Is it Just Me?

[davidgillon]

Amy Sterling Casil has responded to the criticism of her "We are all disabled" post at SF Signal, with an 'apology' on her own blog.

I put 'apology' in inverted commas, because rather than simply saying "I'm Sorry, I Fucked Up", she spends 2300 words explaining how we all misunderstood her (while explaining she meant exactly what she said), and people are being nasty and horrible and disablist* to her for not accepting empathy is totally a disability, and the people being nasty are no different to the guy who raped her or the one who accused her of killing her child when they died in an accident.

She throws a PTSD diagnosis into the ring most of the way through, and I'm not sure if what I'm reading is some sort of  PTSD hypervigilance reaction, or just utter narcissism.

It's bad enough in what it does say about disability I think I need to reply, but Is it just me? Am I reading it wrong?

Dear Individuals on the ASD Spectrum and Others: I am Sorry

* I've found five blog responses to "We Are All Disabled" so far, four are by people who are either disabled, couid legitimately claim to be disabled, but don't, or who have disabled family members (and the other says 'I have more sense than to shoot my mouth off about stuff I don't know'). Several of those posts, including mine, do say empathy is not a disability, but then go on to say she may well be disabled in some more conventional manner and just expressing it in a particularly weird way.
 

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I don't think you're reading it wrong, but… That is a really strange post. Not telling you what to do, but if it was me, I'd back away slowly.

I can't diagnose over the internet so I have no idea, but I will just say that there are possibilities other than (or as well as) PTSD or narcissism. It sure sounds like something is going on with her that would prevent her from hearing whatever you say, so if you're hoping to get through to her personally, I would not bother.

[davidgillon]

That's wise, I think. I may respond to some of the disability aspects, there's some problematic stuff buried in there, but I'll steer clear of the personal stuff (particularly as part of my point is not beating on people for their disability!)

Thanks!

[sovay]

Back on Mount WTF!?!

I really do love your location tags.

I didn't read Casil's original post except in the excerpts quoted in your reply and elsewhere, but my reaction to this latest one is "yikes." The first few paragraphs read as a genuine attempt to apologize for the hurt she caused, although still somewhat qualifiedly and apparently bewildered by the reaction her post provoked. Had she stopped there, fine. Sometimes it is more important to recognize that you have done harm—even if you can't see how—and just apologize for it, trusting that it's the right thing to do for the people who were hurt. After that the whole thing starts to disintegrate. I wouldn't call it narcissistic; I have, for example, no reason to believe that she doesn't have PTSD. Most of the post reads very much like the kind of defensive flailing that comes out of confusion and pain. But the effect is to redirect the reader's attention away from the people she's apologizing to and back toward herself. Even if she means all of the personal information to demonstrate that she sympathizes and understands more about being marginalized and dismissed than she was able to convey in her post, it comes off unfortunately as an effort to present excuses for her behavior, and above all it is not relevant to an apology. By the time she is claiming that in past eras she would have been burnt at the stake as a witch for her powers of perception, we are very far from the original stated intent. I am sorry if she has so much to deal with, but it does not belong in the same post as I am sorry I hurt people; I did not intend to and I did not see the ways in which my choices of language and example were reinforcing and contributing to painful stereotypes of disability; dammit. I do not think she can see that, however, or she wouldn't have posted anything past those first couple hundred words.

[davidgillon]

Had she stopped there, fine.

Yep, very much so!

There's some disability stuff I want to respond to, but I think both you and Rachel are right in saying it's pointless to argue with her.

Thanks!

[sovay]

There's some disability stuff I want to respond to, but I think both you and Rachel are right in saying it's pointless to argue with her.

She just doesn't sound like she's hearing other people. I look forward to the disability stuff response, though!

[davidgillon]

I look forward to the disability stuff response, though!

Me too, when I work out how to say what I want! Partial first draft needs some major rewok.

[davidgillon]

She turned up on Jim Hines' blog with more of the same (and I'm so tempted to add a four letter word to the end of that clause), but without the personal exposure.

So I took her to task for pontificating on our behalf without ever considering that maybe there is an entire body of disability theory and politics she should be aware of before ever opening her mouth.

See http://jimhines.livejournal.com/826755.html#comments and I'm there as WTBDavidG

[untonuggan]

I don't have spoons to read her attempt at an apology, but it seems like at this point you don't necessarily have to do work for other people to see that there's an issue (the initial point) and she is not going to be able to hear anything right now (or maybe ever). You did good and you are not imagining there being issues with what she said.

If you need to, totally do go other things with your life.

Here be unsolicited advice:

IDK if the magazine did anything other than retract the piece and scrub it from the internet. If I were to have energy to focus on something and want to do something with it, I might focus it there (as they have readership): either talking to the editors about what kinds of disability related pieces they should definitely NOT publish, expanding their editorial board, and/or seeing if they would consider publishing something addressing disability issues by someone with a disability.

[davidgillon]

The whole column is supposedly about disability in SF/F, but the person running it seems to end up with people who don't actually understand disability issues rather too often. I'm not certain if the issue is her understanding of disability, or just that she's trying to get people to write articles about it, from a genre where people historically have not the first clue about disability.

The representation of disability in SF/F is one of my personal campaigning foci, and cross-links into what I'm trying to do in writing SF/F, so this isn't so much running off on a hobby-horse in unintended directions, as core to stuff I'm doing anyway.

As it turns out, I think I basically said what I wanted to for a follow-up in my reply to her post on Jim Hines' blog. I'll use that as the core for a second post and just top and tail it with the appropriate links, mostly to have it on my blog rather than a forgotten post elsewhere.

[untonuggan]

Did you see the crowdfunding I linked awhile back to a friend's YA Fantasy novel? I beta-read and it is REALLY good wrt representation. Definitely keep an eye out for when it comes out because ZOMG.

*cough*

(the main character has aphasia and brain fog! I had feelz about seeing that in writing just. yes. okay. done flailing at you.)

so yes I think you are going in good directions. do you have any writing up on A03 or elsewhere?

[davidgillon]

do you have any writing up on A03 or elsewhere?

I do have one piece up on an old blog, I keep thinking I should move it over to A03, but I haven't gotten round to it as yet.

An Open Mind

It's set in Elizabeth Bear and Emma Bull's Shadow Unit shared world, from when I was active in that fandom.

There's also a 'hidden extra', a standard part of the Shadow Unit stories, which is here if you miss the link in the main story. And some background on Shadow Unit here.