Return To Summer 1996 Index
Return To Summer 1996 Index
Within today's society the medical model of disability predominates, anything less than cure is seen as failure. Patients are admitted to hospital either to be given a diagnosis or to be mended. It seems that if patients cannot be cured, there is little to do or say to them.
When I first became disabled I was filled with an urge to learn as much as I could, in general terms, about the world of which I had become a part. The disabled community is like no other. To begin with there is no law which bars admission. In medical terms, a physical or mental reduction in one's ability, which for many people defines disability, can happen at any time.
Words used to describe the disabled (incapacitated, invalid, handicapped) all stress a negative perspective. But the changes I undertook are a very important part of me and make me who I am. How can they detract from my being?
In the vocabulary of the majority I am only a shadow of my former self, I am less able than I was and less whole. It is expected that I should grieve for the life I have lost and the future I will never have. Assumptions are made and I am placed in a category.
For those who knew me before, I am lost between who I am and who I should be. For those I have met since, I fall into the box of the disabled - my call for recognition as a unique person is lost in a chorus of voices who define me as disabled, crippled, handicapped , incapacitated or stupid, less of a person than themselves. In short, like an out of date tax disc, I am invalidated.
When I was nineteen I had never been ill, I had never stayed in hospital. I was proud that I had never broken a bone. I was young and assumed I was a liberal. I argued for the equality of the races and the sexes. The fact that a whole community of people were having their lives exploited and were suffering prejudice of a severe kind escaped me.
I never even considered the existence, let alone the plight, of the disabled community. It almost seemed as if the disabled community were invisible. If it were not for some of our more vocal members then this would be the case today.
In the case of other groups, like women or Asians, there is an awareness that these groups have been and are still ill treated. People are aware of racism and sexism. These are known to be wrong. Society accepts something must be done about it. Disabled people are a different matter.
Children are bought up to at worse to fear, at best to pity, the disabled community, the disabled themselves are made to feel worthless and less than their `normal` counterparts. People are then compartmentalised and forgotten. The solution to the problem of disability, a problem created by societies own prejudices and fears, is to put the problem out of sight. Then it isn't a problem any more. To become disabled is to become part of a huge ghetto, part of a system of segregation, in which there are two camps; the norms and the disabled.
So where did it all go wrong? A look at the history books won't tell you much. The history of disabled people has not been covered well at all. Like the black community and the female community before us it is the turn of our own members to try and find our place in history.
It can be gleaned that the history of the western world is the history of marginalisation of the disabled community. We have been in the past something to be embarrassed about and ignored. It might be argued that the case remains the same.
My own personal experience means I have been a member of both camps. I have been through a set of feelings and stages which some academics have written about . I admit freely to the problem of accepting my situation. What I refute though is an acceptance of the personal tragedy theory that has been offered in almost every direction I have turned. The difficulty is that this theory, and movements of dependency, are so ingrained in society, that it is very difficult not to accept them as the truth.
Personal tragedy theory claims that a disabled person has suffered a personal tragedy of immense proportions. Their life is in ruins and they are condemned to their circumstances. They have lost some ill defined part of their whole selves. Why is it that the experiences and changes I have been through have to make me less of a person? I feel I have learnt much, surely that makes me more of a person. Society sees the disabled as victims. Like Dickens's Tiny Tim in Scrooge we are made to feel the subject of tragedy, innocents struck down, who rely on the good will of others.
Society creates a system of dependency to alleviate any, misplaced, guilt it might have. The disabled person is led to believe he is a victim of personal tragedy. Self pity is almost expected from them, as long as it is not too great, and doesn't interfere with the normal running of things. No concerted attempt to overcome the real roots of disability has ever been made. Physical and mental problems do not cause disability. Society does.
Examine the situations laid out below.
1. A man can not get on a public bus because his immobility makes it a problem.
2. A deaf person is isolated because his loss of hearing means he cannot be spoken too.
3. A woman is not given a job because her disability is too much of a problem to make it cost efficient.
Consider the alternatives:
1. The man can't get on the bus because the bus was inappropriately designed. The needs of a whole community have been ignored and there is a strong reluctance to make any changes.
2. School children are taught Latin, a two thousand year old language they will never use rather than how to communicate to those who have hearing problems.
3. We will only employ people who don't require potential help or extra costs. We will ignore talent offered and concentrate on what the person can't do instead.
The above illustrations express the difference between personal tragedy theory, which focuses blame on the individual and social oppression theory, which identifies society as the cause of disability. As one commentator put it, `Is the problem of access to buildings caused by people being unable to walk, or by the widespread social practice of putting steps into buildings? [1]
These seem like harsh words. Especially as many people try to learn about and understand the predicament of the disabled people. And a lot is being done in the UK to help the disabled. For instance welfare benefits, the PACT (Placement and Counselling Training) scheme at the employment centre, independent living initiatives, huge fund raising charities. But sometimes things are not what they seem.
The Disability Resettlement Officer does not enforce anti discrimination law regarding employment but begs employers to take on disabled people. Employment schemes are lip service. They further segregation. A whole factory full of disabled people, separated, loosing any opportunity they might have had to socialise with the wider community. Training schemes are inappropriate, as are motives of promoters of these schemes. What's important in giving a disabled person a job is not his quality of life but that guilt can now be replaced by smugness.
Welfare for the disabled is part of a complex web of dependency, which is a self fulfilling prophecy. The disabled person is offered the role of the personal tragedy victim. He accepts the role, he has little other choice, and he encourages more pity. Welfare benefits are offered and accepted. They are code for telling the disabled person he can expect no more than this. It is his lot. Accept it. Large charities raise a lot of money for the victims of disability.
Advertising campaigns are made at the cost of the disabled. They work on the pity angle, reinforcing stereotypical views of what it is to be disabled. There message is clear:- These victims have nothing. Give us money to help them, it is all they can expect. It is argued that the end justifies the means, but all the time the public are bombarded by these images by the media then the system of dependency and personal tragedy is reinforced.
The problem with any initiatives that are launched for disabled people is that it is an initiative usually run by non-disabled people who have their own agendas.
Apart from day to day learning of recoverable things (like getting to the shops, visiting a pub,) a learning process began, deep inside, early on. For a long time I was not aware of it. Instead I struggled with the person society told me I was, who I had been, and who I am. I felt people treating me as different. I was placed in the personal tragedy explanation of things.
And for a while I became part of it and accepted the position given to me. I accepted dependency. If I didn't then I hadn't come to terms with my disability and I had a chip on my shoulder. But if I myself believed I had been the subject of personal tragedy, if I accepted what I was expected to accept then what chance was there for me? I am lost, I become nothing.
People argue that you can't deny the facts. A disabled person is less than whole, they have lost something they will never have back. A part of them is gone. These same people argue that the colour of your skin makes you different or that your sexuality makes you different. These differences make you less than normal, someone to be marginalised, ignored and quite often detested. Where has this obsession with normality come from? Who is to say what is normal and what is not?
I am not apart from society I am a part of it. Becoming disabled has meant becoming me. At a recent demonstration I saw a placard saying...
Change is our right. It will come.
Yes, it will!
