I really want to see that movie now. So I went and looked to see if it had been made yet.
Looked like there was a French miniseries made in 2004. And then I saw the poster.
Sigh.
…is that her on the middle horse? It’s soooo tiny…
Rebecca Solnit’s essay sums up that which, in more reasonable times, should be the bleeding obvious, but which needs to be said now:
Disabled people lose their benefits if they get married?
What kind of nonsense is that?
Having a spouse doesn’t suddenly make them “abled.”
Ontario, 1990s: my ex was informed he couldn’t receive disability benefits unless and until he’d already been on welfare for six months – which meant both he and I would have had to be completely destitute.
There was another government department, one which provided equipment so that disabled people could work. This one had no such income restrictions. I forget how we heard about them, but we did, which fortunately meant he could apply for and receive a computer with hardware and software which helped him work around his health issues. His case worker there even got him some consulting jobs to help him regain a more current work history.
ETA: the case worker, a government lifer who retired soon after helping my ex, jokingly referred to his department as “the secret service”, since they were so difficult for enquiring citizens to learn about. “Could work with the right gear, can’t afford to buy it/doesn’t know it exists” was apparently too obscure a category for social services.
You’re assuming these ridiculous and arbitrary restrictions make sense.
It’s meant to punish poor people and kick them once they’re already down. It doesn’t have to make any sense beyond that.
Yup. Sometimes people have to get divorced to claim them, too.
Our priorities are seriously fucked up, regarding this issue. It’s not just a US problem. Anything where aid is based on a maximum family income less than a single person on minimum wage will screw people with disabilities twice as hard.
Believe me, I am well aware.
Not being disabled myself, it didn’t occur to me that they would be subject to even more bureaucratic fuckery on top of everything else, but of course they are…
A member of one of my support groups was given a car by their sibling. The problem is, they were on benefits and didn’t know if they’d be allowed to keep the car and the benefits at the same time. There was lively discussion about how to do that, and it involved exploiting an ingenious combination of loopholes.
If I ran the world, I’d just let them keep the damn car.
Awesome interview, although the ageist introduction gave me pause.
It’s a good companion piece to that Solnit essay.
Uggh. Those comments.
Never read the comments.
Got to love the Pre-Code era!
Here’s the sequence that follows:
Oh ffs.