Re: complicated relationships with PAs, have you ever had a relationship that wasn’t complicated?

Can you tell me how?

i hear you on work for v. work with. it’s so complicated, especially since the “work w/ the crip” has meant really scary service model/medical model shit before. but yet the “work for” has so many class ties to it i think, especially since back in the day it was only rich people who had PAs…

and my personal experience makes that even more complicated as i have liscensed nurses instead of certified PAs so naturally they have more of a tendency to take on the medical aspect of disability and want to be the expert (and my insurance provides this service because of that expertise…) so yes confusing..

i don’t think i’ve really said anything lol but i really appreciate your comment, it’s made me think a lot over the last few days

I think it is possible to be friends with PAs (of my PA-using friends, one is completely into being friends with her PAs, 2 are at the opposite point of treating them completely as employees, and the rest are somewhere in between), but only if the nature of the relationship is clear from the start, i.e. that the PA does what the disabled person tells hir to do when in that role, no questions or exceptions (unless, i suppose, it’s something that would actually seriously endanger hir own safety (the PA’s that is - the disabled person’s safety is emphatically hir own business, and not the PA’s)), and the fruendship, if one develops, is separate and additional to that.

I am aware that there’s probably a contradiction between how i feel about PAs and my overarching anarchist and anti-capitalist beliefs that basically say the whole idea of an employer/employee relationship is fundamentally oppressive and ethically illegitimate. I really don’t know what PA support would look like in a post-capitalist, post-wage-labour society, tho…

I am quite glad that i don’t need PAs, as i really wouldn’t like to be in the position of an employer or manager. I prefer to be submissive rather than dominant in ALL my relationships.

(I am going to be a PA for a fellow crip activist for a week next week, because his PA is on holiday and i need the money, so he offered me the week’s work as a mutual-aid thing. It’s going tobe an… interesting experience, as i’ll see how it feels like to have both the friend/comrade and employee roles simultaneously… will probably produce some blog posts out of it…)

Was just thinking about you this morning. Good thing I checked in. Have I got some stories to tell you about yesterday and some connections I made in my life, but I’ll have to do it later. Practicing calls! Maybe I’ll just write an entire damn post about it . . . lol