Tag: disabilityawareness

Discrimination is surprising

Discrimination is surprising

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

The response to last week’s blog has been amazing: people were completely outraged! And this was so weird (lovely !!, but weird) to me, because my getting blocked by students at my University didn’t even make me that angry: it wasn’t an unprecedented event. But you were all so shocked and furious! So, I realise, that you have no idea of just how poorly your disabled community is treated…

So let’s actually talk about disability and society, and let’s first take the idea of ‘looking’ disabled. Well, I don’t ‘look’ disabled. But the fact that I don’t has had serious consequences on the way society treats me.

There are two instances from Secondary School relating to this which particularly stand out for me. The first was when I was in Year 7: I was 11 years old and I’d recently developed a blister on my foot from walking too much, or having a fold in my sock, or something else tedious. (Yes, folds in socks can shove me in a wheelchair for months: it’s that stupid.) So in an attempt to avoid going into my wheelchair, I started to use the lift for disabled students to cut down my walking.

I was outside the lift one afternoon on the way to my next lesson with my best friend when my Deputy Headteacher came over and asked me what I was doing. I politely explained how I had a note from my parents, that I had a blister and that I had to use the lift. She didn’t look at my note, and she wasn’t interested when I started to lift my trousers so she could see my shoes. Instead, she yelled at me saying ‘a blister?! I’ve never heard such a thing! You’re stopping disabled students from using this lift!’. So I went to lesson in floods of tears: completely humiliated.

In this moment I didn’t ‘look disabled’ to my Deputy Headteacher: I didn’t have a noticeable body deformity, sound disabled, nor was I in a wheelchair. Flash-forward 2 weeks however, and I was in a wheelchair…no challenges as to why I was using the lift then…

The other memory I have is from being in Year 10 – the 3rd time I was in a wheelchair at Secondary School. My friends were pushing me through the halls to our lesson, and a student I didn’t know saw us. He shouted ‘piss off! I saw you walking last week, get out of that thing!’ at me across the hallway. I was stunned but my friends shouted back at him and we kept moving. Clearly, to this boy I was a liar; I was the person the media and government demonise as ‘abusing disability services and benefits’, and he took this moment to publicly expose my lie.

…

The world is constantly fed this finite version of what it is to be disabled: what it looks like, what it sounds like and what it feels like. But nobody ever takes the time to work out whether this stereotype is true. So just think about how many people you know without a disability: are they all the same? Do they all have the same bodies and personalities and emotions and ideas? Now think about applying that to disabled people. Do we all have the same disabilities? Do people who even fall under the same type of disability, have the same variation of that disability? Do we all look the same? Sound the same? Feel the same?

The answer is clearly ‘no’. Still, we’re grouped into one blob and are treated poorly by people and institutions who take very little time to try and actually understand us.

I’ve never been bullied directly because I’ve always had people standing up for me, and I’ve always had the confidence to stand up for myself. But I’ll always be vulnerable to discrimination by institutions and the general public because of an unwillingness of people to sit down and actually learn about things they know nothing about.

If you’re outraged by my experiences then start learning about other people’s, because I’m such a privileged white girl and my exposure to discrimination is nowhere near as bad as it gets. Trust me, you know more disabled people than you think, and you have more preconceptions about disability than you recognise.

Lol, I got blocked

Lol, I got blocked

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

When I first started this blog, I didn’t really think that anyone would read it. Then after a few months I realised that hundreds of people every week were clicking on my links. (!) And I thought that if I promoted it on social media, then maybe even more strangers would take the time to read what I write.

One of the ways I did this was by occasionally sharing posts to my University’s ‘overheard’ page. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically a Facebook page run by students of universities where the members share all kinds of things: information about houses, people trying to find things they lost on nights out, promotion of student events or student projects, all sorts. And when I shared blogs to this page, I received hundreds of reads on each article (one time, the views even reached over 1000 in 24 hours), with strangers sending me messages saying how much they’d appreciated my writing. Some even said ‘thank you’.

However, whilst many were grateful to me for talking about subjects such as social class at Durham University, others reported me as promoting a scam…This then caused me to get blocked from the page – a fact I only realised when I checked and saw that I could no longer access the student community.

Bit harsh, but never-mind, whatever.

When I asked the administrator of the page to unblock me, they did it straight away. Then last Wednesday I shared a blog about disability representation. I did so because disability is really not something I ever hear mentioned at Durham, and I thought that reading a blog about it might be a safe and easy way to get students in on the discussion. Plus, I thought, if you don’t want to read it, then just scroll, it’s not exactly an offending topic???

I received hundreds of reads and around 50 likes on that post. But once again, some found it so insulting that they chose to report it, and got me blocked. Only this time when I asked the administrator if they could undo it, they said they couldn’t because at least 50 students reported the post. At least 50 !!! The administrator didn’t remove or report it, my fellow students did.

Why am I even writing about this, you ask? Well, I’m writing about it because when I shared blogs about dating or relationships, they stayed up on the page for weeks – no problem. But then when I discussed social class or disability, at least 100 people took the time and effort to report me. So this isn’t about my ego, it’s about how objectively insane it is that at least 100 students at my university have reported articles about social class and disability as having no place on a Facebook page devoted to a student community. These people may make up a minority, but they exist, and they’re actively rejecting conversations about disability and social class, and I’m not okay with it.

Durham is one of the best universities in the country and many of those attending it will reach powerful positions in their lives; some will even become the people who make the rules in this country. So if later down the line these people are going to control my rights as a disabled person, then why can’t I ask them to try and understand what it’s actually like to be the disabled person?

If you don’t like my writing then it’s calm, just keep scrolling. But don’t tell me to sit down and shut up, or get me blocked because I’m not talking about something you want to hear: it’ll only make me more persistent.

I want to go for a walk

I want to go for a walk

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 2 Comments

For me, disability causes a constant conflict between personality and body. Ever since I was small I’ve struggled to mesh the two together because I’ve never wanted to accept that there are things that I’ll never be able to do. From the age of about 8 until 14 I was awful for it: I’d just do everything that my friends were doing because I wanted to, and I’d rarely give a second thought to my feet. But then I’d end up with infections, and in a wheelchair. So living that way didn’t get me very far.

After about the age of 16 I’d managed to (sort of) make my peace with it. I accepted that I couldn’t ever live my life the way most people could, and I mourned it, but ultimately I realised that those are just the cards I’ve been dealt. I mean, my disability could be so much worse, and what do I gain from fighting it?

Then I was 19 and I had my gap year. I proved to myself that I could travel the world on my own: I went to seriously remote places, away from medical institutions, and showed myself that doing what I want to do doesn’t always have to end in infection and debilitation. It might sound trivial to you, but it was breaking news to me, my family and my doctors.

This year, quarantine happened and after a while the government started allowing people out for walks and exercise. This change to the lockdown brought so much relief to most people, but not to me because I can’t just go out for a run. I can’t just walk down loads of steps to the beach and then back up them, because if I do, I have to accept that I might injure myself. I might put myself in a wheelchair.

This is where we get back to how complicated disability is, because many of my readers have seen me in person and have seen me walk plenty of times. I can walk short distances, and I’ve been known to dance for hours on a night out, but sometimes it’s just luck that I don’t end up with a blister after doing these things. I’m a seasoned professional when it comes to internalising my worries and pushing my disability as far as it can go. I’m stubborn and I’m young, and I don’t see why all my friends can but I can’t. Like I said, it’s a constant conflict.

But I don’t write these blogs to be all ‘woe is me’. Loads of people have it so much worse than I do, and everyone does the best with what they’ve got. It’s just that if I’m going to write blogs about when I feel empowered by being a young disabled woman, then I have to show you the side of my condition which gives me no joy whatsoever.

Some days I just don’t want to be this disabled person. It makes me feel weak and suffocated. I don’t want to have to think about whether I can go somewhere, I want to be able to just go. Sometimes I look at my feet and wonder how it’s fair that I have to be the only person I know who can’t just wear normal shoes and have normal legs. I wonder how it’s fair that I’ll have this for the rest of my life, and how I’m supposed to get over it when there’s nothing I, or anyone else can do to ever improve it.

There are no solutions to these problems. Life doesn’t work in ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’ – especially when I don’t believe in any type of God. As far as I can see, random people get random sacks of sh** to deal with, and we move. I have a really good time even with the headache of my Spina Bifida, and it’s shaped me in so many positive ways. To be honest, if someone told me that I could flick a switch to get rid of it I’m not even sure that I would. Disability can enrich a person’s perspective on the world and life in many ways, but I’d never, ever, wish it on anyone.