Kechara's Moon

I have been waiting all year to post this.

MURDER HER FOR CHRISTMAS

oh wow ok there are endless scenarios

the ideal musical episode would be a pink kryptonite ep in which everyone is gay n they sing gay shit for 45 minutes, Lena sings “touch my body” to Kara or she sings “i need a hero” while Supergirl lands on her balcony. Winn sings “daddy issues” to James or Clark.

a slightly more realistic version would be a holiday episode with holiday songs. the Danvers would be jewish tho, but Kara and Lena would sing “baby it’s cold outside”, with Lena singing the traditionally male part of the duet, and after the song is over Kara would be like “you know i cant get cold, right?” and Lena is so fucking done she just walks out of the room n Kara laughs.

an alternate universe episode in which everyone is someone else, a completely different version of themselves; a completely different life but with music.

an episode in which Kara has amnesia and everyone uses songs to help her remember who she is and what they mean to her. Alex would sing something from wizard of oz bc she knows it’s Kara’s fave. Lena would sing “for good” from wicked. she tries potstickers for the first time again. and pizza. and to Lena’s great disappointment, even after amnesia, Kara still hates kale.

a classic romcom, a cheesy AU episode in which, again, everyone is gay. there’s lots of bops and upbeat songs and the general feeling of the episode is light and gives u hope and motivation and makes u gayer than u originally were and gays get to have a happy ending and there’s lots of love and friendship and family and an adventure mayhaps, a roadtrip of some kind or a quest. all followed with bops

So since Tumblr decided to drop this the first time that I posted it, here’s a briefer version of this:

I’ve been seeing it go ‘round the internets that ‘using the spoon theory when you are not disabled is appropriation.’

Lemme be the first person to say that a) that is not a universally-held view in the spoonie community b) we don’t have any universally-held views, c) I actually think that view is actively harmful and d) I’m not interested in arguing about it, just please stop saying “this is so.”

This is not so. You are not the gatekeeper to who can or cannot use a word. Unless you are the writer of the original spoon theory essay, you cannot say who can and cannot use that phrase.

Now, on to why I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

1) As neologisms become more common, they become more useful. If an able-bodied friend says “I’m running low on people spoons, can we skip the next thing?” I say “sweet, yes, I was feeling the same thing, let’s go home and watch TV.” Those able-bodied people are speaking my language, and they understand what I mean when I say spoons, and that’s because they’ve taken the time to figure out what that phrase means and how it works and how to use it. HOO-FUCKING-RAY.

2) Using “appropriation” in relation to a word that is younger than my middle dog is, uh, not good, y’all. Appropriation is for white people wearing dreadlocks and girls at Coachella wearing bindis and fucking Chief Illiniwek and the Redskins. Appropriation is for Whole Foods putting peanuts in collard greens and white girls with no training or appreciation painting their hands with random hearts and flowers in henna and buying cheap-ass turquoise jewelry made in China rather than getting it from Native artists. 

Spoonie culture is a baby culture. (Note: this does not apply to all disabled culture, for example D/deaf culture is pretty long-lived.) We should maybe just chill the fuck out before we start yelling appropriation! because yes our problems are many but people using spoon theory to describe how tired they are is not one of them. 

3) AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: By saying “able-bodied people should not use this,” you are setting yourself and other visibly or openly disabled persons as gatekeepers for the use of this term. You are saying: “you better be out about your disability or you can’t use it, because we’re gonna drag you/call you out about it.”

No one - not you, not me, not anybody else - gets to check anybody’s Cripple Card ™, unless it’s the police literally checking to see if I have my wallet card for my disability placard with me. No one does. No one gets to say “nah, you’ve only got anxiety, you’re not disabled enough.” No one gets to say “you have to disclose your disability or you do not get to use this term.”

Because that’s basically what the upshot of this is: unless you are openly out as disabled, you will not be able to use this term without fear of repercussion – and this site especially is fucking heartlessly beastly sometimes. We eat our own, especially in this baby community of spoonies where we should take best care of each other. 

So, tl;dr: please stop saying ‘this is appropriative’ like we had some spoonie meeting and decided on it, because we didn’t; use of a term makes it more accessible; appropriation as a term doesn’t actually belong to us, we should kinda stay in our lanes here; and please think through what it means when you say ‘no one able-bodied should use this.’ It means you’re saying you feel like you get to determine who can use a term, therefore who is disabled enough, therefore you’re gonna be checking Cripple Cards™ at the door.

No you’re not. 

Look, I’m disabled: visibly, openly, proudly.  I’m paraplegic and I use a wheelchair, so my disability is not something I could hide even if I wanted to. What I’m not, however, is a spoonie, when we describe “spoonie“ as “someone with a chronic illness or disability that regularly impacts their energy levels and/or ability to get things done“.  I use a wheelchair, yes, but I have no problems whatever with energy or getting stuff done (aside from just generally being lazy).

So when people try to gatekeep this terminology and say that only disabled people can use it (which, as stated above, really means only visibly or openly disabled people can use it), what I hear is:  “Hey!  You there, in the wheelchair!  I’ve decided that you are Disabled Enough to use the spoon theory.  I know nothing about you or your disability, but you look crippled so I have decided that I know what you can and cannot do.“

So when you try to play gatekeeper for this, what you’re really doing is giving the rest of us bingo on the “ableist shit” scorecard.  You’re telling us that:

those with invisible disabilities have to prove their disability, because otherwise they are not Disabled Enough, and

those with visible disabilities are obviously worse off than everyone else, because they don’t have to prove how disabled they are, and

there is such a thing as a “real“ disabled person, and you can tell who is and is not one based on… some arbitrary criteria that can not and will not apply to everyone.

One of our baby girls is fat, in the 99th percentile for her age. She is super cute and sweet. Lately, she has been sick with various breathing issues, so she has been reluctant to take her bottles. Normally, she’ll take 4 ounces of formula at lunch and 8 ounces in the afternoon. Today, I was lucky to get to her take 5 all day.

There was a substitute covering a lunch break in my classroom today. We emphasized to her that we need to keep trying to get the baby to drink her bottle until she finished it. She said, “Why are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?”

My coworker replied, “That’s where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.”

To which the substitute replied, “But she’s so fat. She doesn’t need it.”

By starving her. She insisted that her baby was ‘too fat’ and had an aim to remove any and all ‘chubbyness’ so her baby would be thin. She’d already been warned by her doctor about the baby not getting enough food, but insisted she knew best.

After several months of this her baby passed out cold one day and was rushed into hospital where the doctors found her to have severe malnutrition, a low body temperature and low pulse rate. They asked my cousin what she’d been feeding her daughter and she said “one bottle of skimmed milk a day. I don’t want her growing up fat.”

Even after nearly killing her daughter my cousin maintained her view that fat = bad and ended up with all her kids taken from her because she was starving them and neglecting them.

When your fatphobia leads you to starving your own children then you’ve got serious problems.

Is

Real

She backed off saying, ‘Well he looks fine!” – proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health – But I know many other parents who are not as informed as I am about weight science and size diversity would react to this interaction by policing their child’s food intake, if not as an infant, then when he was an older child. This is exactly the type of seemingly-inconsequential interaction that starts the ball rolling on a lifetime of dieting, disordered eating, negative body image, and weight-based abuse for too many fat people.

Years later when he was five, another doctor measured his weight and height and commented that he is off the charts on both, but “at least he is in proportion.” And if he was not “in proportion,” I am sure I would have been advised once again to “watch his weight.” 

I no longer allow healthcare providers to weight my children unless it is absolutely medically necessary. They are unable to control their weight talk, which is a known harm for children.

1. The 4 years old daughter of a friend of mine came to our house to spend the weekend. She gave me a letter from her mom that said that the child was in a glutenfree diet because she was getting ‘awfully fat’ when eating cookies or bread (my celiac ass; who gets dhiarrea and loses a scary amount of weight whenever I eat something with gluten was like ’???’).

You can bet that I went to the supermarket with the kid and told her ‘go & take whatever you feel like eating’ and the poor child came back smiling with her arms full of biscuits and cupcakes.

She didn’t got sick (as a celiac would get) and told me later that she hated the diet her mother made her follow; because her cousins didn’t had to pass through that.

And what’s the scariest thing about this story? Her mother was a NURSE. A fucking nurse who didn’t have a clue of the harm that she was doing to her daughter’s body!

2. My little sister started to feel fatigued and dizzy at 9 years old. She felt nauseated at the sight of food and had abdominal pain that increased with physical activity.

Mom got her to the ER and the doctor dismissed it saying: ‘she’s fat and probably is feeling ill after eating too much burgers, get her to make some exercise and she will be better in no time’.My mom didn’t felt ok with the diagnosis and took my sister with a second doctor who also told her that ‘the child was just fat’.

My sister’s skin was starting to get yellow as the days passed and the abdominal pain was getting awful so my mom (heaven bless her!) got her to the ER for the third time:

SHE HAD STAGE 4 HEPATITIS AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE.

She survived after a long and painful recovery who involved being in bed for a whole year (remember that we’re speaking of a 9 years old child). Luckily they saved her liver and she didn’t went through a transplant… but let this sink:

If it weren’t for my mother, fatphobia would have killed her. Fatphobia kills kids and teenagers, fatphobia kills inocent people everyday. It treats human beings as lesser than others and hurts them in their most vulnerable times.

FUCKING TAKE NOTE OF THIS!

stumbled upon Xena’s Aphrodite (née Alexandra Tydings) coming out post today. i just love when the queerness of the xenaverse feels like it spills over into reality.