#able bodied privilege

Able-bodied people: make assumptions about disabled people and talk in their place.

Disabled people: get mad.

Able-bodied people:

I really hate the term "privilege" when talking about non-oppressed groups, because so often, it feels less like these things are privileges, and more like they are oppression for minority groups.

You are confident that police exist to protect you?

That's not white privilege, that's POC oppression.

Being able to be confident that you will be able to navigate a public space?

That's not able-bodied privilege, that's disabled oppression.

You are confident that no one will harass you for holding hands with your romanic partner?

That is not straight privilege, that is queer oppression.

You can walk down a street at night and not worry about being raped?

That is not a privilege for men, that is oppression towards women.

I was spending the night with my partner at his place. I haven’t written much about him but I’ve been seeing him since late October 2016, and coincidentally, I’ve been flare free since dating him. That is, till very recently. In continuation of my last post, I guess being trapped with my thoughts and not making the progress I want to make in life has stressed me out. Running out of money has stressed me out. And the tipping point recently was my cat, Mojo, running away. He thankfully came home after almost a week of being gone, but sadly, the UC symptoms stayed. So I’ve been officially flaring since early last week after a year+ of remission. 

I haven’t forgotten how tiring this disease is. It’s not the worst I’ve ever been but it does take a lot out of me and I’ve been on a low residue diet. Really don’t want to go back on prednisone. Booked an appointment in for my GI but the soonest I can see him is in nearly 3 weeks. I do not want to be suffering through these symptoms OR the prednisone side effects once semester 2 starts. Anyway, I’m trying to stay positive and do what I can to not aggravate my symptoms in the meantime. But last night sucked. My partner said he’d been reading up on UC to better understand the disease and treatment options, and he was talking about how terrible it seemed. And then he got to talking about colostomies and colostomy bags. It was the most heartbreaking, ableist shit I’d ever heard in my life. “What even is the quality of life for these people? It seems so terrible to have your colon removed.” Also, in the past he’s made pretty insensitive comments about how people with colostomy bags aren’t sexually desirable. I retorted with, “Well, I suppose I’ll focus on not getting a colostomy bag because you’ll stop being attracted to me.” He paused. “Well, you’re also more prone to infection and the bag has its own issues and-” Basically, he was digging a hole and talking very negatively about people with colostomy bags and j-pouches. I excused myself and said I’d see him again in half an hour because I’d be using my mesalazine enema. But as I lay on my side after using it, I felt overwhelmed with sadness. I messaged my good friend about how upsetting everything he just said was and she instantly called me. And I cried on the phone to her. I was so unbelievably fucking hurt by how insensitive my own partner had been. You don’t tell someone with a chronic illness/disability how badly their life sucks to their face. They fucking know that already; they’re living it. And on top of that, his attitude to colostomy bags was so god damn ableist I couldn’t believe it. A colostomy bag is a last resort for people whose colitis has gotten to the point where their quality of life has died entirely. It’s a lifeline for so many people. It felt like he was saying that he’d rather see me malnourished, 20kg thinner and bed bound from my illness with millions of tubes running through me. That he’d rather I die “pretty” than live with a “disgusting” colostomy bag. I’m crying as I’m typing this. 

He came looking for me and I explained how his comments had been so hurtful. His reaction and apology was genuine and he looked gutted that he’d hurt me so much. 

What we, as human beings, have control over are our time, energy, skill. What we do not control is money, health, gender, origin background (and sure some other stuff I can’t come up with now).

Some people would tell you to just “do whatever it takes” or to “leave everything and move to the place where your dreams come true” because “the only obstacles are in your mindset”. Hahaha I wish that was true. This is straight up classism and whoever says that has had certain privileges that isn’t probably aware of. And it’s putting blame to the individual only, whereas there are so many external factors that hinder a person’s dream. Life is not like in The Greatest Showman.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way” is true to a certain point.

This is not to say “oh then, everything is unfair, the World is just a big discriminating mess and no one is offered any opportunity unless they have money and power”. No. Society has evolved and it certainly offers more chances even to the most discriminated minorities than it did only 20 or 30 years ago. Internet and globalisation offer us a lot of means and ways to go from point A to point B, even with less privilege.

Some people have to fight more though and not because they are unskilled or unprepared. The problem maybe is that we have normalised this and maybe we shouldn’t have.

Some people cannot just leave and move to places as if it costs nothing because they lack money (and no, money isn’t easily available as some might think) or support or they have poor health and a disability and need assistance which they can’t find available in other places. So they are stuck home or wherever they have that. Or, if they manage to achieve that success, it comes after years of money spending (most probably), tears, defeat, failure, suffering… And yes, you made it, but you probably went through a lot of trauma and people who didn’t believe in you and didn’t help you at all.

And sure, even in the most equal World someone will remain outside and that’s what saddens me and makes me angry.

The point of this entire post is just to acknowledge that we live in a system that is unfair and where you come from, how much money your family has and if you are healthy and abled play a big role in whether you achieve your dreams easily without trauma and heavy falls.

Just acknowledge it and shut up. You don’t need to put the blame on the single individual who has less privileges than you.

If we don’t acknowledge it, we normalise it. And I think we have already normalised a lot of fucked up things.

You do not necessarily know what someone is dealing with. They may have an immune or respiratory condition. They may live with or care for someone with a compromised immune system. They may have an important event coming up. They may just not feel like having the flu this week and that's their right. You do not get to make that choice for them and it's beyond disrespectful to expose others because you don't feel like rescheduling or being inconvenienced.