I’m not broken and neither are you.
September 15, 2014 3:23 AM   Subscribe

The thing about ableism is that it’s everywhere, and it’s incredibly common, and we don’t even realize it. It’s in the books we read, and in our daily lives. Ableism is that belief that everyone who is able-bodied is “normal” and everyone else is abnormal. Abelism is probably one of the most common kinds of –ism’s, and it rarely gets talked about.
The language of disability and why it matters.
posted by MartinWisse (62 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
As someone who people have tried to categorize as abnormal throughout my experiences in the education system, my eventual response was to reject normality all-together. Able-ism is just the specter of a much deeper human pathology: Normalism. The problem is the need to categorize everyone into normal and other in the first place, and it doesn't matter to me what identifiers people latch onto to draw that division until we can accept that being abnormal is okay, or even preferable.

Redefining "Normal" so you fit into it just means someone else is still abnormal. The truth is that everyone is abnormal.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 3:53 AM on September 15, 2014 [31 favorites]


Oh, and I'd like to add that I think my line of thought leads to the depths of moral relativism, so I'd like to hear some rebuttals with ethical systems that can replace the utilitarian view that underpins Able-ism. What are you supposed to strive for?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 4:12 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


The thing about ignorance is that it’s everywhere, and it’s incredibly common, and we don’t even realize it. It’s in the books we read, and in our daily lives. Ignorance inspires the belief that everyone who is ignorant like us is “normal” and everyone else is abnormal. Ignorance is probably one of the most common kinds of -rances, and it rarely gets talked about.
posted by salad at 4:12 AM on September 15, 2014


But if we reject the utilitiarian concept of "normality" and the sociological notion of normativity, how do we get stuck with ableism, as its base essence is still something formed out of social structures relating to what the generic mass of society dubs as normal? (honest question)
posted by xcasex at 4:35 AM on September 15, 2014


I'm married to someone with a disability. You know what? He's not normal, and he'll be the first to tell you that.

Maybe it's because he has an invisible disability (we've noticed a big split between disabled people along visible/invisible lines before), but telling people about his limitations, that he can't do certain things that most people can, is liberating. They stop looking at him as if he's not trying; they just think, 'he has a disability, and I should try to accommodate that'. If people expect him to be normal.

We were just discussing language politics and disability the other day, because we happen to know someone who was involved in the WHO's work on Impairment, Disability and Handicap in the 1990s. It was a really great schema, for use by health scientists, practitioners, which laid out how to define a physical impairment, which might lead to something you couldn't do that most could (a disability), and limits on your participation in society (a handicap). And while accomodations might not change your impairment, maybe they would eliminate the handicap.

But people objected to the words used, especially handicap - because of a false etymology. They were so hung up on what they thought the word meant, that they ignored what it actually meant (comes from golf & horse racing, never had anything to do with begging), and eventually demanded the WHO come up with a new schema - which they did, and it was politically correct and scientifically useless (lots of disabilities were excluded).

Yes, language matters: please stop trying to destroy its usefulness.
posted by jb at 4:35 AM on September 15, 2014 [105 favorites]


Not the page I remember this being on, but I think this is something I read years ago. The version I remember was a white background and was much more like a DSV-IV classification.
http://seventhvoice.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/normalism-what-is-it-and-how-should-we-treat-those-who-are-currently-experiencing-it/
posted by I-Write-Essays at 4:47 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


There are several sliding scales here. I was a dancer and this weekend I met two really top pros as well as read the earlier post. I often feel quite disabled, I can't do a double pirouette anymore or kick above my head. I know that sounds absurd but it is my feeling. I do feel broken. So can I have legitimate empathy with folks that can not walk or other less obvious disabilities? I see the idiots that ruin their knees doing stunts but that's being pretty repairable, perhaps more other limitations will be overcome by technology.
posted by sammyo at 5:41 AM on September 15, 2014


Sorry, but there are things that 99% of the population can do that I can't, but could once. It impacts what I can and can't do every hour of every day. I'm going to regard that as abnormal and a problem. I don't need others to define that experience for me, or tell me what sort of language I should use about myself.
posted by tyllwin at 5:46 AM on September 15, 2014 [27 favorites]


I'm emphatically not broken and I find this kind of framing useful and uplifting.

for context: I have EDS
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 5:50 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm not going to impose broken-ness on anybody who doesn't think of themselves that way, certainly. But this also seems to neglect that there are a lot of people with conditions that are body- and brain-breaking, and that are not as tidy to just dismiss as other ways of experiencing the world. One of my best friends has chronic pain to the point where she can barely leave the house; the world can't accommodate her to a level that will allow her to do what she wants to do. Some psychiatric conditions are things that could easily be dealt with by having more tolerance for a diversity of behavior and ways of thinking, but I don't want the world to accommodate my eating disorder, I want it gone forever. The world's standards for who's broken are stupid, but "we're all okay just the way we are" just isn't true.
posted by Sequence at 6:03 AM on September 15, 2014 [18 favorites]


Robert Rummel-Hudson (Mefi's own, briefly) had a thoughtful explanation for why he uses the word "broken" in reference to his daughter.

It strikes me that this is the kind of thing where it's a highly personal and individual thing, something for which we ideally shouldn't begrudge each others' preferences. However, it also strikes me that actually having that happen is nigh unto impossible.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:05 AM on September 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


It makes handling my PTSD, anxiety, and depression easier to think of myself in terms of being broken in the head. Having some busted wiring. As Vonnegut put it, bad chemicals in the brain.

It helps me remember that I shouldn't hold myself to that damned standard of normal. To accept my limitations and be okay with them. My brain's a little fucked up, is all, I remind myself, but I'm still okay.
posted by cmyk at 6:08 AM on September 15, 2014 [12 favorites]


The thing is, blind people don’t need second sight to be cool. We don’t need to fix what isn’t broken, and we don’t need to imply that someone needs an extra compensating boost to reach the level of badassitude all those sighted people naturally attain by virtue of fully functioning eyes. It’s demeaning.

I don't understand this, never have, and probably never will. I wouldn't think to suggest that a blind person is somehow less human or inferior as a person or has less worth than someone who is sighted. But to attempt to deny that being blind is a problem that ought to be fixed if possible seems willfully deluded to me. If the word "broken" doesn't suit, no problem -- I doubt it would be the go-to terminology for a lot of people. But to insist on an "it's no worse, just different" framing here kind of wildly misses the (factual, medical, undeniable) point, doesn't it?
posted by eugenen at 6:15 AM on September 15, 2014 [18 favorites]


I agree with the comments here about sliding scales, and I think that there is a certain degree of privilege that can affect these conversations. If you have a lot of money, and a strong support system, you can do a lot more than if you're poorer and don't have a strong support system.

So, it would be great to have more conversations revolving around "Well, if you're in a wheelchair, you can still travel, and get out into the world, and do all sorts of things!" but with the understanding that those things involve money, and a network of friends and family that can either help you out a lot, or can afford to hire someone else to help. And, since solving economic inequality isn't going to happen anytime soon, it's more comfortable? easy? simple? to focus on, "Let's work on curing what's making you be in that wheelchair."
posted by damayanti at 6:23 AM on September 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


Ableism is that belief that everyone who is able-bodied is “normal” and everyone else is abnormal.

As I'm pushing my wife around in wheelchair, while remembering that our first date involved us hiking for miles, I'm pretty sure that being able to walk is what the majority of the populace is able to do. So yeah, it's defined as normal. That's not necessarily good or bad, it just is. I'm stating the obvious in that doesn't make anyone with a disability better or worse than those without, but the disabled do have different experiences.

The linked article doesn't strike me as particularly thoughtful, just someone with a blog who suddenly had a particular thought and the ability to express it. Which is great, but hardly profound or universal. It was helpful for them and that's great. But it's use to other may not be so profound or deep.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:33 AM on September 15, 2014 [23 favorites]


First, it's true that ablism is something we need a lot more conversations about, so to that, I am glad this was posted and that the author is writing about it. Terminology is worth talking about and I agree in many ways BOTH with what the author is trying to convey and the counters to the way she is wording or perhaps some of the intent behind it.

I can not dance. At all. To the degree that when I have been in beginner/total novice level classes I have been the person who is darting around doing totally random different stuff than everyone else is and I literally can't figure out what everyone else is doing with their bodies.

I am not required to call myself disabled for this. No one else calls me disabled for this. Most people would not really even consider that I need to be categorized as disabled for this. I do have legitimate problems with spacial reasoning. I have problems with following simple directions and a lot of basic task oriented functioning.

Because THAT (which is likely a similar and/or co-related issue to not being able to understand the steps involved in dancing even at their most simple level) would be considered a handicap/disability depending on who you're asking because it can impair my ability to do tasks associated with daily living.

My mother, can not handle emotional conversations. At all. She has a hard time with emotions of any kind. I felt very emotionally neglected through middle and highschool, and she was a terrible parent considering my needs. However she functions well at work, she earns a lot of money, and she does chores at home.

She is not considered disabled/handicapped because we don't consider tasks associated with emotional support of our fellow human beings or using empathy, intuition, logic, and reason to deduce and understand things about our fellow human beings and serve and support them.

So despite the fact that she failed at certain aspects of mothering and possibly through no fault of her own was not up to some the tasks that were needed, she is not going to have to walk through life with either the message that she is disabled or the one that comes along with it... that she should change or be changed.

She is allowed to hire therapists, counselors, or psychiatrists to take over the emotional work she is not able to do without being considered disabled, whereas I am not allowed to hire a personal planner to help achieve tasks related to that without being considered disabled. Certain people with enough money can hire people to do these things, and their money functions as a buffer from them having to face they aren't good at these tasks, and they don't have to be given the disability label.

So it's worth stating, some people need more of different kinds of services to be part of society. But that who gets labelled as disabled for needing which different types of accommodations is a social construct. If empathetic people were paid the best, I could outsource the tasks I wasn't good at,and the people who suck at empathy would be considered incompetent or disabled and I would be paid to do the work I do naturally supporting my friends and family members with their emotional needs and intense and difficult situations and feelings on the regular. Because I have obstacles to achieving in a traditional school setting, the skill sets I have are not as easily accommodated into paid and respected work because we assume that anyone who has difficulties in the structure of school can't do anything else of value worth paying well for or couldn't learn as well OR BETTER than some in certain areas if school were designed around their needs.
posted by xarnop at 6:44 AM on September 15, 2014 [20 favorites]


I think about ableism a lot as a writer, especially with regards to representation. I mean, while obviously people with disabilities aren't a majority or anything, the reality is that they're a LOT more common in real life than they ever are in the media. I want to see (and create?) stories where people with disabilities are just around. Not for any particular point in the story -- which is I think where that impulse to throw in the savant-like "second sight" characters comes in -- but just because, just like everybody else, they're part of humanity.

But to attempt to deny that being blind is a problem that ought to be fixed if possible seems willfully deluded to me.

Within a literary/pop culture context, I don't think you're really seeing the whole story here. It's not that blind people (for example) want to be blind. It's just that, time and again, if there's going to be a blind person in a story, their part of the narrative is either:

A) MIRACLE CURE I CAN SEE NOW YAAAAYYYYY IM FIXED

or

B) I may be blind, but that's OK because I'm unnaturally gifted at some other thing. Often, in SF/F stories, some other thing that is superhuman or like 20 times more badass than anything that could actually exist in real life.

It's rare that you see a story about a blind person who is just blind and that's whatever. Or a story about a person who is blind but their real problem is that they can't get a date (unless you're Geordi LaForge!). Disability is rarely just a character trait, like being tall, or sucking at sports, or being a superhuman turtle who practices martial arts.
posted by Sara C. at 6:53 AM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]


I am not disabled, but I have a very close family member who is (invisibly until you talk with them, which as noted above is not at all the same thing as something you can see from across the room, and which also isn't the same thing as something so invisible that you could talk to the person and never know unless they told you) and so this is something I have had to think about all of my life.

watching an elderly woman reduce a teenager with Down syndrome to tears by calling him a “retard” in a public, crowded store

This used to happen more often but it still happens. No one has ever done it to my family member in front of me, but if they did I might straight up kick their bigoted ass, old lady or not. But (and this is pure hypocrisy) I don't get on people who use "retard" as an intensifier or as a joke anymore. I don't laugh, and I put them in the "fuck you and fuck everything about you, bigot" category in my head, but after a couple years of trying to find ways of saying "dude that's not cool" without it turning into a Big Thing I've just let it go. It's embedded incredibly deeply in people's attitudes, and people (and script writers) who would be ashamed to use a racist epithet feel fine dropping "retard" and "short bus" jokes in casual conversation.

But to insist on an "it's no worse, just different" framing here kind of wildly misses the (factual, medical, undeniable) point, doesn't it?

I think the medical "try and fix it!" framing is unhelpful in three ways. First, ability (or normalcy, or whatever language you prefer) is on a spectrum. It's not blind vs seeing, it's people with fighter pilot vision through to people who need reading glasses to people who can see but with uncorrectable vision problems and so on to the fully blind end of the spectrum. Same with the autistic spectrum, same with almost any condition or ability you could name.

Second, a lot of things aren't fixable and never will be. Even if medical science can grow new brain tissue, it won't return an identical personality, say.

Third, having a range of abilities and diversity of people is good for a society. It's an incredibly shitty aspect to our society that we give zero value and role for anyone who isn't 100 percent "normal" and "able," but that's a reflection on our society, not on those people. Being blind means you can't drive which is just a neutral statement, but the value-ridden choice was in creating a society where we value driving and not, say, story telling. (On preview, I think xarnop makes that point better -- these are socially constructed categories, and it is not to our credit that we are dismissing entire categories of people as worthless while also validating and defining as "normal" people who cause harm.)

Returning to the FPP itself, I hadn't caught that it was about representation in genre fiction until very late in the piece. I'm not sure I've ever read genre fiction that dealt seamlessly with disability, but it's not something I specifically read for and quite likely a writer who really got it right would create a character and scenes that I wouldn't notice because it is simply "right" and reads like it should (in the same way that you notice awful misogyny much more than you notice a woman character who is simply a person). This is a good reminder to notice this in fiction and look for well-done examples.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:59 AM on September 15, 2014 [8 favorites]


There's value to the mental exercise of radically rethinking our perceptions of what "normal" is, but when it comes to fiction, there is always a bit of a stilted attempt at dealing with disabled characters. For some reason, there was an era in which programmers or other tech characters were invariably wheelchair bound. Why? Presumably because the writers felt that a disabled character should be somewhere, and the technologist played a role in which the disability had the least impact on the progression of the story.

I tend to gravitate less towards a "everyone is normal in different ways" and more towards the idea that "everyone is broken in different ways." Not necessarily equally so-- the extraordinarily smart person isn't necessarily (and actually rarely is) socially stunted or physically limited to "equalize" his intelligence, nor is the strong person going to automatically be dumb or ugly to "equalize" his strength (the idea that everyone is "average" when you sum up all their attributes), but everyone has their problems and limitations, and we need to undertand the reality of that.
posted by deanc at 7:12 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm broken. Once upon a time I did a lot of things I cannot do now. The ability to do those things went away over a period of several years, and with no explanation I just beat myself up for my failure to stay in shape. I felt bad and other people thought I didn't like them anymore because I just couldn't keep up like I used to.

Then I got an official diagnosis, MS. The diagnosis was a huge relief. I'm no longer a slacker when I fail to do all the things. I forgive myself, and I make no secret of the problem. I can't change the MS. But I can change how I respond to it. Coming out as broken has given me access to a very helpful set of coping strategies. I am doing a lot more things now than I was doing before the diagnosis.

I know a woman who is completely in the closet about her MS. We seem to have similar levels of ability. But she's a shut in. I am not. Being broken is not nearly so bad as being closeted.
posted by elizilla at 7:22 AM on September 15, 2014 [22 favorites]


A handicap is rarely just a character trait in a story because reality is like that: having a disability can affect your entire course through life. It isn't some independent variable like rolling a 6 in CHA. It has affected my answers to some of the more important questions people ask themselves:

Will I try to have offspring? I love this hypothetical child enough not to pass on my genes, so no. Were I to adopt, I most likely will not be around for the full course.

Will I work extra-hard to find a long-term mate? No, it seems cruel to saddle my putative SO with a spouse who is going to have some very ugly final years. You can play "When I'm Sixty-Four" over and over and ask Manson to look for additional meanings, the lyrics have no suggestions for what is coming down the pike.

Whether or not I will prepare for retirement? No, chances are I will not get to collect, it's a waste.

Will I travel? It's a gamble. If I get sick, will the physicians know how to treat my rather rare illness? Given how many times I have been prescribed contraindicated medications, quite possibly not.

Can I go and enjoy this thing that a whole bunch of other people are enjoying? Often the answer is no. This thing is out of my reach, which makes me kind of a drag.

It's not as if I am Mr. Potato Head where you just stick on a disability and that's that. Some can affect your entire person, from how your face looks to what you can wear to how you will die (and how soon). I would have had a different historical path without this — and I think it fits — affliction.

All of the feel-good platitudes and careful reframing doesn't change a whit of it, other than making me feel as if someone thinks I must be pandered to. I'm perfectly okay with saying: "this is not 'normal' and it's kind of crap if you take a moment to think about it." Putting yet another word on the Euphemism Treadmill and lecturing people does not help.
posted by adipocere at 7:26 AM on September 15, 2014 [33 favorites]


She is not considered disabled/handicapped because we don't consider tasks associated with emotional support of our fellow human beings or using empathy, intuition, logic, and reason to deduce and understand things about our fellow human beings and serve and support them.

She's not considered disabled because she's lacking certain skills, not certain functioning body parts.
posted by jpe at 7:43 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


having a disability can affect your entire course through life

I mean, yes and no?

Yes, it would be unrealistic to have a deaf character who can just magically lip read and speak perfectly and always be understood and live a fully mainstream life with no affect on her "course through life". Just as it would be unrealistic if every basketball team on TV was nothing but shlubby short people who are magically able to slam dunk.

But, no, there's no reason to make every story that features a deaf person be about how terrible their life is, or how their deafness got magically cured with the powers of sci-fi, or what an incredibly gifted drummer they are. It's perfectly OK to throw in Joey Lucas every now and again.
posted by Sara C. at 7:44 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


"She's not considered disabled because she's lacking certain skills"

Well that would make all disabilities associated with skill deficits void. Invisible disabilities (that involve skill deficits) may be a contested area for some in society but I think overall we've at least reached a point where a majority can admit they exist. And how they are defined absolutely involves social constructs.

A fourth of our population are labelled mentally ill, so even if to you, this doesn't count as a disability, people are being treated as if they have one.

And I personally agree, that we should handle skill deficits in a different way, but that could also apply to physical skill deficits where the important thing to know is what accommodation is needed not how to define or categorize the person. You don't have to define someone as disabled to give them a wheelchair or create doors that open with buttons etc.
posted by xarnop at 7:57 AM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


So, it would be great to have more conversations revolving around "Well, if you're in a wheelchair, you can still travel, and get out into the world, and do all sorts of things!" but with the understanding that those things involve money, and a network of friends and family that can either help you out a lot, or can afford to hire someone else to help. And, since solving economic inequality isn't going to happen anytime soon, it's more comfortable? easy? simple? to focus on, "Let's work on curing what's making you be in that wheelchair."

Easier for you, maybe. Not easier for me.

I've been disabled all my life. It's how my body is, and I'm pretty comfortable with that. But let's look at what happens what that 'cure' comes around - because there is (as of very recently) a drug on the market that I could take. At the cost of a major lifestyle change, to make space in my life (and lifestyle) once a week for the rest of my life for a medical procedure that, done once or twice is fairly minor, but cumulatively seems like a lot. With side effects like a day or two of exhaustion during and after each treatment. Headaches. Allergic reactions of varying severities, so now add in steroids and antihistamines. The benefits are potentially significant, but not life-saving or (IMO) radical. And the cost is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - paid for by insurance, but I'm not fool enough to think I wouldn't have to continually fight for that coverage. There are people who have decided that's worth it, and that's their right, I'll respect that.

But me, I think I'll stay in my body, the one I'm comfortable in, the one I've worked hard to figure out how to have a relationship with. And fight for political change to ensure that I and my people have access to affordable and accessible housing, education, employment, travel and transportation, the works. Because frankly, the downsides of what you see as a 'cure' are just too high. And creating a more equitable society, well, that benefits a lot more people than just my particular medical category.

It's not me that is broken. It's the world around me.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 7:57 AM on September 15, 2014 [21 favorites]


I do however think that we can support individuals identifying themselves or their struggles as disabilities, handicaps, feeling or being broken in some way, or very much wanting a skill defect to be fixed because they don't like it. Or to NOT talk about themselves that way if they don't identify with it.
posted by xarnop at 7:58 AM on September 15, 2014


spaceman_spiff- well put. I support your efforts and all people with functional difficulties' right to empowering and self determined accommodations.
posted by xarnop at 8:01 AM on September 15, 2014


I'm quite new to the challenges of people with disabilities, having been lucky enough to live free of any major impairment. But as somebody who now cares for a child with a disability, I am keen to understand what the "best practice" is regarding, well, everything. Including terminology.

I agree with Brandon Blatcher. The terms disability and normalcy have too much real-world usefulness to be abandoned, and actually being able to define the boundaries between the two is important for understanding the genetics and environmental factors that influence disease.

However, I think the author nevertheless makes an important point about the use of these terms in everyday parlance and the media and their consequences on people with disabilities.

Nobody wants to be defined by their disability, as much as it might affect their life. And the casual use of terms that refer to somebody's disability does little but remind people of something that do not need to be reminded of. Worse, the normalisation of this practice establishes a mindset (mostly subconscious, I think) that people with disabilities are defined solely by their impairment. Which is what I think is part of the reason for why empowered* disabled people are underrepresented in TV and movies and books. After all, how do you give a disabled character any agency in your stories if you don't believe that disabled people can shape their own destiny.

*empowered does not equal "fixed" or having superpowers
posted by kisch mokusch at 8:03 AM on September 15, 2014


Please stop trying to hammer me into the convenient holes you've drilled; my name isn't Margaret, even if I am square.

It's important for you to listen. That means hearing that, yes, disabilities can color your whole life and while it isn't automatic rending of the breast and pulling at the hair, woe!, it is often a series of odd little subtractions and closed doors. It's not a neutral trait, it's not the worst thing ever, but it is often something in between.

Listen: It isn't as if I won't have hilarious cat misadventures, but I am going to be spending more time in waiting rooms and urgent care centers. I will be doing fewer cool things. I might spend more time sitting in poorly-lit rooms than is good for an ongoing character in a series.

But, in all fairness, how inconvenient an accurate reflection my disability might be for television writers is pretty low on my list of worries, and if liberties have to be taken, that's fine. However, don't kid yourself that you're doing it out of a impulse for social justice of any stripe.
posted by adipocere at 8:08 AM on September 15, 2014 [6 favorites]


However, don't kid yourself that you're doing it out of a impulse for social justice of any stripe.

Sorry, for clarification, is the "you" here tv writers?
posted by josher71 at 8:20 AM on September 15, 2014


Television writers, spec writers, and folks writing literature. Webcomics. Portrait artists, if it comes to that.

Basically, anyone who has the deep, overriding impulse to tell me I need to be depicted as just a guy who happens to have this thing! and it's totally okay and we won't use the word "normal," etc.
posted by adipocere at 8:25 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


spaceman_spiff, I think you may have misread the attitude in my post; when you say "easier for you, but not easier for me" that's exactly what I meant.

So, for example: I know someone with MS, that's progressed to the point where she's lost the use of her hands almost entirely. She used to quilt. We can make sure she gets enough physical therapy to use her hands to the extent that she can, work on creating assistive scissors and rotary cutters and all other equipment, get lots of people who come around and help her sort through fabric and cut things and lay them out, and that's fantastic. But all of those things involve a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of help. In the end, she still isn't being able to do it as nowhere near as often as she used to, as it can only happen when she gets all of those moving parts in place.

For me, then, in this case, I look at this situation, and it's easier for me to say "Man, it would be awesome if we could cure MS" then "We need more low cost assistive services for people with MS". But I'm coming at this from the position of an able bodied person, and I do realize that no, since we're not going to have a cure, at least in her lifetime, we need to focus on making sure that the world is, to the degree that it's possible, set up in a way that she can do as much as she can.
posted by damayanti at 8:25 AM on September 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


Also to those who are new to the idea of ablism being a large and active movement, that author is not alone in discuss or coming to the conclusion she's describing and there have been many heated discussions from within disability/differently abled communities:

Many who would be called disabled have taken to using the term differently abled, and many prefer the term disabled and have concerns that the term "differently abled" carries it's own baggage and harms.

I'm personally a fan of self determination, but that does leave some major questions about how to use appropriate language when speaking specifically about how to address the needs of people with specific needs or whether disabled/vs abled terminology is necessary to use in such contexts at all.

I just wanted to point out the author is not the first to bring this up and they aren't just random ideas she suddenly had, they are very contentious and discussed issues in disability and anti-ablism activism.
posted by xarnop at 8:32 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


We’re no better or worse, more capable or incapable than anyone else. Just different, and shouldn’t we celebrate that?

My mom's disability limits her mobility and gives her constant pain. I celebrate her as a person, but I don't see any reason for celebrating her particular disability or the ways in which it makes her different. "I'm so glad you are different. Wouldn't the world be a little less interesting if you were like everyone else and weren't always feeling high levels of pain?" Also, while she is overall quite a capable person, there are areas of life in which her disability has restricted her physical abilities.

My mom has always objected to the "differently abled" language so I've been raised on one side of what I understand to be an ideological divide.
posted by Area Man at 8:41 AM on September 15, 2014 [16 favorites]


It makes handling my PTSD, anxiety, and depression easier to think of myself in terms of being broken in the head.

Personally, I would say that there is a difference between thinking about your disabilities that way and thinking you yourself as a person are broken, which is how I read the original poster's intent.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:56 AM on September 15, 2014


I think it brings up the fact that people coping with limitations, illnesses, or disabilities, are not a monolith and may have different needs they are hoping the community will understand and respect, either to be seen in the pain and struggle they are experiencing, or to be respected as people who are NOT experiencing pain or struggle- who have their needs met and are interacting with the world in the way they like and don't think of themselves as disabled at all and don't really want the world to either.

I feel like activism and addressing ablism can be nuanced enough to accommodate this spectrum of needs and we don't need to assume there is one way to be or view disability or functional impairments or skill limitations.
posted by xarnop at 8:58 AM on September 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


There's also of course the tension between thinking of a disability as an individual problem and thinking of it as problems with the build environment: the problem is not that you're in a wheelchair, the problem is our cities aren't build for people in wheelchairs.

Or, to put it another way, there are millions of people like myself who suffer from a severe handicap but who are nonetheless rarely considered this way because people who need glasses to see can function perfectly well within our society.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:00 AM on September 15, 2014 [8 favorites]


Incidently, and I didn't realise it at the time, but Sarah Chorn has indeed thought more about these things, as I linked to her before talking about writers writing about disability.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:03 AM on September 15, 2014


watching an elderly woman reduce a teenager with Down syndrome to tears by calling him a “retard” in a public, crowded store

It strikes me that hammering out a Universal Default Standard for whether or not "broken" is acceptable wouldn't actually do anything to eliminate such incidents as the one above. Because the kind of person who would do something like that isn't doing so because of the existence of one or another type of word.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:06 AM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


That's a recipe for never attempting social change through changing attitudes, because there will always be people resisting that change or reveling in being evil.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:09 AM on September 15, 2014


Oh, I'm not saying that's an excuse for not attempting social change. If anything, I'm suggesting shifting the method one uses to attempt change.

If your goal is just to say that you prefer or don't prefer the term when referring to yourself or your family, then go nuts. You have that right. What I'm getting at is that if your goal is actually to stop all people everywhere from being shits, I just suspect you're gonna need a bigger boat.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:25 AM on September 15, 2014


Are there very many pieces of media (TV, novels, etc.) where:

a. The main protagonist, and/or one of the main characters has a disability.
b. The plot/theme/focus of the story is NOT on the disability itself. E.g. 'plot: A skilled detective solves a cold case, and they just happen to be visually impaired.'

Hell, are there any? I'd love to hear about it if there is.
posted by spinifex23 at 12:26 PM on September 15, 2014


X-men, professor X!!!!
posted by xarnop at 12:36 PM on September 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


The Bone Collector with Denzel Washington did that.

The late 80s/early 90s TV series "War of the Worlds" and the late 90s time travel series "7 Days" both had the "wheelchair bound science/technology specialist" trope. In "Sneakers", the programmer/hacker was blind. Though some may argue that these three cases were instances of "he makes up for his disability with a special super power" when programming was still considered extremely arcane and out on the professional fringe.
posted by deanc at 12:56 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


In my case, because of a congenital disfigurement (it really doesn't matter for the purposes of this comment what it is), the word "broken" might just as easily have been substituted for "freak," which is the word I was taunted with on playgrounds and in school cafeterias for the duration of childhood and adolescence, until people got to the age where they couldn't get away with yelling "freak" anymore. But adults still stare at my impediment, or make jokes about it, or ask me rudely "How did that happen? Were you in a tractor accident?" Or, they just do a double-take and gape open-mouthed at it, without any compunction whatever, even though you can see that I can see you staring, and not stopping even when I make it clear that I can see you staring. The worst and most abjectly humiliating is when physicians ask me supposedly dispassionate (and often very aggressive) questions about the impediment in the guise of collecting clinical data. They, too, are performing their version of "What a freak! Holy shit! I've never seen anything like this except in medical textbooks!"

These are all "adult" versions of a group of kids backing me into a corner and pointing and repeatedly screaming "FREAK!" at the top of their lungs on the playground, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by blucevalo at 1:02 PM on September 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


Or, to put it another way, there are millions of people like myself who suffer from a severe handicap but who are nonetheless rarely considered this way because people who need glasses to see can function perfectly well within our society

Except that to function perfectly well you need an adaptation that removes the severe handicap. The environment does not change.
posted by dmh at 2:44 PM on September 15, 2014


A) MIRACLE CURE I CAN SEE NOW YAAAAYYYYY IM FIXED

or

B) I may be blind, but that's OK because I'm unnaturally gifted at some other thing.


I've been rewatching Twin Peaks recently and I noticed on this go-through that, while Donna's mom is in a wheelchair for the entire series, not only is it not a plot point of any kind, it's literally never even mentioned by any other character. It's sad that that struck me as unusual.. altho TP was always fairly progressive in its characterizations.
posted by FatherDagon at 3:10 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


In "Sneakers", the programmer/hacker was blind.

Note that he was based on an actual blind phone phreaker. Who made up for his blindness with other superhuman traits.
posted by Hatashran at 3:43 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


JoyBubbles didn't make up for his blindness: it gave him access to technology which made creating phone phreaking tools possible. Tape player/recorders — both reel-to-reel and cassette — were expensive luxuries at first. The National Library Service for the Blind made these tools available for free to blind readers.

JoyBubbles had the same superpowers any hacker does, but with the right equipment at the right time. (Also perfect pitch helps.)
posted by Jesse the K at 3:56 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


a. The main protagonist, and/or one of the main characters has a disability.
b. The plot/theme/focus of the story is NOT on the disability itself. E.g. 'plot: A skilled detective solves a cold case, and they just happen to be visually impaired.'


I'd love to see more of this, though I'm okay with some focus on the disability. I'm currently reading an NK Jemisin book (The Broken Kingdoms) with a mostly-blind protag that sort of has a superpower, but her superpower is "the only thing that she can see is gods and magic", so it's sort of a severe visual impairment that manifests in a way that makes her oddly powerful sort-of sometimes. The descriptions are really interesting and rich so far, though (I'm not far into it).

Also sort of superpower-y, but the Peter Jackson books all have a handwavey magical thing about how all the half-god protagonists are "hard-wired for Ancient Greek", which manifests in most of them having diagnoses for dyslexia or ADHD because of reading problems; when I was at the bookstore I always tried to encourage kids with reading difficulties towards those ones. (Also because they're decent, at least what I've read, and a lot of kids found them fun; they were one of our most popular series.)

Marvel dabbles in this, most recently with Hawkeye, but tends to shove disabilities under the rug or magically cure them. I think one of the problems with a lot of modern pop culture stuff, especially in genre fiction, is that there are a lot more metaphors for disability around than actual disabilities in fictional characters. Matt Murdock (Daredevil) is blind, though; I recently read a trade paperback from the early oughts in which he dates Echo/Maya Lopez, who is deaf (and has basically the superpower to magically learn any technique upon seeing it once, but it doesn't "make up for" her deafness; practically every protagonist in Marvel has either a superpower or is a "mundane" human with extraordinary powers, so I'm more willing to shrug about it there than in other genres). The art style in those issues are fantastic and I'd highly recommend them to anyone interested in superhero stuff. The Marvel Database lists characters by weakness, which could be seen as either pretty crass and/or ablelist, or as an interesting bit of logic in which real-world disabilities end up in the same category as "can't be exposed to sunlight" and "has to wear a visor all the time or risk accidentally blowing shit up with optic blasts", YMMV.

Though The Hunger Games has a fair amount of magical cures, Peeta does get a prosthetic leg at the end of the first book and keeps it for the rest of the series; I also thought Katniss' PTSD was pretty well handled.

Avatar: TLA has Toph, of course.
posted by NoraReed at 4:12 PM on September 15, 2014


Of course, TV tropes has this covered:
Anyone in a wheelchair will possess super intelligence to compensate for his disability. This allows the character to remain a vital part of the cast without being expected to do anything physical.
posted by deanc at 6:45 PM on September 15, 2014


> b. The plot/theme/focus of the story is NOT on the disability itself. E.g. 'plot: A skilled detective solves a cold case, and they just happen to be visually impaired.'

Motherless Brooklyn
. It's been years since I read it, but as I recall Essrog's Tourette's is just a personality trait and not a Big Deal.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:54 PM on September 15, 2014


The plot/theme/focus of the story is NOT on the disability itself. E.g. 'plot: A skilled detective solves a cold case, and they just happen to be visually impaired.'

Ironside

Look, I have a friend who is interesting and does interesting things. He also has MS. Forget accessibility in the "built world", if you based a character on him but didn't regularly show how his entire day is scheduled to the minute based on the battery life of his scooter and the pick-up/drop-off schedule of Dial-A-Ride and Access to get him to and from home then you've simply exchanged giving him a superpower for giving him a magical superscooter.

As someone with an invisible disability I don't understand why someone would choose to give a major character a disability and then pretend it doesn't matter.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:28 PM on September 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


Oh, there was Stevie on Malcolm in the Middle.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:36 PM on September 15, 2014


I'm guessing what they meant, Room 614-A, was that it isn't a Disability Story with capital letters; you sort of end up with is semi-inadvertent subgenre of literary fiction About Issues about many Important Topics that people don't really want to read for various reasons (though that does sometimes rule out some good stuff and does tend to unfairly and prejudicedly marginalize a lot of books about topics that aren't able-bodied neurotypical cisgender straight white men in the middle and upper classes pondering doing something morally questionable and who have manly problems communicating their emotions); it's the difference between reading a Book About The Death Of A Spouse and a book where someone's spouse happens to die. I love reading books with gay characters but generally don't seek out Gay Books. Stuff like that.
posted by NoraReed at 7:51 PM on September 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


aw man I made the mistake of clicking that TVTropes link and then I went through to the Disability Superpower page and it has the best quote about Matt Murdock, who I mentioned upthread, from Captain America: "Daredevil's 'power' is that he's not quite blind."
posted by NoraReed at 7:55 PM on September 15, 2014


(oh apparently that is a parody comic quote sorry) (I do not want to mislead anyone in a way that causes them to attempt to suffer through Marvel Civil War and believe that doing so would be deeply immoral) (I will stop posting now)
posted by NoraReed at 7:56 PM on September 15, 2014


My favorite character in SF&F with disabilities is Miles Vorkosigan. He may travel through space, but he's still disabled and even what is fixable is only so at great personal cost and trouble. And as he overcomes his birth disability, he even acquires new ones that challenge him.

The stories aren't just about his disabilities. But they are a huge part of his character, and make him more interesting, because otherwise he'd be a complete and utter Mary Sue (brilliant, noble, all the women swoon).
posted by jb at 8:18 PM on September 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


it's the difference between reading a Book About The Death Of A Spouse and a book where someone's spouse happens to die.

Maybe I'm talking about realism then. If you write about a group of friends and want to represent different types if people, great! But if one happens to rely on a scooter to get around and you send them all to the state fair, you're either going to have to address that person's (or rather, their scooter's) limitation or just pretend they can spend 10 hours bopping around the fairground. And it may not matter if that's their only scene, but a regular character would be different in my mind.

But I see your point about the different kinds of framing.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:21 PM on September 15, 2014


I've been in a wheelchair/scooter for about seven years now and on oxygen for ten years, so when I'm out running around town I appear "broken" or "disabled" or "handicapped" or whatever you want to call it. I don't care what the current terms are and I actually much prefer being openly "disabled" to the latest PC term because when someone uses "newspeak" they come across as phony and pretentious, patronizing and supercilious. Give me instead the coolest of the cool - little kids - who come up to me and say, "What's that thing in your nose?"

I spent most of my life like anyone else - I was slim and strong and wiry and athletic and constantly active. I really couldn't see any reason why I couldn't do whatever I wanted to from a physical or logistical standpoint and I had many adventures as a result; it was a very good life. Then, at the age of 48, I was stopped in my tracks by Parkinson's Disease. It took me down hard and fast and I was a mess for about two years; then, little by little, I stabilized and began my new attitude of acceptance of my inabilities but determination to do everything I possibly can - until I can't anymore. That works for me, but I would consider it ridiculous to expect other people who are able-bodied to think of me the same way.

My body is broken - badly, after 20 years of Parkinson's and now the end stage of lung disease - but my spirit is NOT broken. I'd like people to actually learn the difference, accept and respect me as I am until I do something to earn their disrespect, offer to help with little things, like when it's obvious that opening a door would be a great help to me, but honor the fact that my brain still works and I'm still of some value to the world. And in exchange I'll be happy to do anything I can for you. Most people, of all sorts, treat me kindly, and we often have a good laugh together.

The terminology just gets annoying; what matters is the attitude.
posted by aryma at 11:15 PM on September 15, 2014 [13 favorites]


This ableist / anti-"normal": stuff just seems like nonsense to me. - and has no grasp of basic economics of small social groups.

The "history" article linked in the main post starts with
Prior to the 1800’s it was believed that people with disabilities were evil and possessed by the devil or were being punished for a prior sin. As a result of these beliefs many people with disabilities were cast aside and left to die. There were also incidences where people were tortured and killed.

Which seems like such a simplistic understanding of the mechanisms of social groups in a world of scarcity... I think a lot of anthropologist / sociologists would argue that it should be something like

"Prior to the 1800's due to the level of productivity and scarcity of resources it was difficult to maintain non-productive members of the social group and hence they were left to die/ exposed as children. These individuals may have been treated as demonic / possessed to allay the guilt in this treatment."
posted by mary8nne at 6:42 AM on September 16, 2014


> The plot/theme/focus of the story is NOT on the disability itself. E.g. 'plot: A skilled detective solves a cold case, and they just happen to be visually impaired.

I don't know if he's one of the main characters, because I've seen only one episode and I don't know if I can take any more -- it's funny but so miserably awkward that I can't deal -- anyway, one of the guys in Hello, Ladies! uses a wheelchair and while it's addressed, and used for humor, it's just another character trait.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:41 AM on September 16, 2014


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