happy birthday Jilli

Yay for Nora !

today looks better, partly because it started with Ryan pictures

Congrats Nora!

Happy Birthday Jilli!

Hey billytea, have you seen Isabella Rossellini's new project Green Porno?

Anchovies like orgies. Garden snails are sadomasochists. Earthworms are hermaphrodites who make babies by mating with everybody.

There's a lot of hot sex underwater and in the dirt if you know where to look, according to actor and model Isabella Rossellini, 57, whose latest project is "Green Porno," a series of short films and now a book, in which Rossellini dresses in paper costumes to demonstrate the peculiar mating habits of bugs and sea creatures.

"I didn't know it was common for fish to change gender, or that they have such unusual sexual behavior," Rossellini said in a telephone interview from her home in New York.

"The public might sum up my life to 'Blue Velvet' and Lancome, but between that and 'Green Porno' is a span of 30 years," she said. "I don't think about how people perceive me; I just figured it was funny to see a middle-aged woman dress up like a shrimp."

There is something charming about watching Rossellini get her head bitten while mating with a praying mantis, or as a squid blinking colors at night to attract a lover.

Oh, and...

Happy birthday, Jilli!

Congratulations, Nora! You should drink beer right now!

Ooh, yay, 'cos research was getting really dull there, and last night's ep of The Big Bang Theory hasn't finished aheming.

OK. The social model. I think the Wikipedia entry on it, for once in Wikipedia's existence, is pretty good as a starting point. [link]

Another excellent, straightforward summary is here [link] . I recommend this summary when I'm doing Disability Equality Training. (Which reminds me that it's been a while since I've done any of that, and I need to sign up for the weekend course I was going to take to update my skills in that one.) The difference between the terms 'impairment' (physical/mental condition on an individual level) and 'disability' (the discrimination or oppression imposed on top of those impairments) is key, and this summary explains that difference quite well.

The social model only really makes sense when defined in opposition to the individual model of disability (sometimes called the 'medical model', but this is a confusing term that doesn't always work). Mike Oliver, the academic who pioneered the social model definition of disability, describes the difference between the two models in this article [link] (title is 'The Individual and Social Models of Disability', if that PDF link doesn't work and you need to look it up at the main archive at [link] ).

Talking of which, the archive of disability studies material at my university has lots of great stuff on this. It's accessible to the public and can be found at [link] .

More detailed responses to the social model have been made in relation to lots of more specific issues, including how it might apply to people with cognitive/developmental impairments, or to people with mental health problems. (I can give links, but some of these are academic papers that can't be accessed by everyone.) And there's been lots of debate initiated by those who worry that the social model ignores the experiences of those of us who also feel disabled by our wonky/painful/exhausted/etc bodies.

But regardless of the more detailed debate, I think it's one of the best resources that disabled people have for arguing for change in society. Where the focus is mistakenly on us as 'wrong' or 'broken' individuals, we can argue that the biggest problems - the ones that can be prevented and fought against - are those that society imposes *on top of* our conditions or impairments.

For me, that 'on top of' is the vicious cycle whereby people ask me to do things like climbing "just a few steps", and I dislocate my knee, and my impairment gets worse as a result, and round the spiral we go again. For lots of us with physical conditions, it's the inaccessibility of the built environment (no wheelchair ramps, information given to blind people only in print, no BSL/ASL interpreters available to those who need them, poor health/social care systems meaning we can't afford the adaptations/support/equipment we need, etc). For people with mental health problems, it might be the inflexibility of work that requires us to be in certain places at certain times and do tasks that create stress and make things worse. I'm dyslexic and it takes me three times as long to complete my work, so I've needed an extension on my dissertation - some people with learning/neurological impairments would benefit from total reorganization of teaching and assessment methods on courses, so that they could access education. People with developmental impairments could be offered more support: more information could be given to them in ways they can understand; more value could be ascribed to them as people who may not be able to work etc but are still important people living meaningful lives in a diverse (continued...)

( continues...) society.

I learnt about the social model when I didn't know about my genetic condition, when I wouldn't have considered myself physically impaired, but when my mental health problems were such that I was definitely disabled. It turned my thinking about disability upside-down, and I found it very empowering.

IcompletelyunrelatedN: Hmm. I want cake. I have no cake. An apple would be better for me. I might go and find cake.

Congratulations, Nora!

Happy Jilliday!

Marking Seska's post to read after I hve woken up little more...

I just got a note that my 15th high school reunion is happening while I'm in town for Christmas. I don't know how I feel about it.

Happy birthday, Jilli!

I got a save-the-date last week for my tenth college reunion. Along with a request for money, which I threw away.