It is interesting to hear Judge Peter Boshier from the Family Court calling for a radical rethink of the way we deal with domestic violence in New Zealand. He cites cases of suicide because of the lack of support for victims. He also cites the lack of accountability of the perpetrators through programmes never completed.

Nowhere is the need for action more acute than in the disability community where reporting is low, and penalties for murder lighter than for murder of non-disabled people. I know of at least once case of suicide caused by bullying, and more attempts.

Domestic violence has a different meaning in the disability context. The nuances include the usual domestic and family violence which includes murder. It includes bullying in the workplace and in schools at all levels which is nonetheless violence if not domestic violence. All forms, including domestic violence, are experienced by disabled women and men.

Violence also occurs in institutions large and small. This is complicated as the perpetrators are sometimes in paid employment with service providers. If violence comes from other residents there are often few choices or alternatives for either party in their living arrangements or who they live with. But in either case it is the victim’s home. They have nowhere else to live or to escape to. Violence prevention services are beginning to take notice but their focus is quite limited and inadequate in the disability context.

As White Ribbon Day approaches I am struggling with this as I reflect on the unnecessary suffering many disabled people experience at the hands of others in a variety of situations. We have all got stories to tell, but to tell them is a frightening prospect. Many have been deeply buried for a long time and bringing them into the light of public scrutiny may seem like opening old wounds, It can also feel like inviting more pain from those who already think they have he right to intrude in disabled people’s lives in ways they would never consider appropriate for non-disabled people.
Victims who experience this include children and the most physically and psychologically vulnerable and fragile people in our communities.

This “ownership” of disabled people and their issues by others results in a fundamental and significant difference between violence experienced by disabled and non disabled people. It must be acknowledged and understood by anyone who wants to work in this area.

The Disability Clothesline therefore is a project whose time has come. It provides a medium for disabled people to safely tell their stories and perhaps find some healing by decorating tee shirts with their stories in whatever way they want. Supporters and those fortunate enough not to have a story to tell can sign a supporters’ sheet. The tee shirts and the sheet are hung on the clothesline for all to see, to provide education and promote action.

The project wants everyone to know that:

• Violence and abuse against disabled people is not OK
• It is OK to talk about it and share stories
• Violence towards and abuse of disabled people is a serious problem
• Action can be taken to prevent and detect it
• Everyone can do something about it
• As an issue it is just as important as other forms of violence
• Disability violence and abuse is part of the white ribbon campaign

We are hanging out our dirty washing in public. You can too. Nothing about us without us!

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Last Friday night we went to Old St Paul’s to listen to Hot Club Sandwich on the recommendation of a friend. Malcolm McNeil was a guest and he is always good. I had thought Hot Club Sandwich would be quite jazzy because of Malcolm McNeil and they are. But I was pleasurably surprised though as I am not a fan of some kinds of really serious Jazz. They are a lot of fun and we intend to go again on July 3rd. As well as being great professional entertainers they have an appealing humorous touch. St Paul’s is a lovely venue and the concert was informal and friendly. Just the thing for a Friday night.

Bass player Terry Crayford is better known to many of us than we might think since he wrote the theme for Fair Go.

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A couple of weeks ago I was asked to be a panellist to discuss a film in the Human Rights Festival. The film was called Nobody’s Perfect. Since it has an English title I was unconcerned until I was given a copy to preview. Imagine my chagrin, well really my frustrated pissed offness when I couldn’t follow it because much of the dialogue was in German! We tried having it read to me but that is too slow and disruptive, so basically I had to say “no” and explain that subtitled movies are inaccessible to people with low vision or who are blind, and that’s even before you even consider audio description.

Its just as well I found out in advance or it would have been embarrassing for both me and the organisers.

Movies in mainstream cinemas or festivals are never advertised as being subtitled, unless they are captioned for Deaf audiences.

I didn’t attend the screening but heard afterwards that one of the panellists was from the medical school! I know the film was about so called “thalidomides” and no disrespect is intended to that person. But surely we should expect anyone who is involved in human rights activities to have got beyond medicalising disability – even if the subject is related to impairment as the result of drug companies marketing a product after it was know to have side effects.

Disability and human rights are obviously not yet subjects that everyone in the human rights community in New Zealand has quite got to grips with yet. How long will it take?

The festival has finished in Wellington and finishes today in Auckland, but has still time to run in Christchurch and Dunedin.

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I first fell in love with Leonard Cohen’s music in the seventies, and Tuesday night I did it all over again. The concert was simply stunning, well worth the most expensive tickets I think I have ever bought. Cohen seems to have gained so much in stature and depth as a performer since I first heard him the Albert Hall in London back when. At 75 he performed with absolute class for three hours, with numerous encores to an enraptured and responsive audience. What a voice!

The sound was flawless; with perfect balance between vocals and musicians, every one an accomplished performer in their own right.

How appropriate that he sang ‘Democracy is Coming to the USA’ on the eve of the inauguration of America’s first black president. It almost felt like the sixties again!

I came home feeling that I had experienced a deep and satisfying performance. It might indeed have been ‘the best show ever’. It was certainly something to take my mind off the grim times we live in. Big thanks to Mike G for organising the tickets.

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A new year and new resolutions – not – although I have considered starting regular swimming again after all that Christmas food!

Anyway Happy New Year to everyone out there in the blogosphere!

The holidays have passed quietly in this corner of the capital, with the usual amount of moderate over-indulgence. I can’t prevent myself from adopting a kind of siege mentality at this time of year and over-estimate the amount we can eat. My favourite pastime as I recover is relaxing with a glass of wine and a stack of good books. It is a restful antidote to the highly contagious and exhausting lemming rush towards Christmas which I always swear I will avoid but never can.

Things went a bit pear shaped on New Year’s Eve morning when we awoke to a steady drip as a pipe leaked copiously from two floors up. That kind of catastrophe is one of the (few) disadvantages of living in an apartment I guess.

Over the holidays I have been reading about and reflecting on some disability topics, including disability culture, wondering what it means to your average crip or blindie in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I have found the concept lurking in some surprising places on the Interweb thingy, including knowledge of it being specified in several public sector-type job ads. It made me wonder if the people who wrote them could tell me what they mean. They are probably all away on holiday, otherwise I might ring one or two and ask them out of curiosity. If I find out I will publish their answers here.

I would be interested to know what readers think about disability culture. Does such a thing exist? If so what is it? What does it mean to disabled people in NZ today? Post your thoughts.

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Over the weekend I attended a music festival. I really enjoyed the music, but I think the average and generally ageing folkie has a very strong puritan, or maybe Presbyterian streak that dictates hardship must be endured in return for the enjoyment of such pleasures.

The festival was held in the wilds of outer Wainuiomata, in a Spartan scout camp in a remote corner of a valley, and true to form at one stage the rain on the iron roof of the hall drowned out the music!

Having said all that, and despite the cold and the mud, the warmth and enthusiasm of seeing old friends, and the general joie de vivre of the music made a little hardship worthwhile. But I was glad to climb back into our transport along with a few other less than intrepid souls and return to my warm apartment after the afternoon’s entertainment.

My favourite song, or at least the one that made me laugh the most, went by the glorious title of In Praise of the Colorectal Surgeon!

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Someone has come up with the theory that Janet Frame was autistic. Autism had barely been identified as a specific condition at the time Janet Frame was cleared of having a mental illness when she lived in the UK. I have read and appreciated most of her work. Just the other day I bought her newly published novel, Towards Another Summer, and look forward to reading it with pleasurable anticipation.

This new ‘diagnosis’ leaves me with mixed feelings and a number of questions. Firstly Janet Frame died in 2004 and can no longer answer for herself. Secondly shouldn’t her writing stand for itself? Should we forever analyse it and her in terms of what condition she had and not simply accept her writing for what it is, exceptional. Of course there should be no shame or stigma or different judgement attached to the work of many creative people who also have impairments and experience disability.

Does it matter whether she had a ‘condition’ or not. If she were ‘treated’ as the promoter of this theory in a medical journal suggests would her writing have been different, or as good? If she had not been labelled mentally ill, and undergone the searing experience of the primitive treatments she endured, her writing might have been entirely different. Would she have written as well, or indeed at all?

I also find myself asking why there is this need to label, to find explanation for behaviours or states of being, rather than accepting and celebrating the richness of the human condition and the consequential richness of world views. If she was autistic so what? How many other artists in different fields could be diagnosed with a variety of conditions, and what would be the point? Where might all this categorising lead us?

All of this is of course, mere speculation. Her writing stands firmly on its merits. She did not, thankfully, undergo a frontal lobotomy, and we are left today with the essential paradox of her life and work, for which we can be grateful, whether or not she was autistic.

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