I whish to clarify something which may have been ambiguous in yesterday’s entry. I did not mean to imply disabledism doesn’t exist, but that it is fundamentally different to other ‘-isms’. Whereas racism and sexism are both born of blind hatred, what can be called disabledism is born of such things as concern, care, and laced with a dose of fear. They don’t plonk us in special schools because they hate us, they plonk us there for such condescending reasons as ”my son couldn’t cope in mainstream”. Further, disabledism is caused by factors in our environment: the lack of ramps, hearing loops, large-print signs. And while we’re at it would it hurt libraries and internet cafes to have key guard or two lying about?

I guess I was indulging in a little academic pedantry yesterday. Of course disabledism exists but only as a shorthand. For example, I was patted again yesterday, in the canteen on the shoulder: you might term this condescending act disabledism as it is born of prejudice; but you could also call it a misplaced display of friendship and care. My concern with labelling it disabledism is that implies hatred, loathing, something which it manifestly isn’t. I feel the term as a whole carries with it overtones of manifest repression: disabled people are not hated, as black or Jewish people sometimes are. People care for us and worry about us too much; they do not hate us. This is what I meant yesterday when I wrote that disabledism exists only as a shorthand for a set of other factors: its far more complex than simple hatred, and to see it as such is as unhelpful as it is paranoid.

The good news is that this would suggest that disabledism can be overcome. Hatred is blind, but people can learn what sort of behaviours are bad and patronising, and will, in my experience, happily avoid them in the future. The environment can change, and is changing to accommodate us cripples. Architecs do not put stairs and steps in buildings just to repress us – some people seem to think our environment is deliberately repressive, which I find absurd. Things,, I feel, are getting better as people become more aware. I guess in a way disabledism can be seen as a lack of awareness: if so, as I said yesterday, we simply have to teach people.