cereus: Swirls of dark nighttime colors with the word Bats (bats)
So I finally watched Princess Tutu!  Partly because I had seen and heard good things about it at Sakura Con, but the final straw was that Mark Oshiro watched it and the reviews sounded really interesting.

So I got it out from Netflix.

The main plot of the show revolves around this young man named Mytho who doesn't seem to have feelings or a lot of self-will.  And "Ahiru" (which literally means duck in Japanese :P) this young woman (who is actually a duck that can transform herself into a human) who decides she's going to do what she can to help.

And it turns out that Mytho is actually the "prince" from the old story "the Prince and the Raven" who eternally battled the Raven and shattered his heart to seal the Raven away...

"This is great!" said the author, who was supposed to have died...

And it struck me how familiar Mytho's situation was.   From times in the past.  Reminds me of stumbling around like a kitten after getting out of all the therapy and off meds.   I mean, how often do we shatter our own hearts to keep "The Raven" (mental illness, disability, whatever) from affecting others?  Even though "The Raven" is also us.  How often are our whole lives cast as that struggle?  And yet the whole story was made up by someone, and  we can say if we want "wow, this story is kind of bogus".  But we don't learn that  except by ourselves, usually.

Spoilers ahead:

And the revelation that Fakir, who controls and behaves really cruelly towards Mytho to keep him from regaining his heart, was asked by Mytho to shatter his heart in the first place and thinks of himself as pretty much an extension of Mytho's will, as his servant - brings up questions of Inside versus Outside Safety.

And in terms of plural stuff - some of us ended up pretty much being the groups personal Fakir.  Including one of us who was one of the best at passing insisting on "Fronting" almost constantly even though the stress made him so snappy that he/I was cruel and abusive to pretty much everyone in system.  Not that that excuses anything I did, but at the time it was part of a great work of protection.
 
cereus: Ringtail Cat climbing tree (Default)
There's a new community called Disabling Queerness  which is exactly what it says on the tin... or exactly what it says in it's name.

Disabling Queerness on DW

Disabling Queerness on LJ

I'm exited! :)

cereus: A heart entangled with a rainbow colored infinity sign (rainbow)
Disability Carnival is up at Butterfly Dreams

This time the theme is "Let Your Freak Flag Fly":

http://candidlycrippled.blogspot.com/2011/01/nitty-gritty-dirty-little-freaks.html


Enjoy!

cereus: Sandworm and Fremen from Dune (sandworm)
Inspired by reading Amanda Forest Vivian's post "Disabling Queerness"
http://adeepercountry.blogspot.com/2010/10/disabling-queerness.html

When I was growing up, there was a big excitement about the "strong female characters" now being written in books and a lot of those selfsame books were shoved into my hands.  I loved to read and read fast, so a supply of books was a good thing.  And there were good parts to them - in many ways they were what the last era needed - the antidote to the last era.

There's a lot of emphasis in feminism, at least of my mother's generation,of telling girls they can be strong.  On letting "Strong women" develop their potential.  Because women are really as strong as men.  But what about the women who aren't "strong"?

Whatever way you determine strength there's a lot of people that are going to be weak.  Because not everybody has the strength, verbal agility, stamina and physical energy level, and personality (not to mention equal economic opportunities) to make it in this world if we change nothing but allowing women to compete.  If you want to make the lives of women better how much have we accomplished if a large group are still struggling.

In many ways feminism was trying to get woman to be seen in the same way as men.  But there's a trap in how men are seen, too.

There's a dark side to the male role in society is just that if you're strong, great, but if you're weak, if you can't handle it, you're gone.  If the dark side of the female role is the housewife/drudge then the masculine dark side is cannon fodder.  Can't handle the responsibilities of high-power lifestyle? Bang. Show weakness? Bang. Show emotion, or compassion for the wrong person? Bang.  Love another man? (Everyone knows that men are gross, you'd have to be sick.) Bang.  Dress in feminine clothes? Bang.   Have trouble focusing in class and so barely graduate high school and then try to go to community college and try to hold a minimum wage job, and end up short on money?   You can go into the army. It's a great opportunity.  Many of the male roles are designed to make a crop of obedient soldiers.  But it's not a good life anymore than the life of a drudge, or a doll is.

In a talk I went to recently on Math Anxiety they showed a chart that showed what most men and women said their sucess or failure at math was caused by:

                    Success         Failure
Men              Skill           Lack of Effort
Women        Luck           Lack of skill

I've seen so many disabled  people fall into the trap of "I'm just not trying hard enough".  So this makes me wonder...

Telling me, a "girl*" that was (and still is) struggling to speak, to use words at all, to not slur - that she should be speaking "louder" with more "confidence"  if she wants any one to pay attention to her or care for her.  That "She" doesn't "have to speak so softly because she's female" wasn't a good idea.  It was almost hurtful in a lot of ways.

Can't we find a way to treat all people well, without falling into either of there traps?  Can we build a society that works for the Weak and the Strong and the WeakandStrong, and everyone else?


* Not that much of a girl actually, just as much of a boy.  They had no way of knowing about the parts that were there but didn't match my physical body.




May 2017

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