#dishismth

Catching up with the International Women's Day pictures, I'm struck by the 'acceptable' image of women. Everyone is symmetrical, devoid of body hair, plain in appearance.

I came across two cartoons trying to show diversity. One I've seen before of women dressed as Wonder Woman, and a new one that depicts women in plain clothing. The women have varying skin tones, symmetrical body proportions, and hair types.

These images contained one woman in a wheelchair. In both instances the woman was thin and not using the backrest for support. It was the only visible disability representation. Where are the disabilities of missing body parts, eye patches, single mastectomies, curved spines, jaunty angled limbs, drooping faces, metallic prosthetic legs, medication bags?

No women had body hair or beards.

When it came to clothing, there was a plain hijab. No rainbows to celebrate queerness. No other cultural attire, or professional attire. Black Lives Matter but artists didn't include vibrant African clothing. No tattoos or piercings to celebrate indigenous women. I'd take a white lab coat for STEM representation.

Before the pandemic, when I mentioned I my disability prevented me from working, the default response was, "I'd love to stay at home all day." A year of lockdown later, no-one says that any more. In fact, the amount of ableds posting, "Being at home all the time is unbearable!" invoked a mix of 'finally they understand' and 'why are you being vocal about it when you told disabled people to be quiet about the same thing?'

The thing for ableds is they see an end point to being effectively housebound, in the form of a vaccine. They can't wait to resume the life they had before, and that includes excluding all the people who have found the world inaccessible for years and decades. I'm not hearing any compassion of, "I've experienced ableism in having the outside world inaccessible to me for a year, so I'm going to ensure disabled people are fully included in society."

For any religious people, most texts have "Treat others as you wish to be treated". That means, if you enjoy having full access to the outside world, then ensure everyone has full access to the outside world.

I'm glad people can see a way out of the lockdown conditions within a year. But for this disabled person, I've lived without a 'vaccine' (society providing adaptation for a thriving life) for my chronic health conditions for twenty years. There's no 'vaccine' being researched, let alone produced, that enables me to have a thriving quality of life the way ableds do.

Ableds have enjoyed disability adaptations during this pandemic - home delivery, takeaways cooking food for you, working from home, keeping in touch via the Internet. For decades, disabled people have needed such accommodations and been told no, you have to go out to work or buy items or have a social life, but then built an urban environment that couldn't be accessed by disabled people (uneven surfaces, overcrowding, too late a finish, too expensive, etc). The speed at which things were provided in my country for ableds, so that ableds could survive, was staggering, compared to the years of battles by disabled people to be told no. Here we are, with businesses being open and having to keep 2 metres apart - that's space for wheelchair users. Literally, aisles have been widened by moving shelves to ensure space. It tells us that disabled people can be welcome. It tells us that including disabled people makes everyone's lives better.

If it’s described as a life hack, it’s probably a disability adaptation. But because income is currently tied to productivity (even if that productivity is filling in a form to prove your worth), companies market it outside the disability community to increase revenue and decrease item costs. It’s still expensive to disabled incomes, though. If you’ve ever looked at a product and gone, “Why would anyone need that?” Chances are there’s a disabled person relieved it exists.

Ableists balk at wheelchairs, whether human powered or motorised. Yet, society is full of cars - motorised vehicles. Imagine your life if cars didn’t exist, that you couldn’t afford to have a car to yourself, that you couldn’t afford taxis or buses. How is a motorised wheelchair different to other vehicles that take you further for less effort? When it comes to push bikes - two wheels with a seat - do you think they are lazy for using wheels to get around while sitting? Do you judge them for not walking everywhere?

Ramps and flat, gently sloping surfaces are amazing for moving things around. The manufacturing industry relies on this infrastructure because moving heavy items around on wheeled platforms is efficient. Yet, we keep building steps in city centres and residential areas. Worse yet, we’ll dip the curb for car access but not wheelchair access. Imagine how much nicer your life would be if you had a ramp you could even wheel your holiday suitcase up, let alone any items you normally carry at work.

Clothes are ubiquitous, to the point we don’t think of them as an adaptation to a harsh environment. Clothes keep us warm or shield us from the sun and wind. Industrial gloves protect us from machine injury. Washing up gloves keep us dry and protect us from cleaning agents. Shoes protect our feet from whatever we walk or climb on. Body builders wear muscle and joint supports to prevent injury. These are adaptations tailored to an individual, and apply to disabled people, too.

For Disability History Month, the recent history of how disabled people were treated at the start of the pandemic in my country is tokenism at best. When the country lockdown was announced, six types of health conditions were given letters from the government. These people had severe lung conditions (not asthma or basic COPD) and were told to stay at home to save their own life. This is asking disabled people to exclude themselves from society, while other people could go out for 'essentials'. The only support these six groups received was priority booking for delivery slots from major supermarkets.

Only, the supermarkets only gave you priority if you already had an account with them. If you'd never shopped at a major supermarket before (I think six counted), then you couldn't get anything delivered. The queues for everyone signing up for an account so we could stay at home crashed websites. You were greeted with waiting times about where you were in the queue to look at the site. It worked on the presumption that you could afford home Internet and the electricity to run it, had technology that could use the Internet, and had the ability to use it. Assuming you had an account and waited in the queue to log in, then came booking a slot three weeks away, so it assumed you had provisions to last that long. Most people I know drink animal milk and it goes off after ten days, assuming you can afford to refridgerate it. Some people can only take medication with food, so they can't run out.

Then, while ordering items, most things were unavailable as the supply chain to supermarkets had also slowed down with the lockdown. There were item restrictions, too. So faced with only getting a delivery slot every three weeks but only being able to order two dairy items (milk, butter, yoghurt, cheese, etc) meant you'd probably run out. There was a total item restriction on the order, so 70 items had to last a household for three weeks (25 items a week). At this time, supermarkets were reducing their plastic use, so a pack of baked beans suddenly became four separate items. Then came the delivery, and not everything you ordered is delivered, even though you said you wanted it three weeks in advance. Priority given to people shopping in the stores discriminates against those that can't leave the house. Substitutions on an order could be allowed, but plenty of disabled people have IBS and dietary requirements so the pot luck (you can't specify parameters such as vegetarian or soy free) could harm you. Supermarkets also put a surcharge on orders below a certain amount, so it assumed you had the money to cover that 'tax' or the money to make that size order without going into debt on other bills or rent.

Priority booking for a tiny portion of disabled people is tokenism. So many assumptions were made about the finances, home situation, capacity of supermarkets, food availability. Then there were all the other disabled people who were considered abled enough to go food shopping. People with mobility problems were expected to queue outside with no seating for hours, in all weathers. I emailed a supermarket about disabled people having a separate queue inside so they could sit down and have access to the toilet without losing their place. They replied agreeing with my ideas but never implemented them. We've had a whole year of lockdown in a temperate climate which included heatwaves, tropical thunderstorms, and snow.