As most of you probably noticed, for the last week of Disability Pride Month, I had a Q&A on my stories about Disability Pride Month. This brought up a lot of interesting questions, that I want to address on a post. You can see the Q&A on my highlights if you're interested in reading more!
It doesn't matter how we support Disability Pride Month, as long as we do support it in some way. It's okay if you didn't start a protest or share every little thing you saw about Disability Pride Month, you can support it in any way that suits your abilities! Just because Disability Pride Month is coming to an end, we will not stop fighting until we have equal rights and don't have to feel grateful for an accessible bathroom!
Happy Disability Pride Month 2021!
#Accessibility ID: green background with white text reads "Disability Pride Month - a summary" with brown text reading "a summary of a week-long Question and Answer session about Disability Pride Month (DPM)" Below is an image of two people from the waist up.The first is wearing a khaki hijab and mustard jumper, and is doing sign language, the second has a short white bob and a red top, she has no arms.
What's one thing you wish others knew about disability?
This feels impossible to answer, because there isn't just one thing I wish others knew about disability. In my opinion, I feel it can mostly be summarised with "we do not have equality". I think most believe that because we have a law in place to protect us, we are treated equally, but this is not the case at all. You can check out my first post about Disability Pride Month or my blog "Why we need Disability Pride Month" for more information about the statistical inequalities. I was also asked "what law would you want to put in place for disabled people?" The law itself is in place in the UK (The Equality Act 2010) but it is not enough to protect disabled people because it's not easily punishable and is far too open to interpretation.
Do you know of any businesses / brands supporting Disability Pride Month?
When I was originally asked this, my answer was no. In stark contrast to the LGBTQ+ Pride Month that just finished, Disability Pride Month wasn't advertised and supported anywhere. But some of my fabulous followers have sent me a couple of brands who did do something: Pretty Little Thing, BPerfect Cosmetics and Innocent. I really admired the honesty of Innocent's post regarding Disability Pride Month and I urge you to check it out. Innocent acknowledged that they weren't originally aware of Disability Pride Month, but not only this, they also listed their flaws regarding disability equality and what they were doing to change these. This, to me, felt far more important than sticking the flag on a product without doing anything to support disabled people. But a tiny percentage of brands doing something is not enough, I mean come'on Ikea made LGBTQ+ Pride sofas - where's our sofa?!
What's one prejudice you have about Disability?
I loved this question, because it's so important to acknowledge that even disabled people can have an uncnoscious bias or prejudice surrounding disability - we're not perfect! For me, I need to work on my initial judgement of people who are not visibly disabled using disabled facilities. When I've been waiting for the accessible bathroom for ages, and a seeminly perfectly healthy person walks out, I do initially think to myself "they're not disabled, they're taking advantage of the facilities", same when I can't park because all the accessible parking spaces are taken up. I know that there are invisible disabilities, and without my mobility aids, I look perfectly healthy too so I know how frustrating it is to get the judgemental looks. I always correct my thoughts, and remind myself that they could be invisibly disabled, but in that moment of frustration, I definitley make a judgement based on the way they look. It's not right, and I'm working on changing that initial thought by correcting myself every time.
Should abled people be supporting Disability Pride Month?
Abso-bloomin-lutely! We need allies to support us with our fights, because the more people we have speaking up, the louder our voice will be. There are so very few disabled people who have big followings and/or big influence (which is an issue in itself) so we need more abled people to get behind us to help raise awareness and make change. We also know that 19% of working age adults in the UK have a disability which is around 1 in 5, so every abled person is going to know a lot of disabled people, whether they know it or not! As long as you're sharing the messages that disabled people want to be shared, please do support us.
What have I learned during Disability Pride Month?
I've been trying to educate myself more on the expereinces of disabled POC, as this is something I've been regrettably ignorant about. @ChronicallyBrown @DopeBlackDisabled @GirlsChronically_Rock on Instagram have been great resources for this, so give them a follow! I have learnt about the additional fears and discrimination disabled POC face, including the shockingly high statistics of black disabled people who have lost their lives to police brutality. This is something I would urge everyone to educate themselves on; we have been made more aware of racism since the BLM movement, yet we didn't hear as much about the intersectionality of disabled poc, and the discrimination they face.
