The distinction between borderline personality and dissociative identity disorders (f/k/a multiple personality disorder) is the level of dissociation inherent in the personality organizational structure. Whereas BPD‘s dissociation primarily affects the affective regulation and capacity for emotional memory, DID‘s dissociation is more complete, owing to its name.
She learned from a TV telethon that her disease would k*ll her when she was a kid. As an adult, she took on the telethon.
Her name was Harriet McBryde Johnson.
She was born in Laurinburg, North Carolina, in 1957.
She was one of five children.
Her parents were college teachers.
She was born with a degenerative neuromuscular disease.
She used a motorized wheelchair.
At 10, her family moved to Charleston, South Carolina.
She attended special education classes until she was 13.
Then she was asked to leave.
She had been trying to get a teacher fired.
Her sister said that was the start of her troublemaking.
Years later, she wrote that the telethon first told her she would die.
So she began living her childhood in tiny increments.
She thought, “When I die, I might as well die a kindergartner.”
But she kept living.
She earned a history degree from Charleston Southern University.
She earned a master’s in public administration.
In 1985, she earned her law degree from the University of South Carolina.
She practiced law in Charleston for more than 13 years.
She helped clients who could not work get Social Security benefits.
In 1990, she spoke out against the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon.
She called it “the charity mentality.”
She said its images made people with disabilities look sad and miserable.
She said those images get in the way of living.
She wanted rights, not pity.
In 2002, she confronted philosopher Peter Singer at a lecture.
A disability rights group, Not Dead Yet, had sent her.
Singer believed parents should be able to euthanize disabled children.
Harriet challenged that belief.
She took issue with his claim that disabled people are worse off.
Their disagreements were uncompromising, but civil.
On February 16, 2003, she told the story in The New York Times Magazine.
The essay was called “Unspeakable Conversations.”
The cover showed her gazing straight at readers from her wheelchair.
It became her best-known work.
In November 2003, she wrote about institutions she called “The Disability Gulag.”
She wanted people to live at home with support.
She traveled to Cuba.
She rolled across the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In 2005, she published a memoir.
It was called Too Late to Die Young.
In 2006, she published a novel, Accidents of Nature.
She once joked she was “a jumble of bones in a floppy bag of skin.”
She had a sharp wit and Southern manners.
On June 4, 2008, she died in her sleep at home.
She was 50.
New Mobility called her an irrepressible voice for disability rights.
She was a lawyer, a writer and an activist.
Her three brothers survived her.
In 2024, a play based on her debate was staged at the Galway International Arts Festival.
It was called Unspeakable Conversations.
Her essays are still read.
A girl a telethon taught to expect an early end.
A woman who made the world listen.
(Source)
“Stage Fright” transcript from The Rachel Maddow Show
Original Air Date 9. April 2009; clip taken down by National Organization for Marriage:
Human Rights Campaign, the gay rights group notable for not having the word gay in their
name, has pulled off a coup and they‘re counter-organizing against a group called the National
Organization for Marriage. The National Organization for Marriage is itself notable for not
having in their name the phrase, we mean just straight people‘s marriages. The “National
Organization for Straight-only Marriage” is running a new multimillion ad campaign warning
about how scary it is for gay people‘s relationships to have legal recognition.
Here‘s a little bit of the ad.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There‘s a storm gathering.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The clouds are dark and the winds are strong.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I am afraid.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Spooky, right? Spooky.
Human Rights Campaign has done a good job refuting some of the “Gay marriage ruined my
life” stories that are in the ad, but they‘ve also gone one better—somehow obtaining video
footage of the people who applied to pretend that they were straight people who had been
somehow hurt by gay marriage. These folks have been referred to elsewhere today as actors.
I‘m going to withhold judgment here and just let you make that call.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, the storm is—there is a storm gathering.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The clouds are dark, and the winds are strong.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am afraid—and I am afraid.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some who would advocate—some who advocate for same sex
marriage have taken this—the issue .
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: . far beyond same-sex couples.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A storm—the storm is coming. But we have hope.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A rainbow of coalition of—a rainbow coalition of people.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A rainbow collision of people of every creed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Creed—creed and color are coming together.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It allows us to perfect—to protect marriage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)MADDOW: We do not know how Human Rights Campaign got access to the audition tapes,
but because they did, we do know that pretending to be a straight person hurt by gay marriage
is apparently very, very challenging.
Regarding the Aug. 7 Metro article “Ride, interrupted“:
As a disabled college student, I’d like to say to other people with disabilities: The situation could be worse, and planning can alleviate many of our woes.
The Metro system has flaws. However, most can be alleviated with the use of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Web site, which lists detailed elevator-outage information, including projected return-to-service dates. Other difficulties can be solved with proactive communication, such as asking for directions and asking for wheelchairs to be secured.
In contrast, look at New York. For all the raving about the its subway system, it is egregiously inaccessible. More than 75 percent of stations are not accessible, according to the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Web site. And most astoundingly, not all buses have lifts. All of WMATA‘s buses have lifts, all the stations have at least one elevator, and MetroAccess, until recently, was more generous to riders than the Americans With Disabilities Act requires it to be. Paratransit service is required by law, and attempts to undermine it are appalling.
WMATA can improve, but it’s not the worst system. I agree that it’s hard to have a disability, but the nature of our existence commands us to adapt — and to appreciate what we have and fight when there’s an egregious lack of access.
Thomas Muething, Washington
Although it is regrettable that some people are triggered by reasonable terminology, no one should have the power to censor language to exclude the observable realities of autism. Scientists and advocates need a full semantic toolbox to describe what is happening in the real world. Pretending people with profound autism don’t exist by eliminating language to describe their symptoms is itself ableist.
Singer, Alison. “It’s time to embrace ‘profound autism’”. The Transmitter. 27 October
2022. Web. Accessed 22 September 2026.
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