Via Charlie Kravetz.

Originally shared by Isabel Navarro

10 THINGS PEOPLE CAN LEARN FROM PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

1) True happiness is really possible in a “broken” body.

Most say they would rather die than live with a disability and I thought I would never be happy again. But a few years after becoming paralyzed, I was happy. I found happiness through simply being alive, and through family and friends. I still wish I could walk again, but true happiness resides in me.

2) Patience can get you through almost anything.

When you have a disability, the patience required is at a whole new level. Very often we have to wait longer for all types of things and over time we become masters at honing in on it.

3) Accidents can and will happen.

The cold-hard truth is that accidents that cause disabilities happen every day, and they could likely happen to you or someone you know. The realness of this possibility is tangible in all lives, but when you have a disability you’re just a bit more aware of it.

4) Disability can happen to anyone.

Maybe no congenital disabilities run your family, but say your first baby had cerebral palsy. It’s shocking suddenly finding yourself in the camp of either being disabled or the family member of one. The wisdom here is to never forget we are all imperfect physical beings, and to never think you’re exempt. We will all die one day and we’re all human.

5) Don’t sweat the little things.

We are confronted with crazy things all the time, so we learn to prioritize what is really worth freaking out over. That is why so many of us seem so zen-like. The movie is sold out? The restaurant has a two-hour wait? No biggie. It could always be worse.

6) Being different is an opportunity.

Most people don’t like being different or standing out.However, it’s not as bad as you’d think. In fact, when you live the life as someone who’s different, you learn right away it has its cool moments. You get to meet amazing people and get in on special opportunities. When you’re vanilla, no one notices.

7) Fitting in is overrated.

When you have a disability, you pretty much have a free-for-all card to be exactly who you want to be. You don’t need to fit in to feel good about yourself or to think you “belong.” You belong to yourself, we know this. And that feeling is amazing.

8) You can’t judge a person by their looks.

You hear it all the time, don’t judge a book by its cover.Don’t ever think a disability is equitable to someone who is not impressive or successful. You never know what someone with a disability is capable of.

9) Life is short. Embrace everything.

Having a disability can, unfortunately, have an impact on your lifespan. For many people with disabilities, living to 95 isn’t probably going to happen, which is why most people with disabilities have figured out the secret to life — enjoy each day as if it were our last.

10) Weakness isn’t always a negative

Being weak or disabled isn’t necessarily a negative thing. When living with a disability, you learn to be OK with receiving help, and over time, many of us realize that we all need help in our own way, even athletes and the President of United States. It’s unavoidable and part of the human experience.

Originally shared by Deborah Teramis Christian

Today’s Google Doodle honors Ida Lewis, “The Bravest Woman in America” – a Rhode Island lighthouse keeper who single-handedly rescued many shipwreck victims at sea, putting herself in personal peril to do so at a time when few women were even in the workforce.

“None but a donkey would consider it unfeminine to save lives.” – Ida Lewis

Read more about her here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/02/25/who-bravest-woman-america-ida-lewis/98400206/

I enjoyed the first volume of this. Proceeds to the Society of Women Engineers.

Originally shared by Mary Fan

BRAVE NEW GIRLS Cover Reveal and Story Line-Up!!

Today, I’m revealing the cover and story line-up for

BRAVE NEW GIRLS: STORIES OF GIRLS WHO SCIENCE AND SCHEME, coming August 2017!

This YA sci-fi anthology (edited by sci-fi authors Paige Daniels and Mary Fan) features

stories about girls in STEM (Science, …

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

It’s really nice to be able to share good news for once. A new study in JAMA Pediatrics studied the effect of same-sex marriage laws on teen suicide rates. They looked at 32 different US states which changed their laws at different times, as a way of disentangling this effect from other effects.

The net result? Legalizing same-sex marriage leads to a 7% overall drop in teen suicide attempts, and a 14% drop among LGBT teens.

It turns out that being publicly told that you’re an accepted member of society and not a pariah does make a difference in people’s lives, especially teenagers. Who woulda thunk?

But the upshot of this is: All of you who worked on this, in one way or another? You just saved some lives. Well done.

The article itself is available online: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2604258

(NB: For clarity, that’s a 7% drop in the rate, not a seven percentage point drop drop. We should be so lucky as to have any one thing eliminate seven percentage points. As a baseline, a weighted 8.6% of all high school students, and 28.5% of LGBT high school students, attempted suicide in the year before same-sex marriage legalization. Suicide is the second most common cause of death among people aged 15-24 in the US.

For those who want technical notes: The paper seems to have done a very careful job on statistics, testing a wide variety of alternate hypotheses and ruling them out from the data. One test worth calling out: the two-year leading indicator (suicide rates two years prior to law changes) was not correlated to suicide rates, indicating that this was not triggered by general changes in the state which were also leading to this; the two-year trailing indicator (two years after), however, was correlated, with the same correlation as the immediate future, indicating a lasting effect rather than a one-off.)

Cosplay: a nerd woman thing from the start.

Originally shared by Self-Rescuing Princess Society

“For more than 10 years Morojo and Ackerman were an inseparable, intellectually compatible dream duo, and 1939 was an especially big year for the pair: they started their first major zine together, jointly financed the publication of teenage Ray Bradbury’s first sci-fi zine, and attended the first-ever World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) wearing ‘futuristicostumes’ straight out of the 1936 H.G. Wells movie Things to Come — the FIRST FAN COSTUMES EVER WORN IN RECORDED HISTORY.

“Handsome Forrie cut a dashing figure in his giant shoulder pads and breeches, tiny Morojo’s ball gown converted into a ROMPER with a CAPE, and every other attendee who wasn’t busy hatin’ on ‘em for out-fanning the rest of the world started planning their own costumes for next year.”

I had no idea!

Clothing is some of our most gendered cultural equipment. This is an interesting insight.

Originally shared by Deborah Teramis Christian

This is a very interesting read.

“Motivated by Octieber and determined to combat the world of gendered clothing, Lucy Rycroft-Smith tries menswear for a month and documents her findings”

In my forthcoming novel, Mister Bucket for Assembly, a key element of the plot is that the protagonist likes to cook – which is an occupation strictly reserved for women in his culture.

Via Ryan Toxopeus.

Originally shared by Nicola Smith

You can depict your heroes standing up to oppression.

You can show a despised group sympathetically.

Or you can just normalise the “other”.

Originally shared by Steve Turnbull

Making art to bring about change, probably more important now than it ever has been.

This article is specifically about film-making, but applies to all art, in my opinion.