CHALLENGING ABLEISM by T.J Bryan aka Tenacious
moving away from my place of comfort and greater understanding - defining as the oppressed, the colonized, is terrifying.
i've studied my own identity as it stands in opposition of the power and privilege of others so deeply that it's much easier for me to read myself and others who are sitting in similar places of resistance to oppression. who's struggling with what elements of their blackness and keeps cutting off their hair. who's got issues with their queerness and compartmentalizes their life so they don't have to deal. who's got class issues and can't tell the difference between being raised poor and becoming financially insolvent because you can't tolerate being around your well-off family anymore...etc., etc.
moving from that comfort place of self-knowing is about growing. i can give myself permission to learn more about who i am because i want to keep growing not stagnate. and since i'm here to learn and to challenge myself even as i offer this space to you, i'm studying what it means to be able-bodied because i need to continue doing my work. part of this is realizing how i walk with privilege and oppression tightly bound at the root inside my skin.
it tastes odd in my mouth when i say: i have privilege .
i've been having these conversations with other able-bodied people about us and living in a barrier filled, ableist world where walking is defined as the 'normal' way of getting from point a-to-b. where seeing, speaking and hearing are narrowly defined according to the experience of those who do these things with ease. where we [able-bodied people] have built a whole world that centralizes our experiences. where we [need to] assume that the privileges we keep for ourselves are universally accessible. through defining disability as 'abnormal', 'abhorrent', 'tragic', 'ugly', 'undesireable', 'uncomfortable', able-bodied people, maintain our minority experience as the imperial measure of what is 'right', 'good' and 'beautiful' in the world.
as a black woman who spent most of her twenties learning to recognize racial dominance, who learned to speak to it and to fight it, i'm recognizing so many, too many of the attributes i used to ascribe to white folks who didn't want to deal with their white skinned privilege, in myself as i struggle with recognizing what it means to live in a privileged body.
this feeling of wanting to be seen doing 'the right thing', to be heard saying the appropriate politicized words is about showing not internalizing an anti-ableist politic. it's seductive and infinitely easier than actually pointing out that i am not at all clear about what lies ahead.
my struggle to not do empty political perpetration is also upsetting as this is what i often see others engaged in. i'm not comfortable with the idea that i could be gropping for a perfect-aware-and-politicized-ableist-yet-working-on-it political activist girl persona to perform. this is stuff i get annoyed with fellow community members for doing. this is stuff i observe, name and interrogate. this is not stuff i want to see in myself.
yet...
it's here.
knowing how easy it could be to perpetrate clarity and consciousness, to end up being cast in the role of expert...
understanding how comfortable and safe it could be to exist as the all-knowing person those with concerns about their own privilege come to for guidance, to vent their messed up political baggage...
makes me wanna exit from this place i've been sitting.
i want to become less concerned with being the one who points fingers.
i'd like to zoom in on me as i explore possibilities for tackling my own shit.
my ableism.
i actually find myself being worried about taking the risk to speak. how i will sound speaking privileged truths as someone who is not clear?
will i be able to maintain that in-tha-know tone?
will i still be perceived as an anti-oppression educator/worker if i admit i need educating?
deep breath in...
i fuck up.
i am fucking up.
i will fuck up.
i done already fucked up numerous times.
deep breath of relief, out...
in relation to ableism, i will sound like a person who has almost no answers but who instead has lots of questions. i will sound like a person in denial. i will sound like a person who possesses vast amounts of unrecognized, unearned privilege. i will sound like a person who is has not been dealing with their ableism.
what can i do about this?
speaking...
writing...
thinking...
claiming...
i will make the sound of a person trying to speak the truth of her privileged existence.
i will embrace my own lack of skill in this arena and an unfamiliarity with the entire workings of my own tongue, my own life, my own mind.
i will grope toward consciousness.
i will listen for the lies i tell myself when i am confronted with evidence that i am benefiting from ableism.
i will remember that i like myself.
i will unclench my teeth.
since a fuller picture of my privilege means i'll have to incorporate emotions into my political analysis, i'll tell you that i'm struggling with embarassment, shame, anger, guilt, apathy, denial, confusion and a general sense of discomfort.
question:
does having privilege makes me a bad, bad girl?
does being the recipient of ableist privilege make the reality of my oppression as a black, immigrant, queer, working class, bio female, slut any less real?
is it necessary for one to cancel out the others?
nope.
can the presence of one cancel actually out the others?
i don't think so!
can i utilize the presence of one set to ignore my responsibility to critique the other?
unh-hunh. i see people try an' work that particular fuk'd angle/escape route all the time. cheups.
i said they try ... but in reality...
there's no if's and's or but's about it for them or for me.
colonizer/disempowered/privilege/oppression/power/dominance/colonized. a mix-up-mix-up intermingling of various experiences with privilege and oppression ooze and roil inside the same sac of flesh, fat and skin that is me.
my multifaceted experience undermines the myth of binary relations. this complexly located existence is actually a good place to be. if i am all rolled into one, then i end up being able to challenge myself around my own privileges using the tools i've honed challenging others whose very existence marks them as dominators in ways i may not be. since the matrix of power is foundational to all forms of oppression and privilege, my politicized comprehension of power is transferrable from experience of oppression in certain circumstances to my unfolding understanding of my privilege in other circumstances.
so, there is no excuse for not doing the work. there's no escape if i am to be true to my own values, my own politics. my own political framework demands that i do the work, act responsibly, engage critically and fer real.
having an experience of being the resident black woman expert on racism and white supremacy while those white folks around me choose to learn passively, off my back, instead of sweating and crying and struggling on their own, means i have to recognize how easy it can be for someone learning about their own privilege to end up sucking from those they dominate.
i need to work to gain greater awareness on my own and not by bugging/picking apart/draining any of the people with disabilities i may know or encounter. doing this work will never end until the privilege of able-bodied people in this society ends. since the oppression of one is linked to the oppression of all, i know i'm gonna die trying to offset what it means to be in a privileged body. i've got a lifetime of unlearning to do. so down to business.
how am i seeing?
how do i take in information
how can i utilize a growing awareness of ableism to explore the messages, say...the media sends, through movies and television, about disability?
i am a character in a scene from the matrix. there is an effective, pervasive veil of lies, assumptions and denial covering these eyes. i know i'm not seeing, experiencing, acknowledging what's actually here.
the able-bodied, moving with such ease and assumed independence is a construct that i've grown up with not just in the world around me, but in my fucking head.
i'm plugged into a system of values and perceptions that has been feeding thoughts and ideas directly into my brain since i was born. it would be nice to be able to take a blue pill or a red pill and finally be able to see that the spoon really is not a spoon. the spoon is a staircase. the spoon is no elevator from the subway level to the surface. the spoon is a barrier free washroom that is out of service. the spoon is toronto's wheeltrans perpetrating power games through rigid scheduling mandates. the spoon is a community event open to a chosen few. the spoon is everything i believe is real/normal/necessary/right. the spoon is me and my privilege.
i don't have to wait for a few years so that i can live in the genetically perfect world of gattaca where only some of us are considered 'good enough', 'strong enough', 'worthy of living'. considered 'valid'.
that world is now.
by virtue of walking on two legs, by virtue of being born able to hear, speak, see, live, breathe without any societal barriers to my full participation in this world, by virtue of living in a body defined as able, i'm 'valid' while others are relegated to the margins of society as invalids.
i live out the reality of the movie unbreakable where the hero is always physically 'perfect', 'good' and 'true' and 'handsome' and where the villain is always emotionally 'scarred', physically 'imperfect', 'evil', 'lying' and 'ugly'.
to be able-bodied is to reflect inner goodness and perfection not just of body, but also of ethics and spirit.
when i see the ways that disability is constructed as a reflection of societal dystopia and malaise i think of alien resurrection where the filmmakers create a putrid, nasty world where bodies are sold for clandestine government experimentation. how better to symbolize this socially diseased world than by throwing in a main character, one of the space pirates, who is in an electronic wheelchair. we don't need to see people with disabilities in friends or in 8 rules for dating my teenaged daughter because these television shows reflect the normalcy and basic goodness of everyday live. in these shows, a small, sweaty, cussing, drinking man in a wheelchair would rip a whole in the fabric of 'normal' everyday life in the ablecentric world.
i need to do some more seeing and acknowledging. but for now what i will say is that i'm sure that this is a situation of minority rule. my instinct, my common sense tells me there are more disabled people in this world, with invisible as well as visible disabilities, than there are able-bodies people. my politics and experience tell me that i'm implicated in this numbers game.
when i do not expect and demand barrier free facilities whether i need them or not, i support oppression. i move from this place of compliance and culpability when i realize that seeing myself as 'able' and therefore possessing of a desireable body and life is a construct.
my privilege is a construct. my privilege is subject to extreme change at any moment through health crisis, accident and the onset of old age.
the challenge for me is to decide how i'm going to build on this tiny bit of understanding as i move toward a fuller understanding of myself and the society around me.
i move from place of denial and pose a challenge to the powers that be
when i actively define my relationship to my own privilege,
when i move away from the protection i claim,
when i choose not to cloud my relationship to power dynamics,
when i choose not to remain ambiguous.
when i choose to do my part to build a barrier free world instead of paying lip service to some vague concept of accessibility.
i move from taking part in societal oppression to developing a more layered political consciousness when i realize that challenging ableism and dismantling privileges based on a narrow spectrum of abilities isn't the responsibility of those dominated by it, but instead the work of those who benefit from it, including me.
i need to speak to this privilege more.
i need to recognize and tussle with this privilege more.
i need to challenge and interrogate ableism with other able-bodied folks more.
but usually i don't because i don't have to.
here's what the privilege of able-bodied people looks like:
i'm sitting around talking to a bunch of wimmin friends about organizing an event. we talk about making sure the space is accessible. in my mind i start thinking about what that means. even incorporating my very rudimentary understanding of disability, i begin to realize that making sure a space is accessible moves beyond simply making sure there are things like ramps and/elevators, barrier free toilets with ramps and electronic doors. i start thinking about the inconvenience of having all the event's attendees wear clothes that have not been washed in any perfumed or chemical substance, about asking them to bathe in perfume free soaps before coming, to not smoke before coming, to not apply gels or mousses to their hair before coming, to not dab on any perfumes or scents of any kind before coming. i think about getting someone who is fluent in asl. i think about getting my flyers done on a card stock heavy enough to support braille translations. i think this is way too much work to make a group of people comfortable, people who might not even want to come. i realize that to be ableist means i can choose to see disabled people as a special needs group whose needs i don't have to support. i realize that i have the privilege of ignoring their very basic human rights.
this is what it means to be ableist.
too often able-bodied people look at ableism as a problem that disabled people experience. we leave it up to them to address inequities. most able-bodied people don't have a personal commitment to addressing the links between our privileged, barrier free lives and the oppression of disabled people.
as people whose bodies are defined as 'normal', 'healthy', 'whole' or 'beautiful' simply by virtue of us not being disabled, we need to stop avoiding our own ableism.
many of us feel uncomfortable when in the presence of people who are disabled. we mistakenly situate that discomfort with them instead of realizing that this loss of comfort is about our guilt and shame. about us remembering on a subconscious or not so subconscious level, the awful things we've been taught to believe about disabled people. that they're 'weak', that they're 'ugly', that they're 'pathetic', that they're 'stupid', that they're 'abnormal'.
we don't want to deal with our the on-going genocidal campaign against fetuses with disabilities who are aborted [killed] before they are born. spin doctors in medical circles say it's supposedly for their own good because they wouldn't have had quality of life, and because their parents would have been burdened with caring for them. contextualizing these lies means naming this society's obsession with a narrowly defined concept of physical 'perfection'. it also means realizing that parents of children with disabilities struggle on their own with very little access to resources [especially if they're poor or working class or can't access credit] because the society has not built in any supports to actively respond to the needs of families dealing with disability of one or more family member. the normalized choice to abort unborn children set to be born with disabilities ends up being a final solution that means people with disabilities weren't even meant to be born, let alone survive.
with all this in mind, an inability to look a person with a disability in the eye without that overwhelming urge to smile a fake smile or try to seem okay with who they are, is about us not wanting to acknowledge the power wielded against them and the ways we've been participating in a murderous system of affirmative action favouring ourselves.
our playing field is leveled in our favour and the perks we receive are unearned. our free passage, our extra smooth ride through this world is based on a tiered system, or on a continuum of ability, if you will. people living without disabilities have placed themselves at one end of this continuum; we have been constructed as 'superior' and 'valuable'.
our bodies have been pedestalized as the ones everyone would want have if they had a choice. we have built a world where people who do not fit prevailing physical/biological norms are invited to live in a perpetual state of longing for our bodies, our privilege. we have built a society where disabled people are required to live in a state of denial always having their identities, their realities constructed in relation to the supposedly perfect bodies of those defined as their physical betters.
and so, from this place of unearned privilege, with the knowledge of our privilege erased as a prerequisite to our continued dominance...
we, those seen as able-bodied and supposedly 'fit' might want to make the links between our other struggles for change, our other demands for basic human rights birthed out of struggles against racism, homophobia, classism, imperialism, colonialism, trans phobia, ageism, fat phobia, lookism, etc, etc, etc.
we might wanna get real.
we might wanna look past our discomfort at being confronted with evidence that even the oppressed can oppress. we might wanna look past our anger at having our paltry attempts to seem inclusive shown up by those who know betta. we might need to work up a serious sweat as we seek to change the world into a place that represents the physical and biological realities of many.
but then again, it may be easier to tow the politically correct line, make a few disabled friends, fuck a few people with disabilities and hope this stands in as a solid demonstration of how really 'progressive', 'tolerant' and 'open-minded' we really are.
yeah, in the grand scheme of things, with our futures and our children's futures hanging in the balance, sweeping our contradictions, inconsistencies and privileges under the carpet makes more sense, now doesn't it?
