Author: moviewriteups

Sia is the latest artist to be ruled by her own ego and ableism.

Sia is the latest celebrity to fall foul both to her own ego, and to ableism. More upsetting though, is her childish reaction to valid criticism and inability to admit to her mistakes.

Yesterday Sia dropped the trailer for her latest movie. In the movie she has cast a none disabled actress, to play an autistic person. This has been wrong for a lot of years. We as a community have spoken out against this kind of thing every time it has happened. It should be obvious by now. It isn’t authentic. It’s discriminatory, it’s fake and it feels so wrong. Mimicking autistic movements and stims feels so wrong on a none disabled actor. I have only met one advocate in the two years I’ve done this, of the hundreds I follow and no personally, who disagrees with this.

The excuses always come, and they’re always the same. ‘we didn’t have time’. ‘we didn’t have the money’. The most obvious response to that is so what? Don’t make the movie. It didn’t need to be made. This is a trope which has been done over and over and paints a very one sided picture of autism and disability. These people always think their project is a gift to the world and needs to be made regardless or authenticity because it’ll make some middle aged mom’s say ‘awww’. It does not help us.

More upsetting than all of that is Sia’s immensely childish response. She has lashed out, name called, and done everything but communicate with the community. She claims to have researched for 3 years, but every mistake she has made I learned in one week of being on twitter and following disabled advocates.

She even said to an autistic actor ‘maybe you’re just a bad actor’ when asked why she didn’t use an autistic actor and explained how that could have been done. She just cannot handle the criticism and it’s been seen time and time again by people that call themselves progressive until money affects that…On top of that she worked with auti$m speaks. A group with numerous horrific issues and practices which can be found out with a 5 second Google. Showing once more her poor research.

What hurts the most though, is that Sia is disabled. She has a disability. I’ll leave you to research her yourself, but she should have known better. It’s internalised ableism at it’s finest and I think it shows even more that she did not follow advocates and listen to their voices.

So, in my opinion, and the opinion of every advocate I follow and have seen is, do not support this movie. Do not support Sia. Not her movie. Not her music. Nothing. She does not deserve our support.

Below are some screenshots showing her response etc

The DWP are failing disabled and mentally ill people, again.

This is disgusting.

I wish I could say I was surprised that The Job Centre/DWP would treat disabled and mentally ill folks like this, but after dealing with them my entire adult life I don’t think they could surprise me.

I want to break down why this is wrong, and damaging.

The major problem with everything they have said on this form, is that all the issues they say we cause by describing our disabilities accurately, are not OUR issues. They are issues with the corrupt and broken employment system and the way disabled people are seen in society. Instead of spending money on bullshit like this they should spend money training employers to understand disability and teach them that just because someone has a disability it doesn’t mean they cannot work if that’s what they choose to do.

The flip side of this is that their system for deciding if someone is disabled ENOUGH to not have to work and receive disability benefits is completely unfair and broken. The metaphorical hoops disabled people are forced to jump through are on fire and the help we get in jumping through them is non-existent. I see this every day in the community, people who physically cannot get out of bed, and people who may be ambulatory but whose disability or mental illness would stop them being able to commit to a full week of 9-5 work, unable to pass the frankly ridiculous criteria set out by the assessors.

The other issue I have with this is the overall language used. To suggest that ‘chronic illness’ is a word that ‘sounds worse than it is’ is abhorrent. My illness is absolutely chronic. It will affect every single thing I do in my life from now until the day I die. As I sit here typing this my back is on fire and the tension in my arm got so bad I had to switch to typing on my phone. Chronic illnesses are chronic. They are forever. They are every day. I don’t care if an employer thinks that sounds bad. I wouldn’t want to work for someone with that opinion of disabled folks.

I also take issue with ‘try to use language that people would understand or relate to’, for two reasons. The first being, it is not my responsibility to dumb down my disability for any one’s understanding. Much less for the understanding of someone who is going to be responsible for my safety and wellbeing in the workplace. Secondly, leading on from that, if I need accommodations in the work place I am going to need my employer to understand explicitly every aspect of my disability and how it may affect my work and general use of my workplace. It is incredibly dangerous to suggest that a description of my illness be incomplete and basic.

I could go on. I have seen a lot of folks post about this today and I really hope the DWP will rethink sending this out and giving it to people who are already struggling. I hope they will reach out to people with disabilities and mental illness and allow them to help or even write a form like this for other disabled people. I seriously doubt a disabled person wrote this or had anything to do with it. That is never the way this should be done and it is not even close to good enough.

Existing Online With A Disability.

Existing online with a disability.

Reading the title of this blog you might be thinking, “what on earth is he talking about? Existing online with a disability is a non issue!” and honestly, up until last month I thought the same.

A few months back while browsing a disability forum I saw someone had made a post saying every time they try and have a discussion with someone online, the other party in the discussion will visit their profile, find out they are disabled, and then use that against them in an argument.

When I first read that I was obviously disgusted, that people would sink that low. Afterwards though I thought back and couldn’t ever really remember that happening to me personally. It occurred to me though that at that time I really hadn’t mentioned my disability all that much on my Facebook or Instagram profiles.

This past month as some of you will know, I have started solely making videos about disability on my youtube channel and being much more open and active about it on my public (and private) social media accounts. I’m here today to tell you that I have now dealt with someone using my disability against me in an argument three times in the past month.

My interests online vary from various music pages to warhammer instagram accounts and everything in between. Every issue I am going to talk about here though, has been on video game related pages and accounts. The one I want to talk about happened recently.

Yesterday I saw a post about a game which had just come out. I decided to comment (after watching many reviews about said game) that I thought people would be better off waiting a few months as I felt the price would drop due to the bad reviews. I hit post and forgot about it.

Around 15 minutes later I got a notification that someone had replied. I expected it was someone disagreeing with me no doubt but I was shocked to see the replies.

(This is a fabricated pic as I deleted my original comment and blocked both people, and honest to god the first guy did have a furry profile pic)

So these two guys had seen my comment, disagreed with me so much they wanted to insult me personally, clicked my name and gone on to my profile, scrolled for quite a while as I hadn’t posted about disability in a couple of days, found something that said I was disabled and then decided to use it against me without even referencing the game we were commenting on or my original comment.

I don’t know these people. Both had a private profile. You might be thinking that maybe they were someone who knew me and were just trying to troll me, but both seemed to be fully fledged accounts which had existed for a while and for a friend to have found my comment on that post would have been difficult. These were two random guys, who must have enjoyed this game so much that, to defend it against my not even inflammatory comment, they decided to insult me personally.

I have had many an online discussions/arguments in my day. Up until this year when I realised that online arguments are a complete waste of time I would often have debates on various political pages and occasionally pages about games etc, but I have never been this shocked by a reply before.

For one, my original comment wasn’t in the least bit offensive or trying to start an argument, it was merely advice to anyone considering shelling out on a new release. Secondly I just couldn’t believe the vitriol in the comment itself. To argue with me in the first place was bad enough, but to dig through my profile and find what they perceived to be a weakness to use against me is truly disgusting.

You can see I replied, and I really wish I hadn’t bothered, I was just so angry in that one moment. My advice to you if you ever come up against anyone like this online is to block them as soon as you can. People like this will never change, they will never learn. If they are willing to try and insult you by referencing something you cannot change, then they are never going to be good people. I have never met anyone who has become a good person after telling racist/homophobic/ableist jokes or insulting people because of something they can’t change. A friend said to me on this matter, if someone said this to you in real life you wouldn’t give them the time of day, and he was right about that.

I stewed over those comments for a couple of hours. I was actually letting it upset me. When I thought about it, I realised it’s because I have always feared people judging me on my disability before even getting to know me, and obviously on the internet it is incredibly easy for someone to have a 5 second look at your life and assume what they like about you.

In those two hours of upset I honestly considered giving up youtube and instagram and no longer being open about my life online for fear of this continuing. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me, twice before this, in the last month in fact, I have been called a cripple and a retard in a conversation about politics or games online. But I thought, that would be letting disgusting people like that win. I shouldn’t have to hide who I am, even online, just to appease people like that, or for fear of someone insulting me. If someone sees that I am disabled and chooses to use that against me then I know they aren’t someone worth discussing anything with anyway.

So the reason I am writing this blog post is to give some advice to you. If you are someone who has posted on their page about disability, or if you are someone who hasn’t because you don’t want people judging you or finding out about your disability, don’t be afraid. Be proud of who you are, and don’t let anyone make you feel like less of a person because of it. Those people aren’t worth your fear of being judged and they certainly aren’t worth your time.

I will continue to be me, to be disabled out in the open, and I will always be proud of who I have become in spite of living with my disability. Every day.

Why Did I Start This Blog? A Ramble About Productivity and Being Disabled.

One of the hardest things I deal with when it comes to my disability, other than being in pain, is being productive and feeling like I have some kind of worth. When you realise no one who you care about and who cares about you, would think any less of you if you spent all day in bed watching Netflix and just coping with your pain, it can be hard to make yourself want to do anything else.

People always assume that not being able to work must be this heaven where you can live your life completely as you want and this isn’t really the case at all for those of us out of work due to disability. The reality is that although being unable to work grants you what seems like an infinite amount of time, filling that time with stimulating and enjoyable activites gets increasingly hard as time goes by.

I am currently 27. I have been out of education and working since my disability became too bad at 18. That is 11 years that I have awoken every day with nothing on the agenda. I can’t deny that it was freeing at first. To be able to go to bed and wake whenever I wanted, do whatever I wanted and never really have any pressure or responsibility on my life. After as little as 6 months though I felt like I was going stir crazy. Even though back then at just 18 I had much more freedom and independence. My disability hadn’t gotten as bad as it is now and I could actually leave the house on my own and do things, I still found myself being incredibly bored every single day.

So what is the solution to this? I’m still not sure I’ve found one.

After being forced to drop out of Northumbria University due to 3 knee dislocations in 1 month, I was pretty frustrated that I had ended my education, as I had been enjoying my course studying computing, a subject I have always been passionate about. I decided I would try studying online. I started a computing course at The Open University which would end with me getting a degree almost identical to what I had been studying at Northumbria. For the first two years I was feeling really great about the course and it made me feel better about myself to be working towards something. However, after two years my disability was worsening and even with so much free time I was struggling to keep up with the workload. I am still a student there as my degree was open ended, I have the ability to go back to it and I really hope one day I will be able to finish it. I found out though that maybe doing a full time course like that wasn’t for me.

I decided to look to my other passions and hobbies. Music has been a huge part of my life since I was 10 years old. I started learning to play guitar when I was in Primary 5 and have loved it ever since. I also love YouTube. Being stuck in bed all day, YT is a huge time killer and even a free source for education on pretty much education you could want. It is also of course a great provider of entertainment from music to vlogs and pretty much everything else.

I have made YT videos on and off ever since it started back in 2005. Back then I had a pretty crappy webcam with a pretty crappy mic built in but I had so much fun filming myself playing guitar and singing. For a good few years after giving up with studying I would on and off make videos and tell myself that was my productivity and it was enough. While it may not sound like much, it was during this time that I moved in to a place of my own in the city. I spent a lot of time out with friends, playing buskers and open mic nights and really just enjoying my life living in the city. There were times when I thought, what am i doing? I wasn’t really doing anything to further myself, just enjoying my social life and playing music with friends. Looking back however, I am so glad I had that opportunity. I lived in the city for three years and absolutely loved it. When I moved back home for what I thought would be a few months while I found a new place in the city, my disability got worse and I never moved back. My dad eventually moved out and my girlfriend moved in with me. I look back on those three years and am so glad I spent that time having fun and enjoying myself, as almost everything I did back then and enjoyed, is something that is so far out of my reach now.

Anyway I am digressing, a few years back the part of me that wanted to do something with my life came back up to the surface. I was on new medication and starting to have a little more energy and drive throughout the day.

I decided I wanted to try and do YT full time. Believe it or not if you want to make videos about anything and have even a semi popular channel, YT can be a lot of work. I planned to make two videos a week making cover songs and started. I did that for around 2 years. I made at least two videos a week. I started with just my mobile phone and slowly upgraded my gear to proper vocal microphones, an SLR Camera and proper studio lights. I loved doing it and made around 200 videos in that period of time. Some were seen by 3 people, some were seen by 500. Numbers which to some people may have seen as failures, but I was happy to be making something which at least one other person was taking joy from.

That brings us to last month. I think you have probably gathered that my disability is degenerative. I once could walk around the city on my own without too much issue, and now I spend most days in bed. I realised that setting up my music gear, and putting in so many hours to making music videos for youtube was becoming way too much work for my body. Even when my girlfriend helped it was still such a long recovery period for me after each video. It was a hard thing to accept but I knew I had to stop.

While I knew music videos and anything that complex were out of my reach now, I didn’t want to stop making YouTube videos completely though. I had met friends and really felt like I had got something out of it.

A few years back I had made an out of the ordinary video for my channel, where I talked about my disability, what it was, and how it affected me. That video is currently sitting at over 14 thousand views, the most popular on my channel. I realised after reading the many comments on that video that there was an audience out there for disability related videos. I had hundreds of messages from people on my social media saying that they were thrilled to find someone else with their condition, or just dealing with disability in general.

So, for the last month I have been making videos about disability. Both on how it affects me, and disability news in general. The past 5 videos I’ve made have gotten literally 800% more views than my music videos were getting. Not only that but I was receiving so many nice comments from viewers who liked the direction I was going and were enjoying what I was saying.

Last Friday I woke up feeling pretty terrible, which isn’t uncommon. Fridays are my usual day for filming and editing together a new video, but there was no way I could manage. I was upset. I finally have a drive to do something, and it’s something I was passionate about.

The whole reason I decided to start this blog is because I don’t have the energy to make YouTube videos about my disability consistently, but I still want to feel like I am doing something. So that’s what this is for. I want to be able to still create something and get things off my chest, even when all I can manage to do is lie in bed.

This has been a long post. I’m completely new to this. It may not have flowed as well as other posts on other blogs that you read, but I hope to get better.

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