Challenging Disability Discourse

Friday night, my family and I attended the kick-off event for the annual Phoenix Zoowalk, a fundraiser that supports the Autism/Asperger's Research Program at ASU. Dr. James Adams, who heads the program, gave the families and professionals in attendance a welcome address, after which students from my daughter's autistic middle/high school performed several drama skits, choir numbers and a karate demonstration. I even had the privilege of meeting Dr. Temple Grandin, a renowned researcher and scholar who also happens to have autism herself.

So we were listening to Dr. Adam's overview of recent findings from past research projects when my autistic teenager turned to me and, with a troubled look on her face, said "Mom, he's making it sound like this horrible thing. Why would he say something like that about me?"

Although at the time I merely murmured something soothing at her to keep her quiet during the presentation, her simple question stunned me to my core. It just so happened that I had been reading an article just the day before by scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, an Associate Professor at Emory University whose work focuses on disability theory. According to Professor Garland-Thomson, the concept of disability is one that "pervades all aspects of culture: its structuring institutions, social identities, cultural practices, political positions, historical communities, and the shared human experiences of embodiment." Due in part to the rise of science as the end-all, be-all of knowledge about bodies (and, more specifically, the diseases, injuries, or other deviations from the "norm" of the healthy human body), our daily lives are inundated with discourse about deviance, about difference, and about discrimination, only couched in the supposedly objective dialects of scientific theory and research.

Having raised a child with autism for thirteen years, I am intimately familiar with this discourse. In fact, I have used it to my child's advantage, participating in the categorization and differentiation of disability in order to secure therapies, educational programs, and other various life-enhancing benefits. I have attended many conferences and sat through many presentations like the one Dr. Adams gave, bearing witness to a medical community devoted to finding not only a treatment for autism, but a cure.

What I realized, sitting next to my autistic daughter, in the blue glow of yet another medical presentation, is that she does not consider herself in need of a cure. My daughter is not broken, or ill, or disabled. Her autism is a part of who she is; she understands that people treat her differently because of it, but she doesn't see a need to change herself to please them. She is a whole person, and a generally happy one, as long as she is shielded from the shaming, debilitating narratives that would have her labeled, dosed and "normalized" as rapidly as possible; that would have what makes her extraordinary disappear.

I understood, in an instant, what Professor Garland-Thomson meant when she claimed that "disability is a culturally fabricated narrative of the body," a fabrication that nonetheless has real, material consequences for the people about whom such artifices are made to represent. That night, what my daughter was asking me to do was to resist, with her, her own public devaluation; to resist the discourse of wrongness attached to that part of who she is, and once again to make it right. She was asking me to resist, with her, the oppressive stereotypes "that permit, among other things, the unexamined use of disability terms such as crippled, lame, dumb, idiot, moron" and so on, to acknowledge and validate her decision to claim her autism, to claim her emerging identity as-is. If she, from her place of marginality, can ask this of me, what else can I do?


*All quotations taken from "Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory," published in NWSA Journal 14.3, 2002.

I Need A Hero...But not THAT Hero

NPR.org reported yesterday that Marvel has announced plans to change things up a bit with their popular comic hero, Thor.

"The Might Thor, the Son of Odin, the God of Thunder, the comic book god with the hammer is a woman."

Yep, that's right. Thor is now a (white) woman. Writer Jason Aaron is reported as explaining: "This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR. This is the THOR of the Marvel Universe."

Uh, fellas? What. The. Hell?!

I like the entertainment of a comic hero as much as the next Average Joe, and I think that the time for strong female heroes and role models is long overdue.

But for me, this decision is sending red-flag warnings up all over the place. Thor's gender-shift trick isn't fooling me, boys: you can't just conjure a "daughter of Odin" out of thin air. Of course, if this was a sibling of Thor, a goddess powerful in her own right, maybe I could stomach it a bit better.

But that is not what Marvel is proposing here. Marvel, in what reads like an attempt to blur the boundary between Odin-son and woman, has indicated that we, as a society, are incapable of imagining a strong and heroic woman unless/until she is either a) stepping into a role already defined by a man or b) otherwise controlled/paired up with a man who, conveniently, is always more powerful than she. In this case, Thor's hammer passes to the next-in-line female Thor, who will be fully expected to continue conquering enemies with the same brazen flash-and-bash that her predecessor has trademarked. Because of this, she will never completely be her own person: ever living in the shadow of the God of Thunder, she will be compared and criticized at every turn in relation to him, judged in terms of how well she fulfills his legacy.

And, given what I know about gender inequality in the United States, this is exactly how we want it, isn't it? I mean, we can't just have women in charge of things, despite hundreds of years of proven leadership, courage and sacrifice in the name of God, home and country. And a woman who defines the bounds of her own power? One who is free to offer her strength in the aid of others as herself, instead of through the hands and systems of a pernicious patriarchy? Now that's just crazy talk.

Sarcasm aside, what Marvel has clearly illustrated here is that women, long clamoring for their own heroes, will continue to wait the long, long wait.

Students Speak Out

When departmental hands are tied, we all lose.

As news of ASU professor Dr. Ore's arrest has spread through the ASU graduate student community, concern for her future at ASU in the face of an ominous official departmental silence (although individual faculty members have issued public calls for consideration and investigation, as evidenced in the comments published in response to the aforementioned Statement of Concern from Arizona Critical Ethnic Studies) has given rise to a letter of support attesting to Dr. Ore's investment in ASU graduate students, particularly those in the English department.

As English graduate students at ASU, we know firsthand the valuable asset that Dr. Ore is to our institution, College, and individual academic pursuits. The Statement explains that, as a group, "After the incident of May 20, 2014...We were immediately concerned for Dr. Ore not just because this is surely a trying time for her, but also because we are concerned that this incident could overshadow the excellence she provides ASU in terms of graduate education and mentoring."

As graduate students, we want to make sure that our school, our friends and the general public understand who Dr. Ore is, what she means to those of us who have had the privilege of working with her in the course of our studies and, in some cases, beyond. "The graduate students in the English Department at ASU are proud to have Dr. Ore as a faculty member and mentor. She provides expertise and support for graduate students and is essential in their success in graduate school and as productive members of the academic community. Her research and service contributes to the prestige of the University and should be celebrated and protected."

Read the full Statement of Support for Dr. Ersula Ore here.

Please, help us by sharing and voicing your support.

On Twitter, #SupportDrOre and #StudentsforDrOre

Statement of Concern

Following up on Wednesday's post, I have since learned a bit more about the situation and realized, once again, how determined the media is to slant even "factual" reporting in favor of authority figures.

The Arizona Ethnic Studies Network has shared a Statement of Concern from Arizona Critical Ethnic Studies, expressing "deep concern" over "a recent incident involving an Arizona State University (ASU) police officer and an ASU faculty member. We call for a swift and thorough investigation into this matter."

Although there is some question over the exact date of the incident (the first report I read was dated May 19, word-of-mouth reports dated in the 20th, and this letter gives the date as the 21st), the account offered here varies significantly from the one reported by news agencies.

"On the evening of May 21, 2014, Dr. Ersula Ore, a professor in the English department at ASU, was walking home from campus after teaching a summer course. Dr. Ore, who is African American, was stopped and questioned by a male ASU police officer patrolling the area in his vehicle. After a short exchange with the officer, a brief physical altercation ensued in which Dr. Ore, who was wearing a dress, was forced up against the officer’s car and then onto the ground, fully exposing portions of her lower body to the public. Eyewitness accounts of the incident, including video evidence, support Dr. Ore’s assertion that the officer did not clearly inform her regarding why she was being stopped or inform her of her rights, and engaged in excessive force during her detention."

The incident alone is just cause for deep concern; however, the Statement further reports that ASU has refused to take responsibility for the University's own police force. The Statement charges that "Officials at ASU, in response to questions about the incident and possible racial profiling, have sought to distance the University, stating that 1) because the incident occurred on a public street between parts of campus, it was technically “off campus,” so Dr. Ore was a private citizen; and 2) although they will comply with any investigation, there is no evidence of racial profiling."

If ASU is not responsible for Campus Police, who is? Under whose authority do these authority figures act? Accusations of racial prejudice aside, this incident has left me questioning if the campus police can harass and assault a University employee, without being held accountable, what's to stop them from targeting other women on campus? Or off campus? Am I just as likely to be apprehended and violated by campus police in the nearby streets as I am walking to class?

As ACES has asked, "How can ASU ensure a safe, secure, and just environment for its faculty, students, and staff if it disclaims any responsibility for the actions of ASU police officers?"

In short, they can't. My sense of security, however illusory it may have been to start with, has been completely destroyed, despite the potential "protection" that the privilege of white skin has to offer. As a woman who frequents this campus and surrounding area, I will never again be able to trust that the Campus Police will respect me, as a student and employee of ASU and, most fundamentally, as a citizen and human being with inalienable rights.

Arrested Development

I have been a graduate student at ASU for two years. I have also been a single parent, but much longer than that, and live quite a distance from my campus in order for my children to have a yard to play in and a neighborhood filled with paranoid parents on the lookout for any real danger.

Often, this physical distance becomes distance of other kinds, as well: I often miss out on campus goings-on, to the point that I am rarely privvy to departmental news/gossip or other news-bites of significance. In my daily experience, life is often a crazy-making juggling act between the student work/life/culture and the suburban mom work/life/culture as I try to bridge those distances, try to keep one foot in each and yet reside wholly in neither.

So it came as a shock when I learned that on May 19, one of my professors had been arrested and charged with felony assault of a police officer. According to the news reports I have now read, she was walking down College Avenue, just off campus, when she was stopped by a campus police officer, who demanded to see her ID.

Dr. Ersula Ore, Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University

Knowing Dr. Ore well from our many hours spent in the classroom together, I can only imagine the thinking this incident kicked into motion and resulted directly in what happened next. She refused. Repeatedly. So the officer attempted to arrest her. Forcefully. She resisted, and was thrown against the police car, was thrown to the ground. She kicked him in the shins, and was taken to jail.

The shock and humiliation of being thus manhandled aside, I would expect nothing less of my brilliant and fiery academic mentor. She fought back. Of course she fought back. The same way that black women and men have been fighting back against prejudice and racial violence in this country for hundreds of years. As a white woman, I have never once been asked to legitimate my presence on a public street by presenting the police with identification. My right to walk where I choose has never been challenged. This privilege has been granted me, unearned, based solely on the color of my skin.

She, better than most, knows this. She knows that she was singled out and challenged in a public show of racial prejudice. This is why she resisted. This is why she fights.

I never expected to see racial prejudice rear its ugly head here, and in this day and age, publicly, up close and way too close to home for comfort. The shock of it has left me grieving for my professor, for the consequences this incident will bring. It has left me grieving for the racist idiot who singled her out of a crowd of 70,000 students and over 3,000 faculty and instructors and decided that, for whatever reason, she did not belong. It has left me horrified in the face of injustice that never should have happened, and vindicated in my belief that there is much work left for us to do as we strive toward a lasting equality of any kind.

To be continued.