Human Rights Cost Money

Back in 2016, a friend and former professor of mine was faced with housing related discrimination because of her disabilities. Threatened with eviction, she was forced to go into debt in order to avoid homelessness.

A complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal over their refusal to accommodate her medical disabilities.

Unfortunately, the cost of justice is high. She’s raising some money to cover just the legal fees to date. Her situation is already difficult because of the cost of saving her home, but to add to it, she is one of the many who saw a massive cut to their pay thanks to the actions of Doug Ford.

The sad reality is that while the courts seem like an option for confronting obvious acts of discrimination, for many of us with disabilities, the cost is too high. Many of us have stories of illegal acts with regards to employment, or housing, or even just existing, and yet for too many of us, our only option is to swallow it. Justice is for sale.

If she is unable to raise the funds to cover the costs incurred to date, the case will be dropped which means she will have no recourse for getting justice. What’s more, the particular people involved in the acts of discrimination have other disabled people under their purview, people who will be directly impacted by the results of this court case which would send a negative message over whether disabled people have a right to have shelter.

If you are able and willing, consider helping out. For those of us who want to help but can’t afford to, a big help is making sure the fundraiser gets seen through lots of sharing to various social media. This is a great person who honestly deserves all the help she can get.

Human Rights Cost Money
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Dear Ontario: I’m Begging For my Life

Dear Ontario,

Have you ever woken up wondering how your government was going to put your life at risk today? Have you had your government propose torturing you on a regular basis as a reasonable way to save money? Have you had your government put your life at risk for daring to need to be admitted to the hospital because of a genetic condition? Have you been told that you are a burden on society and that you are too expensive to be worth keeping alive?

This has been my reality for at least the last month.

(Truth be told it’s been my reality a lot longer than that, but it’s been a lot more obvious the last year.) Continue reading “Dear Ontario: I’m Begging For my Life”

Dear Ontario: I’m Begging For my Life

5 Things the Straw Ban Argument Shows us About How we Treat Disability

five things the straw ban argument reveals about how we treat disability over a picture of the sun reflected in water.
In the last few weeks, the increasingly frequent straw bans have sparked debates across social media and even the news. For those who are unfamiliar, the Straw Bans are a new fad of laws that ban plastic straws in an effort to reduce ocean waste and plastic. The popularity of the law was inspired by a viral video featuring something sad happening to a turtle. Environmentalism is great, so what’s the problem?

The problem is that plastic straws are necessary for the survival of people with certain disabilities. Necessary for Survival. Without them People Will Die.

I wish I could say that that statement marked the end of the matter and the question of whether or not it is worth proceeding. Instead, what’s followed is endless weeks and arguments about whether we’re really sure that’s we will really actually die, and don’t we know that that doesn’t really happen.

While I’m not one of the people directly affected by this ban, I say we because while the specifics here don’t apply to me, I recognize all too well ALL of the arguments that showed up during the debates. They’re the same arguments I’ve faced whenever the subject of any disability accommodation comes up. These same themes form many of the backbones of systemic ableism. They are the arguments that are essentially used to excuse banning people from immigration on the basis of disability, the arguments against raising disability support payments, putting together socialized pharmacy care, building accessible housing, providing easy accessibility, and so on and so forth.

Continue reading “5 Things the Straw Ban Argument Shows us About How we Treat Disability”

5 Things the Straw Ban Argument Shows us About How we Treat Disability

I can’t just put my disability on hold

title over abstract photo
For the last year or so, I have been basically living out of boxes.

Alyssa’s and my breakup took place right in the middle of my attempts to rebuild my office. I had to halt construction and rethink how to reorganize the smaller bedroom from being an office into being an office bedroom. Then as our actual separation approached, things were packed away and divided. I’ve been struggling for the past year to put everything back together; my room, my apartment, my life, myself.  ‘

Continue reading “I can’t just put my disability on hold”

I can’t just put my disability on hold

GUEST POST: Why It’s Hard to Reveal My Disability to Strangers

By Kella Hanna-Wayne

A dancer on a dark background with title of post in white

CN: ableism, chronic pain

With every new person I meet, I have to gauge just how much to tell them about my disability. I try to be as open as possible about my health issues because I want to reinforce the idea that people who look like me- young, relatively fit, no noticeable limitations- can also be disabled. But being open about my disability means opening myself to potential scrutiny of my body, my diet, my medications, my exercise routine. Any decision I make about my physical health becomes fair game for intrusive questions. Until I get to know a person better, I have to assume they will default to treating me as if my health history is in the public domain.

Continue reading “GUEST POST: Why It’s Hard to Reveal My Disability to Strangers”

GUEST POST: Why It’s Hard to Reveal My Disability to Strangers

Guest Post: From quack to quacked, Quark to quarks: A journey to invisibility.

(Note from Ania: This post by Sophie was written with the assistance of a speech to text tool. There may be some typos, which I haven’t been able to correct yet.  I will come back and edit them as soon as I have the spoons to devote to it.)

We live in a world of experts. Scientists. Astronauts. Doctors. Computer programmers. Politicians. Teachers. Husbands. Wives. Parents. Men. Woman. All the people. Everyone you see around you is an expert in their field, even if we all haven’t gone through higher education to obtain a degree.

But you don’t need a degree to be considered an expert in your field. In a lot of cases, the people who will know most about a thing are the people living with and dealing with the thing. And for the most part, people accept these masters of the universe in their own chosen specialty.

Parents are masters in parenting.

Women are masters in being women.

Men are masters t understanding men.

Even children are masters at understanding children.

Social justice warriors are masters at navigating the system and assisting people in distress because of the system.

Marginalized people are masters at knowing what it means to be oppressed because of who you are, or what you believe in.

I am sure that you, reading this, are a master in your chosen domain.

But I cannot speak to what it’s like being a part of that domain. And it’s not why I’m here today, writing this. But I did want to make sure before I began that you understood that I SEE you. You are not invisible to me. And I am quite certain that you will have experienced some or many of these things that I want to speak about. I know that your pain is real. But I must focus my thoughts and speak of the things that I personally know, which unfortunately isn’t every single person on earth, much as I wish I could sometimes.

So let me try this again, from the beginning.

Each and every one of us is a master of our own domain. We don’t all have university degrees to tuck in under our belts, but we do all have our passions, and qualifications. Today’s words will focus on one particular subset of the human culture: Being disabled, and the invisibility that too often comes with it. Because while it isn’t the knowledge I would have wanted for myself, it’s what I have become educated on, by means of the circumstances I’ve been thrown in.

It is in that light, in that guise, that I introduce myself to you.

Sophie, Ph.D.
Partially human, Disabled.

Continue reading “Guest Post: From quack to quacked, Quark to quarks: A journey to invisibility.”

Guest Post: From quack to quacked, Quark to quarks: A journey to invisibility.

Disability 101: Understanding the Social Model of Disability

Often times, the most difficult part of solving a problem, a social problem or others, is about framing it in the right way. If you are dealing with a situation, but you misidentify the source of the conflict or barrier, then any solution becomes impossible, or at least incomplete. The same is true of discussion of disability justice and issues of equality.

Many of the conflicts that arise between abled communities and mindsets, and disabled ones step from different framings of the problem. While many different constructs and models exist, the two mainly accepted ones are the Medical Model and the Social Model.

Continue reading “Disability 101: Understanding the Social Model of Disability”

Disability 101: Understanding the Social Model of Disability

Casual Ableism

CN: Ableism, Police Violence, Sexual Violence, etc.

Scrolling through my Facebook feed late at night, I came across a Jezebel article on the subject of the Fascist authoritarian in control of the US. In contrast to all of the serious articles going around this week, and especially this weekend after Trump triggered a constitutional crisis with a hateful law targeting Muslims and immigrants of color, the jokey nature of the headline and article stood out. It was mocking the newly sworn in president for an alleged fear of stairs.

To most people, the idea of a grown man being afraid of stairs seems silly and joke-worthy, but it made my stomach drop.

You see, in a sense, I am afraid of stairs.

Continue reading “Casual Ableism”

Casual Ableism