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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:05.23)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viaduct. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Joseph Stramondo, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Humanities and Director of the Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs at San Diego State University. And we're here to talk about his speech he just gave in a book that he is currently working on, Narrative Identity and the Ethics of Choosing Disability. Dr. Stramondo, wonderful to have you on today.
Joseph Stramondo (00:29.564)
Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. I care a lot about this work and I'm always looking for thoughtful people to discuss it with and so this is an opportunity for me.
PJ Wehry (00:45.514)
Awesome. So just kind of out of the gate, why are you choosing to write about the ethics of choosing disability? And when you kind of gave this talk at this conference, we've had Dr. Reynolds on before you added this narrative identity piece. from my background, I've come back from philosophical hermeneutics. So when you talk about narrative identity, that strikes a chord with me. So I'd love to hear why narrative identity, what is narrative identity and why ethics of choosing disability? What is choosing disability?
Joseph Stramondo (01:15.554)
Sure. So I'm going to sort of break this up into two pieces. First, the book project, is sort of its own thing. And then I'll address the question of narrative ethics and narrative identity and that sort of methodology. So I started thinking about the ethics of choosing disability
In one form another, right out of the gate, I was in undergrad and I took a bioethics course. And in that bioethics course as as philosophy major at a small liberal arts college, one of the things we were thinking about was selective abortion. Okay. And so, you know, a lot of the stuff that had been written in the philosophical literature about selective abortion, you know, as a
person that has a genetic disability, it struck me as overly simplistic, problematic in various ways. And so, you know, I started thinking about it. One of my first publications was trying to reconcile sort of the feminist approach to abortion rights that aren't
you know, restricted by, you know, other people's ideas about what one should do with their body and sort of reconcile that with sort of a full, you know, full throated recognition of the ableist thinking that can sometimes be in play when you're thinking about when you're thinking about disability and reproductive ethics. And so that was actually my first my first publication ever in the
PJ Wehry (02:58.477)
Mm.
Joseph Stramondo (03:08.046)
International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, trying to sort of reconcile sort of the disability rights approach with the feminist bioethics approach to this question. And so since then, I've been, you know, more or less sort of in this space, thinking about disability, well-being, you know, choice when it comes to parenting and so on. And so
One of the very fortunate things that happened to me early in my career is that I met, who turned out to be a really close friend and co-author, Stephen Campbell. And so he was at the University of Pennsylvania at their Bob Ethic Center doing a postdoc while I was teaching at Drexel University at their School of Nursing and Health Professions.
And a mutual friend sort of introduced us and we sort of had breakfast. And it was just sort of off to the races after that we started writing together. You know, I've written, you know, things without Steve, but I feel like this ethics of choosing disability specifically has been sort of our baby that really has grown out of our conversations. And so he's the co-author on the book with me. And
When I started talking about it with Steve, we realized that this question of choosing disability is so much broader than reproductive ethics. We have instances of it in reproductive ethics, to be sure, where you're choosing disability for someone else, a future person, choosing for or against disability or selecting for or against disability, one might say.
PJ Wehry (04:49.879)
Yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (05:05.916)
And so, you you have famous cases of that. was one case, I think their names was Sharon Deschanel and Candy McCullough. I might be getting that wrong, but I think that's their name. And that was in sort of the early 2000s. There was this deaf couple that wanted to have a deaf child in Washington, DC, and ended up stirring up a lot of controversy because
They couldn't find a sperm bank that was willing to help them identify a deaf sperm donor. so they went and found a family friend that had three generations of deafness in his family. And these two women sort of used his genetic material to create a deaf baby. And so this sort of is one of the sort of more famous cases, both within sort of mainstream media and
bioethics because it was so controversial. And so that's the kind of thing that a lot of people think about when they first hear the concept of choosing disability. But it's so much broader than that. It's so much more everyday than that, in a sense. Much more commonplace than one might think. mean, there's questions of choosing disability.
you know, if you are, you know, have some kind of chronic illness and you, you know, are faced with this question of whether or not to pursue some kind of curative, you know, intervention, right. that is a situation in which you're either choosing, for or against life with a disability, right. even, you know, something like perhaps a cochlear implant or, you know, some of the other, sort of more high tech.
interventions that are being developed right now are going to present people with this question of whether or not to choose disability. In addition, we have sort of what we've called end of life cases where someone is in end of life is a little bit of a misnomer because it's not really end of life depending on what you choose, right? But let's say someone
Joseph Stramondo (07:27.334)
is faced with a question of whether or not they continue living with a feeding tube or if they choose comfort care, right? Or a ventilator or something like this, right? That's another situation in which you are faced with this sort of choice point, I guess, if you will, of disability or non-disability in your thinking and in your actions. And so we realized that this was
you know, a really, really complicated question that was much more commonly dealt with within everyday life and in medical practice than most people really realize or think about. And so that's sort of where the, where the book came from. We just sort of said, you know what, let's, let's think through this and, you know, a very careful, you know, detailed way to
to see if we can offer any kind of ethical analysis about some of the different ways someone might try to tackle this question.
PJ Wehry (08:35.743)
If you don't mind me asking, what other fields are involved when you talk about disability ethics? You mentioned that you have Dr. Campbell writing and then you're writing, do you bring different fields to it? Is it just because you enjoy each other as like kind of dialoguing partners or? OK.
Joseph Stramondo (08:50.272)
Yeah. Yeah, no, we're both philosophers. And so, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're both philosophers. And so our methodology is largely analytic philosophy, for better or for worse. And so, you know, we, the structure of the book definitely sort of is reflective of that.
PJ Wehry (09:04.949)
Okay.
Joseph Stramondo (09:16.874)
in that, you know, what we, what we've basically done is try to identify, a, a cluster of, arguments that are sort of commonplace, when people start thinking about the ethics of, choosing for or against disability. And then we try to sort of go through them. Each chapter is sort of an analysis of a particular argument about, choosing disability. and so.
We have one on, let's say, mean, there's a bunch. But we have one on what we call the harm argument. And so we'll break down the harm argument into its of premises and conclusion, and just sort of say, OK, well, one argument against choosing disability is that one might think that, in general, disability is a harm.
And so if that's premise one, premise two is if disability is a harm, then there's reason to choose against it. so conclusion is there's reason to choose against disability. And that's just a quick gloss. We're more careful in our writing. And so we take that and then we analyze the premises. And we sort of say, OK, can we generalize and say that disability is a harm? What does that mean? How can we think through that? And then secondly,
PJ Wehry (10:25.686)
Right, right, right.
Joseph Stramondo (10:43.212)
Can we generalize and say that if disability is a harm, there's a reason to choose against it? And so two chapters right there. And so then we have other chapters about options and sort of what we call the option arguments and the idea that choosing disability should not be done because it restricts someone's life options or in some cases, what's been referred to as an open future.
PJ Wehry (10:50.827)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (11:11.842)
for people. And so we have a section on that. And so yeah, we just sort of work through sort of a variety of arguments, actually both for and against choosing disability to try to see if they hold up. And spoiler alert, at the end of the day, we basically come to the conclusion that we've identified some really important
PJ Wehry (11:31.745)
Yeah
Joseph Stramondo (11:41.155)
morally salient questions to ask when faced with this choice of choosing disability. But there's no overriding generalizations we can make about it, right? And so, you know, we have to make sort of contextual choices about, you know, whether or not to choose disability in particular cases. But there's no sort of
PJ Wehry (11:45.229)
Hmm.
Joseph Stramondo (12:07.538)
overriding generalization that you could say that for these reasons, one ought to choose disability or one ought to choose disability.
PJ Wehry (12:18.085)
I think, and there's some immediate things that come to mind here for me, we haven't talked about narrative identity yet, but I think this might lead us into it.
is a part of the reason you can't give, you can only ask good questions is because the term disability, while it can sometimes be a useful label, covers a wide variety. mean, that's not even variety is not the right term. That's a huge label. And you can't make important, difficult, complex decisions based off of a simplistic label like that.
Joseph Stramondo (12:57.92)
Yes, think that's crucial to many of the arguments, right? In that the scope of the category of disability is incredibly wide, right? What we sort of think about when we use the term disability, I mean, everything from dwarfism to autism to spinal cord injury to maybe cancer, right? And so...
You know, with this enormous variety of diagnoses, but then you add to that the complexity of the way that each of these disabilities sort of is mediated experientially, right, by an individual life, right? And so even within categories of disability, right, even within specific diagnostic categories, there's huge variety in terms of lived experience.
You know, just because of intersecting oppressions and identities, or even in terms of personality, right? And just sort of how you sort of orient yourself toward the world can, you know, make a huge difference in terms of, you know, the impact that disability has on a life.
PJ Wehry (14:21.783)
Yes. And there's different reasons to choose a label like disabled, depending on the political, social and cultural conditions, which is, mean, I, was interesting. think you started off the conversation by talking about that you have a genetic disability. And I immediately like kind of latched onto it. was like, that's, know, that's different than someone who gets in a car wreck and has a different like, and so.
And that would of course affect, I mean, you coming out of abortion, the abortion discussion, that's a totally different, like the genetic side is very different from what happens to people throughout life. And so like that introduces a whole set of things, collecting disability, right? Like, it gets, oh, it just works. I think, is that where we get into the narrative identity part? I feel like this is.
Joseph Stramondo (15:10.572)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, no, the narrative identity stuff is really interesting and exciting and slippery in a sense. It's funny, you you say collecting disability and immediately, you know, there's different interpretations of that phrase, right? Sometimes people, when they say collecting disability, they mean, you know, getting monetary support from the federal government to...
PJ Wehry (15:34.539)
Yeah
Joseph Stramondo (15:42.987)
supplement income because they can't work. But when I think about collecting disability, the first thing that comes to my mind as a scholar and an activist is that I collect disabilities. I have these are my diagnoses. This is my collection of disability that I have. And so there's lots of wordplay that is part of disability culture, part of
PJ Wehry (16:01.345)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (16:10.262)
the narratives of disability, right? I have a friend that does sort of some like disability artistic sort of cultural production stuff. And she's into kink and actually has a photo shoot of herself with all of her piercings and tats and everything tied up in her wheelchair. And it is sort of a commentary on the term wheelchair bound.
Right? Yeah. And so, you know, there's this, you know, this word play that can come into, that can sort of bring different tensions within disability identity into clearer focus. And so, yeah, and then, you know, that definitely has to do with the idea of narrative identity specifically. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, some of my work around narrative identity
PJ Wehry (16:40.076)
Yeah, you're right.
Joseph Stramondo (17:08.29)
It definitely relates to some of the things in the book, but it's not the focus of the book so much. And so with my narrative identity stuff, that can become important for certain arguments within the book, especially when you're thinking through the creation and the death cases, right?
And we're thinking through choices that someone might make about whether or not to remain or become disabled based on sort of their narrative identities or actually we develop a concept of substantive identity, which is a little bit different, but related within the book. And so these are related questions, but the focus of the book
you know, that's, that's sort of a, a piece of it and not sort of the, the main thrust. but, you know, narrative ethics in general has been, close to my heart and I've, I've used it, in a variety of situations, right? I have a, a paper, that deals with, the ethics of choosing disability and narrative. in, the Hastings Center report a few years ago,
I'm trying to remember the title of the piece, but it's about the open future argument. And so the open future argument basically says that it's wrong to choose disability because it constrains someone's open future. It doesn't sort of allow for the future of the expression of their own autonomy. And so in this paper, yeah, you're anti-freedom. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (18:59.829)
You're anti-freedom. Yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (19:02.772)
If you choose disability, you're against freedom and liberty and mom and apple pie and all the rest. Yeah, and so in that paper, I basically make the argument that the open future framework is itself constrictive of human agency. This myth that
to be disabled is to have a less open future, right? Or a future that is more constrained than a non-disabled future, right? Is something that is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the way that narrative identity works. And so, you know, if you conceptualize of yourself and other people conceptualize about you,
as being the kind of person that has, fewer life options, then two things will happen. One, we will have, you know, if this is a widespread narrative about that particular identity, then we will construct society in such a way that narrows people's options that have that identity, right? Because that will be sort of the working presumption. People who are like this don't do this. Right. And so, you know, we see this all the time, you know, with small business owner that will say,
you know, well, yeah, no, I've never, you know, bothered to put a ramp in the front of the building to my store because I've never seen anybody that uses a wheelchair come in here. And it's like, people like that don't come into this kind of store. Right. And it's like, well, no, they don't because you don't have the ramp in the front of your store. Right. and so exactly, exactly. And so there's the way in which sort of this idea of, you know, disability.
PJ Wehry (20:38.474)
Yep. Right.
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (20:48.663)
Right, it's it other way around. Yes
Joseph Stramondo (20:58.322)
restricting someone's life options, restricting the otherwise openness of their future that can contribute to the construction of a society that narrows people's options and narrows their future. And so that's one way in which it happens. And the other way in which it happens is, I'm sure you've heard of the idea of internalized racism or internalized sexism, right? There's also internalized ableism. And so if you are told,
over and over again, know, people like you, you know, don't have these kinds of options in life, then you are going to, you know, internalize that and make choices accordingly, right? And so when you're, you know, there's lots of examples that I could use of this, but one that I use sometimes is, and that I used in the talk that you were referencing at the beginning of the
of the interview here, if you are told over and over again that people like you are not parents, are not good parents, are not supposed to be parents, are not supposed to reproduce, right? You're gonna internalize that, right? And so, you know, it might just be that you artificially restrict your own life options because you think to yourself, well, you know, I couldn't do this. This isn't something that people like me do, right? And then,
PJ Wehry (22:06.103)
Hmm.
Joseph Stramondo (22:24.692)
You enter into a social sphere where there is all kinds of discrimination when it comes to parenting. Structural discrimination in terms of, I have two young kids and their school is a historically preserved landmark, public school in San Diego, a liberal city, supposedly.
PJ Wehry (22:54.221)
Unfortunately, I think I know where this is going, but yes, please continue.
Joseph Stramondo (22:56.386)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's impossible for me to independently sort of get in through the front door and go into their school and visit their classroom and do all of the things that parents typically do. There's a way in, but I have to use the side door and I have to squeeze in. It's not equity, right? I think a lot of that happens because there is this...
sort of generalized attitude of, well, know, parents aren't going to be, you know, coming through this door, right? That are going to be using a wheelchair or whatever, you know, the case may be, right? And then you also have, you know, more oppressive or more obviously oppressive situations, right? Where, you know, people will be in custody battles for their kids and they'll face horrible discrimination when it comes to
being able to retain custody of their kids for another reason than they have some kind of disability diagnosis without any evidence whatsoever that they have any kind of incapacity as a parent. And so there's all of these ways and structures that society is set up to... Well, under the assumption that...
people like me don't do things like this when it comes to parenting.
PJ Wehry (24:26.989)
If I could add something, because I've been part of administrative discussions and I think too, and this is a frustrating thing, there's a lot of bigger cultural factors at play when you talk about how expensive healthcare is and the way that it... So what do they build to impress with at schools, right? Really they build to impress
not the parents, but donors. And so some of it too is it's like, well, Dr. Stramondo can go through the side door. Dr. Stramondo spends a lot of money on his health. He'll tell you what he's not going to do. He's not going to donate a lot, regardless of whether you can or not. But that is an underlying assumption too. It's let's make the front impressive for donors, right? Because there's a lot, there's financial priorities focused on
continued making money rather than equity. Is that fair?
Joseph Stramondo (25:28.514)
Yeah, I I think that's very fair and I think that that's one of the fundamental problems with this idea of historical preservation, sort of coming up against equity and disability, right? Because I do think that there's this pattern in general, whether or not you're talking about a school, you're talking about something else, right? Museum, right? That the priority is to...
PJ Wehry (25:51.531)
Museum
Joseph Stramondo (25:57.599)
satisfy
PJ Wehry (26:11.425)
Just say the school's name, but say your school's rival. No, no, say your school's rival. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get them in trouble. Yeah, that's fair, that's fair.
Joseph Stramondo (26:27.148)
That would be funny though. you know, going to a big 10 university for my PhD, I appreciate the importance of rivalries. So maybe we can find a way to smack talk University of Michigan later. But yeah, no, I do think that, know, part of the narrative ethics, if you will, around historical preservation,
PJ Wehry (26:40.235)
There you go.
Joseph Stramondo (26:54.242)
and the importance of historical preservation has to do with the satisfaction of people with power and money. It's not the current parents that they want to satisfy. It's the alums, largely. The alums that are the donors to the school and so on and so forth that are going to be upset if we change the school that they went to.
because there's some sort of value in the nostalgia of it. And so it's the nostalgia that people with more money and power have that puts value in a particular piece of architecture that then comes up against equal access and causes a little bit of a problem. And I mean, this is a topic I could go on and on about. But yeah.
I think you're right about that.
PJ Wehry (27:52.558)
Well, the reason I thought of it, I mean, and the only reason unfortunately that I noticed was I was pushing a stroller. We went to the Boston Public Library, which is very like and they had a ramp and it was right there, but it was really ugly and like hard to navigate. Right. And the steps like I wouldn't have noticed. Right. Because, you know, it's not on my radar should be right.
Joseph Stramondo (28:12.874)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
PJ Wehry (28:21.997)
The steps leading up, beautiful, very easy if you can afford steps, but that's what made me think of it because I was like, that's going to be a real argument to try and have them change the steps to a ramp at the Boston Public Library. It's like the heritage of our nation.
Joseph Stramondo (28:26.338)
huh. huh.
Joseph Stramondo (28:36.919)
Yes.
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, no, there's this is this is a really interesting topic. I'm actually working with a PhD candidate right now at St. Louis University, who is writing a dissertation on what we might think of as is design ethics, I guess, when it comes to architecture and inclusion. And she's she's basically developing.
You know this this argument for what she's calling experiential access And so her name is Natalie Hardy, and I'll give her a shout out because she's just brilliant and so Natalie is doing work on the importance of experiential access in other words the idea that It's not just sort of a practical matter of whether or not someone can get into a particular space
but whether or not there's experiential equity for them as they move into that space, right? And so do they have the same aesthetic experience, you know, going into a building as a non-disabled person does, right? It's not just sort of a matter of, you know, practical, you know, okay, I can get in the building, but can I get in the building without having to go through the alley past the dumpster?
Right? And so it's this idea of experiential access and sort of looking at disability as not just sort of this very oversimplified understanding of impaired bodies that come up against brick and mortar, but sort of almost the phenomenology of it, right? When we talk about access,
Joseph Stramondo (30:31.074)
We're talking about whether or not someone has equity in that social space experientially.
PJ Wehry (30:40.493)
And I think that's even and I could see where maybe I should have her on the show but the as we talk about I mean there's what we talk you mentioned impaired bodies, but also there's once you're inside for people who someone who is deaf or someone who is blind it's like is this something that they can experience in a meaningful way right like obviously there are things that they can't experience but there are like can experience it in a meaningful way is that
Joseph Stramondo (31:02.657)
Yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (31:08.128)
Absolutely,
PJ Wehry (31:09.357)
That's where it opens a huge, it's a huge question.
Joseph Stramondo (31:13.878)
Yeah. And her dissertation, digs into all of that. She, you know, she, she has a chapter that looks at, the Missouri school for the blind, that she toured, to try to get a better understanding of what experiential access for a blind person would look like. Right. And she has, you know, anecdotes and different discussion about, deaf space and the concept of deaf space and what experiential access looks like for someone who's deaf.
And so you're right, it's not just a matter of, you know, people that look like me, you know, needing experiential access. I mean, you can even think about something like, you know, one thing that's becoming more common, thankfully, is I've seen it in, know, in shopping spaces, but also in museums. There's the New Children's Museum in San Diego, I believe does this. have...
some hours set aside for neurodivergent kids that might be overstimulated if they were to go into a museum sort of along with everybody else, right? And so they have certain hours that would be set aside that would be more accessible for some visitors to the museum, experientially. Again, not because of the architecture, but just because of the
the nature of the social space to try to structure it in a way that would be more accommodating for people with different kinds of brain function. And so, we saw this even during the pandemic, we saw a little bit of this kind of thing, where we would have stores that would maybe not have a mask requirement all the time, but that would have certain hours for high risk people.
to come and do their shopping. Is that ideal? Wouldn't it be better if we could live in a world in which things were not segregated and always accommodating? Yeah. But at the same time, there might be ways to have better and worse social structures to give people at least
Joseph Stramondo (33:36.702)
some of what Natalie's talking about as far as experiential access.
PJ Wehry (33:41.302)
It's so interesting you talk about that and apologies, it's a little bit of a rant for me, a frustration. So my day-to-day job, my wife and I run a digital marketing company. And so part of that is we have studied a little bit of design and design philosophy and a good chunk of this is understanding affordances and the proper way to make things work for people.
You mentioned it made you maybe think of with COVID. They had a seven to nine time for elderly people in the morning to shop because high risk and I'd never been to this Publix before I had dropped someone off at the airport early and I went in they put the signage right where they normally put their advertisements. So of course I didn't look at it. You know what mean?
Joseph Stramondo (34:33.984)
Okay.
PJ Wehry (34:37.837)
And they were like, they looked at me like I was such a heel. You know what mean? Like you're like, well, it's like, oh yeah, I was like, they're like, how'd you not see the signs? I'm like, who looks at the advertisements, right? But it's, that's a little bit of a ridiculous story. I should just say, but good design matters, right? Like having things where, where it actually properly addresses people. You're like that stuff.
Joseph Stramondo (34:41.556)
jerk for coming into the... yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (34:54.174)
No, I get it. No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it.
PJ Wehry (35:07.949)
It's out of I've gotten into this a little bit on the the digital side of things there I had someone on talk about dark web ethics and the way that they'll have like an unlike in very tiny print that it's actually a subscription and not a one-time purchase and It's something you have to unclick not that you have to click it to make a subscription you have to unclick and it's those the similar kind of the way that even
that they hide anti, like ableist practices in the middle of things, that sort of thing, or just what, or there's just like a laziness and it just like, well, that's where we normally put things up and people probably won't see it, right? But they don't have a background in design. So there's an education aspect. I don't know, it's interesting.
Joseph Stramondo (35:43.81)
Mm-hmm.
Joseph Stramondo (35:56.897)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, think that's an interesting question. I mean, I think some of it is about aesthetics too, in that, you know, thinking about the example that you were raising earlier in terms of the Boston Public Library, right? You know, and part of what Natalie talks about in her dissertation, and, you know, I just keep on referring back to her because these are, you her ideas is, you know, more than they are mine. But...
You know, we as a culture associate disability with ugliness, right? And so, you know, of course they're going to try to hide the ramp, right? Of course they're going to try to put it out of the way where it won't be an eyesore, so to speak, right? You know, and for the same reason why, you know, maybe, you know, grandma refuses to use her cane, even though it would help her, right? Because there is this sort of cultural attitude
toward, you know, and I'm doing narrative ethics again, right? Narrative identity ethics. There's this idea that, you know, there is, you know, many different tropes that attach themselves to disability that all more or less in various ways boil down to sort of disability equals less than in some sense or another, right?
And so, you know, of course you're going to want to not associate yourself with that, not associate your company with that, not associate anything with that, right? You're going to try to make it as obscure and as out of the way as you, as you possibly can. Right. And so then there's, you know, then there's this, this question of counter story, right. To use the, language of narrative ethics again, right. And how you can tell.
a counter story with design, right? How you can sort of take the ramp and put it out front, right? You know, make it sort of loud and proud, so to speak, to try to challenge and disrupt the narrative that attaches disability to ugliness in various ways. And to sort of think about it not only as sort of a rights-based argument or not only as a matter of
Joseph Stramondo (38:22.046)
equity but also a matter of aesthetics and trying to think through what our cultural norms are around beauty, whether you're talking about people or buildings.
PJ Wehry (38:34.925)
Yeah, absolutely. And but I think a large part of this, as you talk about the beauty of it, something I've been wanting to ask you about, you mentioned earlier, and I think this is good spot is how much of this is determined by the personality of the individual who is making these narrative identity choices? Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's where I mean, so you said loud and proud. That's part of what I'm latching onto here. I'm thinking of your friend who who
bound themselves in a wheelchair, right? Like, I mean, like people are like, whoa, you know, and it forces you and it confronts you, but not everyone has that personality. Can you talk about what are the strengths, the weaknesses? Cause I obviously we don't want to demand that of everybody either, right?
Joseph Stramondo (39:09.282)
Yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (39:19.554)
So I think what we're talking about here is almost the ethics of passing, indirectly, right? This question of if part of the work of the disability movement is about changing narratives and is about trying to challenge oppressive
tropes and narratives that can constrict people's life choices in various ways structurally, right? Does that then mean that there is an individual responsibility to challenge those narratives with self-identification of various kinds, right? And so I actually have a paper on this too. The ethics of passing and uncovering when it comes to disability, Thinking about whether or not
PJ Wehry (40:04.386)
Yeah
PJ Wehry (40:08.599)
Hmm.
Joseph Stramondo (40:13.398)
you know, there isn't an individual, moral responsibility to, you know, have a picture of yourself tied to your wheelchair to, you know, to, challenge, you know, the, the master narrative of what it means to be wheelchair bound, right. which, know, a lot of times does, you know, treat disabled people as de-sexual or, you know, as or de-sexualized rather, you know, and, and so on and so forth. And so.
you know, I think that, you know, what I, what I want to say is, you know, we have to make these kinds of judgments, in, in really contextual ways. Right. I mean, I don't want to say that everyone has a responsibility to not pass, right. That everybody has a responsibility to sort of, do what they can to
challenge ableist narratives by sort of being loud and proud, so to speak. Right. I don't want to make a generalization like that because for many people, it can be dangerous, right. It could be physically dangerous to identify as disabled in some spaces. Right. Especially when you're thinking about, you know, some of the current political climate and the ways in which things like neurodivergence
and gender identity are intersecting more and more. And, you know, I think that, you know, when you, when you have these questions about identity, self-identification to others, passing, uncovering, you know, we really need to sort of be mindful of the risks that people might take by disclosing or uncovering a disability identity.
and so in, in my mind, yes, there probably is some kind of moral reason that ought to motivate, disabled people to challenge some of these. Oppressive master narratives, by taking control of their own story and their own disability identity and sort of telling what it means to them in a way that would challenge the tropes, right? but at the same time, that is sort of, counterbalanced against
Joseph Stramondo (42:37.986)
the risks that would be necessary for some people to do that work. I so I'm thinking about it in that paper that I mentioned a few minutes ago where I wrote about it. I'm thinking about it in terms of the space of higher education and whether or not a faculty member, for instance, has a moral responsibility to disclose their own disability experience.
in order to challenge the master narratives told about disability within higher ed to make it easier for perhaps students, right? That are coming into this space with a similar disability experience to sort of help them along and not have as hard of a time with the narratives around whether or not this particular social space is meant for people like me, right?
And so part of that work can be self-disclosure or uncovering of one's disability in order to signal the students that, yes, in fact, this is a space for people like us. I'm actually, can't really see my t-shirt right now, but I'm actually wearing my Fight Ableism in the Academy t-shirt right now, where it's from a mini conference that my friend
PJ Wehry (44:01.536)
Nice.
Joseph Stramondo (44:05.506)
Kevin Timpe at Calvin College gave where he was an interdisciplinary, he's a philosopher, but it was an interdisciplinary conference where we sort of all got around and talked about how to resist ableist structures within higher education. And my contribution was exactly this, talking about whether or not there is sort of moral reason or more responsibility of a faculty member to
PJ Wehry (44:33.463)
Hmm.
Joseph Stramondo (44:33.762)
identify as disabled publicly in order to challenge these oppressive narratives around disability and identity. And so what the upshot is, is, you know, I mean, in my view, I mean, this is still probably a little bit too simplistic, but in my view, I think that, you know, there is a more responsibility to disclose, that responsibility is proportional to the amount of power that you have within that structure. Right. And so.
Um, you know, someone like me, I'm a department chair. Um, you know, I, uh, have tenure, um, associate professor, um, you know, and not only that, but then I have all kinds of privileging intersecting identities. I'm CIS, um, I'm het, you know, I'm white. Um, you know, I have a lot of education, so, so on and so forth, right. Um, I have a lot of power within, uh, this, this.
social structure of higher education. so, you know, for me to self-disclose and talk about my collecting of disability, so to speak, it's going to be, you know, to reference the joke earlier, you know, it's going to be very different. You know, the risks that I take in talking about it is going to be, you know, a very different set of risks than what, you know, an undergrad
PJ Wehry (45:46.273)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (46:02.12)
might take when disclosing a disability to others or even a graduate student when it comes to uncovering their disability identity.
PJ Wehry (46:17.131)
Yeah, and I hope this is not trivializing it. I'm trying to lead to a further example, but in Malcolm in the Middle, I don't know if you're familiar with the show. Yeah. OK, so Malcolm's best friend is in a wheelchair and the bully tries to punch Malcolm and Malcolm ducks and the bully hits his friend in the wheelchair. And so.
Joseph Stramondo (46:30.383)
Little bit I've seen a couple episodes.
Joseph Stramondo (46:35.894)
Okay.
PJ Wehry (46:43.285)
And actually he barely like he pulls back, but his friend in the wheelchair makes himself fall over. And then the bully, yeah, like makes himself like the bully decides to like, all of a everyone hates the bully. The bully loses, you know, it's and I thought about that. Right. But I'm like, that's a very that's a very suburban school. Right. As you're talking about where it could be dangerous and I understand what you're talking about from the political climate. But even as you're talking about moving through
Joseph Stramondo (46:56.802)
All the street cred, yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (47:03.436)
Yep. Yep.
PJ Wehry (47:12.557)
poor, rougher, more desperate circumstances, whether in a school or a neighborhood, advertising weakness of any sort. And I say that from the perspective of people who would, I hope you understand what I mean by weakness there, but like anything where it's like, this person would make an easy target. Even if you're not, you're like, if you advertise that you're inviting physical danger, like that's another, go ahead.
Joseph Stramondo (47:28.738)
Yeah, I do.
Joseph Stramondo (47:37.226)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's complicated. mean, I think that, you know, we see narratives, for instance, around, you know, various kinds of disabilities in mass violence. Right. And so, you know, who's going to want to disclose that they have a psychiatric disability diagnosis, right. If that disability is associated with mass shooters. Right.
PJ Wehry (48:05.483)
Right. Another great example, yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (48:06.114)
I mean, that exposes somebody to sort of the possibility of various kinds of preemptive violence, right? In the Oscarization and all kinds of problems, right? Yeah, yep, from authority structures. We can't really talk about something like Black Lives Matter, right? Without also talking about the intersecting
PJ Wehry (48:16.717)
Hmm.
Yeah. From authority structures too. Yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (48:35.15)
of disability identities that put certain Black folks at even more increased risk of police violence, right? Because of, you know, not only are they Black and therefore automatically, you know, seen as sort of dangerous because of the, you know, the racist cultural narratives, but then you add in some behaviors that are not, you know, expected and that are, you know, outside of
PJ Wehry (48:52.599)
Hmm.
Joseph Stramondo (49:04.322)
sort of the typical norms. And then it's like, whoa, you know, I mean, that's super dangerous for them, right? And so, you know, this idea of trying to pass, trying to preserve yourself as much as possible, you know, I wouldn't ever, you know, discount that. You know, I think that that's, you know, that's something that, you know, people have every right to think about when they're, they're describing
PJ Wehry (49:08.15)
Yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (49:34.134)
whether or not to disclose their disability identity to folks.
PJ Wehry (49:38.99)
I mean, I think there's a real like wisdom component, right? Like choose your fight at the right time and the right place. And I think part of this too, even as you talk about how you feel more responsibility, I think you, I'm not teaching anything here. I'm trying to, I think I'm making a connection that there are rhythms that yes, you should fight injustice, but you don't have to fight injustice all the time, right? Like you can enjoy your life too, right? Like it's not like.
Yeah, it's like I think sometimes that's missing from not that people like don't understand that they can do that, but we don't talk enough about like, pick the right moment. But you don't have to go around always like thinking about this. you can live like life is so much more full than just fighting what's wrong. If that makes sense.
Joseph Stramondo (50:27.884)
Yes. Yes. No, I mean, I think that's a lesson that I've had to think about a lot since becoming a dad. because, know, you know, being, you know, being out, you know, I have two kids that don't look like they have any kind of disability, right? I have to, you know, average size, you know, very active, you know, blonde hair, blue eye kids. Actually, my daughter has green eyes, but yeah.
PJ Wehry (50:34.888)
Mm. Yo.
Joseph Stramondo (50:54.53)
that you know look like these, you know, little perfect specimens somehow and so, you know, we're out in public and They're having to deal with sort of ableism by association, right of people coming up to me with you know comments or questions or You know what what have you right? And so, you know the way I would react if I were alone might be quite different than
the way I might react when I'm having my six-year-old with me. Just because it's not his responsibility to educate others. It's not his responsibility to fight the fight against ableism in various ways. My priority has largely become thinking about how to protect them rather than how to try to challenge master narratives when I'm in the grocery store.
PJ Wehry (51:25.749)
Yes.
PJ Wehry (51:32.855)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (51:42.263)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (51:51.394)
Yeah, right, right. Yeah. That's a really, really dumb example. But I was on Twitter and building up a Twitter following several years ago. And and I found myself being short with my kids because I was using all my patience on idiots online. Right. And I was like, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I shouldn't be giving my emotional energy to these people. I saw I just deleted the account. Like I was like, I need to give my emotional energy. Kids take emotional energy.
Joseph Stramondo (52:10.358)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (52:20.949)
Right? Like you have to have that for them. And so, yeah, that makes, that makes total sense to me.
Joseph Stramondo (52:21.162)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I was very Twitter active for a while, mostly because of politics and also, you know, professionally I had, my, my personal account was, had like 6,000 followers and, know, I had, you know, some, some interesting stuff going on there. And then I also had like a burner account, for like politics that like my anonymous account, that thing had like 23,000 followers just from me, like ranting about like Donald Trump.
And so, you know, it was the kind of thing that it was actually for me when I became separated and started to go through divorce proceedings, that I actually stopped going on Twitter because it was the same thing, right? It was like sort of, I need my emotional bandwidth right now to, you know, deal with, you know, all of this other stuff happening in my life. You know, I'm not...
PJ Wehry (53:09.581)
haha
Joseph Stramondo (53:23.616)
I'm not here to be arguing with people on Twitter right now!
PJ Wehry (53:27.701)
Yeah, yeah, it's such a, it can be satisfying, but it really is like how much value really comes out of it. It's like, I know some value has to come out of it somewhere, but it's rare. It's not. Sorry, I feel like I detracted a little bit there, but I, before we, I want to be respectful of your time. So before we kind of close here, if I could ask you, there's so many good things to take away from today, but what is one thing that you would ask audiences to either kind of
Joseph Stramondo (53:33.964)
Yeah, yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (53:38.23)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (53:43.98)
No.
PJ Wehry (53:57.814)
meditate on or to try and do after listening to today's episode over the next week, something that gets immediately put into practice.
Joseph Stramondo (54:04.552)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess what I would say is to try to understand the full complexity of disability, right? Whether it's in your own life or in someone else's life. You know, that, you know, we really can't generalize very well when we start thinking about, you know, the ways in which we ought to move through the world when it comes to something like
disability because it is such a complex phenomenon. And so whether we're talking about medical decisions or we're talking about interactions with kids at the playground, These are going to be really context driven choices that we make as we move through the world. And so just sort of recognizing
PJ Wehry (54:45.985)
Hmm, very different. Yeah.
Joseph Stramondo (55:01.582)
The importance of context, recognizing the importance of complexity and nuance when thinking about anything to do with disability, think is sort of what I hope is the big takeaway to much of my work.
PJ Wehry (55:18.733)
Dr. Stramondo, one thank you, great ending to today and just a great talk overall. Thank you for coming on, it real joy.
Joseph Stramondo (55:25.154)
Thank you so much. It was a joy, PJ. Thank you.