generally assumed, apparently correctly given my diagnosis, that my behavior problems were there first. [...]

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