It's Blogging Against Disabilism Day!
Blogging Against Disablism Day

Two posts today for Blogging Against Disabilism Day. Today is the day that I and many other bloggers take up pen (or keyboard if you insist on being literal) to get people to think about discrimination against people with disabilities.

The post below this one I wrote late last night (early this morning), before I actually remembered about the Day. But it is actually the better of the two, in my opinion.

I won't win any prizes for the eloquence today, and if you're here from Blogging Against Disabilism, I'm sure you're reading many better ones. In fact, I actually like last night's post better for this day. If you are one of my regular readers, do go visit the Blogging Against Disabilism site and do some browsing.

My experience with Disabilism is new, since I've only been disabled for a year. My experience also is a changing one, not because the world is changing, but because my disability is progressive. Today I cannot speak. In a few months I'll be in a wheelchair.

But for now, I'll visit the issue of a couple of assumptions people make.

1. When encountering a person who doesn't speak, many people assume we are deaf or retarded or both. The assumption of deafness is based in their experience, but not logic. Because many people who are Deaf don't speak, the assumption is that it goes both ways. If A then B, therefore: If B then A. No sense to this, but it is real. The assumption of mental retardation is not even based in experience -- this one makes no sense whatsoever.

2. When encountering a person who doesn't speak, is in a wheelchair and has spastic limb movements, many people assume the person is retarded. This one doesn't even have a basis in experience. Why do people assume that people in wheelchairs are retarded?

The common thread? Physical disability is automatically linked in people's minds with mental retardation. There is no basis in fact for this linkage, but it is there, and it is very difficult to overcome.

I remember one day when I still thought I had a chance of being understood at least with simple utterances like Hello. I approached a table outside my restaurant and while taking a few dishes away, said hello to the party sitting there. I guess it was not intelligible, because one of the women, a young professional, barked back at me unintelligibly, making fun of my speech. It was the first episode of outright rudeness I had experienced, and it made me see red. And they hadn't even bought anything from my restaurant. They had hot dogs from next door and just took one of my tables.