#it's like. preventing a specific disabling event isn't the problem

[scribefindegil]

been thinking about Disability As Bad Timeline Marker recently, and how I'm not super mad about it or anything bc it tends to happen in tandem with "there was a terrible accident" and making the terrible accident Not Happen is better for everyone pretty objectively

but also I need instances of "the future where someone is disabled and you can't fix it because that's just what human bodies do sometimes"

[cripplecharacters]

How should you write/draw burn survivors? I know this isn't a drawing blog but I don't know of one that I could ask this question to.

Hello!

I'm not a burn survivor myself, so I'll mostly talk about facial differences/visible disability in general and link some stuff made by burn survivors.

First thing, I think it's important to remember that being a burn survivor changes a lot of things - not only appearance. Very important part is the psychological one, but I'm not a burn survivor so I will just let the resources linked below speak.

From the physical aspect, burns can also come with: chronic pain, limited range of motion due to scarring, tightened skin, problems with regulating temperature, itching, skin irritation, and even different nutritional needs during the initial healing process.

There is also specific everyday care associated with burns - something you basically never see in fiction. That could be things like occupational therapy, physical therapy, skincare (like heavy moisturizing and scar massaging), wearing sunblock, wearing splints, or stretching to prevent contractures or tightness.

There are also different types of burns and they (unsurprisingly) differ from each other - for example, electrical burns have a much higher rate of amputation than any other type. Chemical burns can cause eye issues. A burn caused by a fire in a closed space might result in a brain injury due to the lack of oxygen. A much larger portion of people than you (probably) assume have survived burn injuries as small children, and if they were young enough they might not even remember the event at all, unlike older people who might be very affected by the trauma.

Experiences of a person with 80% body surface burns, a person with quadruple amputations from an electrical burn, a person with a facial burn, and a person burnt very recently will be different from someone who has a 5% body surface 2nd degree burn in a spot that’s usually hidden, who has lived with their burn for a decade - despite them all being burn survivors.

When it comes to more thorough research, I recommend going through Phoenix Society’s and Face Equality International’s websites to learn more about both real burn survivor’s perspectives, and face equality as a social justice topic. I think the 3rd link (see below) puts it very well when talking about burn survivors being represented in fiction:

“Most likely, these characters were not created by someone with lived experience. The result is an increasingly garbled game of telephone [...] To avoid contributing to this false narrative, embrace research as part of the process. Explore interviews, first-person accounts, and articles from reliable sources.”

I personally think that the links below should be mandatory reading for writing not only burn survivors, not only people with facial differences, but visibly disabled people in general - because the treatment we get is often so similar the advice still holds up just fine. And if you don't plan on writing any of these, you should still read them to see how prevalent of a problem ableism in media is.

Lise Deguire's Hey Hollywood - scars don't make you evil.

Face Equality International's International Media Standard on Disfigurement.

Niki Averton's Tips for Writing about Burn Survivors.

The main sentiment that you will read from basically any first-hand source is that if you're writing the burn survivor to be either:

evil (just throw the whole character away)

a guy with the "World's Saddest Most Tragic Backstory Ever and It's So Sad and Tragic" (because he revealed he has a scar)

a helpless victim who is there to be The Helpless Victim

...then you're already doing it wrong and need to make some major changes.

From our blog's reblogs and posts, you might want to look at tips for writing a visibly different/disabled character and tips on drawing people with facial differences. Neither are specific to burn survivors but cover the topic of visible disability and facial differences.

Now for tips on drawing burn survivors (that weren't included in the last link);

Reference real people. 99.9% drawings of burn survivors seem to go through the same "increasingly garbled game of telephone" that Niki Averton mentions with how burn survivors are written, in that the newer the drawing, the less in common it has with how real people with burns look like because people reference from each other and none of them ever think to actually check if their depiction is accurate. If you just google "burn survivor" you will very quickly notice that burn survivors don't have that damn red overlay layer put on top of their skin. It just doesn't look like that, and basic research (aka Google Images search) will tell you that - and still, people color a hand with bright red and think that's how it looks like (it doesn't).

In the same vein, maybe don't just draw an able-bodied person and then put some scarring on top (or maybe do exactly that. No burn scar and no burn survivor is the same, and there are people that fit what I just described... but hear me out for a second). Think about how scars interact with their features - do they have both of their ears? Do they still have all of their hair? Do they only have parts of their eyebrow? Do they have all of their fingers? Can they move the same as before their burn, or are their scars limiting their joints? How did their body react to the post-burn hypermetabolism? Lots to think about. Take into account what type and thickness of burns your character has.

Ditch the mask trope. Just ditch it. There's no need to cover your character's scar from the world unless you as the author think it requires to be hidden, is too scary to show, or other ableist trope that seems to always come up with drawings of visibly disabled people, especially burn survivors. The one exception I will mention is a transparent face orthosis/mask (TFO) that facial burn survivors might wear while awaiting a skin graft early after their injury. But as the name suggests, it's transparent and doesn't work for the "scary facial difference, better cover it up and only reveal it in some hyper dramatic scene!" trope because you can see right through it. (I will also mention that TFOs are a very modern thing. Your medieval burn survivor wouldn't be wearing one).

No "body horror", no "gore" tags or trigger warnings or whatever. That's a human being. If you feel the need to warn your followers before they see a disabled person existing, you're better off not drawing them.

Some last notes;

Throughout this ask I used the term "burn survivor" rather than "burn victim" because that is, to my knowledge, the general community preferred phrase. Individual opinions will differ (because no group is a monolith) but "burn survivor" is generally the safest term to use and probably the best if talking about a fictional character.

Similarly, I used "facial difference" rather than "disfigurement". Just as the above, opinions will differ on what is the best to use but I personally, as someone with facial asymmetry and a cranial nerve disorder, heavily prefer the term "facial difference" over "disfigurement". (I am in this case The Individual Opinion Differing because you can notice that in the links above, facial difference and disfigurement are used interchangeably. The general community uses both, some people have specific preferences. I'm some people). When talking about a fictional character, "facial difference", "visible difference" and "disfigurement" are all probably fine. Just stay away from calling a person "deformed".

mod Sasza

[republicstandard]

Why isn't it a Hate Crime to be in a Muslim Rape Gang?

Hate crime is everywhere, we are told. It infects Western society in the form of toxic Whiteness, toxic masculinity, racism and Islamophobia which are the terrible scourges of our culture. Given this dominant narrative, a problem arises when hate crimes are committed by non-White men. What does a White British majority society do when White Britons are victimized and raped by ethnic minorities who have protected status?

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It is a curious time to be a Briton overseas. Looking at the news -or lack thereof- about these important matters is honestly terrifying. Since the double whammy of the exposure of the Telford Muslim Rape Gang and the expulsion of the very activists who warn us of that heinous phenomena, I feel we are at the cusp of a great change in our society. I have undergone a personal change as the result of these same events, new questions must be answered.

Oh look. BBC reluctantly covering #Telford. Apparently the problem is “Asian gangs” abusing “mostly but not exclusively young white girls”. Craven euphemisms deployed rather than just say “British Pakistani” abusers

— David Vance (@DVATW) March 13, 2018

"The abuse in Telford is estimated to have involved over 1,000 girls stretching over 40 years. Young girls in the town were groomed, fed drugs and raped. They were passed between abusers like commodities. Some got pregnant, had abortions and were raped again on multiple occasions. Three women were murdered and two others died in tragedies linked to the abuse. Yet these shocking events have received relatively little coverage. Girls in Telford do not, it seems, deserve frontpage coverage in the Guardian or The Times.

The very same newspapers that covered, at length and over many days, news that Kate Maltby’s knee may or may not have been touched by Damian Green or that Michael Fallon attempted to kiss Jane Merrick, were unable to muster up the same level of outrage for young women in Telford."

So writes Joanna Williams in Spiked yesterday. Do go ahead and read her piece, it is a staggeringly clear-eyed view in one of the few decent remaining British publications. I am not too proud to say that I wept. I had not done so until this morning, preferring fevered dreams, lack of appetite and waking up in drenched sheets as my unconscious mind wrestles with the reality that the United Kingdom is sliding into Totalitarian Liberalism. I am left with the realization after reading Williams' work that it is impossible for the State to further deny that to group together with others to rape children of another race or faith is a hate crime. Britain will not prosecute such a crime because the perpetrators are Muslim- as we see from the spinelessness from our elected officials who cannot even bring themselves to name the crime and the criminal, nor recognize that the crime is related to the demographic.

When Lord Pearson brilliantly suggests that we ask the Muslim leadership in the United Kingdom if raping White girls is sanctioned by the Qu'ran and if not demand a fatwa against such behavior, he is met with groans of "racism" and receives a paltry 8 minutes of debate. This takes place in the House of Lords, the highest chamber in the country.

WATCH | "We're looking at millions of rapes of white and Sikh girls by Muslim men, only 222 of whom have been convicted since 2005. Can we talk about Islam without being accused of hate crime?" Lord Pearson's question deserved less than eight minutes of discussion in the Lords. pic.twitter.com/vaGjKo8O7K

— Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) March 13, 2018

More than this, this House is styled; "the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled." The Lords Spiritual and Temporal.  This House is made up of Bishops and secular folk alike, and even with this congregation of the great and good, we cannot decide if ethnic Britons possess any value at all under God or under the law.

As Williams rightly points out, the #MeToo posturing of wealthy middle-class women extends exactly as far as the class divide. It extends as far as they are comfortable to stretch, which is far enough to blame wealthy White men for all their problems. For some reason, there is some smear on the lens that obscures the plight of working-class girls. For some reason, the people in a position to help the most who have made the most noise lose their nerve when it comes to hate crimes committed by Muslims.

Last weekend there was a 'women's march' in London. Can anyone point me to details of this weekend's feminist march against the industrial level abuse of over 1,000 young girls for a period of 40 years+ in Telford? I can't seem to find it.

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) March 13, 2018

Yes, even under the British definition of the law -which is awfully vague- the rapists of Telford, Rochdale and dozens of other towns are committing hate crimes according to the Met Police.

"A hate crime is when someone commits a crime against you because of your disability, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, religion, or any other perceived difference. It doesn’t always include physical violence. Someone using offensive language towards you or harassing you because of who you are, or who they think you are, is also a crime. The same goes for someone posting abusive or offensive messages about you online. If it happens to you, you might be tempted to shrug it off. But if you tell us, we can investigate and stop it from getting worse - either for you or someone else.

If someone commits a criminal offense and the victim, or anyone else, believes it was motivated by prejudice or hate, we class this as a ‘hate crime’. It means the offender can be charged for the crime itself and also their reasons for doing it."

The law is clear- if I think gangs of mostly Muslim men from Pakistan are raping White children motivated by prejudice, this is a hate crime. Where is the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd? Why, she is calling for investigations into Russian assassinations -which absolutely has to happen- but has said nothing on Telford. Nothing.

I'll finish up with a recap of what the word genocide means. According to the UN genocide is;

"any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such"

Killing members of the group

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

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We see one demographic attempting to inflict all of these aspects on another within the United Kingdom right now. At the bare minimum, we have to recognize as a culture that there are hate crimes being committed against us. In the extreme case I would say that the only thing preventing us categorizing this situation as being a genocide is that, for now, White Britons are not an ethnic minority. Yet. The only difference between the fate of the Yazidi women and that of the teenage girls of Telford is demographics. Think about that- because the clock is ticking.

Tan (a regular at Speakers Corner) is pulled away by Police for standing too close to the Call to Prayer. In recent years a designated prayer area has been put in place specifically for Muslims. pic.twitter.com/nKbpBtyrFH

— l u c y b r o w n (@lucyfrown) March 14, 2018

This is Speaker's Corner, where Martin Sellner was prevented from speaking. This is the British police, preventing anyone getting to close to Muslims at prayer in public. This is what you are not allowed to speak about- from the faith itself to the acts of the devotees, it is all haraam.

We cannot speak about it for fear of being arrested for wrong-think. We cannot act on it because this would be Islamophobic. Our law-makers hide from the laws they are to interpret for us and our politicians cower from the idea that Islam is incompatible with our culture.

This situation is untenable and will bring us all to ruin.

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[pennythemechpilot]

@obsidian3ye this seems like something for you

been thinking about Disability As Bad Timeline Marker recently, and how I'm not super mad about it or anything bc it tends to happen in tandem with "there was a terrible accident" and making the terrible accident Not Happen is better for everyone pretty objectively

but also I need instances of "the future where someone is disabled and you can't fix it because that's just what human bodies do sometimes"