1:58am November 15, 2011

➸ Beyond Empty Shells

The above is a link to my other tumblr. I’ve just created it (and finally finished customizing the theme to something at least sort of satisfactory) to go along with a blog that’s far from finished yet. The good thing about doing it as a tumblr is I can stick on there quotes that I might stick on the blog, but don’t have the brain left over to actually sit there and explain the quotes.

Anyway the whole point of it is to put something out there that goes against the prejudice that says there’s some category of disabled people who are really empty shells, with no mind, no experiences, no soul. Usually people who get stuck with that are cognitively/mentally disabled, or readily mistaken for it. But it can happen with physically disabled people too. It’s always seemed very strange to me because I have never looked at a person and seen ‘nobody home’, but it seems to be such a common sentiment among other people.

Some of the quotes are going to be incredibly disturbing. Because part of what I’m doing is trying to show the prejudice where it exists, and I will be quite graphic about it because it’s necessary to know that people actually think these things. Other quotes will be very good quotes by people who really get it, and interesting quotes that make people think about the issue in new ways.

My last quote on this tumblr is one I found while I was looking for a quote for my first post on Beyond Empty Shells. It’s from a very short but rather incredible manual written by Dave Hingsburger back before he was disabled himself. It’s basically about how to see people as people who are practically never seen as people by just about anybody. (One of the women he describes in the book was officially termed a “low grade retard” at the time he met her. These days, the term is “profound intellectual disability” but the ideas it conjures up hasn’t changed much.) And how to interact with people who have such a different life experience than most people’s. But really, reading the thing, it seems like a good idea to approach all interactions with anybody that way.

Anyway, just thought I’d let people know it’s there. Once I get the blog up and running, I’ll link to it from that tumblr.

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