What I Wish I was Told Before I was Born

Now, I know that it is entirely impossible — but, if it wasn’t, here is what I would have loved to have known before I was born, so I would be better prepared for the world. In this article you will come across some extra material and the ever-important statistics. I will also weave some of my own anecdotes into it, so apologies if I seem a little uncomfortable at times. This is very personal for me, and I haven’t really discussed any of this before. I’ll be discussing disablism as I think that it’ll be better to focus on one thing in detail, rather than spread my net too wide. I also wish to showcase something that often doesn’t get attention.

Disablism

I wish that someone had told me how prevalent it seems to run through every seam of society. That would have been easier than figuring it out rather late. It would also have explained me being put in a lower class for English — despite the grade for my English that I attained in my SATS. Instead, I was somewhat bewildered and went along with it. I didn’t see it as being in anyway unusual because of my age and, well, I thought it WAS normal! To my credit, though, I DID realise that I shouldn’t have been in remedial English classes. I would love to reiterate — there’s nothing wrong with those classes. I just didn’t need them! After a bit of wrangling, I managed to end up in a higher English class — which was, needless to say, much better for me. I still don’t know exactly why they put me in that class. Though, my gut feeling is that they knew I was Disabled, and they thought that I couldn’t handle anything else. Or, more charitably, they might have had to place me in the same level classes for all my subjects — and I was nowhere near as good at maths as I was at English.

I have also experienced people speaking differently to me because I’m Disabled. I don’t remember this, but my mum has told me about it. (First, you need to know that the term people use to refer to disabled people “special needs” isn’t well-liked, to put it mildly. I realise that most people don’t know this and that’s fine — they often don’t say it in a mean-spirited way. However, I remember disliking it even as a child. I remember someone telling someone else that I had special needs, and disliking it. My memories of the nuances I felt at the time are fuzzy. So, I can’t really pin down whether I barked at someone else disclosing that I was disabled to someone, or the term special needs. But I’ve gone off on a tangent.) Anyway, apparently someone was talking to me slowly and I mentioned that I disliked people talking to me in what I called a “special needs voice”. Obviously, at the time I wasn’t involved in disability pride culture to know why it was so wrong, and I wouldn’t use the words “special needs voice” now, as it assumes that some disabled people do need to be spoken to like that — and puts me on a pedestal (and I really don’t want that!). I obviously don’t remember my thought processes at the time, though, so I can’t tell you what actually went through my mind.

So, that is just one of the things that I wished I knew before being born and — just three of my experiences with the thing in question. I could have gone on for longer. Much longer. Much, much longer. What about you?

References, links and statistics

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/disablism — Definition of disablism
https://www.theguardian.com/society/disability
https://www.demos.co.uk/files/disablism.pdf — since 1990 682 people died because of disablism
Being Disabled in Britain:
“Across Britain in 2016/15, disabled young people aged 16–18 were at least twice as likely as their non-disabled peers to not be in education, employment or training (NEET)”
“The proportion of disabled people with a degree remained lower than that of non-disabled people”.
”Disabled people across Britain are less likely to be in employment than non-Disabled people”.