Don’t Cry For Me: Proof Ableism is Everywhere.

I asked people with my condition about using a wheelchair. They responded. I stopped asking.

Not too long ago, I posted about maybe getting a wheelchair and how positive I felt it was. You can read the full post here, but long story short — wheelchairs aren’t new and exciting, but maybe I need one. After I wrote the blog, I began to wonder if I was being premature with this. After all, I have never met another person with the same condition. I know you people are out there because the internet, but still. I’ve never met you. 
It’s hard to judge the progression of impairment if I’ve got no-one else to measure against, so I posted in a message board asking for people’s experiences about using a wheelchair and hereditary multiple exotoses (or MHE is as it’s more commonly known in the US).

Don’t pay attention to how few likes the post got, it’s the kind of facebook group where people comment… Don’t use this post as the yardstick to measure my online popularity. Anyway, the only reaction was one of a crying face emoji. Grr. What about my post elicited an emotional response from you?! Obviously I’ve blocked out the names for confidentiality but my goodness, I was offended. No-one has died, what on earth are you feeling sorry about? But that’s just my initial reaction. The comments were well meant too but they pretty much boiled down to, “DONT GIVE UP!”.

Oh okay. Cool. No-one’s actually answered my question but cool. Everyone seems to think that using a wheelchair is some form of defeat, but think about it — what are you fighting against? The way I see it all you’re doing is fighting to stay within the societal norms that tell you moving around without mobility aids is good. Why do you see using a wheelchair as defeat? For me, it’s just something I’d use to help me do what I’ve got to do. When my two legs wouldn’t carry me far enough to get to my meetings and classes, I passed my test and got a car. Did anyone shout at me to not give up when I did that? No, because a car doesn’t have this huge stigma about it, but a wheelchair does. The principle is the exact same thing. I can’t use my body to do task X but I can with adaptation Y. So do it.

I get why people think it’s such a huge thing to avoid, I used to think so too. I didn’t think too far into why I thought having a wheelchair was a negative, but now I know why. It’s terms like wheelchair-bound, it’s all the negative connotations. It’s all these repeated messages that somehow if I use a wheelchair I’ll become lesser that have contribute to this thinking and can perpetuate disability discrimination. Why are you so against it? It’s a prejudicial bias founded in not much logic whatsover and doesn’t actually help. But these messages are everywhere. One of my favourite TV shows, Bones. By the way, minor spoiler alert if you care. A character in that show acquires a spinal cord injury and requires a wheelchair. Oh YES! I thought. Naively. Finally a show that will tell disability stories! As I watched it, I was less happy. The story just showed the character dealing with all these shitty messages about impairment, disparaging crip humour and anger. I’ve never had a spinal injury, so I can’t comment on the experience and it’s accuracy but what I can comment on is the reinforcement of this one key message. DISABILITY IS BAD. A new impairment = bad. Look how terrible this characters life now is. Look at how all the characters tiptoe around him. Look at how his temperament has changed so much that he’s almost literally a monster — a kind guy becomes a sarcastic, misogynistic, back-biting prick. Now usually when we talk about such a negative representation of a minority group, we can brush it over with the passage of time. Oh, but that was the 70s, things are different now! No. With this disability representation, it’s happening right now. It’s the current storyline being aired on TV.

See, so when messages like this are so prevalent, you can see why responses like this are too:

‘…bounced back after surgery, thank God’
‘Melancholic but enlightening experience’
‘but due to being hard-headed, she’s yet to let it put her into one’
‘I’m going to continue as long as possible before I concede’.

Some of the responses had some positive elements, like one of them advised me to do what is comfortable for me, and another told me to have surgical intervention instead. I think the underlying theme of battles and defeats just made my skin go a little crawly. I know not everyone will perceive disability and impairment in the same way I do, but it’s interesting. If everyone else is fighting this — should I be too? How is it that so many people with my condition are averse to one particular mobility aid but totes fine with crutches, walking sticks, cars, bandages, splints, in home adaptations… almost anything but a wheelchair? Is it something about the condition that doesn’t qualify? I don’t get it.

But there. Rant over.

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