Yesterday morning, just as I was preparing to go out, I caught an interview with Jake from The Traitors on morning TV. As you may remember, Jake was a finalist in the Traitors who has comparatively mild Cerebral Palsy. However, his CP is so mild that he was able to keep it hidden throughout most of the show. As I said a few weeks ago when the program aired, something about that does not sit well with me: He was saying yesterday how CP is actually fairly common, and that a lot of people have it but it’s so mild that others might not realise. He then went on to explain how you could wear a special, flower-adorned lanyard to let people know you identify as disabled.

I’m sorry, but if you need to wear a lanyard to tell people you’re a cripple, you’re not a zarking cripple! Cerebral palsy, like all disabilities, should be obvious: if you have it, it effects your ability to walk, talk and move, albeit to varying degrees. In my case, people can instantly see that I have CP, which is why most of the time strangers treat me like a five year old. If someone’s CP is so mild enough they can hide it, I don’t see the point of them saying they have it in the first place. If they can walk, talk and move like anyone else can, to the point that nobody notices and it has no discernible impact on their lives, how are they disabled? Frankly, it’s like a white, middle class person claiming to be black because one of their great, great grandparents was black, then going on to claim to share all the oppression and racism black people suffer. It may be currently politically and socially fashionable to be seen as a member of a minority, but such cultural intrusion is becoming increasingly widespread and increasingly perverse.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so negative and grumpy; ultimately it’s great to see a disabled guy getting so much media attention for once. Yet a voice in the back of my head keeps asking: did Jake go to special school? Did Jake get a second rate, half-arsed education because everyone assumed he’d never achieve anything? Did Jake have to watch his classmates die one by one? Can Jake only go into certain buildings because his wheelchair can’t go upstairs? Do people assume Jake has the mental ability of a doormat and treat him like a toddler? Does Jake experience a plethora of other hardships on a day to day basis, but has to just accept them as the way things are? Because if he doesn’t, he has no right to usurp the identities of those of us who do for his own gain.