An Open Letter to Brandon Trust Ambassador, Kaliya Franklin.
Bennie and the Jets - Number 1 on TNR's Top 10 Transport Hit List
Dear Kaliya,
I’m sorry if you found my report of the
Brandon Trust’s second, “100 Voices" conference, published on The New Republic, a little brusque and unkind.
It’s just that
I’m autistic and don’t always understand how I come across.
Sometimes it’s not always obvious online, that I’m a seriously disabled client of the local Learning Disability Partnership.
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It's true, I'm a sick puppy... |
In fact, I’m exactly the sort of person that the Brandon Trust provides services for. (Co-incidentally, I know someone just like me, who actually gets help from Brandon).
my teachers had very high aspirations for me
The problem is my teachers had very high aspirations for me and taught me lots of big words, but unfortunately I don’t have the social skills and social understanding to go with them.
I’m going use quite a lot of big words in this letter...
The Mixtures - The Pushbike Song - Number 2 on TNR's poptastic Top 10
I’m writing to you to ask you to consider resigning your position as Ambassador for the Brandon Trust.
I have a problem with not just some of the content of your speech at the conference, but also the manner in which it was delivered.
the “learning disabilities voice”
At the start of it, you were doing the “learning disabilities voice” - not quite as intense as seen, say in Little Britain, but you displayed a definite
awww-does-he-take-sugar? tang to your words. (Too kind for sure: you were doing a Silly Voice).
There are many reasons why you shouldn’t use this affected kind of speech when you are talking to people with learning disabilities. I’ll go through a some:
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
Firstly, there is no scientific data nor clinical experience that suggests using juvenile diction aids comprehension. I would like to suggest that for the cognitively challenged, in some circumstances, it can actually make comprehension more difficult.
an adult with a learning disability is not a child
Secondly, an adult with a learning disability is not a child. Not legally; not morally. It is not appropriate to address an adult in the same manner as a 2 year old child (for whom this kind of voice is normally reserved).
retain good social cognition
Thirdly, some people, even with significant intellectual disabilities, retain good social cognition and engagement. Even though they may not even be able to mentalize the idea of “
condescending eejit”, trust me, they still know when someone is doing a silly voice, and because of it, they will think less of them.
Probably Number 1 on @BendyGirl's Top 10 personal hits.
What worries me personally about silly voices, is that over the last four decades of being reliant on learning disability services, I’ve learned that the silly voice usually indicates that the speaker’s brain has ceased normal functioning. All the normal rules and modes of behaviour go straight out the window as we touch down on Planet Slow-boy.
behaved and acted entirely conventionally
Let me give you an example, once upon a time I hurt my back really quite badly. I’d seen the doctor at home about 3 days before - he had behaved and acted entirely conventionally and he had given me a prescription for a huge bag of painkillers.
Now, how can weeeee heeeeeelp yooooou, Georgieeeee...?”
I rang the surgery. Before I had a chance to say anything, the doc has obviously spotted “Learning Disabilities Partnership” in my medical notes and begins “
Now, how can weeeee heeeeeelp yooooou, Georgieeeee...?”
It threw me completely. I had some difficult things to say to him, and I find speaking a chore at the best of times.
Leaving on a Jet Plane - John DEnver
I needed to say “
Look doc, my back is so bad and I am in so much pain that I couldn’t sit down on the toilet and so attempted to take a shit on the floor... and I need a painkilling shot and an enema... and I need to be in hospital until my back is better because I haven’t got anyone to look after me... and I can’t cope on my own”
UrrghArrrghUrrrrrrrrgh!.
All I managed was, “
UrrghArrrghUrrrrrrrrgh!... I can’t cope! Hospital!”
He said nothing about my bad back, which 3 days before had had him struggling to lift my 10 stone off the kitchen floor as I screamed non-stop in pain; nothing about how the painkillers were working.
put me in the nuthouse
He just said he was going to put me in the nuthouse.
I put the phone down. Perhaps I should’ve been put in the nuthouse - after all by the time I’d finished talking to him, I did want to kill myself, but I’m sure it was mainly because of the humiliation and the pain that had kept me awake for two nights and grown so large as to fill the entire known universe.
Sailing - Rod Stewart
But getting back to the point, I was so distracted by the tone of your voice and the sight of what to me looked like a security guard standing behind you, that I literally don’t remember anything until you announced we were going to have a “
musical quiz”.
we were to shout out the names
And we were to shout out the names of the forms of transport mentioned in the songs to be played.
Foolishly I expected a selection of tunes like Ferry Across the Mersey, Leaving on a Jet Plane and perhaps even one of Queen’s hits (whom I know you’re fond of) like Bicycle Race.
“The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round”
What we got, amongst others, was a Noddy song and “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round”. Children’s songs - for children. You were not addressing an audience of children. You were addressing an audience of adults, some of whom had learning disabilities.
these are subversive choices in the ld world
You later spoke about your DJ’ing, saying “
Trust me, these are subversive choices in the ld world”. No they are not. They are just crass, juvenile and inappropriate.
Cat Stevens - Longer Boats
I’d like to offer you two examples of people who are both effectively non-verbal, and have significant mental and physical disabilities.
The first is
Titan. He lives in Australia with his partner and writes eloquently about his life.
The second is
Kingdom of Rats, who lives in an English care home, and has a rich and full, albeit seldom easy, life.
sex life of whips, chains and bondage
Titan and his partner Nate, are unlikely to favour Noddy or the Wheels on the Bus as a soundtrack to their quite mouth-puckering sex life of whips, chains and bondage. And I understand Kingdom of Rats is more of a death-metal fan.
Queen - Bicycle Race
However what concerns me most and the part of your speech that I found most personally hurtful, was when you suggested that our own mal-attitudes are partly responsible for the level of abuse we suffer in public.
spanking-good coves
You gave as single example of how you as a physically disabled person were accosted late one night by a gang of youths... Who all turned out to be spanking-good coves and not the crack-smoking muggers you first took them for.
shocking level of disability hate crime
The shocking level of disability hate crime and (of particular importance to the learning disabled) “mate crime” is testament to the reality of life for people like me in the community.
no place in the public discourse
Your crassly-stated, psycho-babble fallacy supported by single anecdote, has absolutely no place in the public discourse surrounding disability hate crime
.
The Cars - Drive
Recently I saw the venerable and now sadly retired Dr Zaman from the Specialist Learning Disability Department at the Big Hospital. I was there because of an incident that led to the police being called. After four years of
bullying and harassment, I finally snapped:
or the man that left broken glass
I'm not going to go out now. It's too dangerous. I'm almost certainly going to bump into one of the neighbours, the woman that conned me out of hundreds of pounds, the nonce I caught videoing me, the guy that left the dog shit on my door-step, the woman that put the poison pen letter through my door, or the man that left broken glass. Then there was when they tried to rip the car-port down. Burgle the house. Threaten me in the street...
You’ve got to learn to be less open
Dr Zaman said to me (not at all unkindly - for he was a wonderfully straight-talking man), and I quote him word-for-word
“You’ve got to learn to be less open and give less information away about yourself. That’s how this woman has managed to cause you so many problems”
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Being friendly is what got me into this mess in the first place |
First rule of disability hate crime (both of you): Don’t Blame The Victim!
an apple is not an orange.
And I’m sorry, I just don’t accept your assertion of some kind of equivalence in our respective mental and physical disabilities. I don’t believe that one exists, in the same way that an apple is not an orange.
magisteria of equal magnitude
Non-overlapping magisteria of equal magnitude, perhaps. But there is no equivalence.
You don’t have a mental disability nor are you the parent or a carer of someone with one. You seem to have very little idea of the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of mental disabilities.
the Brothers and Sisters have got a Black Power Thning
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Anyone got an 8 ball? |
Look, to put it another way, me and the Brothers and Sisters have got a Black Power thing going on here - you’re the New York, gay-pride activist that’s turned-up and decided to fight our race war for us.
barged us out of the way
You’ve barged us out of the way, and you’re now doing Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, while we’re all out on the sidewalk, getting brutalised by Officer Krupke.
something else that bothers
But there’s something else that bothers me. It’s how you and your friends treat me and people like me. You see, there’s two layers of “
The Campaign” that don’t mix. At the top is yourself and as far as I can tell, just two or three other people calling all the shots. Then there’s the lumpenproletariat.
a baseless ad hominem attack
Your response to wholly legitimate and justified criticism is to describe it as “constant sniping”, or your colleague claiming an “axe to grind” and “a chip on his shoulder”. You made a baseless ad hominem attack, claiming I’m not in the target audience (without knowing anything about me) as a way of discrediting my criticism.
no right to ignore the message
Just because you don’t like the medium (or largely in this case, you’ve failed to accommodate your critic’s disabilities and consequent lack of social nous), you have no right to ignore the message.
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Nothing About Us, Without Us! LARM |
I don’t need you to speak for me. I can speak for myself.
So can most of us, if we’re given the chance.
It’s just neurologically advantaged people like you are hogging the limelight, and in this case actively encouraging people to ignore the messenger.
The Brandon trust currently have two “Ambassadors”, yourself and a folk band called Fisherman’s Friend.
doesn’t make you an instant expert
I understand the idea of a charity having high profile celebrities to promote their cause, but becoming one doesn’t make you an instant expert on learning disabilities.
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ATOS Killa Fish - a Fisherman's Friend? |
It doesn’t mean your experiences with physical disabilities can be translated into or made relevant to our experiences with mental disabilities.
inappropriate
It doesn’t give you the right to offer, what seems to me, dangerous and inappropriate advice on how people with learning disabilities should live their lives.
Alan Partridge-style
I’d like to contrast the Brandon Trust’s Alan Partridge-style event on Saturday, to the slick and respectful handling of such events and promotional activities involving people with mental disabilities, by the National Autistic Society (NAS).
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NAS Autistic Babes, smokin! |
I don’t think your the right sort of person at the moment to represent the views and interests of people like me to the staff at the Brandon Trust and to the outside world.
appropriate training
If you must remain in this post, then I think I have the right to ask that you take undertake the appropriate training.
If the Brandon Trust can afford a chauffeur driven car, to carry you from up-north and an hotel room for the night, then they can afford to send you on an NAS training course.
the elephant-in-the-room
(I’m trying to ignore the elephant-in-the-room of Fisherman’s Friend - I have no problem with them as long as they stick to wassailing and getting drunk).
I’d have no problem with you, if you didn’t do silly voices and didn’t treat people like me at best like we are toddlers, or at worse as ‘trolls’ or ‘radicals’ to be blocked, de-friended and privately slated in discrete girly chats. From here, it looks like you’ve sold out to a cheesy nibble in a hotel bar and the prospect of a go on Newsnight.
That is all.
I sign off with, as is customary in our community,
Nothing about us without us!
Fritz V.
Further criticism and mention of TNR
here in the comments.