Doyle Saylor wrote,
> anti-disabled thinking in Tom Walkers recent posting
. . .
> I question his focus on a disability. I think he has a lot to prove.
What are the charges against me? Presumably that my suggestion that there
may be such a thing as collective pathology was tantamount to hate
literature against people with disabilities. There's also a second charge,
-- guilt by association -- that my alleged "scapegoating" inflicts real
and extreme pain on people, on occasion driving them to suicide.
I don't have to "prove" anything to defend myself against such vague,
sweeping and _defamatory_ accusations. What I would be interested to know,
however, is whether Saylor objects to A. the suggestion that there is any
collective pathology or B. the metaphorical use of clinical diagnostic
terms as a first approximation to describe that pathology symptomatically.
Apparently, Saylor acknowledges at least some kinds of collective
pathology -- the aversion of "able bodied" people to associate with
"crazy" people. Rather than use a clinic diagnostic term, however, Saylor
opts for the homophobic slang term "candy-ass". I fail to see what is
gained by such a loss of symptomatic precision.
When I taught in prison (prison slang for the type of institution where I
taught is 'bug house'), there was a young man in my class who at 15 had
stalked, raped and murdered a young Spanish-speaking woman, essentially
because he was fascinated by her exotic language. This guy was
frighteningly attractive. He was intelligent, articulate, good-looking and
intense. He also had unimpeachable insight into the "craziness" of his
crime as well as into the ubiquity of violent fantasies among the
"sane" population. He explained to me how he was able to use his
craziness, his awareness of his craziness and his insight into the
craziness of sane people to seduce and manipulate a visiting
psychologist. I would suggest that the aversion of "able-bodied" people to
crazy people arises from the quite reasonable suspicion that they aren't
really any saner, just as homophobia arises from people's insecurity about
their "heterosexual identity".
I personally don't believe there are any such _things_ as crazy
people. There are only different people and crazy acts. A "sick
society" makes it more likely that people under stress will do crazy
things. Redeploying the clinical diagnostic terms from their use as labels
for individuals to a broader critique of collective pathology is about as
far from "anti-disabled thinking" as I can imagine.
> Last night I was on the phone to my friend who is a Phd candidate in
> Massachusetts in Social Policy. She was cutting her wrists as we
> talked.
. . .
> If you look at the candy-ass able bodied students who dither
> about their career being ruined because they associate with a "crazy"
> woman so they sat around with their thumb up their asses.
. . .
> To repeat my assertion against Tom Walker, his remarks single out
> disabled people. His tone is moralizing about fixing the pathology of
> a disabled person, in that case someone with obsessive-compulsive
> disorder. He can fix that because his theory about the pathology of
> Nike ads and products fixes the pathology. I'm skeptical about that
> assertion, and I dislike using disabled people as scapegoats for the
> problems with the U.S. economy. I intend to go out watch a good movie
> and have fun today.
Tom Walker
