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Against Access by John Lee Clark
As I said on tumblr:
This is really interesting to me, in part because of the extent to which it does not match my experience as a disabled person. Which is fine, because he doesn't claim to speak for all disabled people, just for people like himself. And I am a very different kind of disabled.
Like if there was an exhibition of art made by people with chronic fatigue syndrome, part of the message would be that it is broadly the same as art made by anyone else. Having chronic fatigue definitely affects the way a person sees the world, and what they create, but not in the same clearcut, extreme way it sounds like being Deafblind does. And there is no defined subculture of cfs art, not even to the extent that there is for like... queer people. You can sometimes look at something made by someone with cfs and see how them having cfs affected their creation process, but it's not going to be in a fundamentally different language of expression created by and for people with cfs that anyone else will have to work hard to understand.
When I create something, I sometimes post it to a cfs discord I'm on because I know they'll appreciate what a gargantuan effort it was to actually finish something, but I don't expect them to like it, because they are effectively a random collection of people who are unlikely to share my specific tastes. And asides from wheelchair access (which only some of us need) accessibility for people with cfs is a complicated fuzzy thing which blurs into the kind of curb-cut-esque accessibility which helps lots of people: closed captions, places to sit, simple explanations of important information, minimising COVID risk etc.
Like... we kind of do just want what we can get of the ablebodied world, a lot of the time. Because we can mostly enjoy it, and because we have no distinct other world of our own to escape to. One of the defining features of our disability is that we don't have the energy to create such a thing! The experience of Deafblind people sounds incredibly different. And people with other kinds of disability will feel differently again.
Hell, I feel differently about how my mental illness affects my art and access needs, and I can't even speak for everyone else with cfs. Disability is a very broad umbrella covering a huge range of experiences, even amongst people with the same disability. So it's always good to get a variety of perspectives.
As I said on tumblr:
This is really interesting to me, in part because of the extent to which it does not match my experience as a disabled person. Which is fine, because he doesn't claim to speak for all disabled people, just for people like himself. And I am a very different kind of disabled.
Like if there was an exhibition of art made by people with chronic fatigue syndrome, part of the message would be that it is broadly the same as art made by anyone else. Having chronic fatigue definitely affects the way a person sees the world, and what they create, but not in the same clearcut, extreme way it sounds like being Deafblind does. And there is no defined subculture of cfs art, not even to the extent that there is for like... queer people. You can sometimes look at something made by someone with cfs and see how them having cfs affected their creation process, but it's not going to be in a fundamentally different language of expression created by and for people with cfs that anyone else will have to work hard to understand.
When I create something, I sometimes post it to a cfs discord I'm on because I know they'll appreciate what a gargantuan effort it was to actually finish something, but I don't expect them to like it, because they are effectively a random collection of people who are unlikely to share my specific tastes. And asides from wheelchair access (which only some of us need) accessibility for people with cfs is a complicated fuzzy thing which blurs into the kind of curb-cut-esque accessibility which helps lots of people: closed captions, places to sit, simple explanations of important information, minimising COVID risk etc.
Like... we kind of do just want what we can get of the ablebodied world, a lot of the time. Because we can mostly enjoy it, and because we have no distinct other world of our own to escape to. One of the defining features of our disability is that we don't have the energy to create such a thing! The experience of Deafblind people sounds incredibly different. And people with other kinds of disability will feel differently again.
Hell, I feel differently about how my mental illness affects my art and access needs, and I can't even speak for everyone else with cfs. Disability is a very broad umbrella covering a huge range of experiences, even amongst people with the same disability. So it's always good to get a variety of perspectives.
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Yes, I enjoyed how much it got me thinking too!