My Rights vs. Yours
Disabled People are, I believe, all in the same boat, and I for one would never push anyone out. I believe that on principal, but lurking underneath most of my principals is a grubby little personal opinion waiting to get out. You see, there is sometimes a hierarchy on this boat. Kinda like Titantic, some disabled people are Irish dancing and spitting and doomed to drown, while up top the rest are eating kaviar and whatever Kate Winslet was doing...I hate Titantic.
Anyway, let's get one thing straight: impairment comparison is bad, whether you or I do it, we should hang our heads in shame. Thing is, if you understand levels of 'disability' in terms of medical symptoms, then comparison is the inevitable result. "I am worse than him but better off than her" etc etc.
Channel 4's The Shooting Party started two weeks ago and already the contestants (nine disabled - yes, all of them - filmmakers) are being measured for levels of medical tragedy. Maddie, who has depression, and Matt, who has a stammer, came out poorly, it seems. They are not 'proper disabilities', apparently.
See this is what happens when you see 'being disabled' as medical conditions scattered like button badges on a schoolkid's rucksack, counting and collecting. The Shooting Party's wheelchair users escaped the analysis, of course. It is enough that we can see it, it is helpfully obvious, never mind the actual disabling affect on people's lives.
Dyslexics are laptop-grabbers, depressives are moaners, people with acquired paraplegia probably bullied us at school anyway why-should-we-care-now? I could go on, but frankly I fear for my life: comparison, particularly when laced with prejudice, is a dark, dirty game.
Inter-impairment rage: dyslexics' got the spastics in a headlock, the CFS crew smothering the autistic spectrum in their duvets, it's a darkly entertaining picture in my head. It's just not very useful; this whole comparative thought process is, in the end, useless to disabled people. However, comparison, division and prejudice needs to be acknowledged by disabled people *without* discounting what we have in common. Prejudice from the outside, from non-disabled people, is called into question every day, prejudice between ourselves is highlighted far less. I think that might need to change.
**Yay for The Shooting Party dudes and The New Pornographers**
Comment number 1.
At 29th Apr 2008, Chris_Page wrote:What's more, it gives non-disabled people a distorted view of our community. We aren't all engaged in in-fighting, but we are obviously "all the same" in some non-disabled people's eyes anyway, and this only adds to that perception.
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Comment number 2.
At 29th Apr 2008, MacMaddy wrote:So how long will we foreigners have to wait for 91Èȱ¬ American to bring it over here I wonder?
Cheers
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Comment number 3.
At 29th Apr 2008, MsSeahorse wrote:I see this happening all the time, and it does happen within disability circles as well. Nicola this post should get all of us thinking, disabled and non-disabled, about the comparisons we both observe going on and indeed make ourselves.
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Comment number 4.
At 2nd May 2008, Rob wrote:If someone can't do X, does it really matter if its chronic painfultis or a sprained finger in the sense of managing X?
I've seen people with depression bed ridden, will not even move to use the toilet. I've also seen people with "more severe" conditions run their own companies.
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Comment number 5.
At 6th May 2008, johnnycrescendo wrote:This is interesting! My understanding of disability is one of oppression and it is true that disabled people experience differnt forms and levels of oppression. I choose in my life to address the oppression and not the impairment and through this poverty comes into the equation as well as race and gender.Its right to conclude it is not at this time the focus to worry about what the non disabled world thinks of us but rather how we think of each other. but we should in that case reach out to those of us who are experiencing the worst oppression, incarcerated in residential homes, drugged up to fxxx lying in their own shit and piss etc and work down from their. Of course we have our own troubles pain etc but we have to be alturistic in our actions to come together?
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Comment number 6.
At 7th May 2008, Turtle wrote:"I choose in my life to address the oppression and not the impairment"
The whole basis of my post was to question why I still had a tendency to make medicalised judgements on *impairment* , despite believing *disability* to be an oppressive social force.
if you have scepticism and prejudice towards a particular impairment, that surely affects to what extent you can see them as socially disadvantaged and in turn include them in that group.
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