Many of us carry the ableist ideals without even realising…
If we hold views about ourselves such as:
“I am too needy”
“Asking for help makes me a failure”
“I have to do this on my own”
This is ableism.
There’s a lot of shame that surrounds the idea that having needs is a problem that we have to solve – and we have to solve it by doing it alone.
This is entirely false. Without even bringing disability into the conversation, we’re already making an assumption that we need to be fixed, that there’s this ideal version of what health and wellness looks like.
Notions like ‘self-care’ are steeped in ableist culture. Three of the biggest issues I have with the wellness industry is that:
It's often used as a way to blame people for their lack of health.
It promotes a packaged idea of what health looks which excludes so many people.
There are a number significant physical, emotional and financial barriers to wellness.
If you look at the trends surrounding food choices, exercise, or products, the people speaking about them or benefitting from them are overwhelmingly able-bodied – and it even took me, a person with a physical impairment, quite a while to recognise this because of my own ableist views.
It’s thanks to my stubbornness and refusal to be told what I can and can’t do that I was able to access yoga classes, go on retreat and find my inner truth. However, the huge barriers and lack of awareness in ability diversity in these kinds of spaces make it impossible for many to access.
Firstly, self-care is often seen as a luxury - and sometimes it can be. But for people living with disabilities, those "luxuries" like therapy, a specific diet or yoga are crucial to our health and survival. Self-care isn’t just about a nice face mask and a slice of chocolate cake - it's also about creating a support system, avoiding toxic relationships and setting healthy boundaries for yourself.
Secondly, the stock image of self-care being a petite white woman in Lululemon is really damaging. We’re beginning to see progress in areas of inclusivity on gender, sexuality and race – but ability is being seriously ignored in wellness. For wellness to be fully inclusive, it needs to feature ability diverse bodies that move away from the social ‘ideal’. Ok sure - disability is an infinitely diverse spectrum which, of course, makes the task of accessibility for all not a particularly economically viable option. The truth of the matter is though, we’re currently ignoring the needs of every 1 in 6 people – which to me is insanity! This “one size fits all” approach is entirely based on a capitalist model of health and wellness, and it’s really toxic.
Finally, people with disabilities often experience significant financial barriers to health and wellness. Additional expenses from astronomical medical bills (and no, disability allowance or financial aid from the government IS NOT available for all people living with disability) often means that Instagram's version of self-care is simply not an option.
So, when I say disability – I’m talking about ability diversity; physical, invisible and neuro.
I subscribe to the social model of disability which defines disability as the systemic barriers, derogatory attitudes, and social exclusion, which make it difficult or impossible for individuals with impairments to attain their valued functioning’s - rather than the dominant medical model of disability, which is a functional analysis of the body as a machine to be fixed in order to conform with normative values.
For example: if a person is unable to climb stairs, the medical model of disability focuses on making the individual physically able to climb stairs – to meet society’s expectations of what a body ‘should’ be able to do. The social model tries to make stair-climbing unnecessary, such as by replacing the stairs with a wheelchair-accessible ramp. Therefore, the impairment itself should no longer be considered disabling in that scenario.
If we consider the functionality of products, services and infrastructure from this perspective, then anything that is inaccessible to a specific group of individuals is quite simply bad design. Inclusivity should not be an afterthought once the needs of the majority are met – it should just be exceptional design thinking from the very beginning.
This is what I loveeee so much about the design of the 2012 Olympic Stadium here in London. From the stadium accessibility, to the competitors accommodation, to the spectator and at-home viewing experiences – absolutely everything was considered from an ability diverse perspective. Everything was intended to be accessible for everyone, which meant that even the audio commentary that was created for the visually impaired spectators were being used by most people in the venue who didn’t have a very good view of the games! Amazing – better quality service for all, right?
Ability diversity and ableism is an issue in wellness that we cannot continue to ignore.
If you’re a currently working in the wellness industry – if you’re a yoga practitioner, a fitness coach, dietician, therapist, if you work in areas of personal development - sex, love, relationships, holistic and spiritual – I really want to hear from you. I’d love to know what you’re doing to support ability diversity in your practice and if it’s not something you’re already thinking about – I’d really love to hear what your concerns are.
If you’re someone living with a disability and you’re here like, “Preachhhhhh!!”, then please get in touch with me via Instagram @dizexplainstheuniverse - I’d love to know what you’re experiences have been, if you work with any adaptions or any specific accessible techniques.
And actually, this is a call out to anyone. If you’ve got any ideas of how we can bring ability informed wellness into the industry, please get in touch – because being able to live your best life, to develop deep self-love, body confidence and participate fully in life, in love, should be available to absolutely everyone.
Yesterday, I had a conversation with Sam, a friend of mine whom I’ve known for a couple of years and share similar views and sympathies. A part of our discussion was how perception of reality factors into social inequalities. We talked about how language is the indicator of how people perceive reality, and how certain words enable other people’s realities to be abstractions. Words like “people” and “oppression,” for example. Sam said that it takes away from the reality of another person’s experiences when people use those terms to generalize an experience as if we all experience it, when in reality, we do not and do not experience to the extremity that informs social inequalities to happen. I told him that there are just certain things I cannot do anymore, and wished there was a way to make a point rather than deal with the drama of other people’s ignorance. The solution we talked about and discussed was to be specific. I’ve tried doing that on social media today and the message seemed to get across better. The risk, of course, is generalization, because not all of said social group consist of the behavior, but the fact that it is a behavior of said social group, it needs to be pointed out and made real.
Looking at my life experiences leading to the present, there are able-bodied individuals who think that I have no perception of reality. I wrote about this before, but this conversation provoked a second look.
Reality for me is seeing what it is front of me and responding to what I see. Often times, it’s a verbal response. Sometimes it is written. Sometimes it’s subtle, but it is a response. Able-bodied people do not see my capabilities of grasping reality either because they do not know my reality, or they choose to ignore it. It’s been made easy to ignore the perceptions of the ability-increased, and it makes it hard to confront, challenge, and change those who see these perceptions as “disabled.”
Growing up, people who cared and still do care about me have used their grasp of reality as a crux to get me to shut up. It’s a powerful power tool that able-bodied people have used to silence my voice and to put me in my place, which is below them. When I present a point, given all necessary homework and tactful approach, which no one gives me credit for, it is still viewed as this:
Not what it actually is, which is more in line with this:
Basically, it is common perception that due to my Asperger’s, my lens is foggy, cracked, or whatever damage done to it through the syndrome makes me unaware of reality. It makes me stupider than the able-bodied person I am talking to, who always knows more, experienced more, and who has a firmer grasp of the objective nature of reality, and therefore, can be objective. The human mind is the one of the most subjective organs out there, next to the penis. It usually takes consensus to be objective these days, and even so, outside influences who have their own subjective agendas are prone to use their influence and call it objective. This is a post Citizens United world we are living in, and FOX News still parlays itself as “fair and balanced.”
I find myself asking, who is at the greater “disability” here? It is not like I offered my mind to be controlled upon diagnosis. How can able-bodied people control my mind when they aren’t in my mind? How can they assume agency over how I think, act, and behave when they don’t know me, know how I think, how I react? At the end of the day, I am reduced to being a predictable, unregulated, opinionated label who needs to shut up all the while able-bodied people push my buttons and act surprised when I react. I’m just a cognitive illusion to people, not a human being with feelings, thoughts, and a mind that can be equally objective. If they cannot see my humanity, they are at the greater disability. I’m trapped in a binary in which no complex ambiguity allows itself to show my humanity.
When I look in a mirror, I see myself. When I look at my life, I see my experiences and how those experiences shaped me. I always talked in abstractions when it came to social inequalities, and in doing so, I’ve enabled them to continue. What is real to me is not real to someone else, but their reality is their experiences and therefore, it is real. My conversations with people, able-bodied or not, about my experiences should validate my own experiences in the reality of which they are based in, if able-bodied people care to know about my experiences.
Able-bodied people should not be expected to validate ability-increased experiences, as much as men shouldn’t be expected to validate women’s experiences, heterosexuals shouldn’t be expected to validate GLBT experiences, and white people shouldn’t be expected to validate people of color’s experiences. When a person shares an experience with you that impacts their life, we should listen to them. We should take off the cue and either modify our behavior or learn about it some more. By “we” and “are” I mean people with social privilege.
Realizing my conversations make take some time, and it may not fly with people, but who cares as long as it flies with me. Realizing conversations is ability-positive. My life is not abstract by design, it is abstract by dominant perception. I may not be able to control what people think of me, but I do believe myself to be living in the real world, with real experiences, and with a firm grasp on reality.
