Some of us don’t love our disabilities, and that’s fine too.
When it comes to disabilities and the people who have them, I wish some of those people would be more open-minded to the idea that not all of us love our disability or lets it define us.
If you’re in a wheelchair, and you’re fine with it, then awesome! More power to you! But don’t yell “Internalized ableism!” the second that somebody else in a wheelchair feels it would be nice to be able to walk if she felt like it.
I’ve seen people online say that “disabilities are just another form of diversity that we should learn to accept!” and that’s just not a fair view of it.
Take chronic pain. People with chronic pain suffer from depression, and commit suicide, more often that other people. Their disability is so awful that they’d rather die than have to endure it.
Or take poor eyesight. That disability is such a pain that practically everybody who can afford to get rid of it, with glasses or surgery, do so.
Being black, or gay, is not the same thing as, for instance, being blind.
It’s not internalized ableism if a blind person would like to watch a movie, or a deaf person wants to hear without a hearing aid, or a person with crutches feels it would be neat not to have to carry them around. Everybody on Earth has things they wish they could do.
In my view, internalized ableism is when you regard yourself as defective, or broken, or inferior, because of your disability. It’s not ableism simply to think “doing that seems fun; I wish I could try it.” That’s how every human being feels about something.
It’s nice (and true) to say that “we disabled peeps can do much more than you think!” but at some level, we gotta accept that by definition, having a disability means there are things that you cannot do, and we gotta accept that some people might want those options. That’s not ableism in my opinion, because if it were, I’d be invalidating people’s right to want to try new things.
Oh, and one last though: I keep seeing people say that “Without my disability, I wouldn’t be me anymore.” That’s just not true, and the reason I know it’s not is because the opposite isn’t true.
My boss’s daughter was in a riding accident, and is a paraplegic for life now. If I were to claim that she’s not her anymore just because she uses a wheelchair, my boss would tell me I’m wrong, and she’d be correct.
I’d say the opposite is true as well.
