Ableism
Ableism remains the most acceptable form of discrimination. So acceptable, some people don’t even know what ‘ableism’ means.
In 2023, I decided I wanted to write an editorial special about ableism, and publish it across 15 or 16 websites. I started collecting examples of it from across the internet. Having experienced this form of discrimination for many years, I was still dismayed to find how deeply engrained and widespread it is across society.
And it’s getting worse.
Unintelligent
Getting my Honours degree in Journalism, Film and Broadcasting made me not want to become a news journalist.
Being trained to produce news journalism at the UK’s first and most prestigious School of Journalism opened my eyes to how socially damaging news actually is.
When it comes to ableism, it is particularly damaging.
Millions of people trust news media. They swallow whole what they are told and then regurgitate it in online comments sections. In this context, ableist stories have increased.
Equally racist or sexist pieces could not, would not be published. It would not be accepted or permitted. Public outrage, along with certain UK laws, would prohibit it.
When it comes to disabled people, though, anything goes.
The Telegraph newspaper is a particularly bad offender in this respect. It operates on a constant loop, constantly publishing stories on the same few topics. The idea that disabled people are ‘fakers’, ‘frauds’ and workshy ‘scroungers’ is one of their favourite things to write about.
One drive behind this is obviously to gain online interaction. The more clicks and comments it gets, the more people who read its online articles, the better its statistics look and the more money it can make.
As a broadsheet, its target readership was, traditionally, not the people who appear to follow it and comment beneath its pieces most. These would traditionally be tabloid readers who would never even consider buying a broadsheet - newspapers historically aimed at those who are richer, more privileged and more educated.
The Telegraph truly does not care about the negative impacts its words have within society. As long as it hits its statistical targets, pleases its financial backers and reinforces the political ideologies and ambitions of those backers, its editorial teams, sub-editors and editors continue producing socially damaging pieces with impunity.
When it comes to disabled people, it doesn’t care that the constant stream of ableist stories it publishes translate into increasingly hostility and even attacks in real, physical life.
Those who are not its traditional readership are - and this may be an unpopular and uncomfortable fact - less likely to fully grasp the depth to which they are being manipulated by the words The Telegraph posts on its social media and its website.
They are unlikely to question why certain stories are hidden behind a paywall, while others have free, open access. They are unlikely to see or even think about how this is about manipulation.
During my research for the ableism editorial special I hope to get online, I came across some studies that link bigoted thinking (be it ableism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia) to lower levels of intelligence.
Lower levels of intelligence tend to come with lower levels of critical thinking, lower levels of questioning. The bigots who leave ableist comments are not questioning what they’re reading and why they’re being permitted to read these things for free while having to pay to access other stories. They are simply soaking up stories that reinforce their bigotry, and being emboldened by the comments left in echo chambers made up of equally unintelligent and manipulated minds.
Humans are tribal by nature. Our very existence depends on others. We have evolved to belong, to want to belong, and reading vile, discriminatory comments that are in line with their own ignorance contributes to their sense of belonging.
Meanwhile, it also increases the isolation and separation of disabled people and aids the continuance and increase in ableism.
Abuse
In the last year or two, there has been an increase in reported hate crimes against disabled people. This cannot be a coincidence, and I’m totally confident in saying it is because of ableism shown in news media.
When I first started using wheelchairs after an accident in 2006, I did not experience any abusive, hateful comments from strangers. To the contrary, I only experienced shock or empathy. Prior to the fall, I rode a mountain bike around the town where I lived, my young son perched in a detachable chair behind me.
Only after being confined to a wheelchair did I realise how any people in the town recognised me as ‘the girl on the bike’, with strangers coming up to me asking why I using a different kind of wheels.
This annoys and outrages some people - namely bigoted bastards who barely have two fucking brain cells to rub together.
One young guy approached me with complete shock in his eyes, saying “You’re not on your bike. You’re always on your bike. Why aren’t you on your bike?”
The words spilled from his mouth as his eyebrows sat up around his hairline.
“Because I’m in a wheelchair,” was my reply.
In the last twelve months, though, I have experienced a growing hostility because of my wheelchair use.
Severe Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (HEDS) means I cannot tolerate using manual wheelchairs. Pushing myself causes dislocations, subluxations (partial dislocations), muscle spasm and a lot of pain, so I rely on an electric wheelchair.
This, apparently, annoys and outrages some people - namely bigoted bastards who barely have two fucking brain cells to rub together - as I discovered while out walking my dog recently.
We have a usual route, one taking us past a local hotel and bar. I pulled in to have a coffee before returning home to social isolation and solitude. Parking my wheelchair up, I was told by an ableist twat I do not know that I am lazy for using a wheelchair to walk my dog.
Yes, according to him and his empty head, using a wheelchair to move is ‘lazy’.
My (new) electric wheelchair costs £3300 to buy. As much as some used cars.
I’m fortunate that the NHS (National Health Service for those outside the UK who don’t know what that acronym means) supplies my wheels, so I don’t have to buy them – which I could never afford to do.
This twat lacks the ability to think critically and deduce that people are not given wheelchairs unless they need them, that people do not use them unless they need them. He is oblivious to how hard it is to get around safely on wheels.
I refer you back to my words about The Telegraph and how it (and other news media) has increased the idea that mass fakery and fraudulence exist where disabled people are concerned. I’d put cash on the fact he is one of the crowd or dickheads being manipulated into misplaced outrage and increased ableist thinking.
A blonde bitch outside the local pub where I live also decided I am faking my disabilities recently when I dared to park my wheelchair on one side of the road and actually deigned to use my legs to cross to the other side to use the local grocery shop.
Standing outside smoking as I walked (painfully) back to my wheelchair, she loudly announced to her companion “See! I told you she doesn’t need that thing.”
This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard that accusation.
A neighbour who is now dead, used to see me in my wheelchair and shout (yes, shout) “She doesn’t need that thing! I’ve seen her move her legs!”, as if paralysis is the only reason people need wheelchairs.
The woman outside the pub had obviously been gossiping about and judging me and, in all her glorious ignorance, had decided that I am pretending to need a wheelchair. She had probably seen me get out of it to enter the local pharmacy in the past, and is too unintelligent to understand that I have leave it outside because the pharmacy is in an old building with a doorway too narrow for it to fit through.
I ignored her and her finger-pointing, but if I cross her path again, I will say something. Something fit for humiliating and embarrassing her.
Not all ignorant, ableist accusation are spoken. They can be delivered under the weight of silent stares. In the summer, the tables outside the pub where the blonde stood with her cigarette are usually full of drinkers who turn their heads to watch as I struggle out of my wheelchair to get in to the pharmacy.
I try to not be affected by their eyes following my every move, but nervousness and dread build in the pit of my stomach every time I go to collect my pain medication, knowing these drinkers will be watching and judging me.
Ironically, while severe Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos had made my body subject to poor healing, wounds that reopen when stitches are removed, where even IV needles and the slightest scratch leaves permanent scars, my disabilities and wheelchair use have led me to need to develop a thick skin where ableist fuckery and other people’s incorrect conclusions are concerned.
One thing, though, that troubles me more and more, is ableism, how it is still so acceptable, how it is increasing and how Equality laws are ignored where disabled people are concerned.
Illegal
In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 details various things, contains measures and rules that are not optional. They are law. They must be obeyed.
Yet they are still very much ignored – especially where disabled people are concerned. Take my doctors’ surgery, for example.
By law, it must provide an accessible entrance. It is, according to that law, equipped with two electronic doors, both operated with big buttons you simply touch to open them.
When they’re working.
For at least the last year, neither door has worked. The external door is very heavy and difficult to open. Then the internal door must be negotiated. Having spoken to many older people living in the village, I know it’s not just me who struggled to enter the surgery. Beyond the physical struggle, having to leave my electric wheelchair outside the building led to my doctor making mistakes in my medical records by stating I had walked to the appointment, and by writing on scan request forms that I would be walking.
Aside from mistakes made, in order to keep my place in the queue at reception, I had to kneel on the floor – a degrading and difficult thing to do.
After doing more research for the editorial special on ableism that I am slowly chipping away at and finding out more about the Equality Act 2010, I realised that the surgery choosing to not fix the doors and provide accessible entry to the building is illegal.
Not just painful, annoying and leading to errors in medical records, it. Is. Illegal.
According to the Act and the laws detailed within it, doctors’ surgeries are one of the buildings that must provide accessible entrances.
So, I decided to try to do something about it.
I stood in line girding my
loins in readiness to raise
the issue of the surgery’s
illegal actions...
Girding My Loins
It’s not unusual for the surgery’s waiting room to be empty, but the day I decided to say something, a long queue had formed behind me as I waited to speak to the reception staff.
With my electric wheelchair relegated to being stuck outside because of the broken doors, and with me not being in the mood to be degraded by having to kneel on the floor as I waited, I stood in line girding my loins in readiness to raise the issue of the surgery’s illegal actions.
When my turn to talk to the reception staff came, I spoke to them about the medical issue I needed to discuss, then swallowed my nerves and delivered the line I had rehearsed in my mind.
“I know the Practice Manager won’t contact me, so could you please pass a message on to him for me?”
Employing my old theatre training, I breathed from my diaphragm, projecting my voice loudly enough for everyone in the waiting room to hear me.
“Certainly,” the receptionist replied with a smile - one that was about to leave her face.
“Would you tell him that, under the Equality Act 2010, the surgery is acting illegally by not fixing those doors?”
You could have heard a pin drop, such was the sudden silence. The receptionist stuttered, then agreed to pass my words on to the man in charge of the running the practice.
The next time I went to the surgery, the heavy external door was propped open and the internal door had been fixed. As I was leaving, both receptionists rushed out from behind their glass screen to inform me that the external door was going to be fixed soon.
A small victory, it should not have taken me pointing out the surgery’s illegal actions for the doors to be fixed. Had I not said something, chances are, both doors would still be broken. If the external door isn’t sorted within the next month, I will speak up again.
The fact that the practice partners and manager were all happy to break the law and disobey the Equality Act for so long shows how little they care about people with disabilities. Shows that discrimination against disabled people - ableism – is totally acceptable to them.
As it is to so many businesses, news outlets, charities, organisations, politician and people across all levels and sectors of society.
And while I know I cannot change the world where ableism is concerned, if I can open even one door, physically or metaphorically, for disabled people...
...I will.
