I would like to turn my attention today to a subject I have not looked at in a while. Over the weekend I started to think about disability again, how disability is defined and what constitutes the disability community. This was occasioned by my online discussions with my friend James: we had both read the views of a man who calls himself a disability activist and consultant, positing that the disability rights movement and disabled community has become infiltrated and saturated by people with ‘minor impairments’ who ”define themselves as disabled and regarded themselves as opposed by the benefits system for failing to accept they are disabled as they fight with obsession against the welfare reforms” but who have ” turned illness into a lifestyle and by failing to cope responsibility, they create the disability they clear find some sense of comfort from.” In other words, to him there are people in the disability community who he thinks do not belong in it, people whom he condescendingly and arrogantly terms as using their ‘minor impairments’ to garner pity and political leverage.

Of course most people rightly ignore such baseless gibberish, but I cannot. The guy is a loon, and part of me thinks I should get on with something else. But given this guy calls himself an activist, there is a danger that others might confuse these views with those of the mainstream or think they have some sort of validity. They emphatically do not, but to make such a statement I need to examine why not. To do that, however, I need to put forward a definition of disability, which, as I once wrote here, is not that straightforward.

Since I wrote my ‘us and them’ entry, my views have, of course, evolved. Disability, according to the social model, occurs when social constraints mean that, due to an impairment, one cannot act as you otherwise would. Having an impairment does not mean you are disabled: I use an electric wheelchair because I can’t walk far, but that in itself is not my disability. What disables me is when I cannot go where I need to because of the lack of lifts and ramps. Thus in this sense disability is a result of constraints on those with impairments imposed by a society reluctant to adapt, and can be framed as a form of oppression.

The disabled community can therefore be described as a loosely-affiliated group of people prevented from functioning ‘normally’ by social constraints of whatever form. These can range from the obvious physical constraints wheelchair users face to public signs written in language that a person with learning disabilities might not be able to understand. I must admit, however, this does strike me as problematic in some senses: where does one draw the line? Can smokers now be said to be disabled – they have a physical addiction to nicotine but are currently prevented from sating that addiction in public places. Under such a model, a cynic could say that anyone who feels prevented from acting as they like by a social rule could define themselves as disabled.

I think that that is, in part, what this writer is getting at. He is, however, still dangerously wrong. Yes, disability is now a broad church, and yes it is open to abuse, but I would ask upon what basis does he exclude those he terms ‘wannabe’ disabled people? He writes ”These people hide themselves in the social media where their true identity remains a mystery despite the media attention they received, but I have looked at the information they purport to have in terms of being disabled as it does not always add up.” In other words, he has made himself arbiter of who is disabled and who isn’t, who is a valid member of our community and who is not. Forgive me an ad hominen attack, but I find such a notion utterly arrogant and distasteful. As soon as we do that, as soon as we start trying to arbitrarily divide up the disability community from the inside, we start down a very dangerous road. Who is he – who is anyone – to tell someone they aren’t disabled? To seek to divide disabled people into subgroups – say, those with severe conditions and those with milder impairments – would irrevocably weaken what political power we, as one united group, may have. It may be a semi-self-selecting group but unless it stays united it is nothing but a group of cripples bickering over who is in and who is out. Frankly, to get Freudian for a moment, the fact that this blogger seeks to stratify disability while insisting on the severity of his own condition might suggest a certain insecurity on his part – he might be more able than he wants us to think. But then, never having met the guy, that is just speculation. Nevertheless, such a stratification is essentially as baseless as the attempt I made three or four days ago to stratify the blogsphere, although whereas the arrogant gibberish I spewed about blogs was harmless, I see great danger in putting forth the idea that some disabled people are merely wannabes, and cannot let it go unchallenged. Such tosh smacks of thatcherism, even social darwinism. Indeed, the idea that some people choose to be disabled as a ‘lifestyle choice’ is an insult to those whose conditions might be less obvious but who are no less oppressed. Coming from a person who calls himself a disability rights activist, this horrifies me, as does the absurd insinuation that some disability rights activists are actually able bodied people who merely have an obsessive grievance with the welfare reforms.

The disability community is blossoming at the moment. As I wrote here, there is a need for disability arts. Indeed, with the Paralympics and the Paraorchestra coming up, disabled people will soon tae centre stage. Part of the best parts of this wonderful community, though, is it’s vibrancy, variety, and acceptance. As soon as we stop accepting people for who they claim to be, as soon as we start questioning the rights of others to term themselves disabled because their conditions might not be as severe as ours, then we have lost our way. Smokers might not be disabled, and some may scoff at my example, but the incontrovertible fact remains that oppressed people, no matter the form of oppression, must stay united. Variety must be welcomed, difference accommodated, xenophobia, upon whatever basis, fought. In this era of cuts, with money tight and people with disabilities, no matter how minor, being seen more and more as an inconvenience, we must always be able to fall back on each other.