As I've been researching for my final paper on disability, I've come across a number of articles and blogs that have opened my eyes in both positive and negative ways. One blog I came across that I found both hilarious and frustrating is "BBC-Ouch! Disability Magazine." A number of the articles are hilarious, describing how to be "disabled cool"-- explaining, for example, how decorating your wheelchair with tinsel around the holdiays just to make the non-disabled people feel less awkward flaunting their non-disability around you is NOT cool.
While I was playing around on this site, searching for other sarcastic, funny, and (surprisingly) inspirational articles, I came across one that really set me back. This article is titled "Disability humor on the street" and starts out innocently enough-- describing a new TV show that will show disabled people pulling funny stunts (think, an amputee running out of the ocean screaming, "SHARK!") and catch the reactions of observers. AS it progesses though, and even more in people's comments in response to the article, a cruelty and abuse of disability is exposed.
One person responding shares her story: "I have used my impairment to get things such as seats on buses. One thing I did do was when I went on a long haul flight to see my uncle. On the way home, my uncle prayed on my impairment to get a seat which had leg-room, as I have bad muscles in my legsa and arms.,All in a day's work for me, though. I totally love Damon's story too. Go and sort things out, Ouch readers - you have a right to get what you want out of life!
Katie Fraser, Welwyn Garden City"
And another: "The "It's a miracle!" scenario works best when visiting Catholic churches in Italy. I get out of my wheelchair to negotiate the steps to examine the saint's relics in more detail, and before I know it I'm living proof of his or her sainthood.
Linda Webb, London"
Granted, I certainly don't believe this is the norm or that most disabled people abuse their disabilities, but I believe it is exactly this cruel, mocking, self-serving behavior (even though it may be shown by only a small percentage of the disabled community) that further hinders society's unwillingness to change the world to be more accessible to disabled people. I am by no means suggesting that society is right in not changing, but I can understand how this type of behavior makes people not want to adjust for fear that if they give an inch, people may take a mile.
So how do you help those actually in need of help, adjust for those people who will make good use of the shift, and avoid allowing people to abuse it? This is the exact issue that surrounds so many controversial issues. My parents, for example, argue against my "idealist belief" in socialized healthcare with this defense. Yes, they say, socialized healthcare will help millions of people who deserve it, but what about the people who abuse the system? When its your hard earned money that is paying for someone who has willingly wasted away his life, I can see how this defense makes sense. In all honesty, I don't think I can give a well thought out, honest answer to the 'which is better' question because it's still not my tax dollars that are being used.
So, I'm posing the question to the class-- how do we help people who deserve our help, without letting others who don't need it skate by?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
What?! Do you not get this at all? How do we "help" people.. without "letting" others "skate by".. with all due respect, who do you think you are? Pointing out and challenging how ridiculously temporarily able-bodied people have learned to respond to "different" bodies and things like wheelchair use is politically important. Talking about it is a vital strategy for survival. However people choose to "make the best of" violent attitudes or work to destabilize them is not for you to judge. When someone with a disability "uses it" to get a seat you are offended?! How do you feel when a woman wears lipstick or heels (i have to assume you are not a woman who does or a man who dates or employs one, bc you would obviously sooner have the fleas of 1,000 camels infest your armpits than capitalize on the oppression of women)?
My aunt with whom i lived when i was in high school used a motorized wheelchair and all the time people would address me (as a teenager!) instead of speaking to her - assuming she couldn't order her own food at a restaurant and things like that. All the time she was treated like a child (or a monster) and we negotiated this shit, trying to laugh about it, on a daily basis. Occasionally, instead of gently correcting people, we made a terrible scene. We blatantly shoplifted from time to time, just bc people were scared to death to stop someone using a wheelchair. Other times she would drool and moan and i would pretend to cry - or yell at her and tell her to shut up or she couldn't go out again for a month. People were horrified or amused, but could not bring themselves to say anything- ever. We would end the "show" by laughing hysterically sometimes, other times we'd make an exit that would leave people wondering if they should have called someone.
Survival (emotional, psychic, and physical) is political. Doing things people don't expect of you is also political.
Be more thoughtful in your analyses. Read more carefully. Think before you write things that others experience as hate speech on the internet.
Please forgive the heat in my reply- the tone of your message hurt my heart.
It seems to me that you're trying to work through a really tough problem for people in our culture to wrestle with-- the idea that there are right ways and wrong ways to have a disability. To be specific and use your wording, there are "people who deserve our help" on one hand, and on the other hand, there are people who "don't need it," but who "skate by" on the ever-important "tax dollars" of other people's "hard earned money." What your post shows is that you know (or are in the process of learning) that there is a different way to think about ability/disability-- one that doesn't judge a person based on how he or she measures up to normate beliefs about bodies (what they should do, what they are for, how they are supposed to look, and so on).
You can see the humor in the shark example, but something is stopping you from seeing the humor in other demonstrations of "disabled cool." Why? Despite your liberal leanings, you still seem to be reading about the disability pranks with the idea that the pranksters are playing "cruel" jokes on normates and exploiting their disabilities for unfair privileges. From the post, it almost seems that if people are feeling good enough to joke about--or even to "benefit" from their disability--they must be faking the severity of it, and thus, not worthy of the government aid they may or may not be receiving. Also, be careful about assumptions regarding disability. Not everyone with a disability receives Social Security or disability benefits.
To give you a clear idea of what I'm getting at, I want to reinterpret some of the examples you cite here, from a different perspective (but it's a perspective that I think you know, but are having trouble applying to these more blatant examples). Think about the shark prank: why might it be funny? Not simply because it alarms people on the beach, though I think most people's analysis stops there. It's funny because it plays on the normate idea that there's something automatically wrong with a body that has, for example, one hand instead of two. The only way for people in a normate-mindset to understand or interpret a amputee's body is to attribute lack: it's "missing" a hand; there "should" be hand there; by some "travesty," there isn't! [insert normate screams] On the contrary, if our ideas about bodies were more accepting of difference, it wouldn't be funny to see someone with one hand running out of the ocean, yelling "shark!" Instead, we might imagine a bored child on the beach observing the event and commenting, "What's so funny? There could be a lot of reasons why that man doesn't have a hand, and many that have nothing to do with a shark." See what I mean? It's only because normative culture constructs the body as something with impossibly strict requirements for everyone that people would assume the shark was the cause of the hand being missing, or the leg, or whatever-- because we have a pre-existing (but socially learned) idea of what bodies are supposed to look like. If we had a larger understanding and acceptance of the different formations of bodies in reality, seeing an amputee pull this prank would fall flat. Freshly shark-bitten stumps look entirely different from amputated limbs, and we can all tell the difference between them. The joke is on normate culture, which doesn't train itself to care about the difference between a shark bite and an amputated limb, because it prefers to interpret both as "unacceptable" or "abnormal" bodies. And if an amputee gets a kick out of pointing out that normate culture is unable to read his or her body in any way other than a cause for alarm, DESPITE HAVING THE INTELLECTUAL TOOLS TO DO SO, well, I would have a hard time finding cruelty in that.
As for the example of the woman who uses a wheelchair: normates don't even try to understand the variety of reasons people use wheelchairs. Normates prefer to think that everyone who uses a wheelchair is "confined" to it, "in" it all the time, and any other use (partial, or situational, or temporary) gets read as an abuse, or as laziness, or worse, as cruel trickery. It's not, though; it's not any of those things. The problem is that normate culture thinks it can decide and determine the need, function, and appropriate use of wheelchairs for other people. Why? It usually vaguely has something to do with "tax dollars," or is a response of some insecure person who was embarrassed to be shocked when a person using a wheelchair stood up. Well, get used to it, normates. Sometimes people who can stand up use wheelchairs... it's not their fault that you haven't paid close enough attention. So, the joke about the woman visiting churches again plays on the idea that normates have about the "appropriate" type of wheelchair use. Our culture suppresses conversations about disability to the extent that we actually keep telling ourselves that there's only one acceptable reason for using a wheelchair: if you can't ever walk without it. In reality, there are myriad reasons for using wheelchairs, and it's not up to the majority to decide when and where people can use them, nor what person "deserves" one. If people think it's a miracle that the woman can get out of her wheelchair at a cathedral, it's because THEY don't have any other framework for thinking about wheelchairs other than for-an-unfortunate-person-who-can't-walk. To see her get up, then, can only be interpreted as a miracle, because to normate culture, a miracle is apparently more plausible than the everyday reality of some people who use wheelchairs actually being able to move out of them.
I hope these examples are clear. I'm trying to show that each of the anecdotes you cite seem to have concerned you because you're reading them from the perspective of normate culture (which, as I mentioned, seems to think it can decide what "disabled people" should be allowed to do and not do regarding their disabilities, and wants to determine the "right" and "wrong" way for other people to refer to their own bodies). And my point is that these were all instances of people with disabilities exploiting not their own bodies, but the prejudiced cultural norms that daily relegate their bodies to a realm misunderstanding, discrimination, pity, and violence. "It's a miracle!" is funny because it points out that lots of people without physical disabilities would sooner believe in random miracles than think critically about the function and use of a wheelchair. To me, that's the sign of a pretty discriminatory, disability-phobic culture, within which people with disabilities may have a chuckle or two at the ignorance of mainstream culture that makes their bodies legible in ridiculously narrow terms (e.g., the woman at the cathedral was EITHER totally unable to move her legs OR miraculously cured).
What's cruel about "mocking" (I would say "satirizing") the very dominant cultural norms that oppress you? Isn't it an exercise of freedom to be able to expose the widespread prejudice that affects you every day? The mindset that sees someone get out of a wheelchair as either "a miracle" or as "unnecessary wheelchair use/abuse" is the very same mindset that wants to keep people with disabilities in a subordinate position, always ASKING for equal rights, TRYING TO GAIN equal access, STRUGGLING FOR equal inclusion. It's the same prejudiced, ignorant mindset that says, "I'm normal, and you're not. Because of that, I get rights automatically but you have to fight for them; my needs are met automatically but yours have to be "accommodated"; and I decide when and where it is appropriate for you to have a laugh about the way normate culture casually, cruelly, and constantly misinterprets your DIS-ability."
By exposing the rampant ignorance of disability on the part of normate culture, these disability pranksters are calling attention to their presence in a world that wants to define their bodies, their lives , right out of existence.
I think it's pretty clever, actually, and not at all cruel.
Mr. Teatime, you're very right. I just re-read my post and I'm afraid I haven't made my confusions clear enough. Regarding my offense to the person who said catholic mass in italy is the best place to pull the 'its a miracle' stunt, I dont understand why the catholic church was isolated. Especially since I myself was raised catholic, I cant understand why someone who is so used to being stigmatized as a result of their "different" (i am using the quotations deliberately here to show what might be considered a stereotype-- this does not at all represent my own feelings) appearance, or means of getting around or anything else that they ahve been stigmatized for, would single out another group of people so readily. I am fascinated with the idea of making a joke of disability to remove some of the stigmas against disability, as I hope was evidenced in my praise for the "disability cool" article. I just can't understand why people who are so used to being singled out would do the same thing to another "group" of people. Can't it just be a funny joke to do in front of all people? I just think by isolating another group of people, what seems like a brilliant means of removing some of the social stigmas against disability, instead backfires, and causes further unneccessary hurt and confusion for all parties.
and in response to the anonymous comment, really, i have no response. I do apologize for 'hurting your heart' but your personal attack on me and choice to reduce yourself to stealing and cheating to prove a point comes across as though you are trying to insult disabled people and make them look bad-- you are a poor representation of the community and the cause. so again, i am sorry for personally offending you, but if you feel as though my personal struggle with these concepts is so offensive, please address my comments in a genuine, considerate, compassionate way. i would not be posting these ideas if i did not personally struggle with them and if i did not want to further educate myself and open my eyes, and if you'd like to do that, id hope that you would do so in a more mature manner.
Well, I thought this was a great blog post, and that you posed a truly important question onto the class. This is a question that many young idealists struggle with because we are torn between wanting to help those in need and the “life of practicality” that has been advertised to us for quite some time. I know personally, my parents also chastise my “idealist beliefs,” and I do not think you are being offensive in wrestling with this question.
Through my perspective (which has been deemed a little radical at times), we must help every individual who needs help, even if it means that some people will mooch off the system. There are deserving individuals who need help immediately, and it is a far greater crime that they are not receiving aid than the crime of an individual receiving aid that does not deserve it. Take for example the idea of universal healthcare; I believe that it would be far more beneficial to ensure that every human being is given the right to healthcare even if there are individuals who steal from the system. Look at the alternative, a system that does not ensure healthcare to countless people is a far greater crime against humanity.
I found mr. teatime's response to the blog very interesting. I found it hard to understand the other side of this argument until I read his post. The examples he presented were clear and easy to follow. The response greatly expanded my thoughts on this issue and made me ask myself how I have been acting as a "normate" towards the disabled.
In addition, I agree with scotch3m. To quote them, "we must help every individual who needs help, even if it means that some people will mooch off the system. There are deserving individuals who need help immediately, and it is a far greater crime that they are not receiving aid than the crime of an individual receiving aid that does not deserve it." I too believe that all should receive health care. More people are in need of help than those who are taking advantage of the system. Also, maybe people will realize what they are doing is wrong once everyone is receiving equal care.
Post a Comment