something i’ve been mulling over is the idea of the disabled that exists within the imagination of our cultural consciousness. i automatically wrote “disabled person” before i changed it. because the whole thing is that “the disabled” has been stripped of their personhood and dehumanised. i’m using polite language here but tbh the words for us that exist in people’s minds are much less polite.
it seems to me like this. the disabled person exists as a disability first and foremost, and a person last, if at all. much how people conceptualise “the criminal” to strip basic rights away from any human given that designation, the disabled person isn’t a person. they’re “a cripple” or another slur. and within the social imagination, that class of person exists outside of regular society. like an underclass, they’re deliberately excluded by physical and social means.
which comes to a very common thing that happens when you’re disabled. because a “disabled” person has crossed some threshold in the minds of ableds that write them off as a lost cause, people end up downplaying someone’s disability because they have some human aspect that warrants personhood (in the mind of the abled). this is how you get parents refusing to acknowledge the disability of their children, even if that disability is quite severe, because that child has always been a person first to them. it’s why people respond to disability with things they think only persons (i.e. the non disabled individual) can manage to do. such as complete schooling, or talk really well, or hold down a job, being “smart” or even being nice. the concept of the disabled has been dehumanised to the point that subconsciously people are taking any acknowledgement of disability as a form of degradation. the same way fatphobic people will respond like you have insulted yourself for saying “i’m fat” (regardless of how factually true this might be), saying “i’m disabled” is seen like putting yourself down. even significant and severe disabilities or visibly signs of disability can get this treatment, where people are profoundly uncomfortable with acknowledging it in any meaningful way. a lot of disabled people misinterpret this behaviour to mean that qualifying as a “real” or “proper” disabled person within the mind of an abled will grant them some social capital, compassion, or help. when in fact the opposite happens: when you’ve passed the event horizon of disability and truly become “the cripple” in people’s minds (or that other word i’m not saying) then you are facing a constant battle to be seen as a person, as human, as complex as anyone else with a rich inner world and meaning to their life.