autiadhd

[autiadhd]

Ableism: why isn’t it spoken about?

In recent years, campaigns for awareness and equal rights of minority groups have become all the more prominent, and for good reason. The Black Lives Matter, Trans Rights Are Human Rights and Stop Asian Hate movements are just some of the large-scale calls for equality and recognition from minority groups in the last few years. This is absolutely brilliant. Sure, this doesn’t mean that our troubles are over, far from it, we have a very long way to go before these groups will see true equality, but the awareness is beginning to grow and more people are being educated about these extremely important matters.

However, as a disabled person, I have noticed a very distinct lack of movements when it comes to ableism. In fact, ableism seems to be an unspoken prejudice, merely a whisper or undertone below the rest of these massive campaigns for awareness and equality. The only time I see ableism mentioned is when other disabled people bring it up and even then it gets swept right back under the rug again. Nobody seems to want to take a longer, harder look into the issues us disabled people face. It’s usually a face value “oh, it’s quite bad that this happens to disabled people” and then nothing, silence. Several of my teachers didn’t even know ableism was a word.

When people call out discrimination, they tend to list off several forms of it, like racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism…and then the list ends there. Maybe they add “and more” or some other indication that there are more minorities suffering, but people don’t seem to want to name and shame ableism.

A lot of people seem to believe ableism is a smaller issue than most, but this is a direct result of a lack of awareness and reporting and protesting, which is a result of people believing it’s a small issue, which creates a vicious cycle. I am not trying to discredit the importance of the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter or LGBTQ+ Rights movements - these are absolutely vital in moving towards a more equal and fair future. But ableism is treated like a total non-issue by seemingly all who do not experience it. When you’re disabled and experience ableism every day of your life, the feeling that nobody is fighting for your safety and security is isolating.

I’ve been shunned my whole life for practically every single symptom of every disorder and disability I have. Whether it’s the way I act, how I talk too loud or too fast, how I can’t understand social cues well, how I zone out sometimes, how I forget things easily, how I walk “weirdly”, how I latch on to “childish” interests, how I stim, how I can’t manage much physical activity without pain or countless other things, I have been pulled apart for every symptom I have and ridiculed for every last thing anyone can find “wrong” with me. And yet, when I speak up on ableism, I am met with silence. Schools still blatantly refuse to raise any real, genuine awareness, instead opting for very ineffective and cheap anti-bullying messages that rarely ever stopped a single bully and never actually discuss what the bullies are making fun of in the first place. Something needs to change.

We need to raise more awareness about disabilities, as a whole and specific disabilities too. Schools need to educate more strongly, more often and more deeply about disabilities and the issues disabled people face. As a whole, we need to protest ableism more, raise our voices, uplift the voices of disabled people and re-evaluate how we treat those who are different to us. We need to campaign for more accessibility for all kinds of disabilities in all kinds of settings. We can make a genuine, positive difference if everyone puts the work in to be more inclusive and more vocal about ableism, so why is it swept under the rug so frequently? It isn’t hard to speak up or to educate yourself or to simply be more open to listening to disabled people and their experiences. There is no equality until every single minority group is uplifted and supported, not just the ones you hear the most about on the news.