Last night I had a Twitter meltdown. I typed through the tears. That was a mistake. Some words were poorly thought out and I regret those. I apologize for and deleted one tweet. The rest remains.
Before I get into specifics — and I intend to get very specific — context.
Is there a worse feeling than the feeling of being used? Grief is worse because that’s loss and loss is emptiness. Being used feels a little like loss because there is always the lost hope — the emptiness of what should have and could have been. Betrayal is possibly worse but it often also involves being used. Being verbally attacked by someone is, for me, less awful than being used. Is that odd? I don’t know if that’s odd. Maybe it is not less awful but maybe it is the one I have come to accept as the one I can’t change whereas I feel like I should be able to stop people from using me. I feel like when you attack me we aren’t pretending to agree but when you use me you are involving me in something I did not consent to be involved in and even before we get to the fact it is never something I would consent to, the lack of consent in itself is a big problem for me.
I get used a lot. Maybe what makes it worse is the ‘a lot’ part and the lack of counter-balance of being not used. I guess it’s more accurate to say my arguments and analysis gets used a lot but if you understand the concept of lived expertise then you might appreciate why those are one in the same for me.
I’m a white multiply — visibly and invisibly — disabled woman. I am also poor. I have survived so much violence. Trauma carved me. I live on disability benefits in a tiny box in a crowded tower that used to be public housing until the former government in my province transferred it — and the 500 people living here — to an evangelical charity. No one asked us if we wanted to be part of their white saviour story. I doubt many of my racialized neighbours and others of different faiths or none at all, would have agreed.
I tweet a lot about my life and my city. I am actually far more selective about what I tweet about than I think most people realize. Because I am disabled and poor and a woman they assume they know more than they do about me — and they also assume they know more than I do about everything and anything. Mostly I tweet to highlight a policy that should not exist or needs to. I keep the majority of my private life private and I don’t reveal much at all about the people around me because privacy and consent about when and what to be public about is something poor people, especially poor disabled people, are routinely denied. But to the majority of people reading my life is just poverty and disability porn to consume.
Being eaten alive is actually why I never pick 9 when doctors ask me to rate my pain on scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst pain I can imagine. (No matter the level of my pain I figure being eaten by tiger would be worse. You don’t want to know what I imagine for 10.)
And yet here I am being consumed day after day— consumed but never digested. Used if useful. Never fully human. Mostly they bite off bits and spit them (parts of me) at people they don’t like.
This is no where more true than in urbanism and particularly in active transportation and cycling Twitter.
I am a non-ambulatory wheelchair user. I have other accessibility needs and many are influenced by fact I am poor, fat and a woman. I don’t own a car. If I could I would. That alone puts me apart from the urbanists and cyclists who use me.
I would own a car because our cities are inaccessible. This is not a mistake. This is not the result of a lack of awareness. When our cities were first built and designed disabled people were put away somewhere out of sight — especially if they were poor. Institutions have had themes over the ages but they were all, in some form or another, places to dump people surplus value deemed surplus humanity. Eugenics which picked up where enslavement and colonialism left off, deemed everyone not white lesser and some white people lesser than others.
The cities remain inaccessible because white supremacy and capitalism continue to need ableism and the aesthetics and architecture of exclusion is considered ‘normal’ and part of our ‘heritage.’
Disability is a social construct created and used by and useful to white supremacy and capitalism. Unfortunately too many disabled white people spend their time trying to prove themselves deserving of the same white privilege as non-disabled white people instead of trying to dismantle the system and ideology that oppresses us all.
As a white disabled person I take this to mean that I must consciously fight not only for my accessibility but that of other disabled people in ways that involve fighting white supremacy and capitalism. It means being deliberate in not only which battles I fight but in how I fight them. In how I use my voice and when and where. My choice is to lessen oppression and to undermine not reinforce whiteness within society and specifically within accessibility. My goal is radical revolutionary change.
I always look behind and around me. I punch up to poke breathing holes. A crack says I was here.
This is not to suggest I do any of this flawlessly or without making major fuck-ups.
Accessibility is not the great equalizer in the hands of white, wealthy disabled or non-disabled people. At the moment accessibility is nothing more than some dimensions that expand markets and reinforce a hierarchy of proximity and privilege. There is tremendous gatekeeping around accessibility and some of it relates to type of disability but a lot of it relates to class and race. I fight to help change that.
This is a tiny glimpse into the complex politics I try to navigate not for political correctness or to avoid being cancelled or whatever else people think motivates some of us to reflect on how to interact with others in a society that genuinely thinks I personally would be better off dead and doesn’t care what I have to say about anything. I think about the things I say and do because in spite of every message on earth telling me otherwise, I believe I matter. I believe what I say and do matters. I believe the same of every single one of you.
The meltdown: Background
A number of years ago I ended up very involved in one of my city’s heated and absurd debates. Some people were opposing paving over an area where railway tracks had been to make an active transportation corridor — a greenway. The arguments against it ranged from absurd to wildly absurd. I jumped in to say, that while you might think gravel matches the colour of trees (no really) better than asphalt, and while you may wish to keep squatting (extending your property line) on public lands, and while you might not like idea of more of ‘those people’ coming to your area, paving the corridor was the way to make it accessible and yes that trumps the violence of taking away a blackberry bush and no I can’t just stay on the sidewalk and be grateful (I warned you they were absurd).
‘But bikes!’ the opponents shouted.
What about them? Bikes are not anymore inherently bad than they are inherently good. I also pointed out that disabled people also ride bikes so accessibility trump card was still in effect. The only argument I was prepared to entertain was one that argued there was a greater human rights impact in not paving than in paving. There obviously was not and the opposition muttered off.
This made people who previously did not care that I exist, suffer, am excluded and oppressed, suddenly sit up and take notice. Compliments and concern followed. I was and am very aware those were and are conditional on ‘when you are helpful to me getting my way.’
Suddenly my threads on sidewalks and curb cuts were ‘informative’ and ‘important.’ I was invited to sit on an active transportation council — where 98% of the discussion was about bike lanes. I put forward a motion about curb cuts (8,000 corners in a city of 27,000 corners had none, the rest varied from unusable to ‘wow, omg, I found *a* good curb cut’ and the timeline for completion was 200 years — receipts.)
Nothing changed. But all along it was clear I was supposed to be flattered by their attention. I could sign in as a guest at the club as long as at it amused them. A crip can come in handy when you are fighting for things you want. Sometimes these days you just have to check off that ‘inclusive’ box. I never had any illusions about why I was invited but I did harbour illusions about my ability to make them see the logic and wonder of not discriminating against and harming other people.
In all the years since none of them ever asked how they could help fight things disabled people were fighting for and against. None of them ever asked what I thought their priorities should be. They don’t listen. They don’t care. They never consider the context of my words.They never look at the complexity of how I try to situate something in a discussion about policy. They never consider class or race. They swing at anyone who disagrees and I am the bat they sometimes pick up to hit with.
The Pandemic and Stanley Park
I would need to do an entirely different post to even begin to scratch the surface of how the pandemic has hit myself and other disabled people, particularly disabled poor people, particularly disabled poor racialized people. While middle class disabled people have been focused on how frustrating it is to see accessibility they requested and were denied now being adopted, disabled poor people have been in 911 crisis mode trying to survive. The pandemic is also happening within broader politics of late stage capitalism and discussions about eugenics and real threat of dictatorships, white nationalism and fascism are no longer called hyperbolic. All of these represent existential threats to disabled people and to all racialized and poor people disabled or non-disabled. Injustice and inequity and oppression are not new — but the level and spread of the threat is. Strategy, tactics and priorities must be adjusted accordingly. This is not 2017, this isn’t even January 2020.
In the midst of this some cyclists decided that their 911 issue was closing some or all (depends who you talk to and likely how PR savvy they are) of Stanley Park to cars. They decided this was what needed to happen and then some people, including some disabled people, said hang on, we need to be able to drive into and around the park because that is the only way we can access and enjoy it. Fact check true. I have spent years — not days or weeks — in that position.
On cue this is the point where I am suddenly a useful tool for the cyclists to go hunt for and pull out of the box they put in the back of their shed.
‘@mssinenomine says disabled people cycle too so shut up you [ableist slur] [ableist slur] [ageist comment] promoters of car culture which is literally KILLING PEOPLE!! how do you not see the urgency in getting another place for us to bike on top of all the other places we have to bike right now during a pandemic — this is a crisis of the most extreme importance focus on this bike lane everybody this is sosoooooooo important to humanity’
Black Lives Matter is a minor distraction in comparison to their bike lane it would seem.
‘Isn’t that right @mssinenomie’
I have not left my apartment since March. I have no balcony. I had to find friends to pick up my garbage and mail because the good ‘Christians’ running it didn’t find those duties as Instagramable as dropping off a hamper weeks into the pandemic that someone else supplied and I didn’t ask for or need. I have no idea when I will leave my apartment and move in the unfree way I previously did, if I will even survive this pandemic and if I get sick if I will be denied care and deemed expendable because health resources are stretched to their limits because ableds are all out partying like there is no pandemic at all.
When I tried to use the only supposedly wheelchair accessible trail at the park they are fighting over I tipped at the entrance and sat on the sidewalk and cried until HandyDart could send someone back to pick me up.
I took a deep breath and thought about it. Whether or not I can personally benefit from the accessibility is not a deal breaker one way or the other.
But before I could even venture an opinion I would need to go there and see how things are. I would wheel it and I would take a ride in a car. I would listen to the concerns of disabled people on both sides. I would look at the various issues. I would consider the class and race make-up and ask myself what role this would play in creating greater equity or inequity.
I could not do the essential things to even have an opinion one way or the other so I told them I would not be entering the Stanley Park discourse. None of them asked why. It didn’t matter. I am not a person. I have no value. My thoughts and analysis and approach have no value. Just a few odd things that can be stolen and utilized and turned into weapons to win with.
Accessibility and the very survival of disabled poor people is of no concern to them.
Even after that someone sent me a link to a video made about the disabled people fighting against the changes suggesting the disabled people were being used and exploited. I explained why that was an ableist assumption to make and deprives the disabled people in the video of their agency and assumes a lack of competency and respect for their autonomy. I also expressed my opinion that the things they were saying about their accessibility needs were valid and must be respected.
I told them I was on the side that neither had presented — how we make Stanley Park accessible in a way that leaves no one behind and even before than how and who should be discussing Stanley Park given that it is on unceded land.
Naturally they ignored what I said. Each carried on digging into their respective disrespect for the other.
And then yesterday a longtime mutual who I believe is also disabled, used all my arguments — which apply equally to both those fighting against closing lanes and those fighting to reopen them — to only slam the people she disagreed with, which includes other disabled people. ‘Where were they on speaking up about curb cuts?’ she demanded as if the cyclists had a long history of fighting for and speaking up about accessibility.
At the end of her thread she tagged me saying for more of the things she said people should follow me. Co-signing me to this attack on other disabled people. Using my words, my arguments to elevate one side — a side that regularly mocks, belittles and harasses disabled people who dare to point out inaccessibility caused by a thing they like.
A side that ignores police violence, sexual and racialized harassment and assault on the streets and transit and fare we can’t afford and rails against bus drivers strikes because what are labour rights when you want to pump up the volume on it’s ‘abundant™️’ hype.
A side that is going outside.
The thread went viral. My words. My arguments. Used against other disabled people. Turned into clubs to be used by accounts that mock and belittle. Someone favourably retweeted her thread calling the genuine and real accessibility concerns raised by some disabled people “a red herring.”
The thread did harm to discourse and to disabled people. It will be quoted and shared as more reason to ignore and dismiss people who don’t fit urbanism’s narrative and version of utopia.
They deleted the tweet tagging me but still used all my analysis and points in order to attack one side and not consider the ableism on their own.
I am so angry. This is why.
