Blogging Against Disablism Day TODAY

Check out Diary of a Goldfish (http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com)for more than 200 other bloggers' contributions to Blogging Against Disablism 2009.

Here's my contribution:

For years I have worked to decode and recognize my own privileges in the overculture -- and to ameliorate their effects where possible. I speak out against discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender or perceived gender, sexual orientation or perceived orientation, age, size, language of origin, country of origin, perceived economic status ...

Now I see that, in addition to benefiting from white privilege and heterosexist privilege, among others, I also have been benefiting from able-ist privilege. This is my first post about disablism or ablism or disability or ability or neurotypical bullshit. I'm speaking as clearly as I know how, with the very best of good intentions ... and I know already that something I have said will have offended someone, just because I didn't know any better. If you're that someone, I hope you'll let me know what I said that was offensive, and what I should have said instead. (And, as a person who has issues with self-criticism already, I hope you will do it gently, but clearly, but gently. Thanks.)

This season I’ve been reading the blogosphere and getting some more of my preconceptions challenged. Reading Wheelchair Dancer -- http://cripwheels.blogspot.com/ -- and Chewing the Fat -- http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/ -- I’ve been noticing my own tendencies to ask the questions that are new for me but may be all too familiar (boring, intrusive, foolish, obvious) for the recipient. (Like the conversation would be all about me, even though there are two (or more) of us in it).

The questions I ask, thinking to make friendly conversation (!), aren’t materially different from those I hated long ago as a pregnant woman: When’s the baby due? Like that would be anyone’s business. Are you hoping for a boy or a girl? (My answer was always, “Whoever shows up will be fine,” but almost no one noticed the lack of false-dualism or heteronormativism.) Should you be doing that? or Here, I’ll do that, you shouldn’t have to. (No, I’m doing this because I choose to, thanks).

Of course receiving those questions for the five months or so that a pregnancy is visible doesn’t give me the experience of hearing them year in and year out. Why would I think it did?

The deadly stories brought forward in people’s memories by what they imagine is a similarity in a stranger’s situation: What lack of empathy makes us tell pregnant women all our dead-mother stories? What emotional lack makes anyone think a cancer patient wants to hear that a friend of yours died horribly from just the cancer they’ve got? What makes me think (unless, I guess, I’m a researcher specializing in what you've told me you have) that it’s appropriate for me to ask you if you’ve tried the latest pharma or surgical experiment?

Just because there’s no pregnant belly or wheelchair in my house doesn’t mean you want me to ask about yours. Just because I’ve never seen anyone eat bacon and eggs for breakfast doesn’t mean you want me to comment on your every-day experience.

How about the times I have blithely assumed a wheelie would want me to help push them up a hill? Yes, they were obviously struggling. But I hate it when I’m obviously struggling and someone takes my baggage out of my hands. Would I like it better if someone took my elbow and manhandled me up the ramp? No, I thought not. So why would I think I should grab the wheelchair? Without even asking?

As I read I’m discovering what any good reporter should have known: Observing a situation – or a person – from the outside is not the same thing as experiencing from the inside. But even so, the job of the reporter is not to enforce  the prejudices of the majority on someone the majority may find unusual. And the job of the reporter is NEVER to make fun of the person being interviewed, though I've seen that.

As a reader, the experience I would like to have is the experience of being with the person who is the subject of the interview … not the experience of being with the reporter who is doing the interview. But mainstream reporting too-often misses the point when the reporter is writing about someone the reporter thinks of as unusual – it’s as if the sports announcer suddenly started talking about the 3rd baseman’s red hair instead of the triple play just completed.

As I read I’m noticing how much sympathy (NOT pity) I feel for the person who must graciously explain, over and over again, facts that are none of our business.

Sara’s post on Talking Points – you can find it at http://movingrightalong.typepad.com/moving_right_along/2006/03/object_lesson.html if you weren’t a reader of Sara’s while she was still on planet – is wonderfully clear on this particular aspect of the way the Temporarily Abled don’t get it. Full Disclosure: I have been personally guilty of each of these.

So many of my walkie assumptions have been shattered / opened up / enlightened and enlivened by my reading in this neighborhood of the blogosphere. Things I would never have thought of imagining … and so (yikes) believed I didn’t need to acknowledge … like the difference in experience between having a traumatic amputation and having a surgical amputation after making the decision that it’s medically necessary … the difference between having once had an ability which has since been lost / removed / given up … and having never had that ability.

Some writers speak of “not considering myself disabled” because they don’t want to participate in the overculture’s notions of what so-called disabled people must be unable to do. Some don’t think of themselves as disabled because this collection of abilities is how they’ve always been. Some (Sara comes again to mind) don’t see themselves as “disabled” because they’ve worked so hard to become “abled” again after major body-altering surgery or motion-altering illness.

Me, I’m still reeling from seeing how painful my casual words and attitudes may have been to the people who use wheelchairs, or crutches, or walkers, or guide dogs, or hearing aids, or assistive communication, or text-to-voice software, or to the people who call the rest of us neuro-typical.

Happy Blogging Against Disablism Day. May the minds of the Temporarily Abled be opened. May we all learn to recognize that difference is normal. And that everyone has abilities and disabilities. And that it’s not my job to judge yours as “disabled,” any more than I want you to judge mine.