Disability
Add: About, Definitions, my experiences
Quotes
Visible disability
from Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau (published in 2021)
It’s tiring to feel like I’m always on display.
I’m not confined or bound to my wheelchair. It’s literally designed to enable me to move.
Disabled experience
from Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau (published in 2021)
Small victories in representation are important.
Neither the medical nor the social model can exist independently of each other. The ways that I experience my disability can be different from moment to moment.
It’s important to remember that if you’ve met one disabled person, you’ve met one disabled person. And if you have a disability, then the only disability experience you’re an expert on is your own.
Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society. — Alice Wong, editor of Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
Words and definitions
from Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau (published in 2021)
Autistic activist Reyma McCoy McDeid dropped a hard-hitting question. “If you do not belong to a particular marginalized community and you want to help that community, why do you associate the word ‘help’ with that community?”
Functioning labels are both inaccurate and harmful. “‘Low functioning’ is used to deny agency to disabled people who have high support needs,” he states, “while ‘high functioning’ is used to deny resources to people who can mask their disability well. Any person’s support needs can shift from year to year, or even day to day, making ‘functioning’ a flawed concept.
The “bitter cripple” is a cruel stereotype, a label often metaphorically stamped on the foreheads of disabled people who push back against ableism. We’re not bitter, though; we just have the audacity to believe that disabled lives are worth living.
Support
from Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau (published in 2021)
Rather than nondisabled people pretending to be disabled or imagining our experiences, let’s aim for a world in which disabled people are fixtures in every part of the media industry, so stories about us are meaningfully told by us.
We live in a society that, by glorifying and trying to “cash in,” perpetuates the harm of ogling and/or mocking people who look, sound, communicate, or behave outside arbitrary norms. Even though it may often seem like harmless amusement or entertainment, this kind of objectification of people who look “different” has deep historical roots in the perception of visibly disabled people as “freaks.”
Disabled people are the experts on what they need. Avoid the urge to ‘fix’ and make it better without first centering what the person wants and needs.
I’ve put on a jacket enough times in my life that I’ve got it figured out and under control. And yet, it’s as if the process creates a magnetic field that draws in eager helpers—often strangers—who grab my jacket without asking. Plenty of people just shrug when I try to explain how often this happens, telling me that it’s a nonissue and I should accept the help because the people trying to assist mean well. It’s just an act of kindness, they say, and I should stop complaining.
when you come across media that involves a disabled person, instead of falling for the trap, pause for a moment and ask yourself Is this a positive representation of disability that humanizes disabled people, or does this media just use disability to play to emotions? Am I inspired because someone with a disability actually did something truly inspiring, or does this feeling stem from ableist ideas about disabled people? If your answer in each case is the latter, try to avoid clicking. Don’t share—or maybe do share, but call it out. This is how we start to shift attitudes and make real change.
In “Don’t Mourn for Us,” an essay by Autistic activist Jim Sinclair that broke early ground for the neurodiversity movement, Sinclair lamented, “The tragedy is not that we’re here, but that your world has no place for us to be.”
Education
from Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau (published in 2021)
It wasn’t until 2006 in West Virginia that a group of young disabled advocates finally succeeded in pushing for state legis-lation that requires all public schools to teach students about the history of disability. So far, only a handful of other states have since followed suit. The history of disability isn’t a separate, isolated thread of human existence. It is a saga that encompasses all people and places and is deeply intertwined with who we were, are, and will become. Yet it’s still considered a niche area of study rather than necessary to understanding what shapes our society.
To most of society, ableist beliefs and behavior don’t raise any red flags because they’re woven into the fabric of everyday life, simply accepted as the norm. For disabled people, though, ableism is always there—a part of our lives that never disappears, manifesting in endless forms ranging from broad, systemic discrimination to individual interactions.
Disability must be included in social justice movements. Excluding it isn’t just ableist; it’s directly contributing to harm.