I write to you every week from San Francisco, where the Planning and Urban Research Association recently released a new proposal. In it, the organization attempts to address our local transportation agency's budget shortfall. Number two on the list? Charge disabled people $300 per year to use a blue handicapped parking placard.

If something this stupid could make it before the transportation department at one of America's most educated large cities, just imagine what Fresno's urban planning reports must look like.

Disabled people are already poorer and underemployed vs. your typical San Franciscan - and when you compare $300 to the $76 that non-disabled people in San Francisco pay for an annual neighborhood parking sticker, the latter seems like a steal. As noted at Beyond Chron, the proposal didn't address the fact that charging for a placard is very likely against the law.

On the edge of calling a "fiscal emergency," the SF Municipal Transportation Agency is broke. But disabled people already have to deal with broken subway (BART) elevators and buses too crowded to accommodate wheelchairs, and this'll just tighten the thumb screws. And some disabled people don't even have thumbs.

The board of directors of the transportation agency is taking public comments through Friday. Email sfmtabudget@sfmta.com or call 311 from within the city to let them know where you stand.

via Media dis&dat

We at Where's Lulu are huge fans of the always wonderful website Boing Boing. Today they posted a link to an article written by a diabetic woman detailing her adjustment to her insulin pump and how it affects her sex life/sense of self. In "Tethered to the Body," Jane Kokernak writes, "Although the pump offered me better health and the hope of fewer long-term complications from diabetes, wearing it made me feel fragile and also inexplicably obsessed with doubts about myself as a woman... There is no transcending the reality of being my body: 43 years and getting older, female, insulin-dependent, bruised. When I catch a glimpse of my nakedness in the bedroom mirror, I see an imperfect woman and the signs of her vulnerability."

I appreciate Kokernak's willingness to share her story so openly, and she brings up issues that I imagine most women relate to (body image, sexual self-perception). Though I was instantly empathetic with the author regarding her sensitivity in evaluating herself as a sexual, disabled woman (this is a topic I think/talk about often), I have to admit to being a bit surprised by some of the article. To me, wearing an insulin pump during marital sex just doesn't seem like all that big of a deal. Especially when your husband is also diabetic. While it sounds like an inconvenience at times, it's not as Liz Lemon would say, "a dealbreaker." In fact, there's even a website devoted to Virtual Insulin Pump Hotties! Perusing some of the comments from other readers seemed to echo my thoughts. One person (who had some snarky things to say) wrote about his wife's pump. "We sleep nude, and her pump floats on it's tether. When spooning it's usually down around our legs somewhere. Sometimes I notice it and shift it, but calling it an imposition is vastly over stating it. It gets in the way less than the blankets." Another reader wrote, "I've been on the pump for a while, too. There's tons of annoyances, but honestly, just unhook the thing while you are having sex. Suspend the pump and tuck it on the night stand or under the pillow. Surely the exercise you are getting from having sex takes up some of the slack from the lack of basal insulin you aren't getting for that time."

Hey, something interesting happened at the Oscars!! As someone who hasn't seen *any* of the nominated movies and who finds Hollywood awards shows painfully self-aggrandizing and boring, I was shocked to find myself (briefly) entertained by what is now being referred to as the award show's 'Kanye moment,' i.e., somebody's thunder getting drastically stolen in front of an audience of millions. This is not to say I took pleasure in someone else's suffering (I say NO to schadenfreude). Rather, the bizarre interaction made me actually start paying attention to what was playing out on the boob tube. After wondering aloud 'who's this wacky redheaded lady usurping that man's speech?' I found out about the documentary film Music By Prudence.



Music By Prudence follows the life of Prudence Mabhena, lead singer of Zimbabwe's band, Liyana. The band is unique not only due to it's 'Afro-fusion' sounds and lyrics in myriad languages, but also because every member of the band including Prudence is disabled. In a country where being disabled is seen as evidence of witchcraft, the inherent state of being a person with a disability can be a radical act. Add to this the fact that this young, charismatic disabled woman is actively showcasing her immense talents as a musician and a bandleader is positively revolutionary. Director Roger Ross Williams (whose acceptance speech was interrupted) delineates the differences between the first world/developing world disabled experience:

There are so many limitations in Zimbabwe, and it’s so difficult to live there. There’s extreme discrimination against the disabled, which doesn’t exist in America. There’s some, but it’s not like she’s cursed and no one will go near her.

Here, we have the Americans with Disabilities Act. Even if you’re disabled, you can ride buses and get around. There’s disabled bathrooms, and elevators. All that stuff doesn’t exist in Zimbabwe. We just take it for granted. They have to be carried up stairs. They can’t get anywhere. There’s no freedom for disabled people.

Check out a live performance from Liyana here!

You're welcome.

That is an actual quote from a New York Times article about a new Chinese theme park called Kingdom of the Little People.

But it does not stop at pink tutus. Close your eyes and imagine:

"a 230-foot-high performance hall that looks like the stump of a prehistoric tree"

"33 Dr. Seuss-style cottages with crooked chimneys where kingdom residents pretend to live"

"tiny dogs"

"a black BMW modified to resemble a flying saucer, from which dwarfs spill forth"

And then realize this beautiful dream world really can be yours, for just $9 and a plane ticket to Kunming.

Unfortunately, political correctness is already ruining the fun, with a spokesperson for Little People of America asking, "What is the difference between it and a zoo?"

But like we mentioned a while back, some disabled people don't mind working as so-called circus freaks, in part because, duh, it pays better than the typical jobs that crips get stuck with. (The average salary of a disabled worker in China is less than half that of a non-disabled worker.)

I'm just going to go out on a broken limb here and say that "freak shows" are a less insidious result of ableism than, for example, the experience by Kingdom of the Little People entertainer Wu Zhihong at her previous jobs. She used to develop photos and worked as a telephone operator. At both jobs, she was deliberately kept out of public view by her bosses. And it's harder to start a conversation about oppression when the oppressed are invisible.

The first time Kingdom of the Little People performer Chen Ruen wore his pink tutu, he says he "felt really awkward.” But he prefers the Swan Lake gig to his previous job, which was "collecting refuse with his parents."

Don't try to tell me you'd pick trash over tutus.

via Media dis&dat