The Whole Mess
Notes from the middle of everything
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about
Collector of contradictions, student of imperfection, and occasional meditator. Writing from the messy middle with equal parts honesty and humor.
Category: ableism
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Part 2 of 2 Taken together, these policies reflect a narrow vision of citizenship tied to productivity. While SSDI is one central example, the ethical concerns discussed here apply more broadly across disability policy structures, where similar moral assumptions shape eligibility, access, and social worth. But alternative ethical frameworks exist. To counter this dominant framework,…
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(Part 1 of 2) A major policy assumption is that success is defined as independence, whereas dependency is considered failure. Even within the disability community, it is easy to fall into a neoliberal capitalist assumption, with its emphasis on market-based individualism and minimal state intervention, that to be a “good” disabled person, we must prove…
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Part 8 of 8(…a continued reflection on Datable by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp) The disabled community is large and varied in its defining characteristics. However, “one pretty strong marker of inclusion is that you’ve been on the receiving end of some ridiculous comments” (p. 200). So. True.
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Part 7 of 8(…a continued reflection on Datable by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp) Money, and discussions about it, are often complicated and fraught with deeper meaning. Cupp describes money as “one of those overloaded concepts that stands for far more than numbers on a bank statement: in relationships, how people earn, spend, and make…
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Part 6 of 8(…a continued reflection on Datable by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp) This may come as a shock to nondisabled people, but most of us disabled folks enjoy having sex. As Slice so succinctly puts it, “the sexless crip is a tired and painful trope” (p. 149). It may also come as a…
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Part 5 of 8(…a continued reflection on Datable by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp) Within disability culture, we celebrate mutual aid, which Slice describes as “the practice of supporting one another in a complex web of practical and emotional support” (p. 135). This can show up in a multitude of ways, which become far more…
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Part 4 of 8(…a continued reflection on Datable by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp) Even though it’s been decades since the advent of the disability rights movement, it’s disheartening to see that the trope of the disabled person in an interbred relationship is portrayed as a burden and the nondisabled partner as a hero. A…
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Part 3 of 8(…a continued reflection on Datable by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp) Let’s be real: sex education in the United States is a joke. Even when it does exist, rarely does it cover anything outside of nondisabled, cisgender, straight sex and biology. So, just like our nondisabled peers, we disabled daters have often…
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Part 2 of 8(…a continued reflection on Datable by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp) Slice and Cupp remind us of an important decree for dating: it should not be about trying to “fill some empty hole in my life but to add to my life that is already full in so many ways” (p. 46).…
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Part 1 of 8 Now that I’ve moved into the maintenance stage of having had breast cancer, I’m finally feeling like I can put my attention and focus back into dating seriously. Unfortunately, there are very few readily available role models for dating while disabled. That’s why I was intrigued to break open Datable by…