Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Wow I loved this doc! Is there anybody out there?, 87 minutes, UK, 2023. Directed by Ella Glendining, in English with precise captions and audio description.

Blurb:

Born with a rare disability, filmmaker Ella Glendining wonders if there is anyone who can share the experience of living in a body like hers. This simple question—one which non disabled people take for granted, leads to a journey to not only others who live like her—but to the realization that meeting them changes how she views herself in the world, as well as many surprises along the way.

Glendining includes archival footage of her own childhood (older videotapes with flashing lights across the bottom of the screen) as well as horrifying evidence of rank bigotry that disabled kids in the UK. She talks about loving bodies, her own and others’. She documents accepting parenting from her own youth and with her own child, as well as the challenges of wanting to have a "perfect birth" (no drugs, no knives). She demonstrates access intimacy and cross-disability solidarity, interacts with one great doctor and one surgeon-on-a-mission to normalize kids through massive pain, and finally answers the title question yes! meeting three people with bodies similar to hers. I got bi vibes from the doc but I don’t remember her explicitly coming out. In this extensive interview at Diva Magazine, she does explore her bisexuality: https://diva-magazine.com/2023/11/13/ella-glendining-is-there-anybody-out-there/.

I want every parent of a kid with orthopedic impairments to watch this film today, before they ponder any more "treatments." It would also be a great discussion starter for a classroom or activist group.

( Where to watch and trailer )

This panel is WOW! Three disability justice elders tomorrow!

Wednesday 13 April 2022 6p CT - 7pm ET - 2100 UTC

“The Future of Disability Justice” panel featuring Alice Wong, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Mia Mingus

Register at https://tinyurl.com/DisabilityJustice22

Presented by Asian American and Asian Resource and Cultural Center at Purdue University. Reg form asks for "Purdue email" but my Pobox.com address worked fine.

DJ background: https://projectlets.org/disability-justice

The Society for Disability Studies (SDS) is a non-profit organization that promotes the study of disability in social, cultural, and political contexts. SDS con happens in concert with Multiple Perspectives, a disability-themed con sponsored by Ohio State University. You have to register for both conferences.. SDS subsidizes free reg for folks who need it. I’m happy to subsidize membership in the org, which includes access to the SDS Listserv, a very useful resource for researching disability.

The theme this year is

DEEP SIGH: (Re)Centering Activism, Healing, Radical Love, Emotional Connection and Breathing Spaces in Intersectional Communities

During these turbulent times of racial injustice and disappointing leadership(s), amplified by the current pandemic and climate crisis, the world is (has been, and continues to be) hurting, while some have been thriving at the expense of ‘others’. Right now, we need to take a step back and listen and learn from those who are members of some of the most vulnerable communities, in particular historically multiply marginalized communities. Pain, trauma, and vulnerability manifest in a myriad of ways. Rather than sweeping these issues under the rug, we want to invite folks to breathe for a moment and take space/time to (re)connect with their surroundings and with each other, while becoming attuned to the aches, tightness, and tweaks that our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energies convey.

This is a moment for a deep sigh, a moment of “I am present,” a moment of becoming aware of how much wear and tear our mind, body, and spirit have embodied, toiled over, especially in the past several months of “what just happened?!”

Presenters and program items are being developed as I type, with details available by 1 April. I guarantee you’ll find something intriguing and educational. Mia Mingus mia.mingus will be speaking at 4pm Monday, 19 April 2021. She’s an outstanding presenter, thinker, and organizer and I treasure every time I’ve heard her present.

Conference Schedule Overview

Saturday & Sunday, 17–18 April, 2021, SDS@OSU:

• 9 Blocks of 4-5 Concurrent Sessions
• Plenary Event
• All-day Zola Help Desk
• All-day Display, Chat, and Respite Space
• DANCE DANCE DANCE

Monday & Tuesday, 19–20 April, 2021
SDS@OSU plus Multiple Perspectives:

• 6 Blocks of 2 Concurrent SDS@OSU Strand Sessions
• All-Day Sessions organized by the Multiple Perspectives Conference
• Plenary Events

( more background on SDS )

The Society for Disability Studies is the academic home for people who understand disability from the social (justice) model. They’ve been publishing Disability Studies Quarterly since the 1980s. DSQ mixes up high academic and practical activism — it’s always worth checking out their open access archive if you’re interested in anything related to disability. The SDS is not a rich academic group, so they’ve recently partnered with Ohio State University’s ongoing Multiple Perspectives on Inclusion conference to maintain an in-person annual gathering. I’ve attended SDS several times, always learning a lot and (typically) never wrote up the sessions.

This year the con was held online. It turned out to be much cheaper — they had been paying hotel costs of ~$200/hour — and more accessible for some of us. (Nothing like attending a session while reclining in bed — thanks to my iPad holder.) Virtual meetings are by their nature easier to record; the SDS have promised to make all the sessions available — video, captioning transcript, supporting text and slide shows — for a month after the conference’s end. (While this hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t surprise me. The conference organizers — most of them disabled — were operating at 160% effort and negligible sleep for a month before the 4 April start date.)

( Four hundred words about one presentation )

begin quote
[...snip...]
I can see the god of hands:
flapping in joy,
dancing full of language,
poring over six-dot cells of knowledge,
easing joysticks across broken sidewalks,
torn between frustrated teeth,
cracked and callused and sore,
dowsing for love on screens,
flipping tables, throwing chairs,
juddering to a rhythm of the nerves,
loose and still,
knotted,
contracted,
balled into fists,
wrapped around guns
that turn out to be trinkets,
bruised,
bloodied,
wet with tears.

I can see holiness
in the rising,
in the sharing,
in the reaching out to one another
against rejection,
in the demand
for freedom, food and futures,
even as your forces array against it. [...snip...]
quote ends