The Internet is no longer Safe!

Fellow blogger and Mandesty reader Angie sent me this message:

I Googled “hot man” to find an image for my blog post. 99% of the results are begging for Mandesty treatment

 

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This is what “hot man” will get you in the Google.

Readers, we’ve reached a point in our society when we can no longer safely search innocent terms like “hot man”. We get things like this:

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Ryan Reynolds: Apparently, he’s hot

Instead of things like this:

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James McAvoy: Literally hot

Thankfully, Angie is strong and was able to alert me to this indecency. Many other women aren’t as morally upright and would have been lost down the rabbit hole of male immodesty.

I fear it will soon be unsafe for me to Google “hot buns”. What will be next, Interwebs?

The Internet is no longer Safe!
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The Lie of More Diagnoses

If you pay attention to either science or woo journalism surrounding medicine and health, you’ve probably come across someone using a statistic regarding yearly diagnosing rates of various disorders.

One well-known example is the statistic bandied about by anti-vaxxers: that the rate of autism diagnoses have risen since the implementation of regular childhood vaccinations. This is used as proof that vaccines must cause autism. The same thing however can be said for the number of cars per household in the United States. By this logic, owning vehicles can cause autism.

Similarly, a recent article discussing a potential crohn’s vaccine discussed the rising rates of crohn’s diagnoses as proof that the condition was linked to a bacteria found in cattle. Interestingly enough the same statistic is used as proof for the theory that crohn’s is caused by historical poverty leading to a need for higher immune systems which are overpowered for our more sterile society.

Increased number of diagnoses in the last severalyears have been used to discredit the existence of depression, anxiety, ADHD, and many other mental health issues. As proof of an overmedicating society.

Continue reading “The Lie of More Diagnoses”

The Lie of More Diagnoses

How to write a disabled character.

As I work on expanding the diversity of my characters, one idea keeps popping out. How do I write good disabled characters? How do I create something that isn’t a stereotype or falls into a lot of the traps that most media do when depicting characters with disabilities. Even as someone with a disability myself, I struggle with not falling into the same tropes as other people.

With that in mind, I decided to try and put together a guideline of sorts on how to write disabled characters.

Don’t Make Their Super Power Negate their Disability

This is one that I see happen pretty often. A character reveals that they have a disability but it’s ok because their super-power is an enhanced version of the part of them that is “impaired”. For example, bling characters who have their super power be an enhanced version of super-sight. They can use vibrations caused by sounds, or have a connection to the earth, in some way that lets them see what others can’t. In this way their disability becomes an “asset” rather than a burden the way mainstream society expects all disability to be.

The only time the disability is otherwise mentioned is for comedic effect: when they are asked for specifics that their ‘enhanced sight’ wouldn’t let them see. This might be words on a page, pictures on a poster, etc.

The problem with this is that it creates the perception that the only way that disabled characters can be useful is if their disability is completely negated. It plays into the idea that disabled people are on their own useless and burdens.

Continue reading “How to write a disabled character.”

How to write a disabled character.

Young, Sick, and Invisible

A few years ago, while in the middle of trying to decide how best to proceed with my disabilities and my employment situation I decided to test the waters of interest by creating an Indiegogo for a book I was contemplating writing.

The book came out this May, and while I wanted to have a post up and a big launch party, I was prevented by my conditions which decided to have their symptoms worsen in the last few months and in particular in the last few weeks. It is my hope that I will be able to be up and about enough to organize the launch party soon.

The book was supposed to be a chance to discuss not only my process of becoming and discovering my disabilities, but also an anecdotal presentation on the predatory nature of CAM Practitioners. It is that, but it also became a chance to discuss a variety of important issues and how they relate to disability and general healthcare.

I wanted, and I think succeeded, to create an account that was fun to read while still giving people an idea of what it is like to live with disabilities in English North America.

Continue reading “Young, Sick, and Invisible”

Young, Sick, and Invisible