I Broke Up With Paula Rubenstein

This is a sensitive issue. Whenever I write about these issues, you can read more about my motives here. It's not my intention to harm or to embarass anyone. It is my intention to help others overcome abuse, bullying, power-tripping and disablism, even when done to us by our allies. The only way out is though it. We've just got to light a candle and tell our story, in the hope that we can make virtue stronger.

I dated Paula Rubenstein* for just a few weeks last year, and although she has many, many good points, I didn't like the way she treated me. I ended the relationship in December because of her emotional cruelty, and because I felt verbally and emotionally abused by her. And she pushed me. I cried a few times over all this.

I talked to her about all this, but she didn't stop. I was so sad and alone about this, but I'm proud of myself for ending things with her.

At the same time, I'm really afraid of Paula.

I knew Paula because I had been working as a volunteer on a project she was leading that pertains to disabled queers in a historical context. Paula is a paraplegic and uses a wheelchair, but in her case the paralysis is incomplete and she can actually walk. Paula is retired, owns a home, has a cottage she rents to a tenant, has a PhD, and once worked as some kind of therapist. She has many friends. In other words, she's well-connected and has power and voice.

She is a member of a left-leaning synagogue led by the rabbi who did nothing when I complained of relational aggression I experienced in retaliation for turning down some sexual offers by lesbians, one of whom turned out to be the "out" lesbian rabbi. I told part of that story before.

Back to Dr Rubenstein. Paula's good friend Robyn Britebart* was the project's Assistant Director, and at first both Robyn and Paula didn't want me to quit. I was very integral to the project.

I don't want to say too much about that. I'm afraid. But I really contributed a lot.

The same thing kept happening with Paula. And some promises to me weren't kept. I told Robyn, but it didn't stop.

The last straw was Paula pushing me twice more.

So just a month after breaking up with her, I quit the project. That was in January.

I was glad I got away from her. I consider myself lucky it didn't take me longer to see all this.

I am afraid of her.

I didn't know what she'd do to me next.

I'm not mad and I'm not looking to get back at her; I just want to get away from her.

And I want her to stay away from me.

The thing is, Paula could be anyone. She's just a dance. And I don't wanna dance with her anymore. Not that way.

So I'm learning some new steps and I'm trying them out.


(* I don't give real names due to a series of incidents online and offline.)

New Internet Bullying

Yesterday a friend of mine, Judy Siegal*, was the target of a very disparaging note on Facebook. She is probably my best friend in the world. She's got multiple sclerosis. I went over to her apartment and stayed with her.

The person who wrote the Facebook note shared it with quite a few people, and some of them have shared it with others.

The author of the note is Ricki Black*, the same person I wrote about in an earlier post here. Ricki is the woman who told me I better not go back to synagogue, and that many communities are angry at me, and that I'm not wanted, and that I'd better watch my back.

Late yesterday night, Paula Rubenstein*, a woman I dated briefly last year, posted a disparaging note about me on her Facebook wall. She added additional disparaging posts about me to her Facebook wall this morning, and sadly, a few of her friends responded to support her.

I know what you're thinking, are they teen-agers?

These women are 50 years old and they're acting this way. It's really sad. I wrote about Paula in a post here.

I've been upset about it, and I'm concerned and even a little scared when I realize that decent people are getting a strong dose of all that, yet they don't have accurate information to counter it with.

Today I'm a little sick and nauseous from the after effects of a migraine. But I have suppositories to control vomiting and I took one.

Certainly there are physical, emotional and social effects of what Paula and Ricki are doing. But what really concerns me is the spiritual side of it.

When people mistreat me, slander me, defame me, threaten me, mock me, I ask myself what's the spiritual way to handle it?

Should I fight back? Do I need to defend myself?

Is it spiritual to fight?

Is it spiritual to let your name and the name of your friend be defamed, and to allow a community to become riled up, and to do nothing when bullied or lied about?

How does one practice non-attachment under these circumstances?

How do I practice Yogic and Buddhist principles around this?

If my true interests are meditation and yoga, and I seek enlightenment, how does engaging in these worldy conflicts advance that?

In following Yogic and Buddhist ideals, am I following the right virtues?

If I want to meditate all day and do yoga, then shouldn't I move to a temple and do it there?

Last night Durga and I spoke by phone and she gave me a pep talk about the Bhagavad Gita. Durga is a classmate from Yoga Teacher Training, and the Bhagavad Gita is one of our texts. It's a 2,500-year-old allegorical spiritual story, and even Mohatma Gandhi has written about it. She reminded me of Arjuna's inner conflict on the eve of war against his family, his teachers, his friends. He didn't want to go to war. He preferred inaction. He was upset and confused and confronted Krishna about this.

"How can I wage war against my family and my teachers?" is the essence of the young man's question to Krishna.

Another of Arjuna's questions is, "Why can't I just do nothing instead?"

Krishna answered in a way that allowed Arjuna to see it was his duty to go to war. He helped Arjuna to see the world would fall out of balance if the young man did not restore order, justice and truth.

You just don't attach to that war's outcome.

Do I have the strength of Arjuna?

To Make A Difference

What really concerns me is the spiritual question. How do you go through an experience like this from a spiritual standpoint? Do we stick our head in the sand? Do we hide in therapist's offices? Do we play iPods with wind chimes and flutes and chants -- until we drown out reallity? Do we meditate until we find Samadhi? Do we throw back a handful of Prozac, or alcohol cocktails, or smoke medicinal marijuana all day? Do we lose ourselves in Torah or in religious ecstasy? Do we find sexual partners and do nest-building?

Or do we speak out on behalf of creating a safer, healthier community for us all?

If we speak out, won't others tear us down? Won't we inspire jealousy from the Old Guard Lefties and Handlers and Allies?

How do we speak out in ways that really educate, and in ways that provide tools to shape our independence, and build community, and perhaps shed some of those who make their living off us not with us?

And on a personal note, what does any of this have to do with meditation or Yoga, or any of the other things I really care about? For me, this advocacy can sometimes feel like a real intrusion, and in some ways, I can feel trapped into viewing it as a waste of my time on this earth.

I start to think, I just want to minimize this time suck, and focus on more meaningful things.

On the other hand, I find meaning in this. I'm not here to vent, nor to do self-analysis, nor to power-trip. I'm not here to embarass anyone, or to harm anyone.

I'm here to make a difference.

It's my aim to contribute. It's my purpose to help teach about the subtle, yet institutionalized forms of disablism, prejudice, ignorance, imbalance of power, psychological aggression, bullying, internet bullying, relational aggression, enabling, jealousy, competition for resources or competition to become "the voice" of the community, especially as found among the LGBT community, the spiritual community, the healing community, the disability community, the political left, and our allies.

My goal is to empower each other to overcome it.

What You Can Do to Help the Prosopagnosiac

Ok, Let's say my name is Erin Teller. If we know each other, come up to me and greet me. It's the most helpful thing you can do for someone with face blindness. Remember the prosopagnosiac is entering every social situation not knowing who's there. Imagine how you'd feel if everyone you encounter for the rest of your life kept a paper bag over their head all the time.

Here's how to greet someone with face blindness. Approach me and say my name. Then say your name. Then tell me how we know each other.

Here are some good examples. Do this:
You: Hi Erin, it's me, Emma, from swimming at Lakeview park.
You: Hey Erin, it's Gladys, from the Women Over Fifty Club. We met at that cabaret show at the Elk's Hall last summer.
You: Oh Erin, good to see you. It's me, Wendy, I'm a friend of Willa's. We all went to that LGBT comedy show in San Francisco together, right before Pride.
You: Erin, you may not recognize me, because I cut my hair. But it's me, Shamika. I'm the person with the big lemon tree. We made meringue with Alex.
You: Erin, I don't go by Zip anymore. Now I go by Zap. From skateboarding, remember?
You: Shabbat shalom, Erin, it's me Rebekah, from Rabbi Alan's class. Come sit with me.
You: Om, Erin, it's me Shakti, from Laughing Tree Yoga. Put your mat down here by mine.

After you introduce yourself, let me take a beat or two so I can recall the memory you're describing. It may take another moment for me to see your physical type, to see what you're wearing today, and who you're with. I need to associate that with your name and with the memory you described. Not everyone with face blindness is slow, but my face blindness was acquired from a head injury, so I need you to give me time to process what you're saying.

Let's talk about some other situations. Let's say we're traveling to a social event together. If you know or can predict a few people who will be there, clue me in to their names, prior to our arrival. Let's say we're on our way to an event, and you predict Linda, Lyn, Lynette, Lenore and Loretta will be there. You might want to ask me if I want to go over who is who while we're still in the car. If I say yes, be patient while I rehearse it a few times.

In that example, I used similar names to indicate possible complexity, but that's just a courtesy or a kindness to someone reading this, in order to help you understand confusion better. Face blindness has nothing to do with similar-sounding names.

Let's take another situation. If I'm with you at an event, and I ask you a question about someone's identity, try to do this: For example, if I say, "who's that woman in the red shirt, standing by the cookies, sorta short, and she's talking on her phone?" A truthful answer is wonderful. "That's Jackie," is great. But "I don't know, I've never met her, but I think she came here with Miranda," is fair enough. And if the truth is, "I don't know, I don't think I've ever seen her before," that's perfect, too.

When I ask about someone's identity, please don't answer my question with a question. Don't do this:
Me: Is that Connie, carrying Betty's guitar?
You: Why, do you play guitar?
You: Why, do you think they're dating?
You: Why, are you attracted to her?
You: Why do you ask?
You: How come you wanna know that?
You: What makes you think it's Connie?
You: Do you want to talk to her?
You: Aren't you still playing violin?
You: Are you still having trouble with names?
You: What, is it really my responsibility to help you?
You: Is this another lesbian drama?
You: If you can learn who I am, then how come you can't learn who she is?

For many reasons your questions don't work for me: they don't give information that's been requested; they don't let me know whether you know the answer, or if I need to ask somebody else; they place a new demand on me to give information to you; your question may have me so distracted that I may not even remember what information I was trying to learn in the first place.

But if you really have a question for me, or a question about my condition, please answer my question first. Then ask whether I feel comfortable answering your questions. I think etiquette writers would back me on that one. And please understand that my question is one of concrete fact or common knowledge. Your question is more inward or personal, and presumes a level of intimacy that may exceed my boundaries.

I acquired face blindness from a head injury, so it's already hard for me to pay attention and learn. If you answer my question factually, I'll still have to work to absorb what you're saying. I'm sure the last thing you'd want to do is make things more difficult for people like me.

And some questions are really statements in disguise. Some of those statements disguised as questions are not helpful or solution-oriented. Folks disabled from a head injury and acquired prosopagnosia really have a tough enough time as it is. We could use a little kindness.

There are other answers which are not very helpful or solution-oriented. I've heard responses that have really been hard to deal with. So don't do this:
Me: Is Karen the woman with the long blond hair, sitting on the couch with those two women?
You: You really go for the ones with the long hair.
You: She's taken.
You: I thought you weren't here to hit on women.
You: You're always asking who everyone is. Just enjoy the party.
You: I don't really pay attention to someone's hair, I like the inner person. I'm spiritual.
You: I see that the woman she's talking to is eating chocolate-covered strawberries, and I'm allergic to chocolate, and anyway they don't treat the workers who pick the beans in a very nice way, people need to get a grip and start using vanilla.
You: I need coffee, water, tea, a napkin, a banana, artificial sweetener, less ice, more ice, less music, more music, better music, no music, a bathroom, to know why that clock isn't working, to check my voicemail, to re-paint my kitchen soon, for you to be more understanding of my needs, etc.
You: You think that her hair is really blond, but it's not. It's colored. It disgusts me when women do that.
You: Believe me, I know all about your problem. My mother had Alzheimer's, and she couldn't recognize me. I just can't go through that again. Good bye.
You: Hmmm, let's see, you're asking me if that's Karen. You've asked that before. You really miss Karen. You need to get over it.
You: Karen is a really common name. There's always lotsa Karens around. If I had a kid I would name her anything but Karen.
You: Listen, I'm not the information exchange, you know.
You: You're telling me what to do. That's so controlling.
You: Ask her yourself!
You: She's not Jewish.
You: I don't have to tell you that. I don't have to answer. It's not my job to make your life easy. Your problems are not my responsibility.
You: Whatever. I don't wanna participate in your drama.
You: Everyone has trouble with names or faces. Get over it.
You: That's funny, you always know who I am. And you know Susan, Jane, and Wendy. You know half the room. Doesn't sound like some big problem to me. Unless you make it one.
You: A lot of people don't like her. Let's get away.
You: A lot of people don't like you. Get away.
You: Your disability really impacts you socially. That must bring up a lot of feelings for you. I'm a good listener.
You: I don't see what's so hard about this. Hey Karen. KAREN! Nope. Guess that's not Karen.
You: Hey you. Yes, YOU! Erin here was just asking about you. She really wants to meet you.

Those are examples of unhelpful responses I've had to deal with. Sometimes I can recover gracefully. Other times those responses actually create a new set of problems for me.

So please answer my questions factually and normally. Don't make assumptions, don't psychoanalyze, and don't launch into distracting new topics or adventures. Remember that in acquired prosopagnosia there's likely to be comprehension and memory issues in addition to the face blindness. I need your compassion and your help. You may want to consider providing information beyond what I've asked, if you think it's helpful.

Here's some great examples. Do this:
Me: Is Karen the woman with the long blond hair, sitting on the couch with those two women?
You: No, it's not Karen. It's Tamar.
You: Yes, it's Karen. Her hair has really gotten longer.
You: Sorry, I don't know who she is at all.
You: Oh she's got blond hair now, ok. Yes, that's Karen.
You: Karen Smith is on the couch. Karen Jones is in the kitchen.
You: That's Beth. And she's good friends with Mary, the Mary who says mean things about you.
You: I think you're thinking of Karen Smith, and this woman really looks a lot like Karen Smith, but she's not. She's Victoria.
You: Yes it's Karen. You and I and Karen all went out for coffee Thursday. She's the one who rides her bicycle everywhere.
You: I don't know that woman on the couch. And excuse me, but I also don't know you, either. I'm Renee.
You: Hang on, I'll be right with you, gotta catch this call, this falling chip, this running child, etc. Thanks, did you find out if she was Karen? Because I've met so many people here myself today, I just don't know. Maybe you could tell me.

That's easy, right?

If you've agreed to help me with recognizing people or with learning new people in a social situation, then hang out with me and see how it feels for you. But be cool about it. And just remember, I can't help it.

Let's take just a couple more situations. Say you're organizing a social event. You'll want to consider ways to make your event accessible to people with disabilities. I'll bet you've taken great care to choose a location that's wheelchair accessible. You've probably checked to ensure that the bathrooms are wheelchair accessible, too. For really huge public events, some of you have hired sign language interpreters, or you're at least you're open to that. And perhaps you've even thought about creating some program literature in large print. Maybe you've got ushers or greeters, too. Although this is fabulous, and it's certainly overkill for a typical potluck, it doesn't make the occasion accessible for someone like me.

What makes an event accessible for me is name tags. They're inexpensive, they're effective, and everyone has fun coloring their own name. They work great for face blindness.

Another fabulous idea is to appoint someone to be a social buddy. The social buddy can answer questions about who's who. Once you start to offer this, you'd be surprised who might take you up on it. There's almost always a newcomer in the room, and often there's another who's terminally shy. The baby boomers are aging; they're losing their hearing, their sight, and their memory. So it's not just prosopagnosiacs who can benefit from some social identifiers.

Let's take one last situation. Let's say you're a community leader or an educator and you're involved in events. And you find out people have played a trick on someone with acquired prognosia. Or you learn someone keeps doing some of the aggressive things from the Don't list.

You might first consider replacing ignorance with information. Then you may want to model compassion, understanding, and helpfulness. You may also want to get their side.

Sometimes people don't want to be recognized, or they may think it's cute to play games, or they may have personal issues. What you need to know is this. If someone refuses to give their name, or they deliberately give fake names, this is frightening, not funny. It's disablist, cruel and unacceptable. It's taking advantage of someone's disability.

When someone repeatedly says cruel things from the Don't list, a person with face blindness may not consistently recognize who that person is, in order to stay away. This can be very frightening. This is another form of taking advantage of disability. And it's disablist, cruel and unacceptable.

These situations are like throwing obstacles in front of a blind man. Maybe worse. And they're not to be tolerated. I don't play games with my safety. And I don't want you to, either.

If you find out about disablism in your community, speak up. You wouldn't tolerate racism, sexism, or anti-semitism from your friends. Don't tolerate disablism, either.

Coping with Prosopagnosia

The last post I made about face blindness described many negative social situations that I've experienced since I acquired prosopagnosia from a head injury in 2001. In this post I want to describe how I've been handling the condition.

The first thing I noticed after the accident was that I couldn't recognize my own face in the mirror. Even after I understood intellectually this was me, I still was met with an unfamiliar face in the mirror, which was unnerving and surprising. So I avoided looking at my face in the mirror. It was just too jarring to see such a stranger. If I accidentally caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I might for a split-second think, who's this that's come to visit me? So in a way, it was like I always had company.

So that's the first thing, I try to have a sense of humor about it.

I had a huge, widescreen tv, and although I preferred watching nature shows, I tried to watch tv shows that had people in them. For me, watching tv was a little like Sesame Street for prosopagnosiacs. It took time. Even after a few years, in 2003, I still couldn't follow characters or plots very well, and I totally biffed it when asked what happened in the Matrix sequels. I don't know why references to pop culture serve as a handy measuring stick for rehab, I guess that's just the kind of post-modern grrrl I am. But over time I did improve. I understood and followed many of the last movies I've seen.

One thing I did while watching faces on tv was pretend I was looking at the side of a mountain, instead of a face. I remember going to Yosemite and seeing the waterfalls and the vertical rock formations at different times of the year. I remember that after staring at natural features for a while, I would see climbers with ropes making their way. I also remember scrambling around on some rocky surfaces there myself. I remember physically touching the cliff with my hands, feeling the warmth the rock was holding from the sun, and using my hands to help me scoot around. And I also remember when I was younger I saw several photographs of vertical rock formations at Yosemite, including some by Ansel Adams and the f/64 group. When I was a young student, the work of those photographers really drew me in and impressed me. It caused me to love, to value, and to abstract so much from lines, crevices, shadows, and shades.

So one trick I tried while looking at faces was to imagine I was looking at some other vertical surface, like El Capitan in Yosemite. I might visualize a small area on the face where tiny climbers would choose to rappel. The climbers would have to be ant-size! And I might remember how my own hands physically touched the rock surfaces I scrambled on. I might imagine an Adams-styled, f/64-styled, black-and-white image of the person's face, but particularly where a face area could be abstracted.

The combination of these effects might allow me to create a shaft, or a lane, or an angle of recognition on some part of some faces. I was still not able to really see the whole face. But if you can create a familiar pattern on say 15% of a face, it can really help in identification, especially when you consider that gait, body type, hair, and other cues are still in play.

I don't recommend staring intently at people on the downtown bus. It was easier to do this if the person didn't know I was staring at them, so if the face was on tv, great. My tv even allowed me to make a freeze frame, and I would make several, as I didn't want to get locked into one image of a character. It was just easier to try this technique if the faces were larger than life, and didn't move around too much. It was also easier to do this if the faces were older, and had wrinkles. And certain dramatic lighting conditions would make it easier to do this. This technique didn't work well on smooth faces, or where the lighting was fairly even.

Once I started getting out more, I needed more techniques. If I were in a small group of three to eight people, and everyone was sitting or not moving much, I would almost always make a cheat sheet that described general physical characteristics, accoutrements, non-physical identifiers, and some face features of each person. Sometimes the cheat sheet would be in the form of a seating chart, other times it would be a list in the order people talked, other times it would be in an order reflecting who was more socially dominant.

After my accident it was difficult to determine who the alpha women were in any given situation. I hate to make it sound like we're all a bunch of monkeys, because we're not. Nevertheless we are primates, and social hierarchy is no trifling matter. After the accident, my status went from one of the alpha mammals to something like circus dung sweeper. And I was one of the last people to find out. Even the cats knew it before I did.

I sensed it was important for me not to piss off the alphas, yet I also didn't feel comfortable schmoozing with folks who were perhaps too raw or uncouth. I had to really concentrate in order to navigate the social hierarchy in any given situation. This is no easy task, since the truth of hierarchy is hidden in plain view. That's the one place I really can't see. To navigate social terrain after becoming newly face blind, is like waking up and finding yourself to be an African American student in Arkansas in the 1950s, who's been bussed to an all-white school, and told to study calculus without knowing trigonometry first. Just pack me a lunch and I'll be fine, right? Sure.

If you can't see faces properly, you are missing the emotions that are signaled and reflected in faces. Emotions give important information about what's intended and what's received. What's actually happening is so much more than what's being said. I recall telling my partner at the time that she wasn't showing any emotion, and I remember thinking her face was impassive, like a cardboard box. We're no longer together. My point is, faces matter on so many levels. Otherwise our brains wouldn't have evolved with a dedicated region devoted to understanding faces.

Back to the cheat sheet. First I would jot down gross physical characteristics, and by that I mean body shape, posture, that type of thing. I would pay great attention to people's hair, and use details to describe hair. Nowadays many people carry backpacks, and so I would try to notice that. I would also pay very close attention to any accoutrements like hearing aid, cane, wheelchair, etc., because these often are perceived as extensions of the body, and are not discarded easily. I may notice an unusual phone, and be able to describe the manner in which the person uses the phone. The way a human body interacts with iphones, flip phones, and the treo-blackberry form factors is quite distinctive, however people tend to switch phones every year or two. Sometimes people have a favorite hat or scarf, but these things often are easily swapped.

Then I'd write non-physical identifiers on my cheat sheet. Examples would be "lives in Napa" or "works second shift" or "was an early organizer for Obama" or "always talking about surfing" or "her mother has frequent attacks of mild pancreatitis." This has come in very handy. It works like this. Perhaps I have a friend who knows both me and, say Megan, and the friend launches into an update about Megan. It's no use unless I know who Megan is. And for me, I need some kind of "peg" to make Megan an actual person, and not just a meaningless or random name. Then I can hang the story on its proper Megan peg. If my friend knows my problem and describes the physical features of Megan in order to tell a story, my friend may use physical descriptors that I can't follow, like "cute face." Now, what does that mean? I don't know cute face. Have I been dating beautiful or ugly people without realizing it?

Or the friend may use general descriptive words that apply to half the population, like "brown hair." I mean, how is that specific? Pets, coats and carpets can all have brown hair.

So I may ask, "wait, you mean the woman who had the bunions removed, and plays softball with Helen's friends, and wears the turquoise rings, and brought fish to last weekend's potluck?" This may identify Megan to my friend, as people often have common knowledge of each other. And now I get to learn from my friend that Megan is actually cute, and that people view her wavy, shoulder-length hair parted on the side, as brown, and not as chocolate drifting toward red.

When it comes to noting purely facial characteristics on my cheat sheet, I didn't always have much to say about that. I tend to dismiss cute face, beautiful face, and ugly face as having little meaning for me. However, as the years rolled by following the accident, and with repeated exposure to someone, I've been able to describe areas or planes of a face, such as a narrow forehead, or a high forehead. I'm also able to see freckles. I just don't see the whole face at the same time.

I can also see basic face outlines. I can tell if a face is oblong-shaped or if it's unusually round. I can tell if someone looks like they have the mumps, as in a face like John Goodman's. I believe the more polite term for that is square-jawed. This brings up the subject of unusual features, such as Jay Leno's chin. I really can't see it well enough to know whether he's square-chinned, although I remember him well enough from before the accident to know something's going on with that chin. Ditto with a weak chin. Knew about it before the accident, but can't use it much these days. Today, I don't see chins as clearly.

Still on the lower face, if someone has taken their dentures out, I'll bet I could tell, but that doesn't mean I know who the person is. Folks don't often do that in polite company, anyway. And braces can be tough for me; sometimes I see them and sometimes not. People don't always like it if you say "are you wearing braces?" More often than not, they respond with, "Why, is there food in them?" Even with that giant clue, it took me some time to realize two things: one, they must have braces if they go digging around in them looking for stray lettuce, and two, this isn't polite social chitchat.

With lips I can see if they're glossy from lipstick, but not much else. It will take me lots of effort and exposure to determine full lips from thin lips.

For me, noses sometimes can be seen in profile. My father had a classic Roman nose, very straight and rather like a triangle. Michelangelo's David has a similar nose and so did Robert Reed of the Brady Bunch. After the accident this type of nose seems very average, and for me, it's not easily assigned to particular faces that are new faces. Sometimes curved noses are easier for me see in profile, but it requires a bit of staring. Rather flat noses or rather large noses don't really register very well for me, and again, it's risky to be caught staring.

Everyone loves the eyes, they're the window to the soul. And that used to be true for me, too. Post-injury, I'm not sure if eyes are narrow, or widely spaced, or set close to each other, or are almond shaped. I suppose I stay away from eye contact more than I should.

However, I will try to pick up someone's eye color for my cheat sheet. People who are Asian, Latina, or African-American often have brown eyes, and if I don't see race in their face, I could always look at their forearms. However, I live in an urban area and many people are multi-racial, so guessing eye-color or race isn't really the best plan. Come to think of it, I live in an area with a lot of trannies who demonstrate that even gender can be fluid; some people aren't into the binary gender categories at all.

Back to the eyes, if I can't pick up eye color quickly, I might just ask, "are your eyes blue, or is it just the light in here?" Or, "my goodness your eyes are so striking" might be enough for them to tell a story, and if you listen they will say the color. Or I might try asking if they're wearing tinted contacts, but I would add something like, "I was thinking of getting a pair, and I heard they take some getting used to." If she's not wearing contacts, she will laugh and say those are her real eyes. And then you can relax and peer into them, and maybe she'll tell a story and say the color. You have to use caution here and take care not give the appearance that you want romance.

It's kind of funny, but because I look a little like a soft butch, when I talk about eyes to a butch lesbian, she might react in the manner of a straight man being approached by a gay man. Just imagine all the ways that can go awry. And if I talk about eye color with a more femme woman, and her butch "husband" gets wind of it, I'm sure you can see how that might play out. Oh, the joys of lesbian community. Or identity. Or whatever it's called these days. Of course, the butch-femme dynamic would be different if I'm talking to people in the younger generation, or if I were in a different part of the country. But that's another story.

By looking at face parts one at a time, I have a good chance of recognizing face features in a Mr Potato Head sort of way. Though I see the parts, I struggle to see the whole. But I still see a lot, in a close-enough-for-government-work sort of way.

Getting back to the cheat sheet, it's not enough to write stuff down, I hafta review my notes. A lot. Otherwise the person just fades. If I'm meeting people around the circumstances of a new project, then in the beginning I might keep the cheat sheet handy at all times. I might write something very descriptive, similar to a cast of characters list, like what you might see before a play's script.

I would practice my cheat sheet or character list at home, and out loud. That way more pathways wake up: verbalizing, listening, possibly using mimicry to act something out, physically touching a piece of paper, and maybe even retracing my own handwriting. I know this sounds weird, but sometimes I can practically smell the ink on the paper. I'm just trying to enlist all the senses.

Since the accident I'm not the best at writing with an ink pen on paper, so sometimes I might use a dry-erase marker to write notes on a hand-held, dry-erase board. The trouble is the board is going to be erased. This is the entire concept of the dry erase board. And that's uncomfortably close to the way my own mind works. So I might take a photograph of the notes on the dry erase board.

Using the dry erase board kinda calls to mind the pioneer days when kids attended one-room schoolhouses and learned to write and cipher with chalk on slates. Makes me feel a little like Abraham Lincoln in a prairie schoolhouse.

In comparing low tech writing to the revolution of technology, I'm not always convinced new is better. For example, I often make reminders about a new person in my phone or PDA, rather than do a full cheat sheet. But how do I remember to look her name up and not another? Remember, I have a head injury. Really tracking someone new in a PDA might require a second entry on the calendar section of the PDA. Extra steps. And it can be a little conspicuous to enter the names of several women into your phone/PDA right there in public. People will think you're a playboy.

Another drawback to writing notes for cheat sheets or PDAs is you can't do this in a synagogue on shabbat, or in the middle of yoga class, or at a party crammed full of schmoozing lesbians all milling about.

There's plenty of times when neither a cheat sheet nor PDA will work. If I'm with a group that's eating, I might take extra notice of a few of the dishes ordered. I might ask very specific questions about some meals. If the person says the feta cheese omelette is too soggy, or there's not enough salt on the fish, or that the olives were Greek and not green, I might repeat the information out loud, and then imagine tasting the dish as described by the person's description, while looking at their body language, or posture, and noting their psychological attitude. The more senses used the better. This only works with unusual dishes, and unusual complaints, or if the person has a distinctive eating trait, like being terrible with chopsticks. So any butches that use the table to start playing field hockey with the fortune cookies likely will be forever emblazoned in my mind.

During a meal, I can't absorb information from too many people, only a few at the most. So tracking lesbian grazing habits at a buffet or potluck where a couple dozen women are in attendance is way, way too much. And in general, eating isn't a situation where I have the privacy to retreat and make a cheat sheet. When you whip out the writing utensils during a meal, people don't think "prosopagnosia." They think you're a food critic, or they think you're writing love notes to the hostess, or they think you're trying to reverse-engineer their recipes or something.

Despite all of these strategies, if the person gets a totally new hairstyle, or if I don't see them for a while, then whatever I recall of their face is likely to disappear faster than a shook-up Etch A Sketch.

No worries, I still use gait, posture, hair, body type, psychological attitude, and vocal tone to feel my way around social terrain. And humor. It can be slow, and it's prone to error, but it's how I live.

That's pretty much the strategies I've tried to implement by myself. Next I'll talk about how others can help the prosopagnosiac.

What the Heck is Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia is a neurological condition that affects one's ability to recognize faces. It's thought to be related to damage to the right fusiform gyrus, which is a structure in the brain that coordinates information about faces and memory. A simple term for the condition is face blindness. What this means is that I'm really impaired at recognizing faces, so I rely on other cues like gait, posture, hair, body type, and tone of voice. Sometimes I think I can recognize someone from their psychological attitude, which can be encountered from conversation with them, or from overhearing them in conversation with others.

I wasn't born this way, I started to have this trouble right after the accident. At first, it was so bad that I couldn't recognize my own face in the mirror. For years, I just didn't look at my face in the mirror. I wasn't initially told I had this condition, nor was I told such a condition existed. It was practically a year before I had a neuropsych test that showed this. Prior to that test I believed I must be having trouble with my facial muscles. That is, I thought my face was not properly showing the expressions I was making.

Funny, but when you don't have correct information about what is wrong, the mind will start to come up with some plausible theory. Notice how, in the plausible theory, the mind doesn't think there's anything wrong it. Interesting, isn't it.

It was several years before I could remember that there was a medical name for my condition beyond head injury, and a few more years after that before I could reliably repeat even the first two syllables of the word prosopagnosia. I see now it may have been more helpful if I could have used the proper medical word with its definition to describe my condition more accurately to others.

Since I couldn't recognize people, I was very friendly to everyone. I didn't want to be rude, in case I turned out to be chatting with a friend. I didn't want my friend to feel hurt. I see now, those people weren't my friends, if they weren't able to be sensitive to my condition or to be helpful or caring.

A difficulty emerging from my friendliness was that I mistakenly greeted homeless people or panhandlers as though we were friends. Gradually, I began to understand that my condition made me vulnerable to manipulation or trickery. Today I have a pretty good idea that a lot of these random people who speak to me on the street are not my long-lost friends, and they're not happily waiting for a bus to go to work, but they're actually mentally unstable or down on their luck or possibly even criminals.

And yet another outcome of my friendliness was that some women mistakenly believed I was sexually easy, or they believed that I was pursuing them sexually. When I explained I honestly did not want sex these women acted pretty hurt and angry, and I was not able to diffuse their reaction. Sometimes they've involved their friends in this, and it's been unpleasant for me.

In the community of LGBTs and their allies, if you make an inquiry about who a woman is, you may be tagged as looking for a date with the person. So I've learned to downplay any dating possibility and to minimize descriptions that are complimentary of the person whose identity I'm trying to discover.

Another strange reaction to my friendliness was that women actually suggested I go to therapy until it went away. It made me wonder what the heck was going on in their own therapy sessions, for them to come away identifying lack of friendliness as a cornerstone of mental health.

Due to the odd reactions to my friendliness, I stayed home a lot. The first few years after the accident I had lotsa trouble watching movies and tv shows, because I had no idea who the characters were. Prosopagnosia made it really hard to follow the plot, since plots move forward by the characters' journey. So what happened was my taste in movies really changed. Prior to the accident I liked independent movies, or art movies, or serious movies. I was the sort of person who used the word "film" instead of movie, as in the true sentence, "I really used to enjoy foreign films." But after the accident I preferred action movies with less plot, less character development, and less dialog, but not violence.

I bought a bigscreen tv, well before they were popular, and sometimes I would try to watch any show with people in it, just to try to improve my ability to recognize characters and follow the plot. I think it worked because now I can follow plots much better. That's a nice improvement because I remember watching the last Matrix movies with a friend and afterward couldn't say one single thing that happened, didn't even know Trinity and Neo were killed. It was violent and the people looked so similar I had no idea what was happening. Of course, if word gets out that you're disabled and spending time at home watching tv, people will treat you like you're lazy or socially undesirable. People don't understand that you're doing your homework and trying to improve yourself and protect yourself.

In my case, face blindness isn't total and it isn't insurmountable. I can learn someone's face if I spend a lot of time with them, and if I meet them several times in various locations. I just need lotsa time with someone before recognizing them mainly by their face, rather than mainly by relying on cues like matching them to their surroundings, or recognizing how they walk, or knowing their general body type, or recognizing their hair, or by listening to their voice.

A side issue that emerges is that once a woman understands how much I rely on hair and pay attention to hair as an indicator of identity, I run the risk of being labeled superficial. In American culture, great attention is paid in media tabloids to hair and clothing of celebrities. Some women have mistakenly viewed me as being attentive to the wrong traits in others, rather than simply using these traits as a strategy or as a means of identifying a particular person.

In my case, I have tended to improve over the years. I haven't stayed at the same level of face blindness. I think it's because I try hard to find traits quickly that will give me a chance to identify someone. Many times I've gone somewhere and jotted down quick notes to myself describing the physical characteristics of new people. Then I try to review my notes. But more about my strategies in another post.

My prosopagnosia has seriously impacted my social life. I don't go out much, and when I do, I don't like crowded situations where people tend to mill about or change positions from where they're sitting or standing.

Sometimes I would be at a social event and greet someone and exchange small tidbits of social information with that person, not realizing that I had just told them the same thing 15 minutes ago. With some people I may have done this a few times in an evening. I only know about this because some people started asking, "Is this a joke?" And then a few of them were nice enough to explain that I had just spoken to them in the kitchen or something. More often the person would just mutter something about the movie Groundhog Day and walk away irritatedly.

Every now and then I've encountered someone who is very rude or hostile, just as a general outlook or personality trait. In other words, I don't think they're hostile only to me. I certainly try to make a note of who they are, so I don't accidentally engage with them. However, if you ask a rude or mean person her name, she won't tell you. If I ask someone standing nearby, they won't tell me the name of the mean woman, because they believe they're "taking the high road" by not getting involved. So the normal social cues to stay away from a person who is rude or mean aren't correctly associated with the rude or mean person. This is dangerous.

I also experience the exact opposite situation. Let's say a woman is very nice to me. We decide to meet at a table, or go to the punch bowl, or shake it on the dance floor. Well, if I haven't memorized what she's wearing, or if she takes off her sweater, or puts her hair up, I can't find her. This can bring about the unhappy situation where I begin speaking to an entirely new woman at the new location, never realizing she's not the person who just agreed to meet me here. When the right woman shows up, of course she's hurt and confused when she sees me giving attention to someone else, and often she doesn't give me a chance to explain. One workaround is to go where we agreed to meet and let her recognize me. A few times though, the woman was standing right there, evidently waiting for me to speak first, and wondering why I was ignoring her, which I only found out because she finally blurted out her frustration with me. Perhaps the best idea is to never switch locations. But sometimes pesky friends or loud music or cigarette smoke can get in the way of conversation, or it might be her idea to move and not mine. Another plan I've tried when we decide to move to another location is to not let the person out of my site, but to follow her no matter what. This has actually led me into the bathroom with her, which is kinda weird and not smooth. There's no such thing as foolproof, when it comes to prosopagnosia. And women sure don't like it if you can't recognize them. On the one hand it sounds funny, except it's not. In order for it really to be funny, she would have to be here by my side and we would be laughing about it later, together.

A really difficult situation is encountering manipulative or dishonest women who use my disability against me. One manipulation that I've encountered is where a woman, let's call her Rachel, pretends to be someone else, say Dina, and then Rachel (posing as Dina) asks me what I think about Rachel. A variation on this is where Rachel (posing as Dina) gets her friend, let's say, Carol, to ask about Rachel, but of course Rachel is standing right there, posing as Dina, only I don't know this. Another twist is for Rachel-Dina to realize Carol is in the room and I don't know it, and then in order to gain my trust Rachel-Dina shares something with me that's awkward about Carol, and then Rachel-Dina confidentially asks me something about Carol, and I answer truthfully, and then Rachel-Dina fetches Carol in order to confront me. It's all pretty mean. I've only fallen for that a couple of times. Rachel is doing this because she knows about my disability. Not only is she taking advantage of me, she's making it look like she's the victim or like her friend is the victim. So she's a pretty slick customer. It's important to avoid her.

Today, when in public, I try not to say too much about others. But in the past, when asked, I would appraise someone like Rachel negatively only out of self-protection. I mistakenly believed if I explained that Rachel has mistreated me or been socially cruel or psychologically aggressive to me -- a vulnerable woman with a disability -- then maybe the listener will have mercy on me and tell me to look out because Rachel is just across the room, and she's wearing purple, or something. Unfortunately, no one has ever warned me that a woman who has tricked me is somewhere in the room, or that the woman is friends with so-and-so who is in the room, or that she's due to arrive later, or that they've heard she's not coming at all, so we can all just relax. Over time I've learned not to confide and seek protection unless the person is a really, really close friend. Even then it can be hazardous. It's sad that this sort of junior high behavior goes on in the lesbian community, and among grown women.

People act like they're not interested in gossipy social updates, but of course that's not true. It's vital to our social instincts. People exchange social information very quickly, and sometimes with minimal verbalizing, and maybe it's partly unconscious, but we require it, we use it, we share it. And often this social information is way too fast for me to follow. I'm not able to simply scan a room and know who's there and who's not, nor can I determine what their relationships are to each other, nor can I tell friend from foe. Keeping track of social information is really human and very important; it actually represents the difference between having a social life and not having a social life.

On the subject of social and emotional trickery, here's a devious one. Let's say a woman, say Rachel, suggests she believes I might like some third party, say, Susan. By the way Rachel asks me, I believe she's trying to figure out if I would agree to a date with Susan, or at least friendship. Bear in mind I don't know Susan, don't even know if she's queer, but I trust Rachel and believe I'm getting some much-needed social help. So I indicate to Rachel that I'm open to Susan, somewhat out of politeness, but also, I generally like almost anyone who isn't mean. Plus, I believe people would genuinely try to help friendship happen.

Anyway, getting back to the story, I trust that Rachel is possibly arranging something between me and Susan. Here's where the trick comes in. It turns out Susan is a teenager or a 20-something, or the rabbi's wife, or even a man, or just basically a totally inappropriate choice. That's creepy and scary that someone would do that to me. I can't find Rachel to confront her, she disappears, but she's made sure someone else has overheard, and this "witness" gives me a funny look, but won't share her name. It may take me all day to figure out I'd been had. It's only happened a few times, but it makes me sad that lesbians would do that to me. Again, this only works because Rachel has knowledge of my disability, and she's using it against me, like a setup.

Unfortunately, I've experienced many negative social situations where others can exploit my disability to humiliate me or to isolate me or to raise themselves up, and I've really wanted to feel more safe and protected and informed, so I've sometimes sought a social buddy or a lesbian wingman to come to events with me. When I count the number of women who truly are ongoing antagonists to me in the years after the accident, the number is about four. And when I add the number of women who have made a threat or two, it's another four. Since that's a short list, and since several years ago it was even shorter, I thought I could work with a buddy to avoid a few women, and to meet a few new people.

Unfortunately, some problems emerged from relying on lesbian social buddies. One situation is when the buddy wants to be free to meet new women and socialize on her own without my deadweight, so she abandons the plan when she meets that long-lost friend or when she meets someone exciting or interesting, which could happen in as little as 10 minutes. Another problem is that the social buddy may start to criticize me or put me down, usually related to the way I handle my disability, and possibly she does this in front of other women.

A very common problem is for the lesbian social buddy to suddenly and dramatically denounce the whole concept of the buddy system, declaring that "it's all just a bunch of lesbian drama," and saying she "doesn't want any part of it," and typically doing this in the middle of a social situation. This behavior is often accompanied with a most amusing revision of the concept of helping, which, in the new definition has undergone a magnificently Orwellian reversal, to the point where help now means lack of help. Armed with her brave new outlook, the buddy deliberately and suddenly abandons me in public, forcing me to "stand on my own two feet," so that I can "face it on my own" and "be more independent" or "grow" or realize "it's all in my head" or that "it's no big deal" or realize that lack of information or lack of safety or even, G-d forbid, exploitation or relational aggression either "isn't happening at all" or that it "happens to everyone" and that I need to "get over it" and quit "acting like a victim" and learn to stop "blaming my disability" for "my problems" socializing with others. It's really sad to hear.

I just have to let go of people like that. I've learned that ignorance and insensitivity are powerful forces.

Over time I've come to socialize very little, and I've tried to connect more with disabled women, or to connect online, or to bypass the lesbian community, or to bypass the helping community, or to bypass the spiritual community, or, if I do go out, to go out with only the closest friend, usually in daylight and for a short period, and to always be prepared to leave quickly. I've learned not to anticipate community help or support.

Probably the most terrifying situation is encountering manipulative or dishonest people who are in a position of power or status in the LGBT community, or in the healing arts community, or in spiritual community. I remember once I met a nice woman who was a classmate in a Jewish education course at a local synagogue. I really trusted her and told her I couldn't recognize faces, not even my own. A few months later it turned out she was actually an "out" lesbian rabbi who worked in a different synagogue, even though she was a student like me. Let's call her Rachel. Rachel indicated she liked meeting people outside the context of her own shul where she had to be "the rabbi," and she said she wanted to make a personal connection with me. So I invited Rachel and her partner to a lesbian dance. I never heard back about the invitation, but guess who I met at the dance. Yep, it was Rachel, and she wasn't with her partner. And she gave me a fake name. She was alternately nice and then mean. She asked if she could buy me a drink (I don't drink), she asked to dance with me (I was there with someone else), and then she said really cutting things to me. She picked on me for my disability. I was devastated. My head was spinning. I was really frightened, upset and confused. I went home and cried, and I stopped going out dancing.

I began to question myself, and wondered how an ordained rabbi could do that. Months later I asked another rabbi, let's call her R Deborah, to ask Rachel (the openly gay rabbi) why she acted that way at the dance. Rachel told R Deborah that she didn't have to answer any questions about her personal life. I was really specific with R Deborah, I explained orally and in writing about the head injury, and how I have a disability, and how I couldn't recognize people, and how I needed others help and needed people to be good and be truthful. I said I was upset that Rachel would trick me and pretend to be someone else, knowing my problem. I didn't want to believe a rabbi would be so mean, it was really terrifying. So I allowed that maybe I made a recognition mistake, that maybe it wasn't Rachel. I said to R Deborah if it wasn't Rachel being mean at the dance, then it was really upsetting to me now, because if Rachel knows she didn't do anything to me that day, and that it was someone who looked like her, then why can't Rachel at least reassure me of that. I also said that if Rachel was not at the dance at all, so much the better, and since she knew I was so upset about this, why wouldn't Rachel just tell R Deborah that she never took me up on my invitation, and she never went to the dance. I just wanted the truth. It would give me so much safety and peace of mind. I need to know when my mind has given me the correct information and when it hasn't. I need to know who I can trust to tell me the truth. I figured I could trust a rabbi, but here were two rabbis who wouldn't tell the truth. I never received the dignity of a real answer. It was disablist and insensitive. I cried over that, and I was really afraid of what Rachel might do to me next. I need people to be good and to be truthful. It keeps me safe. After that day where the two rabbis talked on the phone, I've just tried to have shabbat at home by myself.

I've learned it's important to be very careful with myself, and to try to protect myself as much as possible. But of course, there's really no such thing as protecting yourself from all harm all the time. Even now, as I write, I'm cautious and I have concerns for my safety as a result of sharing all this, and I can only hope things will get better for me and for others living with disability, instead of somebody reading this and hurting me more. I'm learning to be more frank about my disability in the beginning, and also to track and discern helpful from hurtful people a lot quicker. I've gotten very comfortable being alone. I meditate a lot. Despite everything I take comfort in my faith.

I've already described some of the bad things that have happened when I've been honest about my face blindness. Other times I've had ordinary experiences where women take it all in, but really minimize the situation. They say "Oh, I have trouble remembering people, too." And I'm like, "It's not the same thing." I try to explain that I don't see faces correctly, not even my own. I try to talk about how it affects me and I share little techniques I use to help myself. But many of these women end up being rather dismissive of me. Sometimes a woman who shows an attitude like this isn't mean, she's just very career-minded or goal-oriented -- she's accustomed to setting priorities and writing off anything below the line.

Other times women act like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. This type of person isn't mean, and she doesn't automatically dismiss me, but she doesn't really understand me, either. I totally accept my disability, but at the same time I'm highly motivated to improve my use of compensatory strategies. It's always great to meet nice, friendly people. There's really no telling who's going to be safe and positive and understanding, and who's going to show an attitude that doesn't work for me and may even be unhealthy for me, until I actually have a few experiences with people, and until I memorize who they are and how they acted.

Sometimes I've had the experience of women who initially seem to understand me, but then they want me to do more to improve my condition. They want me to try harder. I'm laughing as I write that. But what makes it not that funny is these women are serious. It's not very accepting of them to act that way, and it's sort of a put-down. I'm like this because of an injury and a disability, not because of a lack of trying. We wouldn't talk that way to someone who's blind. It's insensitive.

Sometimes the way an understanding position or a "helping" dynamic goes awry might be as follows. The woman meets me socially, and acts in a very befriending manner toward me, showering me with support and acceptance. This is especially true of women who work in the helping professions. They position themselves as being in a different league from women who've been mean to me in the past. These accepting women seem to be more enlightened or compassionate about my disability, due to their professional education. In 99% of all cases, they don't know the first thing about head injury and they've never heard of prosopagnosia. But these women are not so interested in being educated about it.

Undaunted, in short order they take on the role of expert, expecting me to run my strategies or my thoughts or my feelings by them, in order to get their approval or their "help." Unfortunately, their approval doesn't come. Instead they make really negative comments to me regarding my adjustments to my condition, sometimes flavoring that with entirely new diagnoses and outlandish treatment suggestions, and since they're the experts, other people sometimes listen to them. And since we met socially and I'm neither their patient nor their student they feel free to riff about it. It's disablist and patronizing. This is one of the more indissoluble situations I've seen, the false expert making absurd pronouncements with total sincerity, while hangers-on and groupies nod fervently. These women are a little like the pope chastising Galileo. It would be more comical if it weren't something of a sad commentary on professionalism in 21st century America.

Sometimes I've been to parties where everyone wears one of those disposable, stick-on, paper nametags. I really like that. Some women still don't give their real name, but at least there's a nickname or something you can refer to.

I haven't read much on the web by people living with Prosopagnosia, and that's something I'd like to change. I want to do more outreach. One person's website said there are two pieces to communication. The first is to know what is being said, and the second is to know who is saying it. That really hit me. That's exactly what's been missing. It's already pretty hard for me to understand oral communication at speed. When you add the confusion of not knowing who's talking, it makes it all the more difficult.

I've learned that people who require too much anonymity or invisibility are usually up to no good. Why would you need to be so invisible if you were really proud of your actions?

I know there's plenty of good and caring people out there, and I hope to meet more of them.

Here's a CNN story about face blindness, and it's short, but pretty well-written. There's a fast paragraph about using the "buddy system" in social settings, and another paragraph on how our condition leaves us vulnerable to being victimized by people.

Here's another news story about prosopagnosia by Canada's Globe and Mail, and this article suggests that people who are face blind may also have difficulty judging attractiveness. No wonder I think everyone is beautiful!

Is Obama's Economic Plan a Gutter Ball?

Many of you probably know President Barack Obama appeared on "The Tonight Show" this week where he promptly managed to offend the disability community by saying his bowling game "was like the Special Olympics, or something." And then -- and here's the sick part -- the line got a laugh from the studio audience.

Despite practicing on the private bowling alley below the White House, the President only rolls a 129, which is beginner ball.

So read me loud and clear: he's not good enough for the Special Olympics bowling team!

Let's face it, we want athletes who can win a medal for America. Although this President may sport some six-pack abs, he's just not in the same league as our real paralympians, who routinely break 200, and have scored a 300, which is a perfect game.

But Obama's anemic bowling game isn't what bothers me. And as hurt as I am by his slur of our people living with disabilities, even that doesn't bother me as much as what really bothers me. It's his economic game I'm worried about.

You see, while Obama was making history by becoming the first sitting president to appear on NBC's Tonight Show, his economic team was presiding over a truly earth-shaking piece of economic and political history. Here it is.

Since we're broke, and since we aren't accepting it, and since we are just printing more money, which is really a form of default, and since we're giving the money to banks and to corporations that prolly should be outta business, and since we're buying our treasuries, all of which caused the Chinese (who loaned us so much money) to issue a warning to Washington (and we were formerly the world's most powerful nation); now the world is responding by dumping the dollar as its reserve currency.

Hence, the American era is over. We can't pay for it anymore. Or should I say, the Chinese aren't gonna buy it anymore. They were the ones floating this all-American partyboat.

I'll bet you didn't know that. And do you know why?

Because not only did Obama talk economics with a comedian -- a feat which grabbed some ink of its own, but the followup press coverage centered on a fake controversy about insensitivity to paralympic bowlers, who, may I remind you, can actually kick Obama's butt all over the waxy lanes.

Do they sit around and drink coffee in order to make this stuff up?

I can imagine the scene at the White House staff room. Several young advisors are convening with iPods and Netbooks and Lattes. They represent change. One of the geeky ones speaks first.

"Mister President, dude, like, we're in real trouble. Cuz like, we're broke. And this old guy from the Fed -- his skype name is Helicopter Ben Bernanke -- well, he says we'll just print more money. So uh, mister President, dude, want me to text that to the Chinese? I'll text 'em right now: We're outta cash, so we're printing more. Or should I text 'em:
Us \ IOU $2 Tril? "

Just then a cynical advisor pipes up. "Dude, no way. Look, I agree this is economic history here. So let's do the math and then do late night tv instead. You sit down with Leno, and you talk about the economy, sure. But then you do something controversial and mildly scandalous."

"Like what?" asks the President.

"Like insult a small minority group," says the cynical advisor. "That generates internet traffic. Then the press covers the controversy, not the economy, see?"

Everyone in the conference room relaxes, and the cynical advisor continues.

"Presto, this whole demise-of-the-dollar-thing blows over. At least for a few more months. And mister President, I know just the group to insult, sir. Paralympic bowlers!"

A third, and very astute advisor agrees. "It's brilliant, because Sara Palin will fight back. And when she does, she'll defend disabled athletes, and not sound economic policy. It's the perfect McGuffin! You simply confess to a lesser sin, get it? It's not that we're broke and can't pay for the bailouts, it's just that we're insensitive to the disabled."

Gimme a break, media. Wake up and smell the burnt fortune cookies!

If I have a head injury and I can spot a McGuffin, why can't you?

True to form, today Sara Palin called Obama's comments "degrading" and said athletes living with disabilities "overcome more challenges, discrimination and adversity than most of us ever will." Palin's son Trigger has Downs Syndrome.

I never thought I'd say it, and I hate like heck to be on the side of a Republican governor, but I gotta give my grrrl some props for sticking up for us. Go Sarah, it's your birthday, go Sarah!

And I do mean that, but on the other hand, I feel used by both sides.

Of course, Obama called Special Olympics chair Tim Shriver right away to apologize for the remark. And that was pefect, because Shriver fell right in line, calling the Presidential slur a "teachable moment" for us all and even appearing on Good Morning America the next day to remind us that "words hurt."

My take: apparently it's going to be a teachable moment for Youtube bowling, or for reviewing our kindergarten manners, but not for real economic education.

More of my take: getting sidetracked on a perceived insult just makes it all the more obvious that the mainstream media don't even know who we are, or how great our athletes are, or just how much breadth and depth and diversity we've got to offer the world from our disability culture to yours. You need to get real about the economy, people. No one knows this better than we do. And no, it's not simply because we depend on social programs.

It's because in disability culture we actually face the truth of our limitations; it's where we live, and we're good at it. We can't afford to live in denial, as so many others can. If we do, we get hurt. Badly. So take a page outta that playbook, mister President. And then text it to the mainstream media, the non-disabled disability rights "spokespersons," and all the university-trained economists and their admirers dancing aboard the Titanic.

Getting back to bowling, the paralympians have their own response. They recommend practice, focus, and aim.

Maybe Obama needs a Special Olympics coach for the economy.

I'm Afraid to Leave My Apartment

Today I was threatened.

I was told I "better not show up at any synagogues I had been going to." And on shabbat, no less! I was told I "better watch my back." I was told the whole community is against me, specifically the butch lesbian community, the Jewish community, and the disabled community. I was insulted and called a wack job.

I called the cops and reported it. The perp was a lesbian.

This is not the first time it's happened. Another lesbian perp called me an asshole and said she'd "kick my ass" a few weeks ago. I reported her too.

When I do go out socially, I'm sometimes met with a reaction that's somewhere between polite freeze and open hostility. Sometimes a woman might refuse to tell me her name, especially if she's just been publicly rude or insulting to me. Since the bullying started, I haven't been making many new friends.

I rarely go out, and when I do, I don't go out alone.

Some nice women who have been friendly to me have been affected, too. Two moderators of lesbian Yahoogroups have received slanderous email about me. Additionally, a moderator of an entirely different Yahoogroup for lesbians has written and posted slanderous email to about a thousand women on that list. No doubt others have received similar email, or have heard whispers, or in some way have been affected by this defamation of character.

It's all gone way too far and I really wish it would end.

The way to end it is to speak out against it. Another important step involves getting the right information.

Some of us apparently don't know what bullying is. But we can learn to recognize psychological aggression, emotional cruelty and other forms of bullying and abuse. It's not the same thing as getting upset, losing your temper, standing up for yourself, or telling someone you're really angry at them. It's not repeatedly asking for the same piece of information because you lost or forgot or misunderstood it. And it's wrong to call someone a bully for doing any of these normal things. Which leads to the next point.

If you don't know what abuse is, you prolly don't know who the victim is. Did you know that in lesbian relationships it's not uncommon for the bully to pose as the victim? Think about it. A bully incites others against the target, and wants to feel supported doing it. So a bully creates confusion and may even count on it. An enabler doesn't want accurate information either.

A victim may try to run away or leave, but have difficulty doing so. On the other hand, some victims may leave a relationship or a work position very suddenly. They may call police for protection, or ask to stay with friends, or even leave the area. A victim is badly frightened and likely has psychiatric injury (not illness) called PTSD, as a result of the bullying, and this can impact decision-making.

A victim is likely to be a newcomer, and socially isolated, and different from the rest of the community in some way. A victim is often very trusting, quite nice, and truly vulnerable; bullies pick up on this. If a victim is bullied at work, she likely has ideas, is competent, innovative, well-liked, independent, and is viewed by the bully as a threat.

A bully often has some position of power she is abusing in order to harm someone. In the case of lesbian relationships, the abuser is not necessarily physically dominant, and may not even be vocally loud. Instead she dominates in other areas of control. She may be a boss, or have credentials or titles, or have money, or have a higher IQ, or she may be more verbal, or she may just have many more friends or social networks. Obviously these traits aren't signs of abuse, they are simply signs of dominance.

Often lesbian relationships are featured by mixed dominance, where neither partner is clearly dominant, or where dominance shifts over time, or where both partners lightly vie for dominance. These situations, should they ever become abusive, can lead to devastating cruelty, as the abuser amps up her efforts to surpass her perception of the victim's supposed dominance, in order to hurt or gain control over the victim.

A bully is not merely having a bad day, nor is she simply angry over a perceived slight by the target. Instead, a bully or abuser is likely to resort to psychological aggression and other cruelties when she is held accountable for her actions. Therefore, bullying can be seen as an expression of retaliation for being confronted over the bully's own inadequacies or behaviors, or when being confronted with the reality of independence and autonomy of others. Fundamentally, bullying is about power and control.

In communities and cultures where bullying flourishes, it flourishes because it's tolerated and enabled. It seems counter-intuitive, but when it comes to bullying, the response of third parties is a huge predictor of outcome. It is not simply the response of the victim or the actions of the bully that determines outcome. In short, she very likely wouldn't be doing it if you, dear reader, told her in no uncertain terms she needs to stop it right now, and that you don't support her actions.

We can and should hold our friends and acquaintances accountable for their actions, as well as their inaction. Passive aggression is aggression. It's psychological aggression. Deliberately withholding needed support or needed resources is a form of psychological aggression. Let's all hope that when it happens, it's based on ignorance rather than prejudice. Ignorance is easier to fix.

We can begin to conquer our ignorance by taking responsibility for the impact of our silence, by recognizing we are interdependent, and by understanding some populations truly are more vulnerable and therefore need special protection. When we don't speak out against internet bullying, relational aggression, scapegoating, or socially-isolating someone, frankly, that enables it to continue. When we minimize relational aggression as a simple disagreement or conflict, that's enabling too. When we suggest we have some religious or spiritual excuse to engage in these behaviors, it's enabling, it's immoral, and it's a form of spiritual abuse.

When we suggest that victims toughen up or shut up or put up with it -- lest the victim disturb or inconvenience the routine of the enabler -- that is not only enabling, it is prolly more deeply destructive than the abuse in the first place. Yes ladies, the silent enabler can do more damage than the flagrant bully.

There's no excuse for silence. Nor is there an excuse for laziness. Or selfishness. We can't absolve ourselves of moral responsibility by throwing our hands in the air and muttering something about "here we go again" with the "lesbian drama." Nor can we tell a victim that we don't have time for her problems. Nor can we mis-use mental health concepts in order to form excuses like "healthy boundaries" prevented me from helping; or my own "journey away from co-dependency" made me think you'd "depend" on help, or I really need to focus on myself (all day, everyday, for weeks, or months?) so I can't help.

Actually, one can do all those things, but then let's not call it morally responsible behavior. Let's call it immaturity or ignorance. Because that's what it is. And let's try to overcome that together. As the AIDS crisis taught us, when a community gets sick, it's everyone's problem. And it's everyone's responsibility to find solutions. What's happening here is, and I really hate to say it, we have sickness in our community. And it's a real scourge. And it's everyone's problem and everyone's responsibility.

But take heart, change is at the door. The question is, do we have the courage to let her in?

We stopped the AIDS crisis; now let's stop the bullying crisis.

If you want to learn more about what you can do to end bullying and abuse, start by learning the facts. Then get involved by participating in constructive, healthy and educational discussion. And stay tuned to this blog.

Aimee Mullins Has Superpowers

Wow, you've got to check out this video, featuring paralympic champion Aimee Mullins and her 12 pairs of legs. They're prosthetics, of course, and they're all over the floor!

She set records in the 100-meter dash and the long jump. Oh yeah, and I believe she's a fashion model. Did I mention, she's gorgeous!

She did a TED talk last month and it's superb.

She asks:
"What is a sexy body?"
and:
"What does it mean to have a disability?"
and she jokes:
"Pamela Anderson has more prosthetics in her body than I do, nobody calls her disabled."

I think maybe this quote really resonated with me the most:
"It is no longer a conversation about overcoming deficiency, it's a conversation about augmentation, it's a conversation about potential."

Me here: Whoo hoo, that's right. We're not here to overcome our disability. That's pretty much the ableist Hollywood story line, isn't it. "Jenny" was born autistic, and well, we call her special, and look how she overcame. Or "Private Johnson" was hit with shrapnel, and lost her (fill-in-the- blank with the attribute-of- your-choice) but look how she overcame. Oh please. Disability is not a deficiency that needs overcoming. Prejudice is a deficiency that needs overcoming! It's sooo patronizing to act like there's something wrong that we need to overcome. And it's shaming. And this prejudice has become so institutionalized and normalized that we don't even see it. We're proud of who we are. And sure, we do augment. We're here to celebrate who we are, and be empowered to do that. We're our own culture. We offer a helluva lot that able folks don't have.

Which leads into this quote, which I may be mangling it a bit:
"People once considered disabled, can now become architects of their own identities.. . through empowerment. "

Watch it, and share!






Hat tip to A Life Less Mediated.

Queer Disability Letter to the Editor in Bay Windows

I don't know if anyone has been following this, but a group at Harvard Law sponsored a conference in February on the LGBT Health Gap.

A journalist from the New England Bay Windows wrote a rather bland story last week reporting that the conference panelists agreed -- a health gap really does exist for those in the LGBT community. Ethan Jacobs, the reporter, even did a really nice job mentioning that LGBT people of color especially experience the health gap. He mentioned transgender experiences and issues that were raised by conference members, but as a journalistic piece, I'd hafta say it was pretty much a bowl of oatmeal. Comforting but not challenging. Or maybe the conference was just boring. How would I know? After all, I live in California and can't attend, that's why I depend on the internet.

Then things got interesting.

Yesterday two LGBT panelists from the conference wrote the Bay Windows saying incredibly cool and astute things. Samuel Lurie and Andrea Neuman seemed to suggest the Bay Windows may have missed some of what really went down at the conference. And boy am I glad they piped up.

Here's what Lurie and Neuman said:
"...[the conference] raises bigger questions about ableism within the queer community and the false separations between people with disabilities and LGBT people, separations that represent a competitive oppression that is divisive and destructive for all of us."

Me here: I'm so excited that others see this, too! Our own LGBT community sometimes separates and oppresses us, and the word for that is ABLE-ISM. It's competitive. It's wrong, and it's got to stop. I'm happy something like that was brought out at the conference, which, after all, was supposed to be about health gaps in the queer community. I mean, who better than the queer disabled community experiences a health gap, and the ableism surrounding that? Would there even be an LGBT health gap if it weren't for us disabled folks? One would think it is our existence that defines the issues the conference was addressing in the first place. I would think our fight against ableism ought to be front and center, not some letter to the editor.

They go on to say this:
"Most of us do not believe that being queer is such a lowly state that we should at all costs avoid being identified as such. How is it that we are, in the same breath, so comfortable reinforcing the idea that being perceived as a person with a disability is in fact so devastating that it should be used only covertly if it carries with it the possibility of access to resources?"

Me here: In a way, they're talking about "passing" as non-disabled. Have you ever tried to do that? Sucks, huh. Nothing wrong with who we are in the first place. And in another way, they're talking about shaming. That also sucks, and they're right to call out the LGBT community for even trying to do it to us.

Then they bring it, with this:
"Not only is it a myth that disabled people currently have access to the resources they need, queer disabled people are routinely denied access or specifically excluded from queer resources. This includes queer-focused health care, gay bars and queer events..."

I gotta chime in: That's just the tip of the iceberg. Queer disabled folks sometimes are made to feel uncomfortable or pressured while participating in straight-but-gay-friendly culture, while non-disabled queer folks -- who sometimes help run those cultural events or who have helped make those events gay-friendly in the first place -- are quite welcome. In other words, some LGBT ableists who move in straight circles sometimes spread or enable oppression of disabled queers in those newly opened circles. It's offensive, hypocritical, and competitive. It's morally unacceptable. And it's not limited to strictly social settings, it can happen in health care, in education, in the workplace, in government, and even in churches and synagogues. And yeah, I've heard of this reaching the point where a lesbian or an ally finds out what your needs are, and then specifically says they won't accommodate, even where they would provide those accommodations as courtesies for someone who isn't disabled.

And they hella closed with this:
"Rather than reinforce the stigmatization and invisibility of queer disabled people, let's recognize - and celebrate - that people with physical and psychiatric disabilities are in fact a significant part of our community. We cannot afford to continue to struggle at the expense of any part of our community. It is destructive to all of us."

Me again: Right on. And Amen.

Garrison Keillor's Jab at Disability Pensioners

I usually like humorist and radio host Garrison Keillor, but I thought his latest short essay was a jab at folks who once worked, but now collect disability pension.

I know he's trying to poke fun at himself, and I know he's complaining some unions haven't negotiated better disability benefits, but to my taste, his approach just ends up trivializing disability, the need for adequate national disability benefits, and the need for better labor advocacy.

Why I Blog

I feel the need to protect and to help myself and others.

I had a head injury several years ago and am disabled from it.

As a result I have or I have had Prosopagnosia, Nystygmus, Cerebral Achromatism, Dyscalculia, double vision, vision drop-out, headaches, neckaches, fatigue, problems navigating, difficulties with comprehension, memory and planning, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember.

Normally, it's not that bad.

But, as Jean-Paul Sartre said, hell is other people. Since my accident, I have encountered a level of insensitivity, ignorance, and prejudice that I had never known before. It's been a real blow. Sometimes, I've experienced cruelty, and I haven't felt safe in social settings, in places of worship, in volunteer projects. It seems I am more vulnerable to relational aggression, which is like a form of social bullying or internet bullying. And it hurts. So far, I haven't been able to protect myself very well from it. Unfortunately this has happened in the LGBT community.

I hope over time the tide will turn. I know it will.

It occurred to me that if I blog, I would be better protected and perhaps less vulnerable. Maybe I would improve my skills and remember more, and be taken advantage of less, and be treated better. And if I really can't remember more, at least I'll have something true to look back at.

And I always wanted to tell my story. Who doesn't.

I'm proud of who I am. I don't feel ashamed or lacking. I know the secret. A human being is not defined by income or by IQ or status or even achievement, but by qualities of being. I'm really into qualities of being. I can be caring, I can be a good listener, I can be available, be friendly, be present, be creative, be meditative, be supportive, be kind, be patient, be spontaneous, be funny, be free. It's easy for me. Other people don't have time to just be. Their ego drives them to other things. But I've had an amazing spiritual journey.

By writing I also hope to reach out to other folks with disability, particularly those with similar issues. I'd like to share solutions and strategies.

And hey, maybe I'll be able to write about many other things in life that aren't disability-related. Like art, music, technology, sports, yoga, spirituality, comedy, and the economy.

I think that's a pretty good list.