On the context of 'Broken'

On the context of ‘Brokenness”

I never liked the word ‘broken’ to describe anyone. Not because ‘no one is broken’ but because it’s so flat and incomplete of a word. It has no form, or context. The word tells me nothing, because what exactly is broken and why are people so offended by it? In regards to disability, people think that ‘broken’ limits, dehumanizes and restructures a person around their disability ignoring the good and the positive skills they have. Yet when you do look at the good and positive you also need to balance it. It’s one the many reasons I feel like bringing this up and using some of the character I write with in my fiction. One that many already have known, for this essay, instead of Tikaani as my avatar pseudo-person its, Chiko my airbender original character which I think fits a bit better.

One of the most frustrating about disability narratives in fiction, is the idea that for the story’s arch to be completed the person with a disability must A) Accept his disability or B) learn to defeat it and be comparatively normal and like everyone else. Both are rather half-ass and shoddy endings, but most of these are written by able bodied people who never had a disability or that experience so they are just contextualizing as someone that woke up disabled than someone born with one. It’s one of the reasons I like Toph from Avatar. She is born blind so her narrative is not about her blindness but people’s perception and her ability to surpass that. In some way, Toph is broken, but her brokenness is not her disability but whole experience of being patronized and coddled by her parents, of her constantly having to match up to her sighted peers and putting walls among people because she is afraid of being seen as weak. With that all in context, she is a broken character. Brokenness is not about disability, it’s about social perception of worth, of value and reclaiming that word not as a flaw but as a paradigm. Brokenness should be part of the character’s narrative; it shouldn’t be a hurdle for the person to get over, because frankly, it never actually happens in real life. 

Chiko’s narrative is being used because I use Tikaani a lot his narrative isn’t about accepting and deal with a sudden disability but social stigma and moving against it. Chiko on the other hand has to deal with much in short time. For those that don’t follow the show or know the canon, this might be confusing and there is a special interest blurb about the show somewhere so you can do your own research. Yet, for those that are aware, the show brings up the fact that a race of people (Air Nomads) have been wiped out, Chiko is one of them and he and his family survives. Barely. His missing left arm is reminder of that massacre at his temple and it does haunt him. He does have phantom pains, he does deal with nightmares and flash backs and all that crap. His missing arm is a point of grief of him. The thing I want to bring up with Chiko, is that his narrative isn’t about his missing arm though it does feel like that, but honestly about his frustration of constantly being jarred around and dealing with a massive war. It’s about growing up on the battlefield and about being considered an outsider but not because of his limb but because of his social context. Chiko does seem himself as ‘broken’ but not in the idea that it’s because of his missing arm, but because he is considered unworthy to live, that he isn’t meant to be here and to him, surviving while others died, isn’t fair. He doesn’t get closure or sort of respite. His brokenness, his hurt, doesn’t go away if he gets a prosthesis or finds a stable home, the war will still be there and people will still die. Giving a disabled person an accommodation or a tool, doesn’t make their brokenness go away. Chiko’s value isn’t undermined by his brokenness, his love for his brothers and his willingness to never submit isn’t challenged by it. Over all, he isn’t less of a person for being ‘broken’. 

Which is I suppose the crux of the argument really. Tikaani isn’t less of a person, neither is Chiko neither am I. Brokenness doesn’t minimalize a person. Which is why next to ‘broken’ I hate the word ‘different’. People think that broken is a word that strips a person’s self and negates them but different doesn’t do that. I don’t believe that. Calling someone different, doesn’t negate that they are broken but accentuates it. It’s still isolating, negative and othering. Calling Tikaani ‘different’ doesn’t remove the fact he lives in a universe where his humanity is always in question, where is feared a shadow of a person and one that gambles with spirits. Saying that Chiko is different, doesn’t negate his missing arm. His nightmares or the fact his people are dying and being systematically killed (So much for Avatar being a ‘children’s’ show) and watching his whole world being set on literal fire. So I cringe when able bodied people saying that I am “differently abled’ thinking that my humanity isn’t questions or the alienation I feel evaporated by well-meaning sympathy. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t make me feel any less included. I don’t want to downplay either of my characters stories because I wouldn’t want mine negated for the sake of the comfort of abled people. I don’t believe calling me ‘broken’ strips me. No more than calling me different or special. I am either. I am just a wild satyr, an organic android, a bard with no song. 

I want people to see the brokenness and love it. Because it is a part of me it’s not separate thing. It is me.

The Monster That I Am

art work by Lucy Dreir aka Thug of my 'satyr-sona' Kalypso.

After spending about 5 years in disability right and identity politics, I have learned that I stopped caring about language and personal labels. What people call themselves is none of my business what they reclaim isn’t my problem until it comes one. But I guess this is a commentary on a word that I took offense to that now I want to actually redirect and reclaim. 

For those that have seen my art, I draw a lot of satyrs and fauns. I have bit of an attachment to them and other fae like creatures. I have made pair of satyr dolls (Santos and his mate Krysanthe which found loving homes when I raffled them off at Beltane) and I working on a third one and I have project in mine for a centaur doll. I don’t know when this attachment started or if this is a special interest but I’ve always filled my pages up with fauns and satyrs, dragon people, snake people and various kinds of nonhumans. I write about them and their lives in my stories as well. To me their lives are more interesting than any of the humans I write or draw. In some way I have appropriated my character’s nonhuman identities in regards to myself. I know that this is probably a response to the years of abuse and marginalization in which my humanness has been taken from me. As an autistic, I’ve been pretty much been swamped by the “changeling’ label and I’ve discussed ‘changeling culture ‘(the idea that our children has been taken by anthromorphed disabilities and we need to ‘free’ them from it) at length and frankly this isn’t a re-hashing of old news. In some way I took that label of ‘monster’ of ‘nonhuman’ and I embraced that metaphor. If I am not human to you, then a monster I’ll be. 

This is not to say that I am not human at all or that I don’t deserve to be treated like one. If there is an ongoing theme with my nonhuman characters, is that they don’t asked to be treated like a human, to subvert what makes them a merman, satyr, dragon folk or whatever. But rather for people to accept that difference, as valid as their humanness and that their satyrness isn’t something that needs to be tamed in order to live among human society but instead, for it be recognized that it’s ok. That it is alright to be something other than human. Granted, authors have been waxing identity politics with using fantasy races, aliens and robots or whatever, as a metaphor for race, gender, sexuality or…whatever. But in regards to that, I’ve noticed it’s always the human being the protagonist. He or she is face with the racism and oppression as someone that benefits from an unfair system and it’s about her or him realizing it and undoing it. It’s rarely about the nonhuman dealing with the unfair system and the expectations forced on him through it and when it is, there is the human acting as the audience avatar or translator. I never found that necessary really. I don’t need a normal person translating my autistic or transgender experiences to a cis or allistic person. This satyr doesn’t need to explain himself or why he does the things does, to you or anyone else. 

When I was working  on “Drinking the Styx, “ I wanted to make sure there were no humans in my story as part of the main cast that cast was going to satyrs and their experience didn’t need to be translated or explained away by humans or human sidekicks. I wanted to be clear that Hermes isn’t a human it’s one of the reasons I spent so long drawing him and his design. I wanted his eyes to be alien and strange, to be hard to relate to at first but eventually you see him with all of his satyrness, daddy issues and problems with mental illness. I shouldn’t have to soften him, maybe him less goatish for my readers. I don’t compromise. 

It’s the same reason I refuse to make Tikaani completely verbal, it’s the same reason I don’t always submit to the idea that I need to wear my ‘mask’ in order to be valued. I should be valued even when I am flapping, shrieking or talking to you plainly. My worth shouldn’t be based on how functional I am or how well I pass. Yet, it is. My identity as a ‘monster’ is measure how well I can hide my fangs, my horns, my long floppy ears any everything about me. It’s how well I can make eye contact, how well I speak, how articulate I can be, how well I can follow verbal cues (when I can’t process them very well) how well I can sacrifice myself for someone with little respect for my own needs. Those are things that people want from me, from others. 

When I do pass, I am seen as ‘over coming’ that I am ‘rising above’ something .  My disability mainly, no one actually realizes how much work it is and many autistics have explained this. But I want to continue to make it clear on how aggravating it is to pass, even when in spaces it’s ok to flap. Because in the end someone is going to see your fox tails and or goat eyes and jump twenty feet in the air and go “Wait! You’re not human!?”  I don’t see my disability as something to be compromised to make you feel better; I don’t see people being friends with a goat man like me, like it’s an act of charity. You’re not a better person for not starting at my horns or hooves. You don’t get good karma cookies for not mentioning that I am walking on my toes or chirping.

It’s being a decent human being, to a decent satyr.

 

Dreaming in Cerulean (Art Post)

I haven't done one of these in forever.

Saving Oneself

This is sort of a response post on a couple blog posts that I read recently.

Being disillusioned is rather painful. Nothing quite like having the wool over your eyes and rug pulled out from under you. For me that is what happened as an activist. I found out one day, I wasn’t as amazing I as I thought I was and out of frustration and disappointment, I lost myself in burn out and apathy. I guess this is a word of warning to my brothers and sisters who are disability activists. Fighting the fight for rights and inclusion, for equal status and for remaining human; it’s pretty much an uphill battle, and one that doesn’t seem to have a real outcome. So it’s why I felt like writing this, because I need to make something clear.

I am not a hero for being an activist. I didn’t go into this for heroics.

But I guess I need to explain why I went into activism and why burn out and being jaded can be so easy.

I guess what started as a venture in community turned out to be a romp through social-ethics and identity politics. I didn’t plan to be an activist, to write blog posts, to go to senators, to talk at summits to march at protests. It wasn’t in my purview. Yet I manage to do all those things and I loved it, because I had the image in my mind that I was boldly doing great things, for everyone, that I was changing the world. That I was…being a hero.  That my friend was the first step on the road of a cliff into the hell of burn-out.

First, I didn’t pace myself. I threw on more projects, I tacked on more lectures I talked to everyone educated everyone with no chance for myself to breath. I got tired easy, but I kept soldiering on. Because I told myself I was making a difference. I never knew I was burning the wick at both ends that I was getting more and more exhausted and overwhelmed and that protesting publicly was traumatic. I just kept working, kept trucking along with my normal job and drowned myself in policy and social-commentary. I kept thinking that progress was happening that I was doing a good thing.

But I wasn’t watching where I was going, and I burst into flames. Jaded cynicism and apathy seem to ooze out of wreckage that was me a year ago. I wrote about it on my blog, I commented on it and I left activism I was done with the verbal abuse from parents. I was done with the public backlash; I was done with ASAN abandoning my pale pagan ass out to dry. I just had it. So when the smoke cleared I was left with a pretty real result.

I wasn’t saving anyone, I wasn’t anyone’s hero. I was a train wreck that everyone watched burn.

You don’t go into activism to be a hero, you may change and impact people, you might start a chain of events that will eventually change a law or a social belief. But it never happens quickly and there is more dead-ends and road blocks than breakthroughs. You will find out that people that you loved and were loyal to you, will stab you in the back. You will find out that people you respected turn out to be monsters. You will go up hill and fall down like Sisyphus. Everything will become a pain, a chore and startling example of human hivemind and group think. You will start to hate it. Activism is often thankless and void of gratitude. But an activist knows this, and still presses on. It with this wisdom that I realized I am only a hero for myself. That I need to take care of my needs before everyone elses.  I have to see where I am in the scope of things, where I am going and if my goals match what I am trying to do with my life personally. I got to step back, and take care of myself before I burn again.

Now at round too, with disability activism, I am better prepared, I am not a hero for trying to get back on the saddle. Just a human being who wants more, who seeks the better of people, I don’t want to save anyone anymore. Just myself.  

Generation Fade

Generation Fade

I suppose as I sit and write this there is a moment where I wonder if this is going to be heard at all. Or largely ignored, maybe it doesn’t matter in the scheme of things, but to me I think it’s important that we read this and understand something. Critiquing something doesn’t mean you hate it. In fact it sometimes can be an act of love. This is not a protest or an ultimatum. This is my observations and what I think might be best for the Central Ohio/OSU chapter of ASAN.

It occurs to me now, why I feel so ignored by a bunch of privileged academics in offices making choices for the National branch. It is the same feeling I get when I am ignored by a population or excluded. It’s the feeling of alienation and for an organization that has been alienated and ignored by the greater typical population, it feels ironic.  This alienation comes from not following the party line. Not actively protesting against AutSpks, or having a taupe or grey ribbon. Makes you somehow invisible, if you don’t dump your resources into traumatic emotionally exhausting protests in which we feel like we have been eviscerated in front thousands of parents. This is what has being going on with ASAN Columbus and myself. We’re being divorced by National.

Our Lead said it last night “We’re already considered a rogue chapter” during the meeting we had last night. It’s pretty much true, we’re not following the party line and we have bigger and more pressing fish to catch. Like employment, and education and health resources. We have to worry about the next generation and what they are going to inherit when we become ash and bone. Do they want a protest group against AutSpks or an organization that will help them keep their heads above water? Most of us are drowning. Autistics are going hungry, they are getting abused by caregivers, locked in institutions, imprisoned, sexually assaulted, abandoned and they only thing we are doing to help our brothers and sisters, is protesting against a bigger organization with deeper pockets and more resources. We’re fighting against a kraken with a rowboat and no one seems to question it. 

I will say though before anyone judges me, that I am against AutSpks, I think it’s horrible, but I know better. You need to reach people one at a time; you need to educate, friends, family and coworkers. You can’t assume that your pamphlets and flyers are enough; you need to sit down with them and one at a time make them see the damage. We’re already seen by the majority as that ‘militant autism group’, we shouldn’t have that reputation. But we do. It’s that reputation is why I never came out as an activist to my coworkers until recently. I don’t want to make enemies. I still don’t, but I guess this will make few now. Might as well put on my pirate hat and charge forward. 

Now I have been personally slighted. I have worked with National to make tools for the majority of autistics out there. I enjoyed it and I was looking forward to the next project. So imagine my surprise when the next tool came out (which I saw on tumblr) and it was about a topic I had a lot of interested in. So I was hurt and in pain and angry about being excluded more so because the one in charge was Mel Yergue. So Brutus shoves the dagger a bit deeper. When I asked for an explanation on why on Facebook, I get no response, I call Em Titon and we have a heart to heart. Then she drops a bomb, ASAN did see my call-out. But they though it was a suicide message, she told me that they were going to have folks call or message me to make sure I was alright. She was the only that reached out to me. No one else did. I guess they were too busy protesting to care. It’s really sad and really angering at the same time. Because even if I did overdose on tequila and Percocet they probably wouldn’t have noticed my bloated rotting ass in the bathtub until some someone mentions it on Tumblr or Facebook. If I am lucky, you guys suck at ‘suicide watch’ bytheway. 

I don’t regret anything that I am writing; I don’t regret getting a target on my ass. I don’t care, because I don’t think anyone will notice or respond to me.  They haven’t so far so why would they start now. But I will say this to all the baby activists out there, just know what you want from your work; know what you hope to achieve. Don’t join a group thinking that they will always support you. Because when you don’t follow their modus operands they will throw you away. I am nothing to this group, I have been for five years, I don’t know what they want from me or what I can do, but at this point I am getting on my Viking longshot and braving new lands without the Jarl’s support.

One more thing, I am not ‘quitting’ ASAN, but at this rate it will be soon when I am done affiliating with them.

Looking at Monsters

The narrative I hear from trans* people the most is that they are often aware of their dysphoria at an early age. That they always knew that they were in the wrong body from the very start, sometimes I hear different narratives how they recognize their dysphoria later and then started transitioning. Or they always were aware but didn’t transition until much later. There are different reasons and different stories. Each unique as the person.

Mine doesn’t seem to follow the script though. I never been aware of my dysphoria, or saw it until a few years ago. It was muddled, mixed in with the feelings of alienation, isolation and othering I got as an autist. The feeling of being in the wrong body never was present, because my body was always a foreign thing to me. It was hard to understand the nature of it and recognize much of it. I guess this doesn’t make sense to some readers so let me try to clarify. 

I never noticed I had gait problems until someone actually pointed out, I never felt the dysphoria of my period because barely noticed it. I never notice that I was hungry or that I was suffering exhaustion until I was older and even now I still have trouble feeling hungry. Or thirsty, the only thing that I am pretty aware of was the need to pee and only that because it was drilled into me through toilet training. So I was made to recognize that feeling. The others come and go and sometimes I am aware of it, sometimes I am not. It’s hit and miss.

Because that, my dysphoria was incredibly hard to pin point. It was like an angry ghost that haunts me only when my back is turn. I never saw its face. As a child, I grew up being presented as female and I identified it as such growing up. It was a combination of lack of body awareness and being socially blindsided. I did stereotypical female things not because I wanted too, but because I was conditioned too. It was expected of me to wear dresses, to wear make-up and to be interested in boys. Most of those were genuine interests but they were also mixed into the idea that I had to follow through with them because of social obligations. One of the reasons I had a hard time understanding my feelings towards girls I had a crush on, is because I was conditioned to reject these feelings. My therapists didn’t help with that either and it took me years to see that I was in love with one of my best friends. It took me years to unlearn idea that I was obligated to act ‘female’ and present as one. It took me longer to re-understand gender and what gender meant. I think as a small child, I saw myself not as boy or a girl, but rather agender. I was adaptive to whatever social function was there. I played with trucks and dolls and blocks and tea cups. Everything was the same and I was not interested in people as so much the things. I didn’t care about looking ‘pretty’ or looking ‘tomboyish’ I wasn’t aware of looks at all until I was actually in my late teens. So even though I bonded with girls and identified with them, I did the same with the Sander boys and my friends in Kindergarten. I was a girl, I was a boy, I was both and I was neither. Gender, was a nothing word. Still though, despite being agender (sort of) I found myself more drawn to being a boy and that desire. I wanted to be a boy, I should have been a boy and so the first heartbeat of dysphoria emerged. It was squashed however through my parents and through the idea, that because of my sex I have to be of that gender. 

So as puberty emerged I found myself looking at gender. I went with what I was told to go with. I was a girl I was female. But for some reason at fifteen, that wasn’t fitting right. I ignored it as that feeling of ‘other’ was probably something else and at that age I found the Otherkin community and I latched on to it. It was there I probably reattached my frustration of something is wrong onto the idea that I was a therian or and animal trapped in a person’s body. It sounded delusional, but for some reason it made sense. I think it was first attempt to ignore my dysphoria or rationalize it. It got worse and worse as I got older and fell in love with women and men, to start loathing my breasts and hating my period every month. I was told this was typical, but in my heart this wasn’t normal. At that time, I was dealing with not just my body, but the fact I was neuroatypical and battled with that more than my body. My neurodivergence was a more present thing for me, I barely registered my body most of the time and I never saw the problems I had with it. The monster of gender dysphoria lurked behind my back, and glowered in the closet of my mind. I never opened the door.

 Not until I was 19.When I reached adulthood and gained enough research I actually started to realize that feelings of alienation weren’t just because I was autistic, but gender dysphoria. When I found the term ‘bigender’ I went with it. I started identifying as queer too, because I started to realize I liked girls and boys. But I was using bigender as mask, it wasn’t right label. But I hated the idea that I was trans*. It was a combo of internalize transphobia and the feeling of being alienated again. I was autistic and I suffered enough bullshit because of it. I didn’t want round too. So I ignored the monster in the closet, I paid no attention to the heavy breathing or the growling. At that time I tried to force myself to be more ‘female’. Because I didn’t want to admit that the bigender label wasn’t working. My marriage was failing I wanted to be loved and more and more, the monster roared and screamed. It wasn’t until I wasn’t until recently that the monster threw itself out and dragged me into the dark. In tears and anger at my ex-boyfriend I admitted I was transgender. It hurt like a son of a bitch. 

Now in transition, I recognize the dysphoria and I am starting to fix it. Looking back I noticed the symptoms much like my autism. I saw it in the shadows of my childhood. But years of not knowing my body, or recognizing it, had made my dysphoria a ghost and intangibility. It was hard to deal with it and hard to see it and now that I have, I now feel the anger and pain with my body that I’ve had but ignored. My periods are dysphoric, my breasts are dysphoric and lately vaginal sex is slowly being dysphoric.  Body awareness is a hard thing for an autist, but for me it was vital for me to see my gender problems and I feel it was the root of why it took me a long time to start transitioning and recognize I was trans* 

Maybe other transgender autists might have the same story.