Blogging Against Disabilism Day
I live in two worlds when I'm logged on to the internet. I live here, on Disaboom and in the disability blogosphere and on disability-related email lists. On the other side of the coin, I live in forums that relate to my job, to my pets, as a commenter on blogs that are witty, clever, and insightful but have nothing to do with disability. Rarely do I mix the two. This week, I did, and the results illustrate just why disabilism is your problem, my problem, your brother's problem, my grandmother's problem, and everyone's problem.
Disabled Politico is at the ADAPT conference and posted a video of a deaf woman taken to the ground by police. Apparently, she was using a bullhorn and police told her to put it down. Unable to hear their instructions, she didn't relinquish the bullhorn, and the video shows her on the floor screaming, "I'm deaf! This sign means I'm deaf!" (Captioned version embedded below).
I posted a link to Disabled Politico's blog about the incident in two places on the internet: An email list that relates to disability, and a forum that doesn't. On the disability-related email list, within a day, someone had identified the woman as a well known deaf blogger, and expressed concern for her safety. There was some muted outrage at the lack of mainstream media coverage of ADAPT's conference and the direct actions including blocking all access to the Health and Human Services building in Washington, D.C. A few people blogged about "the deaf incident" or about ADAPT.
Elsewhere on the internet, the woman in the video wasn't quite so lucky. If I'd bought into the comments on the forum I mentioned, which, by the way, is generally a fairly accepting place when it comes to things like sex, race, sexual orientation, body shape and size, and occupation, this is what I'd be posting:
I've been had. The "deaf" woman in the video almost certainly staged her "take down." She speaks so clearly; she couldn't have had hearing loss from birth. But she claims to understand sign language. That's rare in people who weren't deaf from birth. Except, of course, the kind ASL interpreters who can hear and who learn sign language to help the deaf communicate with the hearing. She was surely being disruptive, and the police are handling it very well. She threw herself to the floor to make it look like she was a victim. She's resisting arrest. I've been had, by Disabled Politico and a sneaky so-called deaf woman, who probably hears just fine!
But I didn't buy in to those comments, especially because many I know in the blogosphere know the deaf woman in the video. Of course she was being disruptive; that's what direct action is. Clearly, the police could have handled the incident more poorly. It's no Rodney King attack- THANK GOODNESS. She is safe and probably spent no more than a few hours under arrest.
I can understand that some people do not feel direct action is an appropriate way to address discrimination. Most of those people have never been discriminated against. However, what I just can't understand or enable, is accusing someone of faking their disability because they speak clearly AND understand sign language. She's just not disabled enough to really be deaf! She couldn't be!
Is it that it's threatening to see a deaf woman who could "pass" judging by speech alone request accomodation for her disability? After all, a deaf woman who spoke clearly was denied a milkshake on similar grounds earlier this year, setting off a huge blogstorm and sparking discussion even in places like The Consumerist that generally don't cover incidents of disabilism.
Or is it just that people, even some people with disabilities, don't see a minor thing like the fear a woman faces as she's unable to communicate with the officers arresting her as their problem?
I think perhaps the latter is true. When disabilism happens, even violently, the word "disabilism" isn't spoken. When Brent Martin was killed, nobody outside the disability blogosphere even mentioned discrimination, hate crimes, or disabilism, much less owned it as their problem.
The fear that a deaf woman feels as she's arrested, screaming, in a room full of people with disabilities, but nobody pauses to get an interpreter to sign the police officers' instructions, is my problem. The accusations that she is lying about her hearing status from others are my problem. It is my responsibility to educate where and when disabilism occurs, as best I can, and hopefully without becoming angry.
When a troll meanders onto the blog of a woman with a disability and spews well-intentioned disabilism, it's my problem. It's my job to speak up. It's my responsibility (and one I didn't meet, in this incident) to educate calmly and without insults, because even if the troll won't be educated, perhaps his friends who he sent the link to so as to brag about causing trouble will. Maybe they'll say, "Gee, pal, this woman doesn't sound like she was asking for anything out of line. What's your problem?" if we explain, calmly, though it's for the thousandth time, that wheelchair users have gender, that wheelchairs can't go sideways, that a woman with a disability has every right to take a pee (and that you, too, can take a pee in an accessible toilet, but she can't take a pee in an inaccessible one- so which one helps more people?)
When I hear the r-word, it's my problem. It's my responsibility to stop and say, "Please don't use that word."
Why is disabilism my problem? Because I'm disabled?
Wrong.
I look, walk, talk, think, speak, hear, and see, more like the disabilists in any of these incidents than the victim.
And that's exactly why it's my problem. Because if I'm not afraid to speak up and speak out against people who look, walk, talk, and act like me, in defense of someone who doesn't, it sets an example for others. If one able-bodied person sitting on a committee for an event says, "Let's get in touch with the local disability community and see what they suggest in terms of accessiblity and accomodations," next time, maybe it's the guy sitting next to her who speaks up and remembers that the disability community wants, "Nothing about us without us," and that this is a perfectly reasonable request.
Maybe the father saying the r-word when he sees a price increase in the grocery store isn't listening when you tell him that word offends you, but maybe his daughter or son is.
Disabilism is everyone's problem, because it's a human problem. Disability is as human as hair color or the common cold. Like the common cold, most people will eventually have a disability, whether age related, injury-related, temporary or permanent. Like hair color, it's also a type of natural, human diversity.
Disabilism is your problem, whether you're reading this as a member of the disability community, as an able-bodied ally, or as a stranger who stumbled across this, because it's a human problem. It's my problem, your problem, and everybody's problem. Take a small step today to own that problem, to deal with it by bringing it into the light rather than sweeping it under the rug.
Add the words "disabilism" and "disabilist" to your vocabulary and to your computer's spell-checker, and start being unafraid to use those words. One small step to create the language that should have been in the news articles about Brent Martin's murder. One small step toward a world where we'll never need to use those words.
