Anonymous

by magicalersatz

My disability is, for many, also a marker of identity. In the parlance of pop culture, I was “born in the wrong body.” In the words of the DSM, I have “evidence of a strong and persistent cross-gender identification.” While I am agnostic about the etiology of my disability, I began treatment before graduate school, which involved therapy, hormones, surgery, and navigating a lot of legal forms and paperwork.

My colleagues don’t know about my gender history (in other words, I “pass” as the gender that’s finally on my identification), but I still view my physiological situation as a disability. I realize that there are others in my situation who would shirk this description, and I am do not mean to imply that any transsexual or transgender individual is thereby disabled.

However, this is a physical condition for which I must constantly medicate myself and for which I’ve had significant surgeries. I live with the fear that my colleagues will discover my past history, which is a source of some not-insignificant anxiety. While I can physically use the bathroom as anyone else of my gender can, that doesn’t erase the anxiety that this space prompts when I enter it. At the same time, I often am privy to conversation about “tr***ies” that I’d rather not hear.

For the voyeurs reading and wondering if I am your colleague that you think is a little too “masculine” to “really be a woman”, or a little too “effeminate” to “really be a man”, I won’t disclose “which way” I’ve gone. Imagine the presumed cisgender female colleague that you’re ignoring used to be one of the “guys.” Does that make you want to consider her argument more? Imagine that the presumed cisgender male colleague who you’re telling about the female speaker’s attire used to be “a woman.” Does that make you want to rethink your objectification?

I’m on anti-depressants, I’m comfortable with myself and am successful in my field. However, that doesn’t mean my body isn’t the locus of intense anxiety and self-doubt. Combine that with the pervasive misogyny in this field, and I’ve got a lot to overcome. I am hoping that I can be part of those who are overcoming the latter, and that in turn will help the former.

Joel Wright

by magicalersatz

My name is Joel.  I am a student of philosophy, a special education teacher in training, and a person with a physical disability.  My disability is unique and nameless, which I have always liked; it is the result of prenatal neurological damage, and is manifested through severe scoliosis and kyphosis, impaired fine motor skills, poor balance, and an altered gait.  (I am often mistaken for someone with cerebral palsy.)

I majored in philosophy in college, and then, after a series of disastrous spinal surgeries, I enrolled in a Master’s program in philosophy at the University of Chicago.  I wrote about many areas of philosophy, including language, pragmatism, phenomenology, and religion. (Wittgenstein, James, Heidegger, Kierkegaard.)  I graduated from UChicago in ’08, and found myself a philosophy-degree holder in the job market.  After spending one more year in Chicago interning at a publishing company and looking for temp work, I followed my then-girlfriend and now-wife to the University of Illinois, where she is enrolled in a Library Science program, and I am getting my teaching degree in Special Education.

I’m interested in this website because I have seen the positive effects that philosophy can have “in the world.”  I had a professor who once told me that, “The most dangerous thing is when they let philosophers out into the world.” Special education – the education of people with disabilities – is a civil rights issue.  I am currently investigating critical race theory, and am interested in applying that theory specifically to special education.  I would love to see this site become a resource for persons with disabilities and an advocate to improve people’s lives through the application of philosophical concepts.

http://joelwrig.weebly.com/

http://logiosdolioseriounios.blogspot.com/

Anonymous

by magicalersatz

I have always been looked upon as having an outgoing, expressive and compassionate personality; others who have been asked to describe me use the words/phrases ‘happy’, ‘ambitious’, ‘humorous’, ‘intelligent’ and ‘kind’. I even had a teacher nickname me ‘smily’, and have developed the reputation around my department of ‘always laughing’. Some philosophers say that what the Other confirms of me, is a good indication to what I really am.

But there seems to be one very key thing missing in this description: ‘rape survivor’, ‘ex-cutter’, ‘mild to intense PTSD’. I guess they wouldn’t really know those things, though, would they?
I’m ashamed. It’s been 8 years now, and I still feel dirty. I still go through periods of feeling worthless, depressed, experience severe flashbacks (which usually occur at night in the form of very detailed auditory, sensory and visual dreams), paranoia (which can be either mild or intense, depending on my mood, the flashbacks, and any triggers), anger, trust issues and severe anxiety at the prospect of a loss of control. At the end of my Undergraduate degree, which I did in a small town, I felt as though I had grown so much; it seemed like I had finally gotten all of this under control. My marks were high, I was getting ready to begin my Masters in Philosophy, and I was moving to a new city. Everything felt so… right.

But then I moved. And all of a sudden, the symptoms weren’t so manageable. Living in a big (very big) city for the first time is intimidating and daunting for just about anyone. But for someone who has experienced something like what I have, the city is like a constant trigger. The minute the sun goes down, everything becomes dangerous. Even the most mundane things register as ‘threat’.
Needless to say, this has all made coping with the change of a new school, new work load, new peers and new city very difficult. My support system isn’t here, and my comfort zone is gone. The lack of control I felt was sometimes overwhelming. Teaching tutorials bright and early are extremely difficult after a night of flashbacks, especially since my ‘danger’ mode is easily triggered at that point by the close proximity of males. Further, witnessing the ease and authority people use to speak of rape examples during an ethical debate, for example, is shocking, irritating and offensive. How can they even begin to posit an idea of what I go through on a daily basis? How can they defend the perpetrator?

Having said all of that, I still find solace in my work; I still use my philosophical projects as a way to find answers to questions I am still unsure of, and I am still (somehow) managing to maintain a 4.0 gpa. But my bias because of my experience is strong. And I fear that will have negative consequences for my future career as an academic philosopher.

So, I guess the point, then, is this: Those philosophers who advocate for a confirmation theory of identity didn’t seem to account for cases like this.

Or did they?

T.

by magicalersatz

A unique burden of depression is the strong doubt about whether the disability even exists.

In the larger culture, depressives are suspected of just having the “wrong attitude” toward life. Since one’s attitude is seen as voluntary, moreover, depressives are regarded as weak-willed or irresponsible in cultivating the right attitude. The label of a “medical condition” is thus seen as an excuse. Accordingly, medications are regarded as a “crutch” used by those who lack true grit.

The worst part is that depressives are highly prone to self-doubt already. So, even though psychiatrists reassure us, we often acutely feel these doubts ourselves. “Maybe I am to blame for my own unhappiness.” “Maybe I really can just snap out of it.” “Surely, medication is sometimes over-prescribed—is that true in my case?” This last doubt struck especially hard when I first moved to [major city], after graduate school. Upon reading my scripts, my new pharmacist blurted out “wow, I’ve never seen anyone on so many anti-depressants!” (Unbelievable, I know, but true.) The self-doubts persisted even when the condition threatened my life (twice). Was I ultimately to blame for getting so close to the edge?

The irony is that depressives often invest far more effort in cultivating a positive mindset. This is so, even though depression often comes with a lack of motivation. (And how do you become motivated to become motivated?)

To be depressed just is to have more and stronger inclinations toward negativity. (This is what distinguishes depression from merely “going through a rough patch.”) We all know people who seem especially positive. The flip side, unfortunately, is that some are disposed to be especially gloomy. The sad feelings and disturbing thoughts enter our minds against our will. Depressives thus end up exerting more will power to maintain a positive outlook. We are dealing with a real disability. I know that now.

Raymond Aldred

by magicalersatz

I am currently completing my Masters degree at the University of Calgary, and writing my thesis on cognitive disability and agency. Prior to my current degree, I completed an honors degree at the same educational institution and wrote my thesis on disability and the body. I am largely interested in philosophical questions about disability, philosophy of sex, philosophy of love, neurophilosophy, philosophy of mind, neuroethics and ethics.

The condition I have been blessed with is the degenerative muscle disorder Muscular Dystrophy wherein my body slowly deteriorates around me, I become weaker, and there is very little I can do about it. As such, I have used many modes of performances to get around in my life: I went from walking, to using a manual wheelchair nearing the end of my undergraduate degree, to currently using a power wheelchair. My disability is very visible, and therefore it is accompanied by many wonderful attitudes and assumptions about me: people wonder if I can love, have sex, compete philosophically, and succeed on my own. These assumptions I believe have lead to a degree of marginalization and social isolation which I struggle to free myself from. No doubt, my peculiar embodiment has led to a unique philosophical perspective on matters people rarely think about and it motivates me to do the philosophical work that I do.

My philosophical career has been met with various structural barriers that frustrate my success in an academic setting, from surprisingly having to write my GRE without accommodation, to not being able to go to conferences because of not being able to afford to pay an assistant to attend with me. However, along the way, I have met many people who I share deep friendships with, and who share in my frustrations. As I prepare to hear back from universities about my PhD prospects I am a bundle of nerves, but it is nice to find some solidarity that there are other philosophers out there who have succeeded, in spite of being under-represented in academia.

Maeve M. O’Donovan

by magicalersatz

On the second night of the 2008 Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA) national meeting attendees were invited to participate in an open‐microphone session. While the performances of piano compositions, songs, poems, and mini‐plays were enjoyable, it was the amateur comediennes who stole the night. One joke in particular sent the audience into such fits of laughter that many around me were crying from laughing so hard. It was the funniest thing we had heard in a long time. The joke uses the nickname for persons with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADDers, and is quite simple: Question: “How many ADDers does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: “Get over it, it’s never gonna happen.”

This basic, formulaic joke captures the essence of living with ADHD. Everyone to whom I’ve told it, since, who lives with or is close to someone with ADHD, has much the same reaction as the audience. Why? Because living with ADHD is painful, it’s frustrating‐‐especially for spouses and parents of ADDers, and it is, ultimately, somewhat predictable. Easy household tasks, such as changing a burnt out light bulb or remembering to move wet laundry from a washer to a dryer, can become insurmountable tasks for the ADHD person. The appeal of the joke, then, is that when ADDers and their families recognize the ADHD reality, accept it, and try to ‘get over it,’ instead of ignoring or denying the link between such behaviors and ADHD, the same reality can also, finally, be funny.

I tell this story for two reasons: because it was at the conference that I felt disabled for the first time in my life, and because it was during the open‐mic that I felt more a part of a community than I ever have. I was diagnosed with ADHD and a learning disability at the end of my first year in a doctoral program (1993). Having never heard of either, I immediately turned to my own discipline, philosophy‐‐the study of thinking, for insight. Finding little in philosophy to help me, I redirected my attention to disability studies‐‐but this search, too, was not as fruitful as I had expected. Why, I have recently begun to wonder, did I have such difficulty finding in academia the kind of community I experienced at ADDA? (This is from a paper I gave in 2009–so I am not asking to remain anonymous)

I am THRILLED that this blog has been created, and am encouraged by the increasing amount of work being done on disability in philosophy. Finally, a community.

Anna-Sara Malmgren

by magicalersatz

I have recurrent major depression and panic disorder. (Both run in the family, but on different sides.) I started having panic attacks when I was about 14, and first got diagnosed with major depression at 18. But moved abroad shortly after that, and refused treatments for years—somehow forced myself through three or four more depressive episodes, plenty of panic attacks, and an undergraduate education. Then things got better for a while, until shit really hit the fan in 2001. Eternally grateful to a couple of individuals who understood the situation much better than me, who persuaded me to sit tight and to finally seek professional help, and who were there for me in the ensuing months (and years). (You know who you are. I love you, and I think you saved my life.) Also very grateful to the good psychiatrist I had the luck to be assigned—he didn’t give up when none of the standard treatment methods seemed to make any difference; nor, later on, when I prematurely and stupidly decided to go it alone again.

Since then I’ve had a couple of longish recurrences, but things are under control now and have been for quite some time. I hope—and plan, to the extent one can plan—for them to stay that way. I still get plenty anxious, and have various associated challenges (affecting me both on and off work). But this is nothing— things are fine—compared to when I’m truly depressed; then I can’t do anything much of a constructive sort at all: sleep, read, eat, write a one-sentence e-mail.

Like Carrie I don’t tick the ‘disabled’-box, and I’ve never talked about this publicly before—certainly not with colleagues (that aren’t also close friends). It makes me feel quite exposed. But a recent encounter with a younger philosopher who’s facing similar troubles made me aware of this blog and prompted me to submit a post. Time to get rid of the hang-up I still have about this, methinks. And the possibility that I could help someone, even just a bit, by sharing the outline of my story here, is obviously worth a little dent in my pride and my privacy.

Anna-Sara Malmgren Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_disorder

http://www.stanford.edu/group/mood/cgi-bin/wordpress/?p=448

Anonymous

by magicalersatz

I’ve suffered from very painful stomach pains since my childhood, and recently I was diagnosed as suffering from a general anxiety disorder. I’m taking medication now that help against my stomach pains, which only come in social situations, but there’s still a lot of anxiety there. I’m anxious of all kind of things, and most of the time I don’t know what exactly I’m anxious about. I just have a general feeling of massive stress. In addition to this, I also have more more specific fears, such as the fear of being unemployed for a long time, of illnesses I might have or may develop, of being judged to be a bad philosopher, of flying, of behaving in an embarassing way in public, and of death.

Most people don’t know about any of this and probably wouldn’t guess that I suffer from an anxiety disorder. It normally doesn’t manifest itself in public and my career is going well. But my anxieties affect my performance as a philosopher in many ways. Because of my perfectionist tendencies I get very stressed every time I am supposed to do something for my job like writing or presenting a talk, finishing my thesis or a paper, or even just writing an email! I often feel so stressed that I’m unable to understand what I’m reading or listening to. And this in turn makes me feel stupid and unfit to be an academic philosopher to the point where even when I receive a studentship or grant, or get a paper accepted for publication or a job offer, I don’t feel happy or relieved or proud. I just feel more anxious. Anxious that I don’t deserve it, that someone will take it away from me again, that it’s not good enough, that I should try harder, and that this will be my last “success”.

I grind my teeth night and day to the point where I constantly suffer from neck pain, which means that I cannot sit in front of a computer as much as I want or should.

I should tackle my anxiety by taking therapy sessions, but since that would take years of ongoing therapy and since I don’t have a tenure-track position yet and thereby move around alot, it’s not happening yet.

I know philosophy should be hard. And I enjoy thinking about hard questions! But often I wonder whether my life as an academic philosopher should really be so hard.

Andrea Nicki

by magicalersatz

Hi. I am touched and heartened by this blog site; and give a big applause to its creators!! I have a position in applied health ethics in a department of health science. I have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since the time of living in my parents home. I have a sister who also suffers from ptsd as well as anorexia and an auto-immune disorder. She has been living on disability insurance now for ten years. I have had articles and philosophical poetry published about my struggles with the fall out of family violence; and these writings have been met with a lot hostility and exclusionary attitudes from both philosophers and poets but also very encourgagingly with some real support from those with similar struggles. I realized that such writing was going to count strongly against me in terms of getting a tenure-track position in a philosophy department but it has gotten me other goods, such as mental release and a commitment to compassionate living.

We need more philosophers writing in the area of mental health. I attended a conference on mental health ethics this summer and I was really surprised by the very superficial understandings found in many mental health professionals. Folks here may want to consider contributing articles or personal accounts to the Journal of Mental Health Ethics.

L

by magicalersatz

I have been considering ‘coming out’ professionally for the last few years for all the reasons mentioned in the ‘Why share?’ section of this site. My disabilities are less visible, so I have the ‘luxury’ of staying in the disability closet. I am not quite going public because my disabilities both carry stigma.

I am an early career academic working in a British university. I had childhood depression and continue to suffer from mild depression. Contrary to stereotypes of this illness, I have a cheerful personality! I take medication, which helps. My partner, who is very supportive, sometimes fails to share his burdens because he sees me as somewhat emotionally ‘fragile’. I find this particularly hard; as genuine partners, that is not what I envisaged for us. I worry that others would see me this way, if I were to be fully open about my mental illness.

In my early twenties, I developed symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which is quite controversial; some doubt its existence altogether. Symptoms that *I* experience (it’s different for everyone) include: post-exertional fatigue, periods of profound fatigue, persistent sore throat, cognitive dysfunction (loss of memory and poor concentration) and muscle and joint pain. There are occasions when I cannot move my limbs and have to sit/lie down regardless of what I am supposed to be doing. It often takes me three times as long as my peers to write a paper due to fatigue and/or memory and concentration problems. This is a significant aspect of academic work and the appearance of ‘underperforming’ will undoubtedly affect my career progression. Travelling to conferences, meetings and for work is draining and I have to carefully schedule any travel to allow for recovery time. I wasn’t sure if I would be able for a full-time job, and I still amn’t.

Doing work in Ethics, I come across a wide variety of debates involving mental illness and disability (directly and indirectly) and I am constantly amazed at the types of false assumptions that intelligent, informed people make about people with disabilities and the Othering that occurs in academic discourse. I am glad that disabled philosophers exist; I am glad that this site is starting a bottom-up, informed discussion. Thanks Magical and Jennifer for founding the site and thank you to the contributors.

 

Anonymous

by magicalersatz

I am a graduate student currently dealing with major depression, a severe case of PTSD, and minor psychoses. These conditions, almost every day, try to convince me I should leave school. My work is interrupted by bouts of depression that leave me cognitively impaired and sleeping most of the day, sometimes accompanied by a lot of seemingly unintended self-harm. I have spent years fighting alcoholism brought on by a decade and a half of trauma (and have been successful). Hallucinations (auditory, visual, and tactile) interrupt my work and any concentration I may have mustered that day. I have anywhere from 1-5 memorable nightmares per night, often leaving me with only 3 or 4 hours of sleep and emotionally exhausted all day. I am on medications that make me perpetually nauseous.

I have had peers make fun of me for being registered as a disabled student on campus. Peers have made snide remarks about my usage of extended time for exams (because of severe concentration problems and a seeming inability to perceive time). I usually present myself as having a completely “normal” mental life. So, I am usually fairly humiliated every time I must explain circumstances to a professor; I’m always certain they think I’m lying. (Though, both of my graduate advisors have been very helpful.)

Either way, as you all know, this field is so competitive: I spend much time in distress over the fact that I cannot always keep up with my peers no matter how hard I work on improving my conditions.

Patrick Standen

by magicalersatz

I am an Instructor of philosophy at Saint Michael’s College where I teach introductory philosophy and political theory. I also teach medical ethics–both undergraduate and graduate–at the University of Vermont where I am an instructor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Movement Sciences. I have been teaching philosophy for 23 years. At the age of 16, I was in an automobile accident that left me a complete paraplegic at the 10th thoracic level resulting in complete paralysis from roughly my belly button down… I have lived with a disability for 31 years now. The perspective of life from a wheelchair has been an incredibly eye-opening experience.

I did my undergraduate at the University of Vermont and graduate work at a number of Boston-area schools including Harvard, Harvard law, Boston University and Boston College. I am one of those itinerant academics who, because they could not afford to stay in school, teach without a terminal degree to support themselves. My studies were cut short by a lack of money due to the monthly medical bills I must pay to maintain my life. I turned to teaching to eke out a life.

As an academic yeoman in the fields of philosophy, I have taught virtually every kind of course at every level at over a dozen schools but chiefly enjoy introducing students to the history and ideas of philosophy. I was similarly introduced to philosophy in a high school class. When I am not teaching, writing or reading, I am an avid wheelchair athlete and outdoors enthusiast.

Kathleen Akins

by magicalersatz

I am currently an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University; I’m married, have two children (early teens), and spend a huge portion of my life sitting in bed doing philosophy. For about 25 years, I’ve had a form of ‘arthritis’ (although for most of that time I was misdiagnosed as having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). There are over 75 kinds of arthritis, a blanket historical term that covers any swelling of the joints, often diseases that have very little relation to each other in their etiology. In any event, I have a form known as HLA-B27 Negative Ankylosing Spondylitis (with Fever Syndrome). This is a ‘short’ way of saying that: I have an autoimmune reaction to enthetic tissue, that handy organ that holds tendons and ligaments onto bone; the illness has a genetic basis but we don’t know which genes underlie this particular form, and; in men, this condition is centered around the spine, which eventually leads to a fusing of the vertebrae into a single mass. And finally, the disease ‘flares’ with a 48 hours fever whenever I encounter a ‘bug’, a garden variety virus or bacteria that causes colds and flu. My case is unusual in that I have an autoimmune reaction to  the all the entheses throughout my body. This allows me to do a nice party trick for physicians, namely the identification, by touch, of every tendon/ligament attachment, without a shred of anatomical knowledge.  So that’s the physiology of the disease. Gary Larson once drew a cartoon entitled “The Boneless Chicken Factory”, in which there are these vaguely chicken-shaped blobs with beaks dotting the landscape. I LOVE that cartoon. That’s me on a bad day: Kathleen Akins aka The Human Lump(el). (Turns out that it doesn’t matter if you have bones, if they’re not firmly attached to anything. Of course, a bit of neural innervation is not to be sneezed at either, as I am sure Steven Yablo will tell you.) It’s a very painful disease — and I say that using childbirth as the benchmark. It’s also entirely invisible. When I’m up and moving, I look just like anyone else, or any other six foot middle-aged female in dire need of a good night’s sleep and some wardrobe help (I think it’s the bedroom slippers). I am currently on Enbrel, one of the new immuno-suppressant drugs which act suppress the immune system generally (like the drugs used for organ transplants).

After all these years with The Stupid Disease as we call it in my family, I have an endless array of often depressing, sometimes hilarious tales of dealing with colleagues, physicians, administrators and indeed lawyers. (BTW, one of the funniest and saddest books I have ever read, a book about both degenerative disability and terminal cancer if you can imagine, is “So Much For That”, by Lionel Shriver. Not for the faint of heart. But funny. Wickedly funny.) I don’t consider this disease a blessing. In fact, I feel quietly confident that the universe would be a significantly better place without it. Not without me, but definitely without IT.

Still, as my husband always says in a deadpan voice (usually on the way to the hospital) “Your disease is a many splendored thing.” And there is a serious point there. The nature and range of ‘disability’ is so vast that nothing about my own case necessarily generalizes to the experiences of other philosophers on this blog. Still, I think we really needed this forum if only to say “Hey, we’re here. We contribute. We’re a part of the profession. We’re good citizens and good philosophers.”

Mental/Physical/Social Disabilities

by magicalersatz

Well, let’s see. I have, over the last ten years since the beginning of my PhD, been faced with multiple crises that were not under my control and affected my ability to advance my career. Some of these are permanent features of my life and some of them are arguably temporary, though they have had relatively long-term impact on my life. I don’t know whether they should be called disabilities or not. I will just tell you what’s happened. I am still trying to get a tenure-track job, and I feel that I am behind my cohorts because of what has happened to me in the last ten years, but how to deal with this or accommodate it, or even whether it should be, I don’t know.

Let’s start at the beginning. I have had a rare form of migraine, hemiplegic migraine, since I was 13 years old and for which the new miracle drugs, apparently a cure for migraines, are contraindicated for me. When I get a migraine, I can take only opiates. This makes work impossible and even when I don’t have to take these drugs, the other symptoms make work virtually impossible. My migraines can last anywhere from a day to a week. Of course, people are aware only of the most common form of migraine, and so do not understand how migraines can still be disabling. Thankfully, I don’t get them that often and I cope with this relatively well. Still, it would be nice not to have to worry that when I can’t teach because of it, that people don’t think I am just making excuses.

Second, I also have PTSD, which I only recently became aware of, and which has progressed over the years to the point where I can take an interest only in one thing: philosophy. That, at least, also hasn’t affected my work life that much for the obvious reason, though it probably has affected the social aspects of my work life in various ways of which I am not aware.

What’s more, in the last ten years, I have lost both of my parents. I lost my father, who I was very close to, suddenly after my first year as a PhD student, and proceeded to take a year and a half leave of absence as a result. It took me seven years to complete the PhD in part because of this leave. This fact likely affects how I am perceived on the job market because of how long it took me to finish. Perhaps this effect can be moderated if letter writers mention this fact or something, I have no idea. What I can’t do, however, is list counterfactual publications on my CV.

On a side note: I am also on the austism spectrum and I have no doubt this has affected professional perceptions of me in social contexts. Though I doubt that it is perceived as autism by others, since I am female and I am quite sure that it expresses itself very differently in those socialized in completely different ways. I have no ability to gauge how others perceive me and find myself violating the expectations of social interaction in social contexts with other professionals. And if you think philosophers are somehow liberated from these expectations, think again, especially when it comes to standard expectations about how women are supposed to talk and act.

Last, I have bipolar disorder, now well-controlled with medication. It peaked at the same time I was defending my dissertation and going on the job market for the first time. It took two years for me to get stable. I cannot mention this on my CV. I hardly tell anyone about it. Having a mental disorder is not seen in the same way as having a physical disability. I don’t know that they should be, and I have no idea how they should be accommodated. There are aspects of my disorder that speak more directly to job performance than others. For instance, some of the meds I am on have been known to induce cognitive deficits. People also don’t seem to understand that putting an abnormal brain on effective meds does not make that brain normal. I still have those days where I need to be able to take a mental health day without guilt or consequences and I cannot. Also, the time from diagnosis to effective treatment was long and painful, and even if I could tell people about it, it wouldn’t change my publication record. Last but not least, I had two major surgeries in the last two years that took more than six months to recover from, cared for a mother dying with cancer for nine months in her home town and had to take another nine month leave of absence from my post-doctoral studies. These issues, of course, needn’t remain hidden. But again it doesn’t help my publication record. I do feel that I still have a chance on the job market though as I recently published something in a top ten journal. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this alone will help me get a job. I am also currently employed at a good place as a VAP. I don’t know what the point of all of this is. I also have no idea what should be done about it. It would require significant epistemic risk to start judging candidates potential rather than their actual accomplishments. Plus, I just may consistently underperform because of my bipolar disorder.

What’s to be done?

Teresa Blankmeyer Burke

by magicalersatz

I’m a deaf philosopher at Gallaudet University. I teach philosophy in two languages: American Sign Language  (ASL) and English. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to sign concepts like “grue” in ASL, since there is not much of a philosophical lexicon in this language.

Face-to-face communication with (hearing) philosophers is hard work. My speech does not obviously mark me as deaf, and my speechreading abilities are excellent in everyday contexts. I hear all vowels and about one third of consonants; everything else is speechreading and inference.

It takes about 100 hours of watching a philosopher speak before I have a read on the particular way she shapes words; after this initial investment I can devote my attention to understanding content. Beards, mustaches, and accents make it harder to speechread. Speechreading non-philosophy talk first helps me build a word bank that I can call on once philosophy talk begins.

Accessing philosophy through ASL is challenging. The lack of a philosophical lexicon is one issue; the workaround of fingerspelling technical terms means that my interpreters will get behind and start to omit words or even sentences. Since these interpreters are not philosophers, they don’t always appreciate the importance of word order and word choice.

As a graduate student, I started developing a personal philosophical lexicon in ASL. I’m extremely sensitive to the political connotations associated with constructing neologisms in signed languages, and I’m also aware that my project may tread dangerously close to the history of oppression associated with imposed sign systems. On the other hand, if I want to participate in philosophy fora, I need to figure out a way to access philosophy in real time. I prefer interpreted communication to captioning because it captures affect – I like philosophical humor as much as the rest of you do!

To reduce misunderstanding, my interpreters work in signed English. Basically, this is transliterated English using ASL signs and some conceptual features. Even with this, I still do extra work to figure out translation errors.

As an example: the interpreter signs “SUNBEAM” and it doesn’t make sense in this context. (Interpreters tell me that often they are so focused on conveying the message that they don’t think about whether the message makes any sense).

When a signed sentence doesn’t make sense (and this happens quite often, so interrupting the speaker or the interpreter isn’t a workable option), my thought process goes something like this:

SUNBEAM? Huh? SUNBEAM?! That doesn’t make sense. Must be another word. Okay… I heard the vowel sound AY repeated twice – was that one word that was repeated for emphasis or two different words? If one word, what could it have been? “Sun” doesn’t have the AY sound, but maybe there are some compound words using “sun” that do – ray of sunshine has “AY” in it and matches the concept of sunbeam, but it still doesn’t work in this context. And why would this be repeated? What two words might fit here? Could it have been a foreign phrase that the interpreter doesn’t know? Or a person’s name? No, a name wouldn’t fit this sentence either. Hmmm…the AY sound is common in Latin, perhaps it was a Latin phrase?

As I’m thinking all this, I’m still watching the interpreter and hoping that another clue will come up that will help me identify what I’ve missed.

Ah! The interpreter just signed DAY, followed by fingerspelling D-I-C-T-O. Got it!  SUNBEAM = DAY RAY = de re. This could work!  Now, what was the whole sentence again?

And as the speaker is forging on to a new thought, I’m still trying to reconstruct what was said three minutes ago.

I used to think that I was just incredibly stupid when it came to understanding philosophy talks; these days I‘m a bit kinder to myself. I now believe that the extra work I do in figuring out the words just has to have an impact on my struggle to understand the philosophical content.

Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins

by magicalersatz

[Moderator’s note: We’ve been getting a lot of posts from graduate students with anxiety disorders. In their posts they’ve expressed varying levels of concern over whether their condition will prevent them from becoming successful philosophers. In hopes that it might offer some encouragement, Prof. Jenkins has kindly agreed to share her experience as a very successful philosopher with an anxiety disorder.]

I’m a philosopher with anxiety disorders. I don’t self-identify as disabled (I don’t tick that box on the HR surveys …), but at the invitation of this blog’s creators I’m happy to share some thoughts about my condition here.

I’ve basically got two things going on: (1) a generalized anxiety disorder and (2) a specific phobia of flying. They impact my professional life in different ways. Unlike many of the academics I’ve known to struggle with anxiety, my anxiety doesn’t specifically affect my ability to give talks or lectures or sit exams. The kind of generalized anxiety disorder that I suffer from means I get panic attacks (and semi-attacks) that can hit me any time, whether I’m giving a talk, reading in my office, trying to meet an admin deadline, trying to have a really solid think about something, trying to relax at home… just whenever. They’re never so bad that I actually have to stop giving a talk or lecture, but they’ll sometimes cause me to end one early, or mean that I have to continue on a sort of autopilot, working around the distraction and giving a less competent performance. They often mean I can’t read or think effectively until they’ve gone away.

My phobia of flying has a more predictable professional impact. Building up and maintaining an international reputation means being prepared to fly all over the world to present your work at conferences and workshops, hear what everyone else in your field is up to, socialize and network. But flying for me means spending significant amounts of time in one of two conditions: diazepam-induced stupor/sleep (strongly preferred), or blind terror of crashing (the maximum safe dose of diazepam just doesn’t always cut it). I have a strict policy of never, ever turning down an invitation I would otherwise accept just because it involves flying. (However much flying. I once did a trip from Australia to Europe and back in a few days in order to honour a speaking engagement.) I do, however, have to schedule things so as to avoid talking the same day as flying, because the diazepam can leave me somewhat out of it.

Both my forms of anxiety involve obsessive thinking. I notice that the same sorts of obsessive traits are part of what makes me good at my job. I sometimes think of my anxiety as the evil twin of my research skills.

 

Catherine Duchastel

by magicalersatz

I was born with epilepsy, and, I am interested in issues of embodiment as they relate especially to metaphysics and knowledge-making. Another interest, is how sexual representation, or lack thereof, and agency, intersect with political and social recognition for disabled people. I am a student, wh0 just finished her B.A. in sociology and philosophy at Concordia University and will be starting an M.A. in critical disability studies in fall 2011 at York University.

Katherine

by magicalersatz

I am a graduate student with depression, severe social anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, which I currently manage with medication.

Because academic philosophy is intrinsically – and properly – centred around being able to explicate and defend one’s arguments, there is a great emphasis upon verbal facility and presentational skills. This affects my ability to participate in the tasks which my degree demands of me ,and to evince any competence even when doing so, for obvious reasons; it is difficult to field challenging questions (particularly those that query whether the topic I am studying is even worthy of being termed philosophy – I am working in a ‘soft’ subject area ) when just being in a room filled with people sometimes brings me to the verge of a panic attack. When at university I already struggle with constant feelings of fear and worthlessness, which are only exacerbated by criticism (no matter how valuable, mild or well-meant).

Unfortunately, it is hard to escape the feeling that such issues are essentially personal failings on my part rather than any form of ‘disability’, that I am simply temperamentally unsuited to be a philosopher in the same way that I could never be a performer. Unlike those *who have been disabled* in the sense that they have needs which could and should be accommodated, I feel that I cannot reasonably assign any blame/responsibility to the department in which I study, which is not especially adversarial or intimidating. It would be interesting to know whether other philosophers who deal with (particularly social) anxiety disorders feel the same way, and how they manage them in their working lives.

DK

by magicalersatz

My case may be borderline, but in the past it has been life threatening and it also has had significant financial burdens and will continue to. I have Factor IX deficiency – a rare form of Hemophilia otherwise known as the Christmas Disease.

My version of hemophilia is rare, but it is also less severe than the more common form. Minor cuts and bruises do not require blood transfusions and aren’t life threatening. I also have a very active lifestyle mountain biking, kayaking, rock climbing, and running.

However, (i) I’m disqualified from military service; (ii) I was disqualified from team sports in high school and jr. high; (iii) routine medical procedures, such as getting one’s wisdom teeth removed cost *at least* ten times as much because they also require blood transfusions. For example, my wisdom teeth removal in 1999 cost $12,000 while most people who get that procedure pay around $1000; (iv) I’m uninsurable in some states unless I get on a group plan. In other states my insurance costs *at a minimum* $500-600 per month while most people would pay around $100. For a few years before I found employment that offered insurance, I was forced to work two jobs to pay the monthly on my insurance, just in case I was caught in an accident; (v) injuries that are severe but not life threatening for most people are life threatening for me. If I were to break my leg in the wilderness, there’s a strong chance I’d bleed to death internally if I didn’t get to a hospital within a few hours.; (vi) I’m at risk, due to blood transfusions I occasionally receive, of getting blood transmitted diseases. In fact, when I was first diagnosed with hemophilia, I had a scare where there was a paperwork mixup, and my doctor informed me (at the age of 13) that I probably had hepatitis as I was given blood from someone who had hepatits. Fortunately *that time* I found out that I had in fact not received that batch of blood.

I’m very fortunate to have excellent health insurance at my university and to also not have needed a blood transfusion in a while.

Survivor ABD

by magicalersatz

I am an adjunct instructor and grad student with post-traumatic stress disorder dating back to childhood. My symptoms are pretty well under control at the moment due in no small part to having a loving, supportive partner and to living in a city where sliding scale women centered counseling is available.

But a downside of living in this city is that the threat of crime seems closer and there are always men who feel they have the right to say whatever they want to women on the street. Many days it rolls off; some days I have lost afternoons of work caring for myself while recovering from being triggered by a few words hurled at me by a stranger on my way home from teaching.

On good days though I tend to risk street harassment because I’ve found that walking to and from campus helps me clear my head and calm some of my anxiety. And it’s cheaper than taking the train. (Which means more cash for tuition, coffee, and therapy!)

I know that my quietness, my lack of progress since finishing coursework, and my absence at many department events makes me invisible to many faculty members and is interpreted by some as a lack of commitment and enthusiasm toward my program. Which is maybe sometimes fair, sometimes not. But I know this is something I’ll have to navigate on the job market.

Like many people with less readily visible disabilities I suppose I probably vacillate between believing in myself or relishing in what I have accomplished and believing that I am just lazy and awkward.

It’s not all bad though. I think my history has gifted me with a profound capacity for empathy. It has driven many of my interests in philosophy and has given me opportunities to have difficult and important conversations with some amazing people. I am frequently inspired by the work of other survivors both in and out of our field.