Rather You Than Me

[davidgillon]

I finally wrote the blog on the Me Before You controversy I've been intending to write for several weeks.

'Finally' because I thought a lot about how I should do it, as the obvious approach to take as both disabled writer and disability activist collides head-on with the advice to us as baby writers to never do anything remotely controversial on the net (given agents and publishers will hunt your web-presence down as a form of due diligence). In the end I went with the obvious approach, because not taking apart how the writing and filming process systematically failed disabled people, and especially wheelchair users, seemed like a betrayal.

There's a lot of embedded links, so I'll link to it in place rather than reproduce it here: Rather You Than Me

CW for extended discussion of euthanasia and disablist fuckwittery

Comments

[capri0mni]

You know what's saddest (translation: most infuriating) about this?

"Better Disabled than Dead" should never be a "Controversy," in the first place, any more than "The sun is hot, rain is wet, and black lives matter."

[davidgillon]

{Nods} This.

[lilysea]

May I share this?

1) On DW under a friends lock ?

2) On Facebook, friends-only access setting ?

[davidgillon]

The blog is public, you (and anyone) can share it anywhere. The larger the audience I can get for disability activism, the better.

[hilarita]

Gah. I'm really not at all comfortable with people telling authors from margianalised groups that they should have an uncontroversial profile on the net. That's pretty much like saying 'put yourself back in the closet' - and don't do anything like activism. I find that quite silencing. Well done for writing out!

[davidgillon]

It's generalised advise, and I don't think it's quite caught up with minority authors and the positions we find ourselves in.