This course journey has been really eye opening to how much disability and non-disability impact my life and the lives of others. After watching Crip Camp, I wrote in my journal about how I wish I had been taught about this historical event when I was younger, when my history classes went over civil rights movements. I think this digs into why a part of this course has been bittersweet to me. Because if I hadn’t taken this course I likely would have never learned about the history of disability and the impact it makes on the rest of society – despite most of my family and even myself having out own disabilities. However, I’m also really happy to have been able to see so much pride and community regarding disability. The film Sins Invalid was really special to me. I wrote about how seeing artistic expression of disability, and the behind the scenes of such creative works, was really powerful and beautiful.
A reading that really stood out to me was the one on Disability and Mythology. I wrote about how Daredevil is supposed to be disabled, but he “makes up for his disability” by being able to sense people more accurately than a person with sight. I think this notion of making up for something could be seen in so many other aspects of the world. How people value others is a really odd thing, and I think it ties into the concept of normalcy and the normal experience. Overall, looking closely at disability, and going so in depth on one topic, has been really captivating and I feel really well versed in this topic. My main goal at the start of this class was to learn how to better represent disabled people in writing, seeing as I want to go on to jobs using creative writing, and I think this class has helped me extraordinarily in preparing for that, but it has also opened my eyes to a whole new academic world, and social and cultural world as well.
For some reason I can’t forget what Lily said during an early class discussion on accommodation; that people lack accommodations not because people don’t care, but because there are so many different types of people that have to be accommodated, and that it takes time to hear from everyone. I feel like this is a positive notion that I want to keep moving forward. That people really do want to help disabled people. I think this type of thinking brings hope for the future.
In this project I look at online space, the rhetoric of memes, its connection to disability, and the way that comedy relates to all of these topics. For a baseline I did a lot of research in online spaces, from blog posts on tumblr to tweets and comments from both twitter and instagram. A troubling thing about the internet and my collection of sources is that so many things are chares across platforms, and it could be almost impossible to find who was the original creator of the image or phrase. I discuss this more in-depth later in this project, but did include the usernames of the people I was able to find that did create the original image. Many of the things I discuss come from my own observations from looking at the internet and disability communities online, especially with the knowledge and skills I attained through this class. Looking at online space through the lens of disability has been a very eye opening experiance for me, and looking more into the way that knowledge and rhetoric come into being within these communities has been a really fascinating and introspective exercise for me.
Memology and the Complexity of Online Space
Rhetoric online is very diverse, and for the untrained mind might even be indecipherable. There are many etiquettes and rules to follow, mostly safety procedures put in place to protect users anonymity. However, in recent years these unspoken rules have grown less common, with a sort of emphasis on commodifying the self taking more focus in online communities. This is in part due to the rise in online influencers who occupy the space between celebrities and everyday creative people, and in part due to consumerism and an emphasis on the self being profitable and marketable (Keeping in mind this also runs through a more individualized westernized online experience). This is one reason why we see a lot of changes in online crip space, and why it matters where these spaces are. The medium of social media changes depending on which platform you are occupying. Twitter is oriented towards short, bite-sized posts, and much like Instagram and Facebook as well, popularity, or the big numbers, are mostly status-based. And sites such as TikTok, Reddit, Tumblr and parts of Youtube, are merit-based, which is to say engaging with an audience is going to be favored. This further ties into the commodification of the self, which is further encouraged by such sites which allow for the audience to further engage with the people behind the screens. Additionally, there appears to be a sort od distortion occurring socially regarding the society’s mentality about the body and mind. But what if you aren’t looking for the big numbers? This is what a majority of social media users experience, so we see smaller communities’ creating rhetoric on these apps as well. All of this context is important to keep in mind because it does influence the rhetoric of the sites.
For the sake of this project, I want to focus on the length and depth of rhetoric on social media, and how this fosters communities online. I went into this project thinking that the length of discussion usually mirrors its nuance, so it is unlikely to see very complex experiences captured in short-hand, brief posts. However, after reading more into the origin of memes and their connection to genes and evolution and knowledge, I have realized that they are absolute goldmines for rhetoric.
The similarities between genes and memes are ever-present, in that they both want to survive and multiply. And while genes produce this to a biological level, memes so this on a cultural one. Memes rely on complex online contexts, some of which span decades, and it is through this collective knowledge that people online are able to create new meaning in the form of new meme formats or altering and mixing other meme formats. Thus, you get something a bit like this:
[a figure with a snake image on its head gestures to a stock image of a boot, below it instead of subtitles is the image of a man’s face, captioned “It’s free real estate”]
This is an example of a meme that uses the collective rhetoric of memes to create new meaning. The base of this image is the pigeon man meme, where the man points at a butterfly and asks, “Is this a pidgeon”, however, this format is being used to convey the phrase, “Theres a snake in my boot.”, where the snake takes on the rhetorical contextual position of the man and gestures to an image of a boot. This is given further complexity by using the “It’s free real estate” meme, which takes the place of the caption of the meme. Thus, the viewer could derive from this image that the snake is asking to the boot, “Is this free real estate?”. This meaning is only achievable through a lot of context that the viewer may or may not have. It is built on the online cultural knowledge that pre-dates the creation of this specific meme, and it is through the collective knowledge of people online that this rhetoric is able to take shape. The people who may know the meaning behind such an image are specifically people who have spent time online, to the outside viewer this is a picture of utter nonsense with no meaning.
It is this shared knowledge that people are able to decipher and derive meaning. I am going to analyze more memes from the disabled community to show how rhetoric is created online using memes in the disabled community.
[An animated man points to his side, followed by many repeated images of himself glitching, the caption also glitches with him, making the words, “Is this aaaaaaaaaaaa”]
This meme, captioned by “brain fog be like”, uses the base knowledge of the meme format we saw earlier, and uses editing of the original template to communicate something similar to the experience of brain fog. The meme repeats the image of man and the caption much like a windows error page, which to some users is a perfect example of explaining what brain fog feels like. The original image was likely found online by user chronicpainlife on tumblr, where they reposted it with their own caption to recontextualize it and give it new meaning.
Much of the images we see online are posted and reposted on nearly every other social media site out there. There are countless tumblr images on twitter, twitter images on reddit, and reddit comments posted to instagram, this is a side effect of the wild nature of social media. Much like graffiti art, online memes are usually open source, in that anyone could come along and change it and adapt it to their own liking. It is also common to see people steal images, repost images, and for people to communicate that the original post is not theirs. It is less common to see people online claim to own something that is not theirs, often because it is hard online to get away with such things, but also because it has become normalized for rhetoric online to be dumped into the shared pool of the online space. Which may seem to contradict what I said earlier about commodifying the self online, but in online space there is a nuanced and fluid movement to the expectations of when a person should show themselves to the world, and when someone is expected to only show their art and not the person behind it. This is likely a result of so many different types of people being a part of a community. This topic however also brings me to my next meme:
[A scene from the movie Up, the old man gives the scout a badge, the old man is labeled “me”, the child is “character I like” and the caption is “I would like to award you the highest honor I can bestow”, the badge is labeled “autism headcanons”]
This meme uses the format from the movie Up, where the rhetor draws emphasis on their pride for their identity by giving it as a badge to the “character I like”. I find this format to be particularly bittersweet because it touches on the pride of a character being disabled, but also draws attention to the lack of good representation in the media for disabled people. Headcanons are personal, there is no expectation for people to see it as the truth, or canon, of a piece of media. However there are often times where a headcanon becomes so popular that they become more widely accepted among a community. The rhetoric of a piece of media changes via the audience, which before the internet it would have been very difficult to have reached the scale it could reach now. Oftentimes these sorts of headcanons arise because people don’t see themselves represented in the media they consume, or they see the writer’s subtext and decide to bring it to the forefront. Perhaps a character demonstrates characteristics of an autistic person, but it is never outright said that they’re autistic, or perhaps it is heavily implied but the word is never used. This leaves a gap for the actual community to fill, that people on the outside might not fully recognize and see. While it seems fairly agreed on that there needs to be actual disabled people in media for everyone to see, it is unfortunately a rarity to actually find, so I have seen several posts in these online disabled communities talk about the joy they feel from seeing themselves in a character, while also feeling the loss of being cheated out of representation.
[two spidermen point at eachother, captioned “when you spend hours researching adhd because you’re adhd made you hyperfocus on adhd”]
While we touch on the theme of disability pride in memes, we also should look at the theme of relatability. Often online memes are used for comedic purposes, and this comedy comes in many forms. We have seen examples already of comedy that comes from unique formatting and relatability and also that comes from pride, and the pursuit of representation even at the price of altering the very piece of media that you love. This meme is an example of comedy found through relatability, which in the online disabled community is most often aimed at the audience of other disabled people. This meme uses the spiderman pointing meme template., where rhatroically the audience could either be shown two things that seem different but are infact similar, or they could derive rhetorically that the two topics represented by the spidermen pointing are perpetuating one another’s being. It delves into the cyctlical loop that alternate realities and clones themtaically touch on. This latter rhetoric is used in this meme, which becomes more clear through the caption. The “when u” is used often online and is a indicator that this meme is effective more through its relatability, instead of lets say shock value, inside humor or cringe comedy (there are far more types of comedy but there are the more common types seen in memes).
[a cartoon person reaches out to a ball labeled, “motivational memes”, behind them in the second panel a blob creature wraps its arms around them, it is labeled “ableism”]
It is difficult to look at disability memes and not talk about the theme of ablism, and dealing with ablism. The theme makes a lot of sense, making fun of people who harm you or perpetuate harm onto you or your community is both a way to reclaim power back from ablists, and to communicate what is and isn’t ablist in the first place. Often times memes could be a basis for complex discussion. Through my research is because very clear to me when joining a new online community what are the common things or phrases that people have to deal with, and what they would prefer instead. Often times it becomes laughably ridiculous to see how many people have been told the exact same things by different people, then I began to realize that this was probably a result of the previous cultural basis that people built their predjudices upon. This meme is one example of this taking effect. It uses a two frame online comic format to show the hope a person feel in receiving or pursuing a seemingly positive thing, then the dread that comes in realizing that a negative things is either attached or disguised by said positive thing. This image‘s referance to “motivational memes” could be several things. From what I’ve found in online communities, it could either be referring to motivational posts that promote societal views on productivity that align with constantly being available to exceed in your work, or it is eferring to motivational videos that show disabled people exceling in something that “makes up” for their disability. Both of these are harmful for the disability community and being able to joke around the negative feeling’s such concepts invoke provide a sort of comfort in the relatability of disagreeing with such concepts.
[A man looks at a burger and smiles, the man is labeled, “able bodies people in desperate need of motivation”, the burger is labeled, “disabled people”]
This meme is a specific example of the latter motivational meme that I explained previously. The captioning of this image is very specific in the ablism that it is poking fun of. This format is more ambiguous however. The man looking at the burger could be assumed to be overjoyed at a very messy food, or it could invoking the image of hunger and commodity that “able bodied people” point towards disabled people in their need to feel motivated. The image is more open to interpretation, but it also uses a similar rhetorical format to many other templates.
[two women cry, point and appear to be yelling at a smug and angry cat, the women are labeled “put your hearing aids on!” and the cat is labeled “you’re not worth the batteries”]
This final meme deals with themes of ablism, but also unlike the last two images we’ve observed bites back directly to the ablists. Here the rhetor uses the salad cat meme format, which depicts two women yelling angrily at a cat sneering back. The cat could seem prideful, unremorsful, and unwavered in the face of being yelled back. The image itself depicts a rather ridiculous situation, and the captions are used to show the argument between the ablist and the disabled person. I am confident in saying that this meme depicts with both ablism and pride. The two women are almost always demonstrating panic, anger and foolishness, but the cat often is used to represent a variety of attitudes. Sometimes the cat is used to communicate facts, sometimes its anger or exhaustion. The cat’s emotions are usually interpreted through the context of the caption. And in this example, it protests against the idea that people with hearing aids always need to have them on, for the sake of making nondisabled people’s lives easier, something that people with hearing aids do not owe to anyone. This meme also in a way separates the prosthetic, or the accommodation, from the person. Where the first panel implies that hearing aids are something the person cannot part with, that it is necessary for their existence, the second makes the distinction that it is simply an electronic divide. Rather than explaining that the person does not want to engage with you, the second panel draws attention to the batteries instead of the ability to hear more.
We’ve looked at lot at the rhetoric of disability memes, but what impact do these have within the disability community online? When it comes to the disabled community online, there is an expansive amount of information to be found. Within my research I have found two spheres of communities in these spaces. There are a lot of posts that are informational, that are more oriented towards non-disabled people, or people who are new to the online community. They could be helpful to newly-disabled people or people who need information on how to support their disabled friends. The second sphere is more focused towards people in the community. It is founded on the basis that the information found in the first sphere is already known fairly in depth. This foundation is used to have more nuanced discussions, share more specific experiences, and where a lot of the memes are found. For instance, the migraine memes use words like, “brain fog” and autism memes discuss “masking” without feeling the need to explain these words because it is expected of the audience to already be familiar with these terms — usually the audience is people within these communities. There is a generalized knowledge based on common experiences that is used to create relatability and quickly convey a lot of rhetoric. It is the context of this rhetoric that allows it to take shape.
There is a distinction to be made between yourself in the physical world, the “irl-self”, and the online-self. The anonymity that comes with being online, coupled with its more accessible nature, makes online crip space something very fascinating to consider. Social media is accessible from anywhere with the internet, so long as you have a phone or computer, which makes it especially quick and easy to access. It also is a unique space in how it is usually optional to interact with. While not always, jobs and school might require you to be plugged into a device, social media sites and entertainment are something people are able to walk away from, which unlike inaccessible physical spaces, or kyrotic spaces, is an advantage that online spaces provide. However, some downsides are notable. Lighting of screens could be especially harsh and things like eyestrain and flashing lights are still things people have to look out for. It is not a perfect, all accommodating space, and often the experience of being online is influenced by what people and sites you interact with. Disabled people will still see ablism online, but also will be able to connect with a wide community of people with similar experiences to them. Additionally the rhetoric found online is extremely unique, and heavily relies on the shared knowledge of people that already exist online, so it could be difficult for outsiders to get a grasp of what information is being communicated and why. I think that the shared cultural knowledge however allows for very fun ways to connect with people, and while the speed and complexity of being online could become overwhelming, there is a comfort to being able to turn off your device and step out of that space should you need to.
My work here is mostly just the beginning structure of my analysis and essay, so not everything is gonna be well structured yet.
[Insert Introduction here]
Rhetoric online is very diverse, and for the untrained mind might even be indecipherable. There are many etiquettes and rules to follow, mostly safety procedures put in place to protect users anonymity. However, in recent years these unspoken rules have grown less common, with a sort of emphasis on commodifying the self taking more focus in online communities. This is in part due to the rise in online influencers who occupy the space between celebrities and everyday creative people, and in part due to consumerism and the advertising and emphasis on the self being profitable and marketable (Keeping in mind this also runs through a more individualized westernized online experience). This is one reason why we see a lot of changes in online crip space, and why where these spaces take place matter. The medium of social media changes depending on which platform you are occupying. Twitter is oriented towards short, bite-sized posts, and much like Instagram and Facebook as well, popularity, or the big numbers, are mostly status-based. And sites such as TikTok, Reddit, Tumblr and parts of Youtube, are merit-based, which is to say engaging with an audience is going to be favored. This further ties into the commodification of the self, which is further encouraged by such sites which allow for the audience to further engage with the people behind the screens. But what if you aren’t looking for the big numbers? This is what a majority of social media users experience, so we see smaller communities’ creative rhetoric on these apps as well. All of this context is important to keep in mind because it does influence the rhetoric of the sites.
For the sake of this project, I want to focus on the length and depth of rhetoric on social media, and how this fosters communities online. I went into this project thinking that the length of discussion usually mirrors its nuance, so it is unlikely to see very complex experiences captured in short-hand, brief posts. However, after reading more into the origin of memes and their connection to genes and evolution and knowledge, I have realized that they are absolute goldmines for rhetoric.
The similarities between genes and memes are ever-present, in that they both want to survive and multiply, which genes take this to a biological level, and memes a cultural one. Memes rely on complex online contexts, some of which span decades, and it is through this collective knowledge that people online are able to create new meaning in the form of new meme formats or altering and mixing other meme formats. You get something a bit like this:
[Analyse the meme yeehaw]
It is this shared knowledge that people are able to decipher and derive meaning. This meme, captioned by “brain fog be like”, uses this base knowledge of the meme
When it comes to the disabled community online, there is an expansive amount of information to be found. Within my research I have found two spheres of communities in these spaces. There are a lot of posts that are informational, that are more oriented towards non-disabled people, or people who are new to the online community. They could be helpful to newly-disabled people or people who need information on how to support their disabled friends. The second sphere is more focused towards people in the community. It is founded on the basis that the information found in the first sphere is already known fairly in depth. This foundation is used to have more nuanced discussions, share more specific experiences, and where a lot of the memes are found. For instance, the migraine memes use words like, “brain fog” and autism memes discuss “masking” without feeling the need to explain these words because it is expected of the audience to already be familiar with these terms — usually the audience is people within these communities. There is a generalized knowledge based on common experiences that is used to create relatability and quickly convey a lot of rhetoric. It is the context of this rhetoric that allows it to take shape.
There is a distinction to be made between yourself in the physical world, the “irl-self”, and the online-self. The anonymity that comes with being online, coupled with its more accessible nature, makes online crip space something very fascinating to consider. Social media is accessible from anywhere with the internet, so long as you have a phone or computer, which makes it especially easy to access. However, some downsides are notable. Lighting of screens could be especially harsh and things like eyestrain and flashing lights are still things people have to look out for. When it comes to crip space, [insert research with sources]
I found more memes on the internet and would like to analyse them as a class together. I’ll be showing them on the board too:
“Found a meme page for my disability and I have never in my life felt more validated and comforted by the fact that my experiences are shared by others who are like me and we can laugh about these things together because they get it.” – shiphappen-s, tumblr
To analyse how disabled people have established communities online, crip space online and how it functions, its benefits and limitations, how comedy and the relatability of memes are used to foster unity and even spread information.
To what extent have memes within online spaces help foster disabled communities?
I want to think about online crip space, online disability communities and the thought process behind comedy and memes, and how this is used to create rhetoric. I personally will be going through the process of making memes myself to better understand how they are made and I will also use examples of other memes made by the community. I will analyze their rhetoric and also the general community and the role that online space has in influencing how we think and talk about disability.
Product design
Digital design with collage of images interlaces with analysis (maybe consider making a video essay?)
Use several sources, both primary and secondary. Scholarly and non-scholarly.
Examples of actual online rhetoric by and from these spaces.
For a text-imaged based project:
Start with an introduction, general information, and use memes when supporting a certain topic.
Analysis is more focused on the online space and communities and less the memes, maybe also dig into how comedy is used to foster community
Or:
Start with the memes then explain their rhetoric, use further in-depth analysis of their meaning to transition into the more scholarly stuff
Analysis is more focused on comedy and art, shared knowledge and community
Try to connect memes and evolution to disability and “normalcy”
For if I want to do a video essay
The writing would be more casual, or at least hold more of my speaking voice and less my academic voice.
I would need to use a lot more images and footage.
Start with an attention grabbing intro, then analysis of memes and finish with a “so-what?” or what they do for online spaces, and why this is important for disabled people.
I have no idea how long it would actually be.
Production plan
Read parts of “Bending over Backwards” first
Then look into information about the actual communities, what is the general vibe of subreddits, tumblr posts, tweets, etc.
Look for memes: I want to look at chronic pain, migraine and insomnia memes first.
Then look into bigger communities, like the autistic community (look into #actually autistic on tumblr).
Have the memes by second meeting, or at least some examples
Have a rough draft by the 29th.
If I do a video essay, I need to find footage for the visuals, then record the commentary. I also don’t know how many words would make a minute, this depends on how fast I talk, how I edit the video, what pauses I make, etc.
Consultation
I’m okay with meeting at the week already planned to have the second and third meetings. The source “Bending Over Backwards” is going to be very helpful for me, and any other sources about online crip space and online disability community would also be really helpful.
I don’t know how to cite social media posts, if you could maybe get me a guide to how to do that, that would be really helpful.
Citations
“Bending over Backwards” by Lennard J. Davis
“Access Imagined: The Construction of Disability in Conference Policy Documents” by Margaret Price
“Celebrating Crip Bodyminds” by Cobett Joan O’Toole (they/them)
Crip Camp was released in January of 2020, and features footage of campers in 1971, and the disability rights movement in 1973. I bring this up because of the major historical richness this film possesses. This film’s most prominent focus is on community. The hardships these people faced in their everyday lives was relieved during their visit to Camp Jened in 1971, and it is through the bonds formed there, and the accommodation and social environment of that space that the people there realized that they no longer wanted to be “in a world that wasn’t made for me”. They banded together in 1973 and protested for the passing of the 504 plan, which was being jeopardized at the time as people discussed if it was really necessary.
So much of the value in this film lies in how personal story — and even footage — is used to cast a more in-depth light on the history of disability. All too often disability rights and disabled people are written out of history. But here we see their role up close. The footage from Camp Jened in 1971 is literally shot from the perspective of campers. We see the intimate lives of the campers, their physical needs, their discussions, their fun camp activities. Very quickly the audience could tell that people were happy and free at the camp. The narration also emphasises how different it was from the “outside world”, how disability was not an irregularity or something to be mocked, shunned or stared at, it was normal, expected, and there was an overwhelming amount of understanding in such a place. This contrasts with the fight they must undertake two years later, as they protest for the 504 plan. However, we still see that same sort of community unity during these protests. Everyone’s needs are considered, and people care for one another. There is compraderie in people planning what to say, making places to sleep, delivering food, fasting, heating and electricity, all sorts of specific conditions for living that everyone must be considered when making these decisions. It was a smaller protest, and a very personal one. This personalized account of such a historical event — especially an event that was avoiding publicity and has been for the most part less known outside of the disabled community — really makes the audience (particularly a nondisabled audience) quickly understand the importance of such protests.
One quote that stood out a lot to me was, “The problem was not with disabled people, the problem was with nondisabled people.” My keyword reading was on ableism, although it was titled “ability”, it discusses how the term “ability” came to be what we now know it as today. It seemed to start as a measurement of what a person was able to do, and usually was legally used to benefit men who owned property. To not “be able” was to be disabled, and to have less value socially. This disabled term was applied to pretty much everyone other than property owning men. This would later evolve into being applied specifically to bodies that were given less value because they were not able to produce as much profit. I go more in-depth for how this is messed up in my keywords RAB, but I think in relation to Crip Camp a lot of similarities could be drawn. The general concept of a body being valued as “lesser”, of a person’s presence and their necessary accommodations that would be needed, is explored a lot in Crip Camp. There is a lot of contrast to how people’s lives were before the 504 plan was passed, and before, and the change between the historical footage and today are impossible to ignore.
There is a lot of value to this video being shown in class to high schoolers. Not only does it open students up to unique perspectives, some of which nondisabled students in your class may not have known about, but it also provides an important historical context to American history, one that is often overlooked or only briefly touched upon. This in-depth telling of history by the actual people who lived and experienced it is also extremely valuable, it is in a way timeless. I mean timeless in that it is extremely valuable to have a historical documentary that includes the actual people that lived through such events. Years from now, people will be able to hear the thoughts and insight of the actual protesters and campers. I think that’s really valuable.
Some notable quotes:
“The problem was not with disabled people, the problem was with nondisabled people.”
“I was in a world that wasn’t made for me.”
“I don’t think I felt shame for my disability. What I really felt was discussion.”
“Schools and even hospitals didn’t want to spend the money to make their buildings accessible.”
“We Can’t Go Back” is a statement that Ricardo Thornton made in front of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. He starts off by explaining his own personal history with institutions for people with mental disabilities, and he goes on to focus his argument onto the detriment that this standard created. He explains that people wouldn’t treat him with respect, people believed that he would never have a life worth living, how people prevented him from living his own independent life, and controlled him. He then goes on to explain how, upon leaving the institution, he still faced similar issues in group homes, but that over time, with support from his community, he was able to learn and gain independence and reclaim his own life. He now lives with his wife Donna, who he also met in a group home, and they have a son, who also has grandkids. They are both financially stable and have had successful careers, but that is only through the support he received from his community and the tools that he was given to find this success, that he was able to achieve any of this. He ends the statement with a call to end institutions, and to support disabled people by protecting them from such places.
Quotes:
“I’ve seen people with severe disabilities who have grown and accomplished great things given the right support.” (Thornton 87)
“The time needs to be over for people to be sent to institutions because there aren’t opportunities in the community or because people think it’s cheaper or more protected.” (Thornton 88)
“The one things that is special about me is that people believed in me and in my potential to learn in spite of my disability, and they took the time to help me learn.” (Thornton 89)
Reflection:
One of the more powerful themes of this statement is how important community is and how external support systems are needed to solidify internal support systems. It is very clear that Thornton believes that anyone could achieve a great life if given the right tools and support, and he uses evidence from his own life and experiences to support this claim. I really like how he went about this because it directly contrasts the “support” that he received at institutions, it further shows to his audience how harmful institutions are, especially since a lot of his personal story has an underlying current of recovering from such an upbringing. I really like how he orchestrates his argument, it leaves little room for doubt on the harm of institutions. It does a really good job at the end to call the audience to action, to end institutions and forcing people against their will into programs, but to protect disabled people from this.
Keah Brown writes about her relationship with hope and joy, and the arguments and assumptions that she faces as a black disabled woman who many assume will never be happy because of her disability. She writes about how disability is almost always presented in the media as a cis white man in a wheelchair, and how she is never seen in the media, even though she very much exists in the real world. She discusses how she found joy in spite of her previously negative mindset that she had prior to the winter of 2016, and how joy is not something you could just expect someone to start feeling, but that it has to be nurtured, it’s work. She makes it clear to the audience that she does not feel joy everyday, that she doesn’t expect anyone to, but that associating disability with joy, pride, hope and love, will change public minds for the better. She explains her hashtag #disabledandcute, and how if focuses on finding joy in the little things, of continuously taking time out of your day to actively think positively about yourself.
Quotes:
“Instead they think of cis white male wheelchair users who hate themselves, because that is so often the way that pop culture depicts us.” (Brown 118)
“I may not find joy everyday. Some days will just be hard, and I will simply exist, and that’s okay, too. No one should have to be happy all the time — no one can be.” (Brown 119)
“I was once a very self-deprecating and angry person who scoffed at the idea of happiness and believed that I would die before I ever saw a day where I felt excited at the prospect of being alive” (Brown 119)
“Forcing myself to reroute negative thoughts with positive ones. Instead of saying what I hated about myself, I spoke aloud what I liked about myself.” (Brown 119)
Reflection:
Brown’s outlook on life, and her optimism is almost contagious in this essay. She does a really good job of setting the stage on the issue she sees and ends it with a very great call to action that encourages readers to think more positively about themselves and disability. I was impressed with how she predicted possible counter-arguments (or what nay-sayers would claim) by directly addressing them, and also explaining how important and necessary joy is. Her stance on joy having to be worked on and nurtured, and not just coming naturally to people, is very nice to hear. Instead of telling her audience to “Just feel joy, stop feeling upset”, which is what I have always worried about when it comes to essays on how to feel joy, Brown is realistic in her methods and expectations. This piece also works as a much more critical piece on the social expectations of disabled people, the expectation that disability equals misery and suffering. Her methods of tackling these issues are very efficient and well developed, and the personal aspects of her own story are used to further support this argument.
My project is about online disability communities and how memes are used to create rhetoric and foster relatability and understanding. I also want to look into how online crip space and anonymity play a part in these communities. I want to present the information through a digital form, either through a text-image based post much like the posts I’m seeing in my research, or through a video essay, where I would use a more conversation voice in my writing. I would be writing a script instead of an essay.
With some of my research so far, I’ve found out a lot of things I didn’t really consider. A really interesting part of this project that I found out was that there seems to be two spheres of communities in these spaces. There are a lot of posts that are informational, that are more oriented towards non-disabled people, or people who are new to the online community. They could be helpful to newly-disabled people or people who need information on how to support their disabled friends. The second sphere is more focused towards people in the community. It is founded on the basis that the information found in the first sphere is already known fairly in depth. This foundation is used to have more nuanced discussions, share more specific experiences, and where a lot of the memes are found. For instance, the migraine memes use words like, “brain fog” and autism memes discuss “masking” without feeling the need to explain these words because it is expected of the audience to already be familiar with these terms — usually the audience is people within these communities. There is a generalized knowledge based on common experiences that is used to create relatability and quickly convey a lot of rhetoric. It is the context of this rhetoric that allows it to take shape. I wasn’t all that aware of these two spheres, or at least I didn’t really notice them until I was doing research for this project.
The main struggles I’m facing is choosing if I do a video essay or not, and also the social media aspects of this assignment itself. While it is enjoyable to see these online communities, I also find social media really draining and don’t really use it personally. Depending on what app I use, there are drastically different vibes and a lot of posts could be discussing really bad negative experiences. Which is not to take away from the actuality of these experiences, but a lot of apps are arithmetically going to be focusing on the most extreme or polarizing posts, so often it is difficult to find posts about pride without them being touched by negativity. There is also the immediate nature of social media that is to be considered, in-depth discussion could be harder to come across on instagram and twitter, because the format of the apps are limited. Reddit is more likely to have long posts, and things like podcasts and video essays are more in-depth as well.
I’m going to show to memes in class though. If I can.
Campbell gives a detailed account of how the term “ability” came to be what we now know it as today. It seemed to start as a measurement of what a person was able to do, and usually was legally used to benefit men who owned property. To not be able was to be disabled, and to have less value socially. This disabled term was applied to pretty much everyone other than property owning men. The term would only really be applied directly to people in the late 14th century, where people would be identified as able or disabled. Ability was focused much more on “perfectionability”. Philosophy and science around this time was really focused on the contemplation of what made us human. In the next 200 years or so, we see the expansion of the global market, where ability is now seen as how much a person is able to work, how efficient is the human body and how it could be used for profit. In the 1980’s, we see ability and disability being connected to each other even more, mostly in a negative way. With the development of modern medicine and technology, the definition of ablebodidness grows narrower and narrower, especially as the idea of the able body becomes more compulsory and unattainable (its pretty cool that we see McRuer here too). Campbell finished this off with explaining how the two main parts of ableism are the concept of the normative and the division of the perfected body and the “aberrant” or underdeveloped, the unhuman. She argues that the idea of ableism is important to look at in terms of disability, as well as other marginalized identities seeing as they often also face being categorized under the term “less human”.
Quotations:
“‘Ability’ in the Anglo-Norman world was a legal term tied to capacity to enter into contracts or inherent property” (Kumari Campbell 12).
“Throughout much of pre modern Western history, ability and able-bodiedness referred to a person’s role in the community rather than to a fixed condition”(Campbell 12).
(14th and 15th century) “‘Abled’ as an adjective, described a ‘capable, vigorous and thriving’ person or object”(Campbell 12).
“Key to a system of ableism are two elements: the concept of the normative (and the normal individual); and the enforcement of a divide between a ‘perfected’ or developed humanity and the aberrant, unthinkable, underdeveloped, and therefore not really human” (Campbell 13-14)
Analysis:
When I first read Campbell’s analysis of what able bodiedness is today, where hyperproductivity, physical and mental perfection and constant availability are key factors of the “abled body”, I couldn’t help but think of machines. I found it really ironic when Campbell explained how often the humanity of disabled people would be debated, when meanwhile the definition of what makes an able bodied person was not of a person, but of a profit, or dollar sign; a living factory. The movement towards nondisabled people being valuable only in their ability to work and never fail to come in to work really disturbs me, it makes me think a lot too about universal healthcare and welfare and how retirement works as well. I think that the mentality behind a body being made for labor and hyperproductivity is really damaging to society as a whole, our very views of bodies are being warped and given values based on what they are able to provide labor-wise. It just feels so wrong. Bodies are a rhetoric, they embody rhetoric, they give us the opportunity to experience the world around us. They are vessels for our beings that allow us to perceive the world around us and to be perceived by others, they’re tools for interaction, not tools for someone else to use, for someone else to pass judgement and value upon. This sort of mindset is not only dehumanizing but extremely damaging to humanity as a whole. Not everyone’s bodies are the same, not everyone experiences the world in the same way, so saying disabled bodies are less valuable because they are visibly different has been and will continue to chip away at our perceptions of others.
I found it really fascinating to see how the term “abled” has changed throughout history. Campbell does a wonderful job at showing both negative and positive definitions of disability throughout the ages, and you could really see how our present day perception of ability and disability has come from. One thing that really stood out to me was how originally ability was not always in reference to a person, let alone a person’s body. I think that this is where the term started and to now see where it has wound up is really daunting, I hope to learn more in this class about how terminology evolved throughout the ages both within general society and academic circles of the past, and to see how these changes have influenced our present.
Harriet McBryde Johnson details in her story her meeting and eventual debate with Professor Peter Singer, who believes that disabled infants are not people and thus it should be legal for parents to kill their disabled child. Johnson, who is notably known for being a disability rights activist, who has congenital neuromuscular disease and occupies a motorized wheelchair, debated Singer and others with similar beliefs, and gave a full account of her meetings, emails and debate with Singer.
One thing that I think captured my discomfort with this reading was when Johnson explained, “We should not make disabled lives subject of debate”(Johnson 11). I agree with her here, there is something sort of disturbing seeing in an academic setting the blatant disregard for empathy and emotion in some of these arguments. The urge for Singer’s perspective to become completely devoid of emotion and human contact – an impossible feat. As if distancing itself from compassion and delving solely into “facts” (which doesn’t equate to truth but that’s an entirely different discussion to be had) reveals an objective truth that defies the boundaries of morality altogether in its purity. YUCK! This seems to mostly come from nondisabled people in this story, where the distance between a person and “them” (being disabled people) is distinct, it seems to make the argument easier for them to have. The author here is much more patient here than I am, but I’m young and impressionable and quick to judge. It’s hard to appreciate the nuance that I know is there in these arguments when the topic of debate is — once again, like so many other seemingly pointless debates — on who deserves to live and who deserves to die.
I must say however, that I am absolutely in love with this author’s voice. I can’t quite put my finger on why; maybe it’s because she’s a lawyer, maybe because she’s disabled, maybe because this is her story and she’s told it a hundred times over, but I really want to read more of her work after reading this! I love how she included so many details about the complexity of this situation, the people she’s aligned herself with and opposes, the debate and the trip she took to get there, every part of it is so captivating. I in particular love how she introduced Singer as, “The man who wants me dead”(Johnson 3). This sort of concise language is really refreshing, and her voice is so soothing and easy for me to read.
