Change Is A Sound

In reading a post on Comics Bulletin today, I stumbled across something that reminded me of a subject percolating pretty far back in the recesses of my dusty cerebral cortex. Yeah, it’s not the sort of place to let a pot of coffee sit - it could start a fire and what not, and it’s dangerous, but perhaps something lighting a fire in my brain isn’t a terrible thing.

At any rate, Kyrax2, the Batgirl of San Diego, wrote a piece about sexuality, disability and the public’s perception of both.

It seems like I’ve talked more lately about disabilities and being disabled than I have in a very long time; the subject keeps popping up and apparently this morning is no different.

And I need to preface these comments by noting that this is my own musing and my own thoughts and that I am in no way criticizing Kyrax2 for her thoughtful column.

My problem is with the PWD acronym.

PWD is an acronym for People With Disabilities. It’s a shorthand for an idea which emphasizes humanity first and disability second, instead of using a term like disabled people, which emphasizes the condition and not the person.

There’s a reason for this, and the Whorfian hypothesis (which I spent a lot of time studying back when I was aiming for a minor in linguistics) sums it up nicely. Briefly summarized, the language people use shapes how they see the world. Linguists have supported and tried to discredit this idea, but even now, it appears that some form of the Whorfian hypothesis is still true to some degree.

Viewed through the Whorfian hypothesis, the term disabled people emphasizes the disability since it’s the first concept in the phrase. People with disabilities emphasizes humanity since that is the first concept in the phrase.

There’s a brief history of the Whorfian hypothesis and the idea of people-first language, but there’s a virtually endless amount of reading you can do on the subject.

I spent a long time doing communications of one sort of another. I did journalism. I did advertising. I did marketing. I did corporate communications and all sorts of things in between and beyond. I started writing professionally - meaning I was getting paid for it - before I started high school.

My frustration with the PWD acronym and the idea it represents is that it’s terribly awkward wording. I am not a person with a disability. That’s a lot of words and awkward phrasing to describe a very simple concept - I’m disabled. I use a cane. I don’t get around well.

I may be disabled, but goddammit, I will not be pandered to by some linguistically prescriptive asshats who think that calling me a person with a disability somehow humanizes me in some way, because that implies that I am somehow NOT HUMAN RIGHT NOW.

William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White gave us “The Elements Of Style,” a fantastic book which leads to exceptionally clear communication from people who have read and apply it (remember: theory minus practice or application equals bullshit). Although I can’t remember the exact wording at the moment, one of the most useful rules in Strunk and White’s guide was either “Omit needless words” or “Omit unnecessary words.” I forget which was in the middle, and I can’t find my copy at the moment, but the concept is the same. Use as few words as possible to convey the idea.

Paul Fussell later wrote a book called “Bad,” a brilliant collection of brief essays which assaulted culture for dozens of bad ideas. Fussell’s definition of bad language did not include words like fuck or shit, because - as he put it - they didn’t try to deceive people by using big words and bad phrasing to make something seem more significant than it is.

Strunk and White would likely object to the PWD idea because it’s wordy and awkward. Fussell would likely object to it because - even as the idea behind it is to emphasize a person’s humanity - it effectively conceals a truth.

If you read the criticism section of Wikipedia’s People-First Language entry, you’ll see that others have the same or similar concerns. That section quotes the U.S. National Federation Of The Blind as saying “it is overly defensive, implies shame instead of true equality, and portrays the blind as touchy and belligerent” in rejecting people-first language.

And yet I know that the people who use such terms mean well; they’re obviously trying to be respectful. It’s just that such respect all too often feels worse than rudeness. It feels like, as John Steinbeck once wrote (in “Travels With Charley,” I think), “everyone was protecting me and it was horrible.”

That level of sensitivity - to me - is more offensive than adults staring or asking questions or making assumptions about me or anything else (kids always get a pass; they’re kids and if a kid asking me about my cane helps them be less afraid or worried or more understanding of differences, I’ll happily spend 10 or 15 minutes talking with them as long as their parents don’t mind). It doesn’t matter that people mean well; good intentions don’t always result in good outcomes.

What matters here is that I’m a self-identified old-ass cripple. I call myself that. I own it. I use that language and say such things to strip these words of any power they may have. I’m not reclaiming them. I’m eviscerating them. I’m cutting their throats and letting them bleed out onto the slaughterhouse floor.

My friends - and they know who they are - can say any damn thing they want about my conditions. They’ve earned that right by being my friend, and a lot of them have driven me to doctors, hospitals, other cities for examinations and so on. If they want to call me a cranky old cripple, they’ve earned that right and they’d be telling the truth. I have a lot of gray hair and I’ve earned every last one of them.

Anyone else calling me that will find out exactly how cranky I am. To people who aren’t my friends, I’m a disabled person. And calling me a person with a disability and couching my conditions in such half-assed awkward and deceptive language will REALLY piss me off.

On change, the DCnU and Star Wars Galaxies … Part 3

In Part 3 of this series, we looked at relative interest in the DCnU from current customers, briefly examined the short timeline DC had to build interest in the DCnU among potential readers, and the inherent challenges of doing so in diffused media (TV, Web, print, etc.), along with identifying DC’s target market and a brief discussion of how DC leadership is alienating existing customers with comments about increased gender inequity among creators and characters in books, whether perceived or real.

This time around, we’re going to examine some simple things DC could have done to attract new readers without alienating existing readers.

The first idea comes from Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter and a list of things he would do to improve comics. Point 13 is brilliant in its simplicity: “Establish A Number Of ‘Safety Titles’ At The Mainstream Comics Publishers.”

Spurgeon writes, “I would force Marvel, DC and any other applicable company to guarantee that their most popular characters would always have a monthly or bi-monthly title that had their name on it and nothing else, and that these comics could be enjoyed without buying anything not with that name on it to supplement their enjoyment.”

Think about that. “Thor” would be “Thor.” You wouldn’t need to read “Fear Itself” to enjoy it. “Captain America” is “Captain America,” and “Iron Man” is “Iron Man” - no “Civil War” necessary. No continuity-heavy stories - you only have to know that Tony Stark is a billionaire playboy who is also Iron Man. Steve Rogers is a patriot who serves his country as Captain America. And any half-competent comics writer can write a quick blurb like comics used to have so that anyone could pick up any issue of any comic and know exactly what was going on. They don’t all have to be literary classics like the Avengers intro, but they do need to be there.

Considering this post is about DC and the DCnU, that should be true for Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern and so on. Every single major character should have its own safety title. There doesn’t need to be a safety title for every character possible - just the most widely-read ones. The ones who have movies in the theater. The most well-known ones.

I’d go further. I’d make those safety titles suitable for all ages, genders, identities, etc. No sexism or homophobia. No prejudice. No jokes about someone’s religion or weight or gender preference. Just good stories with action and well-developed characters. If a kid wants to read about Superman or Batman, here’s “Superman.” Here’s “Batman.” Here are comics that any comic retailer, convenience store clerk, librarian, parent, relative or friend can hand to any kid without worrying about graphic violence (present in many current “Green Lantern” comics, just as one example, and entirely unsuitable for young children whose parents probably buy the books thinking that it’s a comic and it can’t be that bad because the movie isn’t rated R) or inappropriate amounts of sexual content. Here’s Batman punching The Joker. Here’s Superman bringing Lex Luthor - and his 40 cakes - to justice.

This would accomplish a number of things - it would allow and possibly encourage creators working on these titles to indulge their canonic fantasies about Silver Age heroes - instead of racially regressive politics affecting the main universe and preventing progress which should be occurring but isn’t due to creators spending time bringing characters like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen back, the safety titles could feature those iconic characters in stories since there’s limited continuity - Jay Garrick, Barry Allen and Wally West could run side by side in them. New Flashes could be created, as long as it’s The Flash.

And it’s possible to write titles in such a way that they can appeal to adults at the same time. Atomic Robo does this every month, and its creators have publicly pledged not to insult their readers’ intelligence (although I’m paraphrasing quite a bit - still, each bullet at that link is a great promise to readers). Creators like Roger Langridge, Colleen Coover and Lucy Knisley would be perfect for these safety comics, whether creating main stories or back-up stories or one-page stories, and would help develop talent and broaden both the audience for these books as well as the creator base DC has available.

The second idea is that these safety titles should also be available digitally for $.99. At one point, I was an early adopter of technology, until I realized that I wanted the market to settle a bit and was content buying products once the platform or medium had stabilized and industry leaders and best practices had been established. I no longer wanted to make snap decisions about VHS or Beta for ridiculous amounts of money - I wanted a product that would be around for a lengthy period of time. I was tired of gambling on technology and somewhat frequently betting on the losing horse, meaning I was stuck with a product made by a company that no longer existed which used a format that was no longer available. And honestly, being on the bleeding edge often meant getting what amounted to prototypes - I wanted to get products that actually worked.

I say this because, despite adoption rates, digital content - whether music, video or printed materials - still hasn’t settled down. Law, for example, has not caught up with industry practices and what law does exist (such as the DMCA) contravenes existing and long-held protections for consumers under Fair Use provisions acknowledged in traditional media.

As one example, people who circumvent DRM to ensure that their content is usable on whatever platform they desire are technically violating U.S. law. While other countries may have similar restrictions, harsher restrictions or none at all, I can only speak about U.S. law since that’s what I’m familiar with. While some early adopters rush to convert content catalogues to a new format, this is inherently dangerous, particularly when moving into digital content forms.

As one hypothetical example, if Comixology went out of business tomorrow, what would happen to people’s comic collections obtained through or from that service? Would they still be viewable and accessible? Would users be able to transfer them to other devices if the DRM servers were gone? Would users lose that content entirely? And what about existing and reported problems like publishers locking content or providers remotely removing content from devices (Yes, I’ve been told that Amazon took steps to make sure that never happened again … except it did, and Amazon again removed content that people purchased from their Kindles)?

This is why digital content is inherently risky until the law catches up with it and extends existing and long-held protections for print media to digital media. In the meantime, content providers want to make use of the platform and people want to buy that content, but the key is recognizing that inherent risk in pricing. In short, digital comics should be no more than $.99. Not $1, or $1.99, but $.99.

When we buy an actual comic, it can’t be easily taken away from us - not legally, at any rate. We have physical possession of it, which means that someone must physically remove it. A server error won’t keep us from reading it, nor will a network outage or some other technical glitch, nor does anyone else have control over how we read it or whether we can read it at all. As such, a physical comic deserves to be priced higher than a digital comic, but the market has already shown unwillingness to pay more than $2.99 (Marvel’s pricing aside). Since physical comics carry production costs in addition to paying creators, they need to recoup costs.

But converting them to digital? That’s gravy. The comic already exists. It’s already been scanned. Converting it to a file for use on devices is cake. And at $.99, people are far more inclined to try it because it is quite literally change. At $2.99? That’s a drink at a coffee shop.

Plus, lower price points support people who want to take a chance on something. DC has experimented with this idea by reprinting first issues for $1 as part of its initiative to create new comics readers after the “Watchmen” movie. A number of Vertigo titles launched with $1 first issues. Image is making a habit of launching some series, both minis and on-goings, with a $1 first issue, as well as $1 reprints of key first issues to encourage potential new readers to take a chance.

At $3, publishers ask someone to decide between coffee, a gallon of gas, a burrito or burger from a fast food restaurant, an energy drink or a comic, among other products. At $1? That’s less than the cost of a candy bar at many convenience stores, and there’s no overhead or production costs that weren’t covered by the initial print run, especially if it’s a digital comic. If people get hooked on it, that $.99 is money in the bank, over and over. It may turn into someone buying the actual physical issue. And buying the actual physical issue, as I can attest from personal experience, frequently turns into someone who starts buying comics.

It isn’t that hard, even if it is uncomfortably similar to how my parents used to warn me that drug dealers operated. In point of fact, Brandon Schatz wrote an interesting article about that very subject over at Comics! The Blog which is well worth reading. DC could learn a thing or two from it.

The third idea, stated as simply as I can, is that DC needs to make sure that the right people are talking. As I write this, some number of people are frustrated by the conduct and comments of DC leadership at Comic Con. And they are rightfully frustrated, if the accounts of how they were treated are true (and there are too many substantially similar reports from too many sources for these accounts to be false). DC is, in effect, insulting and offending existing customers while in the process of trying to gain new ones.

I’m going out on a limb here - pissing off existing customers while trying to create new ones is not a sound business strategy. In fact, it is all too easy to chase away existing business without any new customers materializing, leaving an organization in worse shape than it was before (which, bringing this back to the original idea, is effectively what happened with Star Wars Galaxies, which recently announced that its servers will be shutting down - the old customers left, the new ones didn’t show up and the business shot itself in the head in its marketing game of Russian Roulette). It is hard to think of an industry in which it is a sound business strategy to alienate existing customers in any way, for any reason.

And yet this is the effect of what DC is doing. Why would women want to consume media from a producer which not only doesn’t seem to hire women but doesn’t seem to understand why it should and why it’s wrong not to do so? Why should disabled people want to consume media from a producer when the producer effectively eliminates one of the two most visibly disabled characters in comics? Why would people of color want to consume media from a producer which seems to think diversity means adding a white woman to a team consisting largely of white men?

Furthermore, that’s just how DC has treated existing customers. The outreach to potential new customers largely consists of giving this story to that tabloid or this other newspaper. An article appearing in one place for one time does not build brand awareness. Again, conventional marketing wisdom is that a message must be seen at least seven times before people even remember it, much less have any interest.

DC needed to put a talented marketing and PR person on this task. Instead, DC allowed some dudes who don’t understand why they should hire women to travel around and talk to the same people who already sell their comics at the same comic shops that already sell them. As I mentioned in the previous post on this subject, there is no definition of new customers which can include existing customers. As a result, DC gets reports of Dan DiDio asking customers which women he should have hired, instead of a professional saying that DC is committed both to diversity in its content and its creative teams, and that talented female creators are working on titles which will be announced in coming months, even if DiDio’s response is more honest and accurate.

In allowing its executives to speak to customers without coaching or a skilled communications professional present for damage control, DC has created a perception problem in its new line - that it openly and willfully excludes women, that the company doesn’t really want women as customers, that DC comics are only for 18-to-34-year-old white men, and so forth.

That’s a bad message to have in the open, especially when social networks allow such things to rapidly build steam and gain attention, and especially when a company is trying to launch what amounts to a new product and market that product to potential customers in the next two months. When news sites like io9 post articles about DC’s fan outreach with titles like “How Batgirl Took On DC Comics: The Anatomy Of a PR Crisis,” that’s not good word of mouth. The old adage that any press is good press isn’t true if the press focuses on the behavior of executives and not on the product being sold.

While it’s too late to undo the damage that DC’s executives have done by speaking off the cuff, it is not too late to put a communications professional on damage control, spin, clarification and trying to tidy up the mess. And it is never too late to hire someone whose only job is communicating these changes so that highly-placed representatives don’t give people the wrong impression of DC … or, both more sadly and more accurately, the correct one.

Now, since I wrote those paragraphs a few days ago (and keep in mind that this series of posts has been in progress for a while), DC has issued a press release which effectively says that more women will be working on upcoming projects, as opposed to the overwhelmingly male composition of writers, pencillers and cover artists which have been announced. I sincerely hope that’s true, but I will be buying significantly fewer DC comics until that shakes out in the next few months.

With these notes about what DC could have done to get new readers without annoying existing fans completed, it’s time for what I suspect will be the last post on this subject, and is usually one of the most important parts of any project lifecycle - the lessons learned. Unlike most of the corporate lessons learned sessions I’ve been part of, this won’t be trying to identify lessons which try to make the project team look good, regardless of whether the project was successful or an unmitigated disaster which warranted releasing at least one Kraken.

It’s clear that things need to change.

It’s clear, for example, that the U.S. government not only needs to put the money it borrowed from the Social Security trust fund back into that fund, it needs to never borrow from it again. The U.S. government has, in effect, become that friend of yours who always promises to pay you back for lunch or the movie or the beer or whatever, but always has a reason why they can’t repay you right now.

The first place to start is closing tax loopholes and ensuring that corporations and the wealthy actually pay taxes; there are far too many examples of corporations generating billions of dollars in revenue with massive profits which pay nothing in taxes and even get tax credits (hello, General Electric). Last year, GE claimed $5.1 billion in profits and not only didn’t pay a penny in taxes, it claimed a $3.2 billion tax benefit.

And yet John Boehner walked out yesterday, claiming that actually requiring people to pay taxes and closing loopholes constitutes a new tax, which is only true if you think that using loopholes to avoid paying an assessed tax bill is the same thing as not being taxed.

On the contrary, John - it’s simply requiring people to pay what they actually already owe instead of letting them become even more unimaginably wealthy.

Yes, Social Security has a couple of loopholes that would be nice to close - early retirement benefits, for example. Limiting Social Security recipients to disabled people, survivors and people who have reached the full retirement age would help reduce some of the challenges Social Security faces while we wait for the government to repay all the money it borrowed. Allowing people to retire early, even at a reduced benefit rate, taxes the system.

Furthermore, lifespans tend to be significantly longer now. Social Security gradually increases the full retirement age based on year of birth, but the simple fact of the matter is that people born in 1990, due to improved understandings of medicine, the human body, environmental toxins, etc., are likely to live longer lives than people born in 1960.

I often joke that I wouldn’t be alive today if I had been born even 10 years earlier, but the simple fact of the matter is that given my chronic health problems, if I had been born in 1960, I likely would have died before Reagan was elected president. As it is, I’ve benefited from diagnostic techniques that didn’t exist in 1970, but saved my life 20 years later.

It is foolish for Social Security not to account for improved medical technology when considering the retirement age, and to assume that people born in 1960 received identical medical care as people born in 1990, 2000 or 2010. As a species, we are learning at a literally exponential rate, meaning that children born today are likely to have significantly longer lifespans than children born 50 years ago.

While it’s difficult to predict the future, eliminating early retirement and raising the full retirement age makes sense since American citizens born in the last 20 years received better medical care than citizen born in the preceding 20 years, and will likely be in better health and physical shape.

Examining the above-linked chart reveals that people born before 1937 had a full retirement age of 65, while people born in 1960 had a full retirement age of 67. Why isn’t 69 the full retirement age for people born in 1980? Why isn’t 70 or 71 the full retirement age for people born in 2000? Why does that chart stop adjusting the full retirement age in 1960 when medical technology has improved immeasurably in the intervening years?

Hell, in the early 1980s, AIDS was considered a nearly immediate terminal illness; now, improved treatment regimens have extended the lifespans of people diagnosed with HIV by 20 to 30 years and it’s much more of a long-term managed healthcare condition.

And yet Social Security doesn’t account for that in its retirement age.

One other concern I have is Medicare treatments. Although a friend of mine and I have vehemently disagreed with each other on this point, I think Medicare should be allowed to deny certain treatments. The most recent example is Provenge, a treatment for terminal prostate cancer patients which costs nearly $100,000, must be custom-tailored for each patient, and extends their life by no more than four months.

Medicare, by law, is prohibited from performing any sort of cost-benefits analysis on treatments, and approved Provenge, which means that American taxpayers foot the bill for it.

I realize I’m a heartless bastard, but I don’t think that taxpayers should have to pay for Provenge. If it was a cure, I wouldn’t blink. If it gave an extra 10 years of life, even an extra five years, I don’t think anyone would blink. But $25,000 per month? And that’s the best case scenario?

That’s offensive. People can debate the ethics of it, but I think Medicare should be allowed to perform a cost-benefits analysis when a medication or treatment is introduced, and make a decision on that basis.

Here’s the moral question - would that decision-making body, in effect, constitute a death panel? I don’t think it would, provided it was limited to life extending treatments and medications instead of life preserving treatments and medications.

The distinction I’m making is that, using the example of Provenge, it does not preserve or save life. It briefly extends life in already terminal patients with end-stage cancer at an astronomical cost. This is not a treatment which can be used early in medical care to greatly extend life - it’s a last ditch effort to buy someone a few more months.

There is a big difference between the two. I absolutely think Medicare should cover assistive devices like motorized wheelchairs which help quadriplegics and I don’t think that Medicare should be deciding whether to remove life support from patients in comas or vegetative states; I recognize that allowing Medicare to decline treatments which are outrageously priced and offer minimal benefits effectively creates a slippery slope which rapidly proceeds from decisions that I think most people would understand and agree with to a populace horrified that life-preserving care was summarily denied due to cost, but the cost of medical care is outrageous, even for private insurers.

In other words, we have to do something - short of nationalizing hospitals and medical development, effectively removing all financial incentives to conduct research into new treatments since the cost of getting a medication to market is unfathomable and barely covered by the time a medication goes off-patent, allowing Medicare to decline treatments based on a cost-benefits analysis, perhaps supervised by both a bio-ethics committee as well as religious leaders, is one of the less morally and ethically offensive options.

Since it appears that Social Security recipients will be paying more for Medicare coverage, prescription benefits and medications anyway.

So. To sum up:

1. Close loopholes. Ensure that people and corporations pay the taxes they owe. That isn’t a new tax, that’s just making sure people pay existing taxes.

2. Raising the retirement age for Social Security benefits isn’t a terrible idea, considering that the last adjustment only applies to people born after 1960, despite advances in life-extending medicine.

3. Ending Social Security benefits for early retirement isn’t a bad idea either, provided it allows for situations like long-term unemployment due to age discrimination.

4. Allowing Medicare to decide whether to cover life-extending treatments based on a cost-benefits analysis supervised by a bioethics committee (particularly one involving religious leaders) isn’t a bad idea.

5. The key point? These aren’t new taxes - it’s just making people pay the taxes they already owe. These aren’t cuts - they’re changes which have been made before, or are routinely made in business (as one note, private insurance will typically only consider paying for a treatment AFTER Medicare approves it - until that point, there’s almost no chance that a private insurance carrier will approve experimental treatment).

Will this fix everything? No, but it’s a hell of a good place to start.

Just so we’re clear on this whole Social Security thing, Social Security is funded entirely by payroll deductions. It is not funded by taxes. It cannot affect the deficit.

Except the government has been borrowing from Social Security surpluses for decades and replacing them with IOUs, effectively treating Social Security like a de facto higher tax rate. And now that the piper has to be paid, instead of raising taxes and cutting spending, the Republican Party wants to pretend we can keep throwing money at the rich and taking it all from the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.

Remember this as politicians like John Boehner talk about dismantling Social Security to save it, and to save our country from debt, when the only reason that Social Security has any issues at all is because politicians just like John Boehner couldn’t keep their hand out of the cookie jar and now don’t want to put the cookies - cookies, in this case, being our money that was supposed to be held in trust for us - back.

Tory MP Philip Davies (for folks in the United States, think of the Tories as the Republicans and an MP as a member of Congress - the House Of Representatives seems to be the best analogy) suggest that disabled people be allowed to offer to work for less than minimum wage.

Davies explains his reasoning by noting that people at a charity he visited took it as a foregone conclusion that employers would hire able-bodied people before hiring disabled people, and suggested that allowing disabled people to negotiate a lower wage might level the playing field for them.

For what it’s worth, even members of his own party seemed shocked by his suggestion. From The Mirror:

Senior Tory Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) challenged Mr Davies, saying: “Forget the fact there’s a minimum wage for a moment. Why actually should a disabled person work for less than £5.93 an hour? It’s not a lot of money, is it?”

Read more at the link below:

Tory MP suggest disabled offer to work for below minimum wage

Counselors often suggest writing letters as part of the grieving process to help achieve closure, whether it’s a letter to someone who will never receive it or what the writer wishes someone would say to them, knowing that person will likely never say it.

A while back, enigmaticcrux made a comment that hit a nerve - to summarize, she said it seems like DC is in damage control mode and trying to spin things instead of explaining why they decided to do this and acknowledge what a lot of people are feeling.

I can understand why DC isn’t really commenting on the loss people are expressing - PR is all about managing the message and trying to shape and shift perception and right now, that perception seems unlikely to shift. The message was supposed to be excitement about the return of another Silver Age character; instead, the message became frustration with DC’s failure to recognize the importance of Oracle to disabled people.

The particular problem DC faces in this example is that the same people who would likely have been excited about the title are now miserable because of what has been done with the characters. Like enigmaticcrux noted, it isn’t just the loss of Oracle and putting Barbara back in the suit - it’s displacing Stephanie Brown who put on Robin’s costume and went through hell to become Batgirl. As others have noted, it may also mean a radical shift for Cassandra Cain, and all this at the same time that Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian all seem to have roles in Bat-family books, if not a starring role in their own book.

Since it is rare for companies to admit mistakes and they typically only do so after being pummeled in the press and losing market share (and again, this is another lesson from Star Wars Galaxies which can be instructive here, and I promise I’m still messing with that piece because we’re talking about massive change forced on two rabid fanbases and past can be prologue and all that stuff), I messed around with what amounts to an academic exercise, although I’d love it if Dan DiDio and Jim Lee and Geoff Johns and Gail Simone read this, nodded their heads and sent it out as an official release. Seriously. If any of you four want to use this, you have my blessing to use it without compensation, although it would be nice if you donated some money to a charity that benefits disabled people or if you helped the cheerleader in some way.

With that in mind, here’s an imaginary letter from DC to everyone who is upset about this whole mess. I must stress that this is an imaginary letter which does not exist and is purely my wishful thinking. I also need to note that I started writing this piece before a lot of additional announcements, before the Jill Pantozzi / Gail Simone interview … before a lot of additional things came to light which make a lot of the points in this letter irrelevant. But still.

The point of the exercise is to imagine kindness, compassion and generosity of spirit, and to bring appropriate, healthy closure to a loss. Even if the circumstances have changed, even if I know more now than I did then and I feel like I’ve been kicked in the face, I still wish that this had been said instead of everything that has come out in the wake of DC’s announcement that Barbara Gordon will once again be Batgirl.

Dear DC and especially Oracle fans,

We didn’t know. We honestly did not know and would not have anticipated this reaction and outpouring of emotion and support for Oracle.

We knew that some people would be upset because any change in comics, no matter what it is, will upset some people. But we didn’t know how much Oracle meant to you. We had no idea that this change would affect you so much or that you would be so upset.

A lot of readers were excited when Hal Jordan came back and when Barry Allen came back; we simply wanted to bring that level of excitement to a character that we all love. It never occurred to us that in restoring Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk that our world would become less diverse and that in making this decision, we would be removing one of the most prominent and visible disabled people in comics from view. That was never our intention, although that has clearly been the effect and we’re incredibly sorry for that. Clearly, we have more to learn about what diversity really looks like and a long way to go before the DCU is a truly diverse place.

What’s worse is we can’t change this decision. It would just upset more people and cause more outrage among people who were angry about how Barbara Gordon became disabled. It seems, in this case at least, that a lot of people are going to be hurt no matter what we do. However, we can recognize that now and act to not cause more hurt.

We’re sorry that you feel like you don’t have a place in the DCU. We had always considered characters like Cyborg and Cliff Steele to be representatives for disabled people because of their injuries, but it seems that Oracle was special to you because she accepted that her life had changed and continued using her talents to help people … just in a different way.

There’s really no way that we can make it up to you. If we introduce another disabled character right now, you’ll rightly see that as an offensive attempt at pandering. You’d probably wonder how long it would take before we someone cured or healed that person too. And you’d be right to do so. And we can’t introduce a character who is as powerful as Oracle was - that was the result of years of writing by skilled creators and she became that powerful over time.

In short, we screwed up, we can’t fix it and we’re sorry. We thought that everyone would be happy, but we obviously needed to do more research. Unfortunately, all we can do now is recognize what happened and learn from it so that we don’t make this mistake and needlessly hurt so many people again.

The exercise is supposed to make the writer feel better. I’m hoping that will come with time.

In the meantime, I think a lot of us would like a reboot.

The interview is up.

Which interview, you ask?

Seriously? The only interview that pretty much anyone I know has cared about since it was announced - that would be Jill Pantozzi interviewing Gail Simone for Newsarama.

Key takeaways?

1. It appears that Barbara Gordon was going to be Batgirl regardless of whether Ms. Simone wrote the comic or even agreed with the idea.
2. Ms. Simone raised the issue of why Babs was still in a chair while dead people keep coming back to life.
3. Ms. Simone mentioned that some disability advocacy groups argued for restoring Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk.
4. Oracle was - and I’m paraphrasing - too powerful and turned Batman from a detective into a monster hunter as one example.
5. The entire DCU appears to be getting younger and less experienced; in order for other heroes and heroines to be able to make mistakes and learn, Oracle couldn’t keep saving them.

I suppose all of these points make some amount of sense, but it doesn’t alter the harsh reality of this change (and honestly, I’d love to know which disability advocacy organizations supported restoring Babs’ ability to walk - in light of how this change has emotionally affected many disabled comics fans, I think those organizations should make their stance on it public and explain their position).

The most problematic part of this is the second item above. Using this logic, DC is effectively saying that no one ever needs to be disabled in a DC comic again. Somehow, in some way, some magic or technology exists to fix any disability that can be imagined. If that’s the new shape of the DCU, that’s disturbing, but it’s not my decision - my decision is limited to whether I provide any level of financial support by purchasing their comics and, if so, how much.

But restoring Barbara Gordon’s mobility also suggests that no one has to continue being disabled and that in turn begs the question of why Wendy Kuttler (Proxy) still is. Barbara Gordon was paralyzed for 23 years and will have her mobility restored, apparently - according to Ms. Simone - to provide a framework for telling different stories about her (among other reasons, such as limiting the effectiveness of a character who is too powerful in the current DCU and offers what might as well be deus ex machina solutions). In the meantime, Proxy is still in a wheelchair.

It is clear from Ms. Simone’s interview that DC recognized how significant Oracle was and how her work made things easier for heroes, and that putting her back in the field as a cape will reduce that impact. Oddly enough, if we simplify that further and describe it as a physical change which renders someone less able to do certain things, doesn’t that sound like she’s being disabled again?

And yet that’s exactly what’s happening here. Barbara Gordon was disabled by The Joker’s bullet and found a new way to help people, one in which she became so remarkably effective that DC had to make her less useful and less capable, and changed her physical circumstances to mitigate her exceptional capability. In the absence of details, if we talked about a character who became less effective after a significant change in their physical condition, wouldn’t we assume that the character somehow became disabled?

So let’s summarize this briefly:

• DC allowed Alan Moore to paralyze Barbara Gordon for dramatic tension.
• That was apparently one of the key moments sparking Ms. Simone’s decision to begin the Women In Refrigerators list.
• Kim Yale and John Ostrander then created the Oracle character.
• Oracle grew in influence and ability, becoming an invaluable ally for DC’s heroes and heroines.
• DC then made the decision to remove Oracle from her wheelchair, partly because she was too effective and partly to enable new stories (or, perhaps more directly, to create dramatic tension as a result of her reduced effectiveness, particularly when compared to Oracle).

It seems that in DC’s eyes, disability only exists when it serves a story as a plot point, much like harming women. Apparently, Barbara Gordon must have her ability to walk restored because her extraordinary capability resulted in reduced dramatic tension, and if she isn’t in a wheelchair, she’ll be punching people instead of using her most finely honed skills to catch or stop villains more quickly. And apparently Proxy is the flip side of the coin and isn’t sufficiently capable to reduce dramatic tension by using her skills or intellect to intervene, so she can stay in her wheelchair because her physical condition is irrelevant to stories unless it’s for dramatic effect … even though DC is clearly showing us there’s no practical reason for her to be there and there is no barrier preventing her from getting up and walking away.

Using the same feminist perspective and reading that regarded Barbara’s ongoing disability as an ongoing recurrence of the violence done in “The Killing Joke” in light of people returning from the dead, when viewed through the lens of Barbara Gordon being brought out of her wheelchair, Proxy’s continued disability becomes a recurrence of the violence done to her by Wonderdog in exactly the same way.

The more problematic aspect of this reading (damn, there sure are a lot of problematic things about this, aren’t there?) is that it effectively places disabled people in the DCU in the same role as women in refrigerators. Writers used and still use violence toward women as a plot point, an inciting moment to spur a hero or heroine to action, to create motive for them and their actions, particularly if those actions are extreme, such as killing someone.

Likewise, in light of DC’s editorial decision to remove Babs from her wheelchair, it seems that disability now serves a similar, if not the same, purpose - people will only be disabled as long as it meets a writer’s need for the story and then that disability will disappear. Disability is no longer part of the natural order at that point, nor is it a different aspect of being human - it’s something to be repaired or exploited for the sake of drama in a story.

In that context, we must ask what purpose Proxy’s ongoing paralysis serves - according to the way Ms. Simone is approaching Barbara Gordon at the moment, restoring her ability to walk allows for different and new stories to be told. Therefore, Proxy’s paralysis must also serve a narrative purpose because there’s no practical reason for her to remain in a wheelchair if it does not advance a plot.

Perhaps more to the point, and certainly more directly, removing Babs from her wheelchair means that any disabled person who is still disabled is effectively in a proverbial refrigerator.

Consider that for a moment.

I’m saying, very bluntly, that in light of the change to Barbara Gordon, any disabled person remaining in the DCU, in light of the apparent ability to cure any disease and fix any physical ailment up to and including death, is in a refrigerator. There is no reason for them not to have their ability to walk restored, or have cybernetic limbs, or have limbs regrown or … you get the idea.

Being disabled in the DCU is now nothing more than a plot point, one which is as emotionally manipulative as the idea of putting women in refrigerators. And although it seems clear that Ms. Simone didn’t make the decision to restore Babs’ ability to walk, she’s involved with implementing it which is quite striking, considering her work in bringing the issue of violence against women for dramatic purpose to light.

First things first.

An old boss of mine once told me never to assume malice where ignorance could be at play. It’s one of the single best pieces of wisdom I’ve ever been given. Throughout this post, I will assume ignorance is at work. Furthermore, I will not assume that ignorance is intentional, nor will I assume that any harm is intended, even if harm is an outcome.

In short, I will assume - for the sake of this post - that it’s all inadvertent, the sort of thing that, when it’s brought to light, makes people sit back and say “I didn’t know” or “I never thought of it that way.” In short, the sort of thing that helps us better understand each other. I both hope and ask that you will read this post in the same spirit - even if or when it seems difficult to do so, whether because of someone’s actions or comments or your feelings about this whole thing.

It’s official that DC is restoring Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk and that Gail Simone will be writing the character. Jill Pantozzi wrote an amazing piece responding to that announcement, explaining why Oracle is such a profoundly important part of the DCU and why she holds such an important role in comics in general.

In reading over comments added to reblogs of my On disability and visibility … post, I kept seeing the word kyriarchy appear in tags. I didn’t know what it meant, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, because as we all know, Wikipedia is the be-all, end-all source for perfectly accurate information on the treasure trove of facts that we call the Internet.

To put it in the most basic terms I can, and if I understand the idea correctly - and please, correct me if I don’t - kyriarchy means that someone can be both part of a minority and a majority at the same time, or part of a social group which can oppress others as well being part of another social group which can be oppressed.

Using myself as an example, I’m a disabled white dude. Although I really hate using academic jargon and rarely do, please forgive me for slipping into it for a moment to break down kyriarchy and make sure I’m getting it (seriously, please correct me if I’m wrong and explain it to me - I love learning new things).

Being white means I’m part of a social group with privilege. Being male means I’m part of a social group with privilege. Being disabled means I’m part of a social group without or with less privilege, or that is de-privileged, or whatever the particular jargon is.

Breaking it down further, Oracle is a disabled white woman with red hair. With respect to this discussion, while I’m partly experiencing the debate through being male and white, I’m certainly experiencing it from my perspective of being disabled. Gail Simone experiences this character much more than I do as a white woman with red hair. And I think any reasonable person can understand exactly why Jill Pantozzi is experiencing Oracle the way she does as a disabled white woman with red hair.

Both Ms. Simone and Ms. Pantozzi see themselves reflected in Barbara Gordon - Ms. Simone saw herself in Batgirl, while Ms. Pantozzi sees herself in Oracle. They’ve both made statements to that effect. I think Ms. Pantozzi’s statement that the real world should be reflected in the DCU’s fictional worlds is vastly more compelling than Ms. Simone’s excitement about getting to write the character who sparked her interest in comics.

Ms. Pantozzi’s comments cut directly to the heart of this matter. While another book anchored by a strong, capable independent woman is always welcome on the shelves, in this case it comes at the expense of one of the perhaps three or four visibly disabled people in all mainstream and most independent comics. Furthermore, it comes at a time when that character was the most visible of them all, considering that - as of the last X-Men trade I read - Charles Xavier was walking.

Now, that begs an interesting question in that I don’t recall such an outcry when Chuck started walking around again - why not? Do we simply expect less from Marvel? Is it that Professor X has gotten up and walked around before? Is it that, as Ms. Pantozzi noted, Dan DiDio noted at Wizard World Philadelphia in 2008 that Barbara Gordon would not walk again? Did Marvel never make a promise like that?

More interestingly, it seems that many of the people who are most concerned and most vocal about this change to Oracle are women. I’m aware of arguments that keeping Barbara Gordon in a wheelchair while countless heroes and heroines return from the dead is effectively a continuation of the violence done to her in “The Killing Joke” (or refridging). The outcry supporting Oracle seems to suggest that at least some readers feel differently about it.

At this point, we have two red-headed white women identifying with Oracle, one of them able and the other disabled. We have a disabled white dude trying to puzzle through feminist interpretations of Barbara Gordon’s ongoing disability in a world where people come back from the dead almost every year but doctors are unable to heal her spinal injury even though Bane broke Bruce Wayne in half and he’s back on his feet. We have people who think that keeping Babs in the chair is effectively reenacting the violence every time she appears because of the injury that put her there and that removing her from the chair will heal that psychological wound (i.e. defridging), we have people who applaud how she grew as a person and hero from that moment …

In short, we have a lot of compelling arguments, all of which are based in profound emotions and stuff that makes people who they are and shapes how they see the world. We’re talking about long-held fandoms that brought people into something they love, and reverence for characters.

And a lot of it seems to deal with how often people see people who look like them in TV shows, movies, etc. (representations of self in media for people who prefer a more academic way of putting it). And all of it is affected by the blinders we all have, just like the ones horses wear to keep them from getting distracted by stuff on the periphery of their perception. We may not wear them by choice, we may not be and usually aren’t aware of their presence, but it’s ostrich logic to think that because we don’t acknowledge them that they don’t exist.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’m disabled. My little girl’s mom identifies as a lesbian these days and half of my little girl’s family is Jewish, some orthodox. My little girl stayed here last night and we talked a bit about this stuff this morning.

My little girl has always been a source of change for me, ranging from writing Tony Hawk directly to inquire why players couldn’t create female characters in certain versions of the video games that bear his name to suggesting non-violent collections to Star Wars Galaxies developers because she wanted to know why I was shooting baby deer. She has helped change the way I see the world and removed blinders that I wasn’t even aware of.

For her part, she gets mad when she doesn’t see girls in comics, games and so forth. To her, it isn’t fair and she puts it as simply as that. This is gender disparity analysis from a 9-year-old. It’s pretty solid and reasonable and I think a lot of comics creators could learn from it.

Anyway, we chatted about the change to Oracle. I asked several questions working up to it and she didn’t see what the big deal was about not seeing disabled people, or LGBT people or people of color. Her mom is gay, and she didn’t see a problem with not seeing LGBT folks on TV. And then I asked her how she would feel if she didn’t see girls, and it suddenly all fell into place for her - she remembered how she felt when she couldn’t play as a woman in a Tony Hawk game (and, on a semi-related gaming side note, Brink offers 100 quadrillion different appearances - more than everyone who has ever lived on this planet combined - and not one of them is a woman) and she seemed to understand - at least intellectually - how it all cascades … how seeing girls is as important to her as seeing GLBT or people of color as heroes is to others … and that this, in turn, extends to disability.

Poof. Blinders gone.

And this is where we come all the way back around to the beginning, and first premises.

Like I said, first things first, do not assume malice and I’m not assuming malice. I’m assuming ignorance, and not willful ignorance - I’m assuming, as I noted, the sort of ignorance that dissipates when someone calmly and reasonably points these things out in plain, simple language. I’m assuming blinders that people aren’t aware of.

And this outcry? This is a good thing. It may be too late to change DC’s editorial direction with Barbara Gordon, but it’s a positive step that this discussion is occurring and that it’s happening in places where it normally wouldn’t, that it’s making people aware of their blinders, and it’s especially positive if it eliminates those blinders to any degree.

And what if … and I’m just thinking out loud on a blog here … what if all of us disabled comics fans and disabled people with a few extra bucks to spend picked a day and time and all went to buy comics? What if we all talked to our local comic shop owners about the importance of accessibility and accommodations for the disabled as we were giving them money? What if we all voted with our dollars that day and made not only our physical presence but our economic presence known?

Good for disabled people. Good for LCS owners. Potentially good for the industry.

Just a thought.

I meant to write about Christine Miserandino’s Spoon Theory that bluejaybirdie loosely referred to in her post about a Batgirl picture with a caption that is either sarcasm or poorly done trolling, but I’ll have to do that later. See, I’m out of spoons now … read the Spoon Theory article if you aren’t familiar with it. You’ll understand.

I absolutely love the way that Ms. Pantozzi explained this. It’s heartfelt, emotional, reasonable, logical and says why Oracle matters so much better than I ever could.

Put simply? It brought me to tears. Literally.

Oracle Is Stronger Than Batgirl Will Ever Be

dcwomenkickingass:

Gail Simone just confirmed it.

Writer Gail Simone sent us a few words about today’s BATGIRL #1 announcement:

“Barbara Gordon is pretty much my everything. Because of the Batman TV show, she was the reason I fell in love with superheroes. Because she was a redhead who could kick ass, she is…

This is not thrilling. This is actually the exact, polar opposite of thrilling. A friend of mine and I quite literally just had this conversation. We’re both men, he’s able-bodied and I’m not, but we both agree that Barbara Gordon was a much more effective hero as Oracle precisely because she wasn’t limited to what she could do in swinging around Gotham.

This is not a step forward for the character in any respect except for literally being able to take a step forward.

With that said, I’m going to ride a pogo stick through a minefield here, so get your flamethrowers ready:

Gail Simone started with Women In Refrigerators and Barbara Gordon was on that list. Reading Ms. Simone’s explanation, it’s clear that she identified and still identifies with Barbara Gordon, so - perhaps more than any other writer, especially in light of her role in bringing violence against women in comics to the forefront of discussion - she should understand how much being able to see a visibly disabled superhero in comics means to people who are disabled. She saw herself reflected in Batgirl, right down to the hair color. We see ourselves reflected in Batgirl, including overcoming tragedy and adversity and becoming stronger because of it.

Ms. Simone gets Barbara Gordon back as Batgirl. The disabled community loses one of the very few characters in comics who was disabled.

Since Charles Xavier was depowered and walking when I last paid attention to The X-Men, are there any other characters in comics who are visibly disabled? For sake of argument, let’s exclude characters who would be disabled in the absence of technology (see: Cable, Cyborg, Forge, etc.) and supporting characters whose role is either incredibly limited or augmented by cybernetics.

Who’s left?