Enabling people to exist
It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon, so it’s a good time to remind everyone that the concept of “enabling” is ableist, capitalist propaganda.
The “enabling” concept originated in the context of addiction – the premise being that friends and family of addicted people should not help the addicted person continue to use drugs or alcohol. Even in this original context, it’s rather heartless – addicted people can literally die from drug withdrawal; they can’t always just choose to stop taking drugs.
But it’s been taken much further in a capitalist society where being poor and being disabled are considered “bad choices.” Even the most rudimentary aid to the poor is classified as “enabling.” Privileged people are allowed to frame themselves as rationally displaying “tough love” by allowing people to starve and die in the streets.
Recently, a free public toilet for homeless people was criticized as “enabling.” Because if people with no home, no money, few possessions, and minimal access to hygiene are allowed to use the toilet, this may “enable” their “choice” to be poor. Somehow if they have no toilet, the desperation might somehow “motivate” poor people to… generate money and a home, somehow. This is the depth of the capitalist belief that making poor people suffer is good, actually, because poverty is their own fault.
This, of course, also applies to disability. Equal access “enables” disabled people to choose to be disabled. With enough barriers in place, we will become motivated to simply choose to be abled.
In particular, this capitalist-classist-ableist-neurobigoted trope applies at the intersection of psychiatrically disabled people who choose not to use medication, and also are poor, unemployed, or homeless. Material assistance is denounced as “enabling” psychiatrically disabled poor people’s “bad choice” to opt out of psychiatric medication, as it is presumed that, if they were pressured or forced to accept medication (or were desperate enough to acquiesce to it), they would become neurotypical-passing, and be hired for some well-paying job that would lift them out of poverty. Of course, this isn’t how psychiatric medication nor capitalism actually work.
All people deserve a basic standard of living. Food. Shelter. Bodily autonomy. Healthcare with consent. Bathrooms. No one “chooses” to be poor and desperate. Reject the narrative of “enabling.”