disablity earasure and idenity
This is going to be a bit of a different post due to the controversial nature of it, and this is something that we need to be aware of when people are talking about “inclusion, equality, and diversity,” something that has been hijacked and politized to the core in universities, at its core it’s about including everyone in the conversation. However, I see that there is a group of people who are often left out of the conversation until it becomes critical because someone has been harmed and people start to realize that there is very little education or training around disability in schools and higher education facilities, except that they do have some forms of what they call disability accommodations, but one look on Reddit we see that many professors don’t accept them or don’t even realize they exist.
This is because they have been abused by people who don’t need them, so what is it that I am rambling on about, well it’s disability erasure and mainstreaming of disability. This is a good thing but it has come with a touch of the bad because some people feel that it’s ok to take advantage of things that are designed for us, just think about the last time someone parked in a disabled car park and said I will only take a minute? Or when someone has said oh but you don’t look disabled, or your so high functioning? But my cousin has this and this helps him.
These are all symptoms of disability erasure due to people having a political addendum to push to benefit themselves and they aren’t including people with disabilities in the conversation about us or for us.
Traditionally it has been the parents of people with disabilities and the medical professionals that have been the gatekeepers for what defines a disability and therefore who gets access to spaces designed for disabled people. We are seeing medical professionals talk about the wastage within the NDIS and showing a fundamental lack of understanding about disability and the mental toll that applying for the NDIS has on not only a person’s mental health but their families, as well. Not understanding that most of the wastage is in provider's control and not client's control and often a client is on such a strict budget often a support worker will pay for everyday living expenses for this person.
We see that also traditionally that a person with a disability was thought to be better off in a facility due to the fact that families were told that they couldn’t care for them, at times this has been true but we are now seeing hundreds and thousands of cases of abuse and neglect and historical cases coming out about the “care” that they received.
I also see that there is an infantilization of people with a disability leading again to direct mental health issues due to the fact that people think that you are not capable of making decisions for your own life, and this can easily be abused I think we all remember Brittney spears and the free Brittney movement, but I also know that this, when there is oversight, does work well and can protect everyone.
We also see that there is a trend back towards medical based words usage in the NDIS and other care programs and what Drs are calling the medicalization of disability, this is a very outdated concept and shows again erasure of disability and shows a distinct lack of understanding of disability due to what we see is a bias towards health, and this is where doctors need to be but they need also need to be able to listen to the lived experience of people with a disability and in particular women with disabilities that tend to not to be listened to by doctors and are gaslighted until it becomes a medical emergency.
I understand that there also needs to be spaces set aside for people with disabilities but, we are also seeing a trend towards them shutting down due to having to pay people award wages, while I agree with this as it goes against modem slavery but we see that it leaves a massive gap about what does a person then do during the day if they are unable to work and don’t qualify for NDIS, what do they do with there time becomes a major issue.
Disability is also part of a person’s identity and we see that this again is erasure when people start to “identify ”as or self-diagnose their disability. This is inherently dangerous due to the fact that it could miss a number of medical problems that can cause issues similar to the disability that they are presenting as and they also are adding to another problem is that it is creating medication shortages due to people using medications for study drugs, weight loss and to tune out instead of working on there issues or working towards adjusted goals.
Then people who have a legitimate need for these medications are treated like drug seekers by medical professionals and people who need them might not seek a diagnosis due the hoops that they need to jump through causing extra stress.
This also goes into gate keeping disability and it’s a complex issue that I will dive into in my next post as we need to talk about who gets to decide what is good and bad information about disability. However gatekeeping is when a person decides who gets what information and when and how, we are seeing that bloggers like myself and YouTube has fundamentally changed the game when it comes to accessing information but again we are seeing a “gate keeping” of this information due the professionals thinking they have a right to speak on our behalf about issues that effect us due to them having the “education” to speak on this expense’s but we are seeing a turning of the tide due to online creators busting myths and being able to build an audience to be able to respectfully challenge the status quo and we see that this is an interesting concept due to people needing to be able to access information but at the same time how do they process this information?
Because having information and not being able to process it is just as dangerous as not being able to access this information and this is due to the experience of disability isn’t universal and it’s not something that everyone experience’s in the same way, some people will have family support and live in the community some people won’t have the needed support and will have to live in a facility , but one isn’t better than the other and we need to be very aware that disability could happen to anyone and that it’s not a bad thing what is bad is that it is still stigmatized and the contribution that disabled people make to society is minimised, or down graded to inspiration porn and this is something that we are slowly starting to see change and we are starting to see an acceptance of disability as a normal part of the human experience, I know some of my readers are in acting and that some are in the disability sector so we all have a part to play for those who are actors it could be promoting disabled actors to play disabled roles, for those in the disability sectors it could be advocating for change and change in the way that care is given. We need to accept that disability exists before we can change it. We need to be accepted into society and not have our own society that enables abuse and neglect.
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