In the last few weeks, this #AbledsAreWeird hashtag has been going around on Twitter. The hashtag was started by Imani Barbarin to express frustration at all the indignities people with disabilities have to deal with on a regular basis, and it’s gotten so big that it’s made the news. I’m probably inviting some kind of Twitter war with this post, but as you can guess from my title, I disagree.
Let me be totally clear. The experiences people are talking about on this hashtag are at best upsetting to the people who have to experience them, and many of them are worse than horrifying. I have experienced a lot of these things myself. I have been prayed over on the subway because I’m blind. I have been physically prevented from entering buildings or going upstairs. Strangers have grabbed me, my cane, or my guide dog and attempted to pull me where they think I want to go. People have taken my things and asked me personal questions, and I’ve probably been discriminated against while job hunting. And I’m talking about people in the U.S. here. So when I say I disagree with what’s happening on the #AbledsAreWeird hashtag, I’m not saying that because I’m unsympathetic. What people are talking about on this hashtag really happens. It happens on a daily basis, and it’s awful, and it hurts, and we should talk about it.
But I don’t think this is the way to talk about it.
My problem with the hashtag is pretty simple. As far as I’ve seen, and admittedly there’s a lot to scroll through so I may be missing something, the hashtag has turned into a space where people with disabilities are shouting about things people without disabilities have done to them, and then calling people without disabilities weird. Barbarin says she hopes the hashtag will make able-bodied people feel accountable for their actions, but I honestly don’t understand how. This does nothing to solve the problem. It doesn’t even really tell able-bodied people what the problem is. It just accuses them of something that they probably think of as being helpful or honest curiosity. And by accusing them in this form, I feel like it’s just pushing them away.
Ableds aren’t weird. They just don’t know that what they’re doing is insensitive or offensive. Instead of pushing them away with accusations without explanations, we should be reaching out to them with positive messages of what they can do to be helpful and what kind of questions it is appropriate to ask.
But, Jameyanne, why should it be on us to educate people about what we need all the time?
I get it. It’s frustrating to constantly have to educate the public. I’m pretty patient about it, but I definitely have days when someone tells me I can’t bring my dog into their restaurant, and I feel like exploding. But exploding doesn’t help.
When I feel like exploding, I think of a story my younger brother told me. He was with some friends when he saw a woman who was blind walking back and forth along the block across the street, obviously trying to find a specific doorway. He crossed the street, approached the woman, and offered assistance. He grew up with me, so he knows how to do this appropriately. He didn’t grab her. He just asked if he could help her find what she was looking for and offered to give her directions or sighted guide to her destination. (Sighted guide is when a blind person holds a sighted companion’s elbow and walks a half-step behind them, using their movements as a guide rather than a cane or guide dog.) My brother was polite, he used the right terminology, and the woman still exploded at him. And he came away feeling like he would never offer to help another blind person, because he didn’t want to have his head torn off for it. And I’ve heard similar stories from all sorts of other people.
So when I feel like exploding, I think of the damage I would do by exploding, and I don’t. At least not at that person. I maybe explode when I get home and I’m in private or talking to close friends.
The #AbledsAreWeird hashtag is kind of like everybody exploding at once. At best, it’s confusing for the ableds of the world. Saying “random person grabbed me and tried to drag me across the street today” doesn’t mean anything to someone who thinks that’s a helpful response to seeing a blind person on the corner. They don’t know that what they did is the opposite of helpful. They don’t even really think about what they’re doing, because if they thought about it, they’d probably realize that it is never appropriate to grab another human being and drag them across the street. So complaining about what happened on twitter doesn’t solve the problem. If anything, it makes it worse because it pushes the ableds away. And we don’t want to do that. For one thing, think how it would be to find yourself in a situation where, for whatever reason, you really need help, and you can’t find it because people are unwilling to help for fear of doing something wrong. For another, it just makes people with disabilities seem more other to able-bodied people.
It’s probably true that the hashtag has allowed people with disabilities to feel less alone over these experiences. This is certainly a valuable thing, but there are countless facebook groups, email lists, etc for disabled people to get together and gripe about an inaccessible and insensitive world. But Twitter is a public place. The people being griped at can see the griping. In my opinion, if you’re going to have a public conversation about this problem, it shouldn’t start with calling the people on one side of the argument weird. Granted, with only 280 characters to make your point, Twitter isn’t always the best forum for a productive conversation, but words matter, and personally, I think #AbledsAreWeird was a poor choice to label this hashtag.
When someone without a disability does or says something that I find inappropriate or offensive, I stop them and I educate them. When a random stranger on the street corner says “It’s time to cross,” grabs my arm (or my dog’s harness), and attempts to drag me forward, I pull free, step back, and say, “Please don’t grab me or any other blind person without permission. I appreciate that you’re trying to be helpful, but it pulls me off balance, distracts me and my dog, and endangers my safety. Also, I don’t want to go that way.”
Is this easy? No.
Can it be frustrating? Yes.
But is it necessary? Absolutely.
We have to educate people. No one else will do it for us, because they can’t. They don’t know what we need as individuals, stereotypes abound, and unfortunately most people have never interacted with someone with a disability (check out this horrifying study from Perkins School for the Blind if you don’t believe me). We, people with disabilities, know best what we need. We need to be the ones to tell people what we need and don’t need, and we need to do it in a positive way, or we will get nowhere.
Yes, it’s high time that we started publicly talking about the many microaggressions and macroaggressions we face every day as people with disabilities. But there needs to be a next step. If we’re going to say “this is not okay,” we need to say what is okay. In my opinion, this needs to be a conversation, not a one-sided shouting match.
So to start that conversation, here is your periodic reminder that you can ask me questions about what it’s like to be blind and how I do things when I can’t see. I will happily answer. I will answer based on my own experiences, so bear in mind that I am not every blind person, but I will answer. The only reason I won’t is if it’s a totally inappropriate and personal question, in which case I will tell you so. But I will not laugh at you. I will not shout at you. I will not call you weird.
So fire away.