OT: how is ableism an -ism?

[Mr. Brightside]

Xavier occasionally gets to leave the chair, but the only time I've ever seen it done was in that one Animated arc and he lost his powers as a result. Or he lost his powers and it made him able to walk again? They were never completely clear on that, actually.

Like screwing with Superman in some way, curing Xavier is one of those plots they do every few years, but it never sticks.

It really doesn't make a lot of sense that anyone should be disabled in those universes - even putting Xavier aside, how many times have we seen someone cured of a disability, some excuse is given for why that solution can't be mass-marketed, and it's never mentioned again? Even if it's some alien doohickey, or magic, or divine intervention, surely some enterprising engineer would find a way to study it, if for the glory alone... especially since in most of those universes, gods are aliens, interplanetary politics are a fact of life, and magic is a legitimate field of research.

[FlyingFish]

It really doesn't make a lot of sense that anyone should be disabled in those universes - even putting Xavier aside, how many times have we seen someone cured of a disability, some excuse is given for why that solution can't be mass-marketed, and it's never mentioned again? Even if it's some alien doohickey, or magic, or divine intervention, surely some enterprising engineer would find a way to study it, if for the glory alone... especially since in most of those universes, gods are aliens, and magic is a legitimate field of research.

Which was, incidentally, DC's reasoning for why Barbara Gordon can walk again; it was getting stupid for no one in the entire DC universe to be able to repair the damage to her spine.

Come to think of it, she and Cassie Cain are both DC while Xavier and Murdock are both Marvel, so it may be less a male/female thing than a different universe bible.

[Freemage]

One complaint I've heard from some folks with disabilities is one that's spread by the comic-books, interestingly enough: the notion of 'compensation'. Some people will take the 'differently abled' meme and run with it, to the point of insisting that deaf people have hawk-like vision, and so forth. No, folks, sometimes life is just unfair as shit and you have to accept that.

On the broader subject, ablism is probably my own last big '-ism' that I'm trying to ditch, mostly in the language arena. Sometimes I slip up, particularly because there's several terms that I never knew had a technical definition in the first place, and so the common usage slipped into my brain's lexicon of "go-to epithets". Ditching those and finding replacements is often pretty tricky (particularly in cases where I'm attempting to indicate a deliberate willingness on the part of another person to engage in foolish activity--many, many of the more colorful terms for such are, as Val noted, tied directly to mental disability). So I'll be partway through a brilliantly scathing mega-post on some hot political topic, an realize that I've slipped up and used a now-rejected slur throughout the piece, and have to go back and edit it all out.

Oddtail: I think part of the problem stems very much from the 'mushiness' of the word "bad", honestly. Sure, disabilities are 'bad', but not in a way that should earn derision, scorn or condemnation. But usually, when we use a term like 'lame', we're deliberately evoking derision, scorn and condemnation. That creates a parallel, that then plays out in other ways, most notably because we tend to want to think in karmic terms--it's a comfort to many folks to believe that apparent injustices map back to actual behavior in some way--if you're disabled, therefore, it must be because of something you did, or maybe your parents.

Since correcting the mental shortcuts we've evolved to try and cope with the illusion of consciousness is almost nigh-impossible in the short term, to break that connection, we need to attack it at the weakest link--in this case, that's the linguistic tie between "lame" and "bad".

[Valerie]

[...]

I... need you to know that I am so, so sorry. I'm "abled," and I've only recently started to see how difficult it can be for people in wheelchairs because my husband is in one. The sidewalks are too messed up to navigate in parts of town, so you have to be on the road, and then you're worrying about cars the whole time. And that's just one of the many problems disabled people face. There are buildings that he can't even enter unless he gets up and has me drag the chair inside (since he can hobble a few feet to get himself in).

There is something wrong with his body. That does not mean he's less of a person. That does not mean he's not good enough to enter certain areas. That does not mean he's not good enough to use the fucking sidewalk. And these are just the things that the rest of us take for granted. Just practical, everyday things that people who can walk never even have to think about.

I could relate to too much of your post, even if only by secondhand experience. You made me tear up, to be honest.

And I am just so, so sorry. *hugs*

This part, though...

When you've been disabled long enough, it can get extremely difficult to relate to abled people. They just exist in a completely separate reality and usually don't even think to compromise or understand... That burden is always on the disabled: Conform, fit in, adjust.

I'm a cashier in a restaurant. We have a couple of people who come in every few weeks that use sign language. I've been teaching myself some of the basics (the alphabet, "spoon," "fork," "knife," "soda," "sandwich," "please," "thank you," "sorry," etc.) just to try to work with them. I give them paper and a pen when I have trouble understanding.

It's all I can do. I really am trying to be considerate, because I know it's got to be a serious pain to not be understood by so many people. I feel like, if it were me, I would be happy to see a non-deaf person making an effort, so that's what I'm doing, even if I do end up looking silly and mixing up my signs sometimes. (I tried to do "sorry" last time they were there and accidentally did "please." They look alike.)

[Artemisia]

I don't know. I think what frustrates me is that we have created a society that demands absolute conformity to a standardized person and anyone who doesn't conform is automatically treated as "other". A decade ago, my only real friend in a dark time for me was a man who, when he was two, suffered brain damage and was partially paralyzed on the right side of his body. It frustrated me that he was treated so poorly by so many people, and yet, he was a brilliant photographer, very smart, very funny.

I am glad, Valerie, that you are making the effort to accept those who have a different life skill set. I also hope they figure out what's wrong with your husband, but I understand about the sidewalks and the roads. It isn't nice out there even here in Vermont.

[Valerie]

I feel like I have to admit, it's probably largely because I was treated so differently as a kid. I know what it's like to be the "other," the "weird one," the person that gets excluded. And that was just from your typical, run-of-the-mill school life. In elementary and middle school, I was the poor kid, so I got left out a lot. The other kids didn't know how to talk to me most of the time. I was isolated.

The first person I could really consider a friend was a girl I met when I was in 8th grade (she was in 7th and had just moved) who was ostracized because her parents were lesbians.

I know (in a way) how that feels. And damn it, outcasts stick together.

So I kinda feel like that takes some of my credit away. I'm doing my best to adapt and be considerate, but a lot of it is simply because I've been there, in some form, and no one should ever have to feel that way.

[Rawra]

*
@Oddtail:
About the Deaf. It's not them having a culture & language.
It's not a case of "they don't know what they're missing", they have an idea, to one degree or another. At the very least they can see how hearing effects those with it. It's that they do not feel disadvantaged by their disability. Would you feel the need to get a corneal transplant for your short-sightedness? Why not? Because you do not feel it sets you at a disadvantage in your life. To you, you live a relatively "normal" life.

It's about the fact that because they do not fit within able-bodied society - which incidentally, that very lack of acceptance is why they formed their own - their needs are neglected in favour of forcing them to conform in a manner that makes those of us with hearing comfortable, without respect for their wishes.
Like when teaching hearing-impaired/Deaf children lip-reading is prioritised over education in things such as maths, science or art... and then we wonder why overall disabled kids fall behind their able-bodied peers? It's not so much purely a case of dealing with the complications of the disability, but also struggling against a system that refuses to help you learn unless you do it their way.
Again, it's about having your right to make decisions for yourself on your own being taken away from you.
And being denied your basic human rights. (In this case education) It's not outright, but if my able-bodied peers are given every opportunity to do their best job at succeeding academically, yet I am not purely on the basis of my disability, how is that not discrimination?



Secondly, not only is that patronising, but you've just made an assumption a great many abled people do about being deaf, blind or otherwise disabled. That it's an absolute, one-size-fits-all affair.

Being legally & functionally blind comes in a variety of flavours: Being able to see only light, or only motion, or only vague colours... or any combination there-of. Infact in some cases being blind is exactly like being extremely near sighted, to the point where you can only focus on something directly in front of your eyeball. Not every one has a lack of optic nerve signal that completely "blacks out" their vision. There are a myriad of different causes for blindness.
Same goes for deafness.
Some can hear really low bass sounds, others only high pitches, some people cannot distinguish the sound of speech specifically, and there are those who experience sound without the ability to distinguish between them & thus cannot interpret them into anything of meaning.

It actually happens a lot where the abled class an outward disability/symptom as if it were the actual problem in and of itself. Do you know how many different reasons there might be for why someone's in a weelchair?
There's the obvious two that are the usual assumptions of the ignorant & unthinking: Paraplegia, quadraplegia. (Usually the former)
But there's also neural or neurological damage, weakness in the weight supporting structures including anything from your hips, to your tibia, knees, feet, or ankles, muscle atrophy, serious anemia or low blood pressure, lack of ability to maintain homeostasis or inability to breathe brought on by stress or exercise, even severe chronic pain or fatigue.

There's also this pervasive mentality that you are going to get better. Because that's what people do, right? They get sick, go to the doctor, take their medicine and then they're fixed.
No.
(In the immortal words of Kaylee: "Sometimes a thing gets broke can't be fixed.")
Whenever a stranger sees my cane they assume I've hurt my leg... there is nothing wrong with my leg. I do however have permanent nerve damage that can have any number of strange effects. That's the other form of discrimination actually. When you don't fit someone's idea of what "disabled" should look/be like. My (chronic) friends & I have actually discussed how sometimes we wish we had cancer instead, because then there's no need to explain your unheard of complicated medical condition, or struggling to get across how it effects your life and that it's not going to get better, or fighting to be taken seriously, or trying to elicit some form of understanding or at least empathy (not sympathy, this is an important distinction) from others.
I mean, it's not nice to have either, and if you do recover, you live under the constant possibility of relapse, and not making it this time... but when you say "I have cancer" people just immediately accept it and have at least a minimum of understanding. (And for some of us, dying as a result of our conditions is a possibility anyway... and we don't get possibilities of recoveries, at best long remissions) But it is very frustrating that unless you've got cancer, you're not really sick. Unless you're completely weelchair bound, you're not really disabled.
These are the only ways you really get taken seriously, once again, this even applies in the medical community.
I actually had one pharmacist tell me "but that's really for cancer patients." in response to my queries into morphine patches for chronic pain, and she meant well, but the entire tone & implication was "no that's for serious and ongoing pain", when my one condition is practically the definition for severe chronic pain, and I was already taking the oral stuff with little effect, and have had multiple injections not be sufficient on bad days. (The injections do work better... the oral stuff is the bane of my existence... case of the cure being almost as bad as the disease, for those who've had migraines, combine that with the hangover from hell, but without the pain and twice the "oh god, what did I do?") I'm now taking schedule 6 narcotics... which is the last category before controlled & strictly controlled substances over here.

This attitude is particularly hard on those of us with invisible illnesses. Because you can't see it, means you don't have to accept it as part of your reality, and even if you do, it can't really be all that bad. I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've been accused of faking being sick, or of using it as an "excuse"... Even by my own family, who personally witness how bad it can be sometimes. But then I'm also too young to be sick. I'm a woman in her 20s, although too frequently mistaken for younger, and unless I'm using my cane that specific day, you couldn't tell there was anything wrong with me just by looking.



@Freemage:
Like how "dumb" used to mean mute?

[...]

I... need you to know that I am so, so sorry. I'm "abled," and I've only recently started to see how difficult it can be for people in wheelchairs because my husband is in one.

There is something wrong with his body. That does not mean he's less of a person. That does not mean he's not good enough to enter certain areas. That does not mean he's not good enough to use the fucking sidewalk. And these are just the things that the rest of us take for granted. Just practical, everyday things that people who can walk never even have to think about.

I could relate to too much of your post, even if only by secondhand experience. You made me tear up, to be honest.

And I am just so, so sorry. *hugs*

This part, though...

When you've been disabled long enough, it can get extremely difficult to relate to abled people. They just exist in a completely separate reality and usually don't even think to compromise or understand... That burden is always on the disabled: Conform, fit in, adjust.

I'm a cashier in a restaurant. We have a couple of people who come in every few weeks that use sign language. I've been teaching myself some of the basics (the alphabet, "spoon," "fork," "knife," "soda," "sandwich," "please," "thank you," "sorry," etc.) just to try to work with them. I give them paper and a pen when I have trouble understanding.

It's all I can do. I really am trying to be considerate, because I know it's got to be a serious pain to not be understood by so many people. I feel like, if it were me, I would be happy to see a non-deaf person making an effort, so that's what I'm doing, even if I do end up looking silly and mixing up my signs sometimes. (I tried to do "sorry" last time they were there and accidentally did "please." They look alike.)

I'm not sure whether to be glad I connected with someone on this issue, or sorry that it caused you upset. Shall I go with... both?
*hugs*
Don't be sorry for being abled. Or for those of us who aren't.
Acceptance is usually the best option in most cases.


And hey, in regards to the sign language: you're still learning - everyone has slip-ups when starting a new language.

I can tell you now, that the fact that you've put in not only the thought but the effort as well in order to relate to them means a lot. And bonus points for doing it on their terms too. Extra for doing so without being asked.


It comes down to basic consideration for others as individuals I think. Just do that as best you can to whomever you meet, no matter abled/disabled, or race, gender, orientation, or anything else... and you'll be on track.


*Sorry about the essay lengths... I'm used to debating forums, believe in freedom of information because education is always the better way, as it has a chance to change things. To make thing better.
Also, sorry about anything nonsensical or misspelled, between my brainfog, pill side effect & sleep deprivation some times my mind just momentarily checks out.

[CBrachyrhynchos]

...I must admit I don't see it as an argument against making those people (especially children) able to hear if possible. Yes, that could lead to sign languages declining or even becoming extinct. But I don't think that'd mostly be the function of the fact that it's what happens in the world all the time. Languages become extinct all the time. Yes, it's terrible. And sure, efforts need to be made to prevent that. But I don't buy, nor fully understand, the argument that people should not be given the opportunity to hear for cultural reasons.

The currently available treatments do not work on a fair number of people, come with ugly side effects, involve invasive surgery, and often do not offer enough of an advancement to enable full hearing or language fluency. The skepticism is not just about potential replacement of culture, but about mandating an imperfect treatment that potentially would still provide a substantial disadvantage.

[Artemisia]

*
@Oddtail:
About the Deaf. It's not them having a culture & language.
It's not a case of "they don't know what they're missing", they have an idea, to one degree or another. At the very least they can see how hearing effects those with it. It's that they do not feel disadvantaged by their disability. Would you feel the need to get a corneal transplant for your short-sightedness? Why not? Because you do not feel it sets you at a disadvantage in your life. To you, you live a relatively "normal" life.

It's about the fact that because they do not fit within able-bodied society - which incidentally, that very lack of acceptance is why they formed their own - their needs are neglected in favour of forcing them to conform in a manner that makes those of us with hearing comfortable, without respect for their wishes.
Like when teaching hearing-impaired/Deaf children lip-reading is prioritised over education in things such as maths, science or art... and then we wonder why overall disabled kids fall behind their able-bodied peers? It's not so much purely a case of dealing with the complications of the disability, but also struggling against a system that refuses to help you learn unless you do it their way.
Again, it's about having your right to make decisions for yourself on your own being taken away from you.
And being denied your basic human rights. (In this case education) It's not outright, but if my able-bodied peers are given every opportunity to do their best job at succeeding academically, yet I am not purely on the basis of my disability, how is that not discrimination?

The part I bolded is important not just because of what Rawra is saying about those with disabilities, but because that is how society treats everyone. I have several learning disabilities and always had difficulty learning specific things. I was lucky to have some teachers who helped me, but a lot of teachers treated me poorly because I had difficulty understanding what they were teaching me.

In sixth grade, I had a school councilor tell my parents that I was retarded because I had problems with the IQ test he had me take. Of course, I'm not entirely sure that he was telling the truth since it turned out to be part of a pattern from him so that he could get closer to children in order to molest them.

Part of what frustrates me about the way that our society treats learning for everyone- not just those who have physical or learning disabilities- is that they all learn in the exactly the same manner, and that means that so many of us get labeled as being "defective". I think everyone has something to contribute, and it is frustrating that we treat everyone like they're on a conveyor belt.

[Captain LeBubbles]

Part of what frustrates me about the way that our society treats learning for everyone- not just those who have physical or learning disabilities- is that they all learn in the exactly the same manner, and that means that so many of us get labeled as being "defective". I think everyone has something to contribute, and it is frustrating that we treat everyone like they're on a conveyor belt.

I agree with this! I tend to be far better with words than numbers, and in fourth grade I had a teacher who already didn't like me. When we learned math stuff, we had to show our work, and I always got in trouble because I couldn't. I could see the numbers in my head and put them together and get the right answer consistently, but I couldn't put the numbers on paper and recreate my process. I kept getting in trouble and she accused me of cheating at one point. It wasn't till I got in high school with a teacher that didn't care how we got the answers as long as we got the right one that I was able to do well in math- so well that I actually skipped Algebra I and went straight to Algebra II (I still had to take I, but the class was too crowded that semester so they moved me to II, and said I could take I later), and managed to pass with a high B.

Anyway, the point is, I didn't learn or process numbers the same way my classmates did, and that gave me a lot of trouble in math classes. So I can only imagine how difficult it would be for someone who learn or process anything the same way their classmates do/did.

Fortunately, the college I go to has a good program for people with learning disabilities, to make sure they're able to keep up with their classmates with no trouble (or at least minimal trouble), and most of the teachers I've had so far have been very patient and are happy to help any student who's having trouble.

[Twitcher]

Come to think of it, she and Cassie Cain are both DC while Xavier and Murdock are both Marvel, so it may be less a male/female thing than a different universe bible.

Marvel's tech is equally amazing... and yet Matt is still blind. I think the reason behind Barb's miracle recovery and Peter Parker's marriage dissolution are the same: The editors of both companies thought the current state of affairs were boring and didn't make for good stories.

2 years ago my mother had nasty brain trauma and lost control of the right side of her body in a single moment. Apparantly a blood vessel had randomly burst in her brain and caused the cells there to suffocate.
Now she has some control over her right leg (she can kick and stretch and bend), but she still can't do anything on her own. She seems content, she has accepted that she's in a state of recovery and knows the path of recovery is long and slow. But for some reason I still can't seem to accept it. I keep wanting to see her recover now now now, to at least see her walk so that she can feel as independant as she used to be.

Yinello, I am very sorry for your and your mother's loss. I think there may be a few support groups out there for family members of people with brain injuries; check around your town and see if going to one helps a bit.

One complaint I've heard from some folks with disabilities is one that's spread by the comic-books, interestingly enough: the notion of 'compensation'. Some people will take the 'differently abled' meme and run with it, to the point of insisting that deaf people have hawk-like vision, and so forth. No, folks, sometimes life is just unfair as shit and you have to accept that.

Yeah, that compensation myth's a bitch, and one my parents bought into wholesale, pressuring me and Sis to get higher grades because we had to "make up for it." That said, I do enjoy the adventures of Oracle, Cassie, Daredevil, Toph, Xavier, Dell Conagher, Tavish DeGroot, and hell, Nunnally Lamperouge, because being disabled's not always unfair or bad (though the attendant trauma that sometimes comes with it sure is)... sometimes it's just different. Those disabled characters I mentioned are super, but they have very human flaws to make up for it; Barbara's a control freak, Cassie fights first and asks questions later, Daredevil tends to underestimate others, Toph is an unrepentant jerk, Xavier's... a control freak, Dell's a psychotic freak, and Tavish is a psychotic drunk. I could write a whole paper on how Nunnally's sweet little moe act is a calculated attempt to keep her brother nearby, reinforcing their enmeshment.. but we also see a lot of their daily lives, and sometimes, they're refreshingly average.

On the broader subject, ablism is probably my own last big '-ism' that I'm trying to ditch, mostly in the language arena.

Um, yeah. Me too. I've bitterly referred to myself or a situation as "retarded" on occasion, the only ablist word that my sister absolutely freaks over. (Yes, I've been called it. So has she.) Her instinctual revulsion is not only because the word is profoundly inappropriate, but because it brings up terrible memories of her, me, and the other disabled students back in elementary school and junior high being forced to do unpaid labor under the guise of "job training"... You know, since we were all going to be janitors and personal care attendants anyway! (In case you're wondering, yes, this was patently illegal and violated both child labor laws and the ADA!) I tend to loathe the word "special" for the same reasons. Dad told me not to use the word "spastic" as a child, a notion that confused me at first, since doctors talked about my spasticity all the time. Dad was raised by his Scot-Irish grandparents, and may have heard the word, a particularly strong slur in Europe and the UK, used by them.

I don't mind the word lame too much, having been exposed to it's 90s meaning so much as to be nearly inured to it's genuine one. Cripple and Gimp make me wince, save when my sister and I are ribbing each other, and I can't understand the reasoning for anyone saddling their child with any variation of the name Claude, or Cecilia, save for familial tradition.

[oddtail]

Rawra, CBrachyrhynchos, Artemisia: OK, what you say makes sense.

And for the record - when I get the money, analyse the risks and find the kind of surgery/treatment/whatever to fix my eyesight relatively safely as well as permanently, damn straight I'm fixing my eyes. I do feel disadvantaged by my near-sightedness, even if it actually offered some accidental side benefits at one point.

But the rest of the reasoning, yeah, I get it. The last few posts pretty much answer the doubts I had when starting the thread, so I owe y'all big thanks =) although some of the responses I got made me feel I should've picked a clearer name for the thread. Being lectured on things I'm well aware of was mildly disconcerting, like I came off as terribly ignorant on certain issues. I'm still glad, as I learnt a lot by reading the thread.

[Valerie]

I just want to thank you again for questioning yourself and making this thread in the first place, 'cause, again, not enough people can admit to themselves that they are having issues with understanding a minority, let alone admitting it to an entire group of people.

I actually learned a bit from this, too. I'm one of the people who thinks the disabled generally want to be "fixed," and I still feel that my brother's life would be much, much better if he weren't mentally retarded, but that doesn't mean everyone else with disabilities would also be happier if they woke up "abled" one day. Seeing a few people here tell their stories has made me question myself on that. If you don't want to hear/walk/see/etc., then I'm just happy that you're comfortable with yourself.

[Bardlp]

Her instinctual revulsion is not only because the word is profoundly inappropriate, but because it brings up terrible memories of her, me, and the other disabled students back in elementary school and junior high being forced to do unpaid labor under the guise of "job training"... You know, since we were all going to be janitors and personal care attendants anyway! (In case you're wondering, yes, this was patently illegal and violated both child labor laws and the ADA!) I tend to loathe the word "special" for the same reasons.

I died a little on the inside reading that. I work for a for-profit supported employment services for the developmentally disabled company (there really needs to be a better way to say that) and see people being forced into the program by "well meaning" guardians or social workers because "they need to know the dignity of work" all the time. Our society's ... I donno exactly... Puritan work ethic maybe, does not make one lick of sense sometimes. There's one guy that I work with who's very earnest and friendly, but between a really bad case of cerebral palsy and a side of moderate MR, I'm not really sure what he can do. Simple task sequencing (get folder, open folder, get paper, put paper in folder, close folder, put folder away) is a little bit beyond him most days. He can't lift much more than five pounds on a good day. He doesn't have the fine motor control to type, and his speech is really slow and sometimes hard to understand. But his parents have him convinced that unless he works a traditional 9-5 job, he's subhuman. Not that either of them works, mind you.

It's just... odd. They think that being being a greeter at Sam's Club (where he can't do half the job anyway) or doing piece-work for subminimum wage at a cluster site is more dignified than volunteering somewhere where he doesn't get paid, but the contributions he can make are appreciated and the people treat him like a person.

[Valerie]

I died a little on the inside reading that. I work for a for-profit supported employment services for the developmentally disabled company (there really needs to be a better way to say that) and see people being forced into the program by "well meaning" guardians or social workers because "they need to know the dignity of work" all the time. Our society's ... I donno exactly... Puritan work ethic maybe, does not make one lick of sense sometimes. There's one guy that I work with who's very earnest and friendly, but between a really bad case of cerebral palsy and a side of moderate MR, I'm not really sure what he can do. Simple task sequencing (get folder, open folder, get paper, put paper in folder, close folder, put folder away) is a little bit beyond him most days. He can't lift much more than five pounds on a good day. He doesn't have the fine motor control to type, and his speech is really slow and sometimes hard to understand. But his parents have him convinced that unless he works a traditional 9-5 job, he's subhuman. Not that either of them works, mind you.

That makes me sick. Especially with the bolded part.

I am all about work ethic, but you've got to be able to do the work. I will always appreciate a coworker that does his/her best, even if he/she is terrible at the job, but when someone lacks the fundamental abilities to do the job and you tell them they have to do it anyway... That just really, really makes me sick. That's like telling me I have to carry 100 pound bags for eight hours a day. I am physically unable to do that. Why would you ever, ever try to make someone who lacks the ability to lift 100 pounds do that? It's the same thing as what your coworker is dealing with, and every bit as unreasonable.

I'm very proud of him for trying his best, but I would like a free shot at his parents for making him do that.