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5:03pm November 26, 2010

[Video has no sound. It shows me in a very dark part of the room where my face isn’t visible. The window behind me is lighter. The only real movement is my fingers on one hand doing a bunch of different rhythmic motions.]

This is… hard to explain. It’s something my fingers do that seems to help me process information about what’s going on around me, and is also just part of how I interact with the world by feel. It also disturbs a lot of people because it doesn’t “look normal”. But screw them, it doesn’t hurt anyone and stopping would do harm to me.

I post stuff like this in defiance of the notion that I ought to hide things like this and spend my limited energy suppressing it (even if I could). Personally I love all the different ways different people move. When I got out of being full-time segregated with other disabled people I always expected all the nondisabled people to suddenly do things like this and was disoriented and disappointed when they didn’t. I hate the way people who do things like this are made to feel ugly and lesser and are hidden from view. One reason I put so many photos, along with just a way to get to know me beyond my words, is to say screw that, I’m not hiding just because I look or act ways people label “(f)ugly” or “crazy” or “retarded” or even “disgusting”. They won’t shame me or get rid of me so easily. They need to lose their dubious privilege of being able to simply get rid of people who don’t meet their aesthetic standards. So I for one won’t hide no matter what they call me.