Thank you. Thank you for sharing what you do. Thank you for being unafraid to say the harsh truths about women, and society as a whole. Your need to keep your family life personal is completely understandable; it’s an overwhelming situation. I’m 24 years old and I was diagnosed with bipolar seven years ago. Some treatments were effective, some were less than. I don’t tell people that I’m bipolar unless they see me on a frequent enough basis that they’ll need to know sooner or later because “I wasn’t feeling well” only flies for so long. My father My father is bipolar as well, and treatments don’t seem to work well for him. He’s never been able to old down a job for long, and I’m faced with the inevitability that sooner or later he won’t be physically able to do what work he can anymore. I’m nowhere near wealthy. I’m nowhere near stable in my career. How can I care for another person with the issues I have? No one aside from my live-in boyfriend knows the struggles I face with each call from him. I don’t talk about it either. What’s there to say? It’s a sucky, scary situation with no real solution.

I’m a (fairly) new reader who found you via your beatdowns with Amanda Hess, and I’m commenting for the first time because I have a younger brother with a disability as well. My bro is on the asperger’s end of the autism spectrum. Fortunately for him, with a lot of therapy and some meds, he will most likely be able to handle the adult world fine, excepting only occasional episodes that resemble full-on autism.

However, he wouldn’t be nearly as successful interacting with most people (or holding a job) were it not for his doctors and his medication. When I began talking to friends about his condition, it amazed me how few people recognized the expenses involved with a mental disability. So I’m grateful that you’ve outlined in black and white all the problems that can arise, and pointed out the difficulty of finding healthcare in our current climate. When the average joe stands up to debate healthcare, I wish (s)he would think carefully about all the people who might, just might, end up out on the streets without it because of mental conditions they cannot control.

Good luck to you and to your family, and best wishes for your brother. I’m sure your he couldn’t ask for a better sister.

I nearly died, several times over. That means I have little to fear. People mistake this for bravery. It’s called…I’m so numb sometimes I don’t give a shit.

You? You’re brave.

Thank you for writing this. I disagree with one thing–I think we DO still get to be outraged when we put things out there and people pee on it (or on us). We still have the right to hope that people will be compassionate, even though so many people aren’t.

I have two brothers who have severe FAS. One is currently in jail, which his social worker says is common–developmentally disabled people are twice as likely to end up in prison as the general population. (It is a long story, but the heart of it is a misunderstanding on my brother’s part which led him to make a bunch of angry phone calls, which was taken as harassment (understandably) by the recipient). The other is in a group home.

I realized a long time ago that if I took care of my brothers I would have no career of my own, and I made the choice to not become their caretaker. Sometimes I second-guess this choice (like, when my brother ended up in jail), but mostly I think it was the right one. (More reasons behind the scenes than I can go into here.)

In any case, my point is that I admire you for making this choice, and I send my best wishes to you and all your family.

I get what you’re saying re: writing about the deeply personal stuff. I’m not a particularly forthcoming person, i.e., I’m not the kind of person who needs to hash things out with my friends on a regular basis. And when that deeply personal stuff involves someone I love, I can’t bring myself to write about it. My mother taught me “never say anything bad about your husband in public”. I’ve extended that to all members of my family and my friends, and that includes not making negative comments, and not talking about things in their lives that are no one else’s business. Although believe it when I tell you that I publicly chastised my husband, via my blog, because he put my favorite wooden spoon in the dishwasher. )

RE: disability, if I may. Everyone is correct that it’s pretty much a matter of course to be rejected the first time. I hate to tell you this, but your parents need to hire a lawyer. SSA doesn’t pay much attention to people without one. The lawyer will take a percentage of the back-benefits, but, by federal law, they are not allowed to receive more than $6000. The money comes directly from the back-benefits check, before the check is mailed to the recipient. The attorney can charge you for administrative work. We paid my attorney $95.00, all of it to cover the cost of obtaining medical records from my gazillion doctors.

Also, if a hearing is requested (which, IMO, it should be. It helps you to force the judge to put a human face into the situation), you’ll have a long wait. We waited almost two years from the time we first met with my attorney, and we didn’t get a hearing date until 6 weeks before the hearing was scheduled to be held.

My apologies if you already know this. Applying for disability is a purposely long, difficult, total pain in the ass process. There’s a lot of information about it that’s beneficial to the applicant, but can be very hard to find. And it’s hard to get answers if you don’t even know the questions.

But the point is that I really do enjoy Sady’s writing, but I understand that life doesn’t allow her to entertain me personally whenever I demand it. (What? Sady? You don’t want to go to the movies with anonymous Internet person?)

I hope for the best for you & your family.

Also, I have no desire to punch you in the face or anywhere else. Quite to the contrary , I would like to offer you a virtual hug, if you take them (((Sady))). Sending good vibes you way!

I know I am harsher on people I probably mostly agree with, which may seem a little weird. It’s just that, personally, I don’t see a whole lot of point in engaging with LOLbertarians and Christian fundamentalists and others of that ilk, since I don’t know what productive end can come out of that. I’ll just end up being a little more misanthropic than when I started. Also, I don’t like to use my blog to point out super obvious sexist stuff, because a)I, personally, am writing mostly for an audience who’s already mostly on board with me politically and b)looking at such things bums me the fuck out. Not that I think it’s constructive to pretend such things don’t exist, and I do challenge that kind of stuff outside of exotic Bloglandia, but I’m not so into purposely seeking it out and writing detailed rebuttals of it.

And I think a lot of good things have come out of inter-feminist arguments, like challenging the universalization of what weren’t very universal ideas of “women’s experiences” and “women’s work,” and redefining views of power so that they weren’t solely focused on gender. Not that my sour little grumblings have had any earth-shaking effects, but that’s what I aspire to. In short, I critique because I care. I probably could stand to be a little less abrasive about it, of course, but I’m working on it. Sort of. Sometimes.