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I think institutions are maybe the most important vaariable when speaking about identity and access, because most (if not all) of the times when we speak of access it is in relation to some sort of institution. I'd like to change the word institution to a much more larger, wider range term: social structure or organization.
I was never an active kid growing up. While my sister and brothers would run around like monkeys on too much sugar whenever we went to the beach, I would quietly sit on the sand (far enough away from the ocean to not get wet, but close enough to the ocean to have access to as much wet sand as I wanted) with my orange bucket and purple plastic shovel to just dig. I could stay in the same area on the beach without moving for hours. When I did decide to move, it was only to collect shells so that I could go back to my little spot and play pirate.
Anything But What Normal Seems To Be
Because of its fastly-growing economics, Shanghai is a melting pot, attracting talented people to come, work, and settle here. The incoming people try to blend in this society; however, locals are reluctant to accept the outsiders as part of the community because they feel they are more superior, and insist using dialects to communicate but the outsiders can not understand. Automatically, the city is divided into two groups: Shanghainese and those “bumpkins”. Class does exist in our lives.
How can someone so small stand in the face of a mountain of slurs, taunts, and hostility? In Eli Claire’s memoir Exile and Pride, his answer is reclamation. Whenever I’ve heard the term thrown around, it was always used as reclaiming slurs—victims turning hurtful, oppressive language into symbols of pride. Clare sticks to this concept steadfastly, saying that “words of violence and hatred can be neutralized or even turned into words of pride” (Clare 109). Based on this, it can be garnered that reclamation is used to uphold pride in an individual and in a community. Just as nature can reclaim lands believe to be uninhabitable, so can people reclaim an ugly word and turn it into something beautiful.
Hate is a strong word, one that should be used sparingly to express a passionate, profound feeling. Hate is defined by the Oxford English dictionary: “An emotion of extreme dislike or aversion; detestation, abhorrence” (Oxford English Dictionary 1). Hating is a cry for action- a demand for change. In the book, Exile and Pride: disability, queerness and liberation, the author,Eli Claire, who has Cerebral Palsy, struggles with gender identity, and other issues, discusses how he and other people’s minds and bodies are influenced by oppression and struggle. Claire discusses how hatred is used to marginalize people, make people feel ashamed of their different abilities, force people to accept certain identities, and isolate groups and individuals.
In thinking about our discussion on Thurs., and how slippery it can be to talk about these complex issues of identity and access - in relation to history and always, I think, in the context of our very contemporary experiences of these matters – I offer a few further thoughts, and invite yours:
Handicapped or handicap stemmed from the mid-17th century phrase hand in cap. It was a lottery game in which “one person claimed an article belonging to another and offered something in exchange, any difference in value being showed decided by the umpire. All three deposited forfeit money in a cap; the two opponents showed there agreement or disagreement with the valuation by bringing out their hands either full or empty.
Grace Chung
September 26, 2014
ESEM Paper 4
Crippling the Norms
When my friend broke her left leg in ninth grade, she was temporary nicknamed The Ninth Grade Cripple or NGC for short. Boys would run up to her in the halls or when she hobbled up the stairs and taunt her—as if being called a cripple was a bad thing. What my friend learned from her experience as the NGC was that calling a person a cripple was an insult; the word should only reference people who negatively stood out due to their physical disabilities or deformities.
What do you think of when you hear the word “Queer?” To some this word is bitter. It carries hate and pain and hurt. To some it is foreign. I grew up never hearing the word used in a negative way or a positive way. To some, like Eli Clare, it carries a sense of pride. It feels like home. Queer means resistance, love, and freedom. According to the OED, the colloquial definition of queer is “Of a person: homosexual. Hence: of or relating to homosexuals or homosexuality.” ("Queer," def. adj.1). In Exile and Pride, as well as in the world today, queer has a much larger range than this definition.