The Disabled Standard

In this week’s part two on the medicalization of disability, Harper and Shruti discuss diagnosis. They dive into the difficulties disabled people often have getting diagnoses, the problems with the gatekeeping and lack of intersectionality within diagnostic systems, and the negative impact it all has on real-life people—especially those who go through it in childhood.

Harper shares her four experiences of diagnosis—her elementary school dyslexia diagnosis, her ten-year journey towards a late autism diagnosis, her college arthritis diagnosis, and her current search for answers about her dysautonomia and chronic pain. Through these stories, Harper opens up about how growing up feeling like a mystery and not being believed has shaped her self-concept.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts and follow on social media to keep to update on all things Disabled Standard.

We will be going on a mid-season hiatus and new episodes will return Dec. 12.

Disability has a long, painful history of medicalization. In this two-parter, the Disabled Standard explores some of the ways medicalization affects the real life of disabled people in the modern day. In part one, Harper and Shruti discuss therapy, including the problems with the system, the importance of autonomy, and ways improvements can be made.

Shruti shares their experiences with physical therapy and medical intervention as a physically disabled person of color. She discusses the impact childhood physical therapy has on her development and her agency, as well as her decision to stop physical therapy and her outlook on future therapies. Harper also shares her experience with language therapy at her specialized learning disability school, and how this therapy was done in a better, more disability-centered way than most interventions.

Listen wherever you find your podcasts and stay tuned for part two: diagnosis.

You can follow The Disabled Standard on Instagram @disabledstandard and on Twitter @disabledspod. Thank you for listening and supporting!

The Disabled Standard is getting back to basics with Access Needs 101. In this week's episode, Harper and Shruti talk through the definition, theory, and framework of access needs.

An access need is something a person needs in order to fully participate in an activity, group, or space. The term comes from disability justice and the field of disability studies, but everyone, disabled or not, has access needs.

From giving examples of access needs and breaking down the ongoing collaborative process necessary for meeting everyone’s access needs, Shruti and Harper explore access intimacy in education, the workplace, and beyond. They also tackle the concept of conflicting access needs and share their thoughts on how to balance the diverse set of access needs for the collective benefit of everyone.

You can follow The Disabled Standard on Instagram @disabledstandard and on Twitter @disabledspod. Thank you for listening and supporting!

An episode about The Big Bang Theory?? Yup! In this Halloween special (that barely mentions Halloween) Shruti and Harper dive deep into an intersectional analysis of the notorious CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Harper discusses the well-recognized Autistic coding of Sheldon Cooper, and his very much not recognized aromantic asexual coding. Sheldon Cooper is a queer, disabled man. Harper is here to explain why and why it matters.

Shruti examines the poor treatment Raj Koothrappali received as the show’s token character of color and its real-world impact. In discussing Raj’s role as the “unlucky in love hopeless romantic,” they discuss how Raj could have been—and maybe should have been—queer.

As two people with complicated, long-term, love-hate relationships with The Big Bang Theory and some of the very identities the show represents—for better or worse, canon or not—Shruti and Harper have a lot to say.

You can follow The Disabled Standard on Instagram @disabledstandard and on Twitter @disabledspod. Thank you for listening and supporting!

In the season 2 finale, Harper and Shruti discuss the 10 Principles of Disability Justice as articulated by Patty Berne and Sins Invalid. The 10 Principles are foundational to intersectional disability justice work and foundational to the Disabled Standard's mission and vision. In every episode—from disability identity to medicalization to media analyses—examples, illustrations, and discussions of the 10 Principles can be found. In this season 2 finale, Harper and Shruti take you directly to the principles themselves. They revisit important topics like intersectionality and access needs within a different framework, discuss new (to the pod) topics like anti-capitalism policies, and provide contexts to terms they've been using throughout the seasons like collective liberation.

To follow along, you can find a pdf of the 10 Principles of Disability Justice here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bed3674f8370ad8c02efd9a/t/5f1f0783916d8a179c46126d/1595869064521/10_Principles_of_DJ-2ndEd.pdf

Thank you and all credit to Patty Berne and Sins Invalids. Check out their work here: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/

Thank you for listening and supporting The Disabled Standard this season! You can follow The Disabled Standard on Instagram @disabledstandard and on Twitter @disabledspod to stay up to date on what's next for Shruti, Harper, and the podcast.