If you’re looking for a good, 101-level introduction to current disability discourse, including (but not limited to) models of disability (medical, social, charity, economic, human rights, etc); person-first vs. identity-first language; intersectionality; and what words to start using (just say disabled, my friend: we know) and what words to STOP saying (you know the big ones, but maybe also consider how often you use blind to mean ignorant, or lame to mean boring, and sweet baby junipers, please stop calling it ‘wheelchair-bound’: I am not bound by my chair, I am, in fact, freed by it. I’m just a wheelchair user, and also I’m not going to get a speeding ticket… I am seriously considering an assault charge, though, I assure you, if you shout out ‘speed racer’ as I go by), I’m highly recommending Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladau.
There’s a lot of things in here that SHOULD be common sense, but I know they are not because I’ve dealt with them. Examples include:
- Keep your hands to yourselves (definitely the most frequent offense, but I got plenty of space for)
- Don’t ask the people I’m with what I want, ask me
- Don’t think you’re helping if you didn’t ask me if I wanted help first
- Don’t assume you know “what’s wrong with me”, but also don’t just ask “what’s wrong with you?” (unless you are a tiny human child)
and - Don’t ask if you can pray over me, because unless we’re praying for the winning Powerball numbers, fuck outta here with that shit. I may have a t i n y bit of personal bias here, bc I am a disabled, atheist who has a fear of confrontation and a ramp outside of their home, and the ramp is like a beacon to every Jehovah’s Witness in the state, but also to really religious delivery people, or just strangers walking by our house who decided they should come knock on our door, ask what was wrong with me, and then ask if they can pray over me. No: No you cannot.
Ladau also includes a chapter on disability history, which, while not super in-depth, does provide a good framework for knowing where we’ve come, in the US, at least, over the past 100 years or so, and seeing how much work we’ve still got to do. Most disabled people know that many things that most non-disabled people consider relics of a far-gone past – eugenics, forced sterilization, institutionalization, the Ugly Laws – are not that far in our rearview mirror, and many are still happening right now (As evidenced by the forced sterilizations at immigration detention camps just last summer, or the eugenical discussions that even those on the far left contribute to debates about abortion). Last year’s Oscar nominated Crip Camp was the first time I’d seen a lot of the footage of the 504 Sit-Ins anywhere outside of YouTube, for example, and I watched it with 2 of my niblings (21 & 15), and they’d never heard of them at all, before, nor did they ever learn about the ADA in school (we’ve had a lot of discussions about it here at home, obviously). I found her discussions about more recent movements – including the Disability Justice Movement, which I consider myself a member of – to be both exactly my experience of them & super informative about what they’re trying to accomplish. I’m also friends with some people within the psychiatric survivors movement, and I’ve hardly ever seen them spoken about in the mainstream, and Landau not only mentions them, she does so with respect, and that’s so rarely the case that it truly surprised me to read it.
She also mentions more than one current disability advocate & the importance of their work, recent examples of issues around failed intersectionality, and she winds the book up with some discussions about disability rep in media – a subject which, if you follow my reviews here, you know I’m pretty interested in and educated about, so I love it when other people are too. There was very little there about children’s literature (my own personal area of interest/education), but she did talk a little bit about Tiny Tim, the small, inspiration set-piece from everyone’s favorite holiday morality tale, A Christmas Carol. Inspiration porn, pity porn & a scant two-pages on positive portrayals (which are much harder to find that the previous two), and she covered all the major bases when it comes to how disabled people are present, absent, represented & misrepresented in most forms of media these days – woefully inadequately. “This would truly be the pinnacle of positive, authentic disability representation – to be surrounded by media that actually reflects & celebrates disability as part of humanity,” Landau concludes. And she’s correct.
Which is why it’s good to have her latest work – complete with resources for where to go next, up to & including some important disability hashtags on Twitter – to add to our collective knowledge of disability.
Speaking of collective knowledge, I’m using this for the Rep square on my cbr13bingo board.