Let’s get down to brass tax. Disability is a probably the biggest part of our lives. No matter what your limitation is, our everyday is built around what we can’t do. And that’s totally fine. It’s what to be expected from life with a disability. But that’s where it needs to stop.
The day to day logistics of living with a disability (i.e. travel, eating, using the bathroom) are the only part of being crippled that we should allow to infect our life. Please let me elaborate. Since I’m in a wheelchair, I’m going to stick to that in my examination as it’s the easiest for me to speak from. We’ve all probably had the experience where a stranger relates to us only through the stereotypes of disability.
You know exactly what I mean. Infantilized. Ignored. Treated as weak. And the problem is not with these people who see us through the prism of disability. It’s that we allow it. Too many times have I seen people in wheelchairs play into the stereotypes assigned to us. People think we don’t have the cognizance to hold a conversation. The correct response is obviously to strike up a conversation, but a lot of us sit quietly in the corner. We’re not supposed to be intelligent.
Border line mentally handicapped even. What’s the answer? Place ourselves in the halls of higher education. However, I recently discovered that at my university there were only four people in wheelchairs on campus including myself. Four. That number is disturbingly low. How are handicapped people supposed to improve our places in society if we don’t get the education required? The handicap are non-sexual. We are not supposed to be attractive or be attracted to anyone. Instead of correcting this fabrication, we sit at home on a Saturday night instead of inserting ourselves into the singles circuit. Issues like these are important and yet I see them too easily glossed over when discussing disability.
The main topic seems to be living easily and not happily. We need to confront these problems as a group. Otherwise things will never really change for us. And as an addendum I’d like to add that this is only my experience. I’m sure there are a number of disabled people who live fully in the community. However, I’ve never seen them.
