All it means when people say “you’re speaking from a place of privilege” is that you’re likely to underestimate how bad the problem is by default because you are never personally exposed to that problem. It’s not a moral judgement of how difficult your life is.
^^^^^^ read it. say it out loud. keep repeating it until you understand.
back when i was in second grade, my elementary school organised a school market with every class selling their crafts for charity. the contribution of my class were hand-sized ceramic frogs we made in art class. each one of us made one of them to be sold for five euros a piece (this is important later). the quality of the frog i made varies drastically based on who is telling the story, and for reasons that will become very apparent later there is no way to check, but i stand by the fact that it was average looking, if a bit wonky.
the day of the market arrived, and all frogs were bought within minutes, snatched up by enthusiastic and proud parents. all except - mine. because my mother hates spending money on unnecessary things, and she hates children’s crafts even more. so she - loudly and vehemently - refused, in her thick eastern european accent, to “spend five euros on an ugly frog”.
i will never forget seeing my ceramic frog alone on the slightly wet cardboard, surrounded by the imprints left behind by the already sold frogs. all the while other parents are getting more and more agitated, trying to get my mother to put the frog out of its misery. eventually, she budged, and spend five euros on a wonky frog. she was absolutely furious about this.
so furious, in fact, that when we came home to where my father was remodelling the kitchen, she WALLED IT IN. that’s right. she cask of amadillo’d that poor ceramic fool. put him into the open wall and slapped concrete over it faster than my poor seven year old self or my dad could protest. out of pure anger over loosing five euros. and that’s where it remains, until this day.
my mom hates when this story is brought up, which is why we bring it up all the time. she also thinks she what she did was right, because “do the other parents know where the frog is? no. only your creation is safe. because i love you.” morally, i would disagree, but on a pure factual basis, she has a point.
i made her another ceramic frog for her last brithday, which was not buried like some pharaoh, and everytime guests compliment it my brother loudly goes “oh you should see the other frog he made” and when they ask to see it, he points at the wall. this is hilarious to him and infuriating for my mother. and that’s the frog story.
people in the notes are strongly divided on whether this is tragic or hilarious. well let me tell you a secret. it is both. all the best stories are
You know… I had an experience about two months ago that I didn’t talk about publicly, but I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind lately and I guess I’m finally able to put my unease into words.
So there’s a podcast I’d been enjoying and right after I got caught up, they announced that they were planning on doing a live show. It’s gonna be near me and on the day before my birthday and I thought – hey, it’s fate.
But… as many of you know, I’m disabled. For me, getting to a show like that has a lot of steps. One of those steps involved emailing the podcasters to ask about accessibility for the venue.
The response I got back was very quick and very brief. Essentially, it told me to contact the venue because they had no idea if it was accessible or not.
It was a bucket of cold water, and I had a hard time articulating at the time quite why it was so disheartening, but… I think I get it a little more now.
This is a podcast that has loudly spoken about inclusivity and diversity and all that jazz, but… I mean, it’s easy to say that, isn’t it? But just talking the talk without walking the walk isn’t enough. That’s like saying “sure, we will happily welcome you in our house – if you can figure out how to unlock the door.”
And friends, my lock-picking set is pretty good by this point. I’ve been scouting out locations for decades. I’ve had to research every goddamn classroom, field trip, and assigned bookstore that I’ve ever had in an academic setting. I’ve had to research every movie theater, theme park, and menu for every outing with friends or dates. I spend a long time painstakingly charting out accessible public transportation and potential places to sit down every time I leave the house.
Because when I was in college, my professors never made sure their lesson plans were accessible. (And I often had to argue with them to get the subpar accommodations I got.) Because my friends don’t always know to get movie tickets for the accessible rows. Because my dates sometimes leave me on fucking read when I ask if we can go to a restaurant that doesn’t keep its restrooms down a flight of stairs.
I had one professor who ever did research to see if I could do all the coursework she had planned, and who came up with alternate plans when she realized that I could not. Only one. It was a medical history and ethics class, and my professor sounded bewildered as she realized how difficult it is to plan your life when you’re disabled.
This woman was straight-up one of the most thoughtful, philosophical, and ethical professors I’ve ever had, one who was incredibly devoted to diversity and inclusion – and she’d never thought about it before, that the hospital archives she wanted us to visit were up a flight of stairs. That the medical museum full of disabled bodies she wanted us to visit only had a code-locked back entrance and an old freight elevator for their disabled guests who were still breathing.
And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? It’s easy to theoretically accept the existence of people who aren’t like you. It’s a lot harder to actively create a space in which they can exist by your side.
Because here’s what I did before I contacted the podcasters. I googled the venue. I researched the neighborhood and contacted a friend who lives in the area to help me figure out if there were any accessible public transportation routes near there. (There aren’t.) I planned for over an hour to figure out how close I could get before I had to shell out for an uber for the last leg of the trip.
Then I read through the venue’s website. I looked through their main pages, through their FAQs to see if there was any mention of accessibility. No dice. I download their packet for clients and find out that, while the base building is accessible, the way that chairs/tables are set up for individual functions can make it inaccessible. So it’s really up to who’s hosting the show there.
So then and only then I contacted the podcasters. I asked if the floor plan was accessible. I asked if all the seats were accessible, or only some, and whether it was open seating or not. Would I need to show up early to get an accessible seat, or maybe make a reservation?
And… well, I got the one-sentence reply back that I described above. And that… god, it was really disheartening. I realized that they never even asked if their venues were accessible when they were booking the shows. I realized that they were unwilling to put in the work to learn the answers to questions that disabled attendees might have. I realized that they didn’t care to find out if the building was accessible.
They didn’t know and they didn’t care. That, I think, is what took the wind out of my sails when they emailed me back. It’s what made me decide that… yeah, I didn’t really want to go through the trouble of finding an accessible route to the venue. I didn’t want to have to pay an arm and a leg to hire a car to take me the last part of the journey. I didn’t want to make myself frantic trying to figure out if I could do all that and still make the last train home.
If they didn’t care, I guess I didn’t either.
If they’d apologized and said that the only venue they could get was inaccessible, I actually would have understood. I know that small shows don’t always get their pick of venues. I get it. I even would have understood if they’d been like “oh dang, I actually don’t know – but I’ll find out.”
But to be told that they didn’t know and didn’t intend to find out… oof. That one stung.
Because…. this is the thing. This is the thing. I may be good at it by now, but I’m so tired of picking locks. I’m tired of doing all the legwork because no one ever thinks to help me. I’m tired of feeling like an afterthought at best, or at worst utterly unwelcome.
If you truly want to be inclusive, you need to stop telling people that you’re happy to have them – if they can manage to unlock the door. You need to fucking open it yourself and welcome them in.
What brought all this back to me now, you may be asking? Well… I guess it’s just what I was thinking to myself as I was tidying up my phone.
I use this with my hospice patients a lot. Because “is there anything I can do to help?” rarely gets a response. But, “I’ll be here till 6:30 and would like to do one thing to make your room more comfortable before I head out” frequently does get an answer. Often something they deem “too small to bug anyone with” like closing the blinds so there’s no reflection on the tv, or repositioning their socks because the heels have wandered into the front and are uncomfortable, or they want ice cream before dinner today, or getting an extra blanket.
What’s going to make you happy right now? Is it some cake? Is it a nap? Is it calling your mom? Is it going on a drive and blasting music? Is it taking a bath? Is it reading a book?
Check in with yourself because you deserve that happiness, whatever it is.
I also use this on myself. What’s one thing I could do to make my environment more comfortable right now? Does it cure my mental illness? Hell no! Does it make me feel more in control of my feelings and the world around me? You betcha!
I’m going to try to apply this to my current situation, since right now things feel very out of control. Thanks!
Duolingo has a home screen widget now so I was like sure why not.
So I didn’t notice until late in the day yesterday so that’s why the streak numbers are different… but the longer you go through the day without practicing the Duolingo owl gets more distressed
All it means when people say “you’re speaking from a place of privilege” is that you’re likely to underestimate how bad the problem is by default because you are never personally exposed to that problem. It’s not a moral judgement of how difficult your life is.
^^^^^^ read it. say it out loud. keep repeating it until you understand.
ALT
