Steps to effective self advocacy or how to change the status quo
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- Skull13
- cmac29ca
- Skull13
- cmac29ca
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» Skull13 - I don't think the title fits...
Self advocacy to me would mean advocating on behalf of yourself. This would mean including your own disability and private grievances. Changing the status quo may in fact include going above and beyond self to the higher good.Avoiding negative words is very good but can soften you to the level of dispassionate shill. You do need to let some passion and some force of will show through your language.
I think saying that if you can't advocate according to these simplistic rules don't advocate is way off base. I don't care if someone is out there ranting and raving at the top of his or her lungs and pulling the craziest stunts imaginable...any publicity is good publicity. If it works in show business and politics, it works for advocacy.
Step 3 is perfect.
Step 4 is discriminatory. Many of us...myself included are either poor or have a condition that makes wearing "appropriate dress" extremely uncomfortable. If we are clean that should be enough in this day and age.
This is a new world and times have to change. We have to make the world adapt to us...why do we have to change who we are to get them to do it?
-- posted by Skull13
» cmac29ca - Re: I don't think the title fits...
In response to message posted by Skull13:Skull, I have to say that I agree with you. The title does not seem to fit.
It may be the ideal to delete negative words from our vocabulary, but I want to know is how practical is this? Is doing so not the same as playing the semantics game of the politically correct verbiage that means nothing in the end?
For example, there is a difference between being physically challenged.... or having Cerebral Palsy or Fibromyalgia.... The difference is that the first term means nothing and is useless, although possibly more politically correct, because it does not offend anyone; while the latter descriptions are conditions that many folks can relate to.
As an educator who has worked with disabled students for years, I can tell you that political correct "buzz words" that have lost all meaning are detrimental to the disabled. For example, to tell me that a student is developmentally delayed does not assist me in finding a starting point for that student's educational program. On the other hand, if you tell me that the student has either trainable or educable mental retardation (politically incorrect but more accurate medical terms) I can then use these proper medical terms to determine a baseline of curriculum objectives and goals with that student.
If we do not state things as they are without trying to clean it up for the "to be enlightened taxpayer" these folks are never going to see how it really is for the disabled. The problem is that people won't deal with situations that are messy. They expect everything to be sanitized and packaged into sound bytes as it is on the evening news. To state the truth in realistic terms with no flowery language, but with lots of current well organized facts and figures to support the statements made is the only way to get our point across. And to do so effectively is anything but being negative and a complainer in my opinion.
Step 2 then makes absolutely no sense to me! As you will guess, I do not think that we can divorce ourselves from out disabilities! This is just not realistic in my opinion. To say that one can do so is lying to yourself and those around you.
And to say that those who can't divorce themselves from their disabilities should not advocate is not only totally unrealistic it is totally discriminatory. Who decides if one has successfully divorced themselves from his or her disability? On what criteria is such a subjective judgment based?
Step 3 is (as you say) perfect. Hopefully more people will make the effort to do it when they get the chance.
I also agree that some people's dress is impacted by the nature of their disability and as long as they are presentable this should have no bearing on what the individual has to bring to the advocacy table. So, in relation to Step 4, who judges what is appropriate dress? Sounds like the old church question: Does God worry about how you are dressed on Sunday or is he more interested in the fact that you are presentable and participating in your church community? I think people are too caught up in petty, superficial details and lose sight of the truly important factors. In fact, I will go so far as to argue that it is possible that promoting an understanding that some folks' dress is impacted by their particular disabilities IS part of "effectively [enlightening] the taxpaying public."
-- posted by cmac29ca
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