Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

6 Comments

• Teesee wrote:

  Feb 17, 2009 at 7:49 pm

  *waves* Hello.

  /random — the nose pier­cing really suits you.

  In regards to the video con­tent, if I’m hon­est, I didn’t real­ise your part­ner was a woman until a few weeks ago. I think it’s import­ant to share with people the stuff that makes you the per­son you are. And you do and have.

  A rela­tion­ship shouldn’t be defined by gender, but rather by how the other per­son impacts on your life. Basic­ally what I’m try­ing to say amongst all the waffle, is that I under­stand how import­ant K is to you and I got the sig­ni­fic­ance of your rela­tion­ship with her, and I under­stood all that without need­ing to know she is female.

  With your dis­ab­il­ity, if you’d just said ‘I’m dis­abled’, I wouldn’t have under­stood quite how that impacted on your life, if it even impacted you at all. By elab­or­at­ing and talk­ing about it, I can see the world a bit more how you see it.

  Cool hat too.
• Chris wrote:

  Feb 17, 2009 at 9:06 pm

  Oh, wow! This is an excel­lent incite to your points of view, I rarely com­ment on here, but I think it’s good to know little things like this.
  As for sexu­al­ity not being so big an import­ance as your dis­ab­il­ity, I can see where you come from in that aspect, as I have to agree.
  Great Post!
• Imo wrote:

  Feb 21, 2009 at 5:02 pm

  Good post Claire I like Teesee’s com­ment:
  

  A rela­tion­ship shouldn’t be defined by gender, but rather by how the other per­son impacts on your life.

  she’s put it bet­ter then I could. Would we expect a ‘straight’ blog­ger to go on about their other half and how it affects them, etc. etc. I don’t think so, whereas if it was a ‘straight dis­abled per­son’ we prob­ably would expect them to com­ment on that as dis­ab­il­ity is some­thing that defines you and rules your life, it’s not some­thing that can be put away in a cup­board with the socks at the end of the day
• Claire wrote:

  Feb 21, 2009 at 8:50 pm

  Tee­see:

  the nose pier­cing really suits you […] Cool hat too

  Thanks I’ve had my nose pierced for about 8 years now and I still love the look now just as much as I did when I first got it done. The hat’s new — I got it for my Lon­don trip, what with all the trekking about and the snow.

  A rela­tion­ship shouldn’t be defined by gender, but rather by how the other per­son impacts on your life

  I couldn’t agree more. To me, the gender of the per­son I am with is little more than a footnote.

  With your dis­ab­il­ity, […] By elab­or­at­ing and talk­ing about it, I can see the world a bit more how you see it.

  I’m really glad. It can be quite tricky to talk about my dis­ab­il­it­ies in an in-depth way for any length of time without people start­ing to feel awk­ward or start­ing to apo­lo­gise to me about it/for it. I think this medium helps with that, after all — I’m not want­ing any­one to be “sorry” — I’d just like to share my take on my dif­fer­ences and exper­i­ences in a “con­ver­sa­tional” way.

  Fayt100:

  This is an excel­lent incite to your points of view, I rarely com­ment on here, but I think it’s good to know little things like this.

  I’m glad you de-lurked and enjoyed the vlog, it’s good to hear from you — and shar­ing in this way has been a lot of fun, I’m def­in­itely gone to carry on with vlogs some more.

  Imo: Hiya Imo!

  it’s not some­thing that can be put away in a cup­board with the socks at the end of the day

  If only, eh? On the whole, I tend to have a really pos­it­ive out­look, but I’d be a liar if I said that there weren’t some days where I really fan­cied a day off from the aggro and/or pain.
• Vixx wrote:

  Feb 22, 2009 at 9:59 am

  I’ve never quite under­stood why there’s an expect­a­tion on LGB people to proudly pro­claim their sexu­al­ity. Nowhere on my blog do I proudly state that I’m HETEROSEXUAL in flash­ing neon gifs, so quite there’s that expect­a­tion when it comes to LGB people … I don’t know, it’s never made sense to me. :p Maybe it’s because of who I am and what I do, but I’ve also never under­stood why sexu­al­ity can be so polit­ical. For the most part, I don’t care; I like people, not ideo­lo­gies or polit­ical state­ments, so who someone chooses to sleep with at night makes no dif­fer­ence to whether or not I like their com­pany. End of. :p

  That said, I — obvi­ously — com­pletely under­stand where you’re com­ing from when it comes to dis­ab­il­ity. Although I tech­nic­ally fall under the pro­tec­tion of the long-term med­ical con­di­tion defin­i­tion under the DDA, I wouldn’t self-identify as dis­abled and that’s purely because I have not exper­i­enced soci­etal dis­crim­in­a­tion. My day-to-day activ­it­ies can be affected by my con­di­tion and my med­ic­a­tion, but they’re not affected by ignor­ance, neg­li­gence or dum­bass ste­reo­types and it’s that, IMO, that’s really dis­crim­in­at­ory. Like a lot of people with unseen con­di­tions, my invis­ib­il­ity is pretty much my pro­tec­tion — abso­lutely crazy, when you think about it, but undeni­ably true.

  Am bab­bling now, so will leave it there. Starry­n­ite — your ques­tion was awe­some and thanks for answer­ing it, Claire!

  V xx
• starrynite wrote:

  Feb 23, 2009 at 6:23 pm

  Sorry for tak­ing so long to actu­ally com­ment on the response to my own ques­tion but I’ve been away for half term and was thrilled to come back and see that you had vlogged again.

  Great answer, Claire — not that you need me to qual­ify your own opin­ion, but the way you expressed your­self and your reas­ons for your answer deserve a lot of respect.

  I like your point Vixx, about the neces­sity — or lack of one — of overtly stat­ing one’s sexu­al­ity, but equally, as Claire poin­ted out she and K are often mis­taken for sis­ters, there is still an assump­tion in much of the world of het­ero­sexu­al­ity. I went on hol­i­day last year with my girl­friend and we met a couple com­pris­ing a man and a woman. Iron­ic­ally both couples made the mis­take of form­ing assump­tions about the nature of the other’s rela­tion­ship — the couple we met were both straight, but not together — and thank­fully we could all laugh about it after­wards. I don’t per­son­ally go around pro­claim­ing my sexu­al­ity and prob­ably much like Claire, will be upfront about it when neces­sary and appropriate.

  The real insight you have given me, Claire, is into the reas­ons why you do identify your­self as a dis­abled per­son, which makes per­fect sense when you state it the way you just have. There are a mul­ti­tude of ele­ments that make up our per­son­al­ity, per­sona and — if you like — place in soci­ety and it is cer­tainly true that we will be more open about some than oth­ers for a wide range of reasons.

  Thanks so much for answer­ing my ques­tion! xx

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