Lesbian Benoit Blanc

if you are in the united states you cannot choose to stand at a location

That was something the medical institution of psychiatry was cool with and allowed to happen. The orbital lobotomy designed by Walter Jackson Freeman II was meant to be simple enough that psychiatrists could perform it on their patients in psychiatic hospitals and baby perform it they did, and of course it was so simple that it became used en masse to shut women up or make them more compliant with their nightmarishly abusive lives. It became an issue when it was happening to otherwise able-bodied or non-institutionalised women, but it was a device of the institutions meant to be used on people like me in order to keep us docile and quiet, perhaps to "cure" us.

You should notice in this moment that "lobotomy" is synonymised with "abused housewife" and not with "schizophrenic being subjected to intentional brain damage in an institution that they aren't allowed to leave." Some victims matter more than others, and the disabled are always distanced from their abuse, and their liberation from the focus of any intersectional movement, as a result. Many such cases.

Nevertheless, when womens' movements fought against the lobotomy, they were engaging in protest and direct action against ("anti") a specific abuse of psychiatry. They were "antipsychiatry" activists. That is how that phrase works. It's like "feminism," where it's broad enough that all kinds of dummy shit does in fact slide through and call itself "feminism" or "antipsychiatry," because it isn't some coordinated, organised group, but rather a broad political thrust with some shared concepts ("patriarchy," "medical abuse.")

Measuring antipsychiatry by the Scientologists or the "all medicine should be destroyed" abolitionists is like measuring feminism by the standards of the "all penis in vagina sex is rape, you should become a political lesbian" weirdos.

Finally, the narrative that followed the lobotomy in "formal," academic settings was that they decided it was bad science one day and just agreed to cut it out. No pressure from women's movements, no pressure from disabled rights movements. The numbers didn't line up so like pure professional men of science they just moved on to better things. That's science, right? A benevolent, civilising force on society, that yes does make the occasional oopsy daisy, but better science (and not social pressure from affected communities) always emerges to course correct these slippery dippery fuck ups. The victims are just unfortunate casualties of a darker time, and something like that could never ever happen again, we're so enlightened now after all.

Guarantee you this documentarian would've not made such a distinction if he had met, for instance, a high needs autistic bloke who punches holes in walls during meltdowns, a kind of guy who is not actually all that uncommon and who you will almost certainly meet working in a day service or a resi care program.

But yeah, that's basically how a lot of these conversations work. You see it a lot when looking into queer history and women's history and deinstitutionalisation. There is always this liberal, normative assumption that the institutions are necessary for some ambiguous set of disabled people that only the experts can define, and so who's identity is beyond the scope of whatever you are reading or writing. The horror is always when someone is misclassified within the system. So, Alan Turing being institutionalised and then forced onto estrogen is horrible because he was just A Gay Man, but there must be somebody else for whom this practice is valid, hmmm maybe a sexual abuser? And then they find somebody so low in the social hierarchy, somebody that you do not want the burden of defending, to present as the necessary and acceptable victim.

When it comes to most mental health contexts, schizophrenics are and have pretty much always been that bottom point. None of these people can actually define schizophrenia, the word simply conjures to mind this concept of somebody who is so unable to live a normal life, who is such a drain on resources, who makes public spaces unsafe and distressing, blah blah blah. Look at how people use "schizophrenic" as an adjective to mean "a thing that doesn't make sense," ie. "this dataset produces nonsensical, almost schizophrenic results." No one really has a clear concept of what it means, only that it is a bad and misplaced thing. And so when it comes to deinstitutionalisation, let Mike Oliver and his wheelchair mates out, but we still need psych wards, we still need the conservatorship system, we still need a legal mechanism where someone can become a "ward of the state."

12 years ago I made a vine that went viral on social media with my then 1 year old cat… and after many requests over the years, it's time to do a follow up!

YES! That was me 12 years ago, I made this vine along with the Luigi-Board Vine, and a few others that went around quite a bit.

YES! It is the same cat! He was 1 year old in the original vine and he's 13 years old now! He's super healthy, very active for his age, and loves to cuddle.

That's not it.

The idea of the social model is built off of a concept first articulated by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation, an old school disability rights organisation out of the United Kingdom.

An important excerpt from the organisation's founding statement is,

it is only the actual impairment which we must accept; the additional and totally unnecessary problems caused by the way we are treated are essentially to be overcome and not accepted

Please please please notice how they do not say that their physical impairment is created by the conditions of their social treatment. Rather, there are additional problems created by their social treatment, which they seek to address.

The social model of disability refers specifically to these problems, in distinction from the physical impairment. It is not a rejection of the material bodily fact of disablement, it is a rejection of stairs but no ramp. That is the extent of its focus and it does not prescribe the ramp as a solution to the condition itself, only as a solution to the additional, unnecessary problems caused by the way we are treated.

It is not and has never been a rejection of the material reality of impairment.

If I can let my frustration out here, it really is shocking that people think it is when Mike Oliver, who coined the social model, looks like this

Do you think a dude with an upper vertebrae spinal injury who was in a wheelchair from seventeen years old, might have some concept of the material reality of being disabled mate?

The social model comes from a historic disabled movement, articulated by a specific disabled professor of disability studies in response to the institutionalisation of disabled people circa the 1980s, with direct reference to the 1970s (the UPIAS was founded in 1972). It is a core tenant of the deinstitutionalisation movement and is a solid, proven model for actually discussing and implementing accommodative practices, especially in light of the reality of systemic policy and practice before and after the work was adopted by support services.

The full context of the UPIAS founding statement except is,

We reject also the whole idea of "experts" and professionals holding forth on how we should accept our disabilities, or giving learned lectures about the "psychology" of disablement. We already know what it feels like to be poor, isolated, segregated, done good to, stared at, and talked down to — far better than any able-bodied expert. We as a Union are not interested in descriptions of how awful it is to be disabled. What we are interested in, are ways of changing our conditions of life, and thus overcoming the disabilities which are imposed on top our physical impairments by the way this society is organised to exclude us. In our view, it is only the actual impairment which we must accept; the additional and totally unnecessary problems caused by the way we are treated are essentially to be overcome and not accepted. We look forward to the day when the army of "experts" on our social and psychological problems can find more productive work.

And yet, the way dorks attempt to "debunk" it online with "well even if there was a ramp I'd still need a chair!" presumes this is some alien able-bodied doctor concept forced upon disabled people, the very phenomenon the social model was developed in rejection of. It is so frustrating. Learn ya history

This is not to say that there are not flaws with the social model, but the primary pop criticism of the social model is literally just a re-statement of one of the core aims of the social model. And when I see it I just