My (disabled) identity

Who am I?

This blog was prompted by being ticked as ‘disabled’ by someone on a form. It’s not an identity I own. Here’s why…

Disability is about being dis-abled. Any disability I have is not located in me, my body, my brain. Rather, it is located in the stuff that makes up our society and our everyday living. It is about social structures, attitudes and assumptions that reduce my ability to participate in society on an equal footing with others.

That’s pretty standard ‘social model of disability’ stuff.  The social model of disability has served well as a statement of facts, re-orientation of thinking and rallying cry for people being dis-abled because their bodies, minds or health are seen as wrong, impaired or inconvenient. Without the social model, we would not be where we are today. Without it, many more people would accept society's labelling of them as second class and broken. 

But I’ve got two queries about this approach as I look into the future. First, if the key factor in disability is how society is organised, why do we reserve the term for occasions where our physical bodies, mind or general health are in conflict with the kinds of bodies, minds and health that society values and organised itself around?

Why not include other reasons for me being dis-abled?

·         I am dis-abled in terms of my low income.

·         I am dis-abled when I am discriminated against because I am a woman [and that opens a whole new debate. If one site of discrimination is because a woman’s body is the "wrong sort" of body in terms of how society organises itself, does that mean women should be included with people who have the “wrong sort of body” because they have fewer than four functioning limbs?].

If we insist that the term disabled people is only for people with impairments, then we are back to foregrounding the individual. There is no way we can play with language and pretend impairment is anything other than a deficit word. ‘Impairment’ sets us up to compare a fictitious norm with something less than the norm (not other or different, but less). I find the Indian term ‘inconvenience’ far less irritating. It recognises that some aspects of our bodies and brains can be incredibly inconvenient to us as we try to operate and thrive in a world that disables us.

My second problem with disabled identity is that I am me. I am unique. I have an identity as me. It is very difficult to pick one aspect of what makes me me and foreground it as THE aspect that should be the primary influence for how I interact with the world. When I met the legal criteria for being a disabled person (and actually I still do in many respects), that was not always the side of me that dominated how society and I interacted or the reasons I was dis-abled. I have attributes in common with David Cameron, my friend with Down Syndrome, Jeremy Corbyn, the woman in drug abuse recovery, the person who does not identify as male or female. And I face barriers to fulfilling my potential and being valued for me for all those reasons.  I have an identity. That identity is me. Me as a whole person. So that is why I have never accepted a disabled identity. 

Now, I will gladly be labelled and identified with others who share being disabled by a particular social barrier. Labels can make it easier to lobby and fight to get rid of that specific barrier. I’m particularly happy to publicly own a label that I could have hidden, because that label is highly stigmatized. I’m articulate, got great support networks and a strong sense of self and I have the luxury of the choice to hide that label and ‘pass’ as ‘normal’. By publicly sharing the label, I am challenging the stereotypes that go with the label, and standing in solidarity with people who cannot hid from their label. That does make sense to me.

But my fear is that, ultimately, this way of thinking will not create an inclusive society. An alternative approach is to challenge the ways of seeing the world that can make everyone's life more challenging, lead to most of us being dis-abled at some points of our lives and lead to some of us being dis-abled at every turn. The alternative approach says we have value, we are acceptable and we have an equal place in society because we exist. It says each person is unique, and labelling people into groups is meaningless. It says we need to find the most inclusive ways possible of relating to each other, working with each other and creating social ways of doing things. It sees diversity as a huge strength for society, and looks for ways to celebrate and enhance diversity rather than manage it.

In a nutshell:

·         We are all of value and all belong in society. So why not organise life to be inclusive for as many of us as possible, regardless of labels? The number of people being dis-abled would go down instantly.

·         Inclusivity means different practical actions for different people. But the bottom line is without inclusive attitudes and ways of seeing the world, practical actions alone won’t stop disability.

·         I don’t call myself disabled because I refuse to be dis-abled by society. But I make an exception to that rule when stereotypes and stigma need challenging

If anyone is curious about my ‘stigmatising label’, you’ll just have to read my other blogs ;)