maybe i should’ve saved that tidbit for our next paper.

“this ethos of constant, unrelenting radical pride might actually HURT the movement. If the expectation is that we all “get over” our internalized ableism and get to a state of constant radical pride, it alienates a lot of folks who may not feel like they are up for that task.”

i totally agree, especially applying this to transness and my/our internalized transphobia. writing the paper with you, bethany, i came to this realization that my shame about my emotional experiences of gender dysphoria is a form of transphobia. or, i am ashamed that i am ashamed of my body – and this is a social injustice. because the rhetoric goes: to liberate ourselves, we need to love our bodies. locating the problem in our emotional experiences i think is just as painful/harmful as locating it in our bodies (the logic of radical body-love as form of resistance). i think conceptually parsing out the injustice in the fact that our society causes us to feel these feelings (just as society dehumanizes our bodies), and we are entitled to all of our feelings, helps to locate the origin and responsibility for our pain outside ourselves, even when we are emotionally struggling. we haven’t done anything in order to make ourselves sad. its their fault!

what is really difficult for me is when i judge my feelings (about my body or anything else), and then i judge my judgment of my feelings. when i have liberatory moments in emotional struggle are when i can just experience the feeling without judging it. but that is very difficult to do, and it still hurts. especially the shame about my shame, or when i feel depressed about being depressed. then i get into a downward spiral. shame is really hard to get out of. if i think: shame=oppression and shame=injustice, then it helps me to feel validated in my shame. because it comes from outside, even though it is a very internal emotion.

i feel similarly about my embodied/emotional relationship with activism. as a radical gender freak, i have aimed for a while to smash the binary gender system. because it hurts me, but also because it maintains sexist oppression and male domination. but smashing the binary hurts. because i get punished for it every day through people staring at me. now i’m at a point in my identity where i’m finding myself more unhappy about people not seeing my gender (as male-spectrum) than i am about assumptions of gender binarism. though it is still hard for me to feel comfortable in any gendered restroom. my activism used to be a huge part of my gender identity. now i feel that i do activism because i hurt. and telling people i hurt is activism, because they don’t know anything about trans issues or trans people, and telling them i hurt renders me human.

Next, the topic you are hitting upon here are really rich and reeeeally important. To me, this reads like a “confession” of internalized ableism. I say confession not only as an allusion to the title of your blog, but also because there is this ethos that the “real” crips (as a radical identity) have gone through the grieving process mentioned by Marsha above and have come out the other side with pride. Now, while I believe in radical pride and think it is good that such ideals are the core of what we strive for, I do think it is just that: an ideal. Like any virtue, I think there are times when we are closer to this ideal and times when we are farther away, but no one could possibly live up to the expectation that we are always “uppity” (a great term). I don’t talk about it much at all, but I know that those closest to me know that there are times that i do NOT have crip pride and experience that dissonance between my ideal and my reality. Just as I sometimes fail to live up to my ideal in how I respond to other oppressions that I don’t experience like race, class, or gender, even though I strive, I sometimes fall short in how I grapple with my own disability oppression. What I’m trying to say is that I think it is a flat out MYTH that we can ever really get past our internalized ableism.

I think their is much to be learned from the “confession” approach you take here.

First, there is something really satisfying about speaking to your experience “outloud.” This is ESPECIALLY true when your experience runs contrary to a dogmatic myth of any sort. So, it can help us to feel more liberated to say that our lives are not just matters of constant suffering as mainstream culture would believe nor a constant state of radical pride as crip culture seems to demand. We are all much more complex than that and there is nothing wrong with SAYING that.

Second, I have a friend who has recently pointed out to me that this ethos of constant, unrelenting radical pride might actually HURT the movement. If the expectation is that we all “get over” our internalized ableism and get to a state of constant radical pride, it alienates a lot of folks who may not feel like they are up for that task. It may actually help radical crips to appeal to that wide swath of people with disabilities who haven’t gotten involved with the movement if we talk about the times when they fall short of our ideal. That is, by admitting we still have internalized ableism, we create space for others to grapple with their own. Perhaps the mode we have to take on to create a true, far reaching revolution is to challenge both oversimplified pictures of our lives and deal with the messy reality. It is this reality that will be our common thread and bring us together.

So, confess away sister. Don’t do it in soft whispers of shame to close friends and lovers, but shout it in the face of power.

Because you were born with OI, you have always known yourself as you are. With this “break” you have described having to deal with an increased level of disability and a decreased level of function.

Could it be that you are simply experiencing what many people experience when they go from not being blessed with disability to suddenly acquiring one?

Isn’t it perfectly typical, and certainly “normal” to grieve a loss? Losing function, losing a pet, losing a loved one….all are loss, and when we lose what we value, don’t we grieve?

Some of the proudest, most righteous crips we both know once grieved the loss of the person they were before accident/injury/health emergency. And after grieving for as long as the grieving process takes, they re-invented themselves, came to acceptance, came to even embrace the new them, and then moved on, strongly and proudly.

Maybe the difference here is only that because this is temporary the healing will happen so quickly that you won’t have enough time to go through the whole process and come out the other end knowing in your bones that you are the same sparkly, strong, sexy, capable woman you have always been.

That’s not to say that each day might not feel interminable right now as you will yourself to heal quickly so you can return to the you that you are used to. I just believe that if the situation were permanent, you would grieve, you would come to accept needing more assistance with some tasks, and you would get on with it, proudly and strongly.

And maybe some of what’s happening is because maybe, just maybe, you are looking at you, and your current situation through the lens that you THINK your beloved must be looking through and judging you. The good news is that she has told you that your worry is most certainly NOT her reality. And if you love her, you will graciously accept her word, and let it be salve for your doubts.

And then there’s the matter of relativity…for many of us who appear to not have any disability….we still go through times where we feel like we aren’t “good enough” or don’t “do enough.” And as we age, or put on weight, or start to lose our vision and our hearing and our flexibility, those feelings are prone to intensifying. Grieving the losses is part of life, and it’s universal…in fact, it’s hugely positive because it’s sort of a catalyst for growth and transformation. At nearly 64, I still look in the mirror sometimes and wonder what happened to the spunky, agile twenty-something me that still lives inside these bones. lol…

What a gift you have given the rest of us by sharing these thoughts and doubts. Along with Rahnee’s note on Facebook earlier this week, your words are a hand reaching out to your sisters (and maybe some brothers, too) to let them know they aren’t alone. And with these words, you are already communicating that you are moving through the grief to acceptance and enlightenment, and reassuring others they can do that, too.

Thank you for your strength!