Late last night I came across something I genuinely do not understand and do not know what to think of. It was late so I just went to bed, but this morning I’m still perplexed. I had come across the notion of transability – the idea that some people seek to become disabled. At first I thought it was a joke, but I googled it and found it to be quite real. I don’t know what to think: part of me says such people are quite mad – being disabled is often neither easy or fun, so why would anyone want to deliberately damage their bodies? Maybe they just want to jump on the bandwagon, and claim to belong to the disability community. To be honest, while I’m not going to name names, I think I know one or two people like that.

Part of me asks what is the difference between this and transgenderism? If i can accept that some people were born into the wrong gender and have a right to change genders, I should accept this. My initial reaction would be that gender can be swapped either way: men become woman and women become men, and neither necessitates a lessening of ability. Of course, you could say that people with disabilities always seek to become more able-bodied, be it through medical procedure, specialist equipment and so on; but we aren’t trying to become something fundamentally different to who we now are. To try to make our lives a bit easier is not the same as thinking we were born in the wrong body. Thus I’d say there is a fundamental difference between transgenderism and transabilitism, and that I can be perfectly fine with one and deeply skeptical about the other.

I’m very troubled by this. According to this article, this very real phenomenon can be seen as a neurological condition – itself a disability. But I can’t help thinking there might be imposters in our community, bandwagon jumpers who profess to be disabled for some kind of street cred or fashion accessory, as if wanting to be in an oppressed minority is in vogue. I wonder how many users of the ouch message boards or the DPAC facebook group claim to be disabled, yet know nothing of special schools, long stay hospitals and so on? Of course, they might genuinely think they are disabled or might not be conscious of what they are doing; but I just fear, looking at the numbers of people now using those forums, that our community could now be usurped as a political force by people wo don’t have the rest of our interests at heart.