Disability Narratives & The Media

As a journalist, and as a person with a disability, this subject is of particular interest to me. Having been a part of the industry since 2015, I can tell you two things from experience.

Stories that involve disability, in any of its many contexts, are notoriously well received by most editors. At least that’s been my experience, I haven’t had a single editor throw a story back in my face and say “nobody cares”.

Quite the opposite in fact. I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve had a story about disability rejected.

The second thing is that context matters, background research matters, and an understanding of the long-held frustrations within the disability community is a must. That takes time, something that the news business typically does not have, but in doing so, you’ll quickly learn that language matters when stories do get published.

A phrase such as “suffers from” is a great example. It might be easy language, but it’s also inherently assumptious and places the entire life of the disabled person under an assumed cloud of suffering.

The reality is that most disabled people don’t suffer from their disability. Dealing with the toxic disability support system? Now that might be something we suffer from, but it isn’t the be all of our daily lives, because it implies the majority of us don’t have one.

As a journalist, former public speaker, current radio host, boyfriend, son, nephew, et cetera – I can assure you there is much more to life than the wheelchair in which I sit.

It’s imperative that news stories published by us in the mainstream media about disability are respectful and accurate. It’s also worth noting that journalists, and this is a mistake I’ve made in the past, aren’t always great at thinking about how a person with a disability may wish to be described.

I wrote one particular story last year, calling someone featured in my story a “disability advocate”. In my mind I thought it was ok, then I saw a tweet from the Chief Exec of a major disability organization that inferred my very article framed that particular person in what she called an “ablest narrative”.

It then dawned upon me, if ableism is to be present in how we the media report on disability, then we should probably have a look at addressing it. Simply relying on the ideology that reporting on a news story involving people with disabilities brings to light the issues impacting that community, and therefore brings about some change, is a flawed approach to have in my view.

If not, there will be a growing distrust between the disability community and the media. In our reporting of the news, and it’s also true that this goes well beyond just stories impacting people with disabilities, we need to slow down a bit and think about the wider contexts that are put in place because of the language being used.

None of that was done in some of the media coverage this week surrounding basketballer Thomas Abercrombie and his children, who also happen to be on the Autism spectrum.

Let’s hope more care is taken next time.

Hey Polly, Having Your Facebook Suspended Doesn’t Make You Disabled

In an otherwise interesting column for Stuff on Sunday, Polly Gillespie began her piece by labeling herself as disabled. An interesting way to start a column indeed, and being disabled myself, I was intrigued to find out what Polly meant by her interpretation and was fully willing to provide some advice based on lived experience. 

Sadly, Polly’s interpretation of being disabled is far different than mine. Shock horror, this lovely lady has had her Facebook AND Instagram page disabled! Apparently, she had posted some explicit content. 

Far be it from me, an outspoken AND disabled blogger turned journalist to get terribly upset over language, because I’ve written on multiple occasions about my thoughts on how the disability community spends far too much time bickering about the proper term to describe ourselves. 

It’s a tired conversation that originally started out as very important but got turned into something else. But I digress. 

I really wish I could tell you that the definition of being disabled was determined by a presence on social media, and while I’m sure that we should take the assessment by Polly with something of a humorous eye roll, this is also no laughing matter. 

Disabled people and their families are faced with many challenges on a daily basis just to achieve something in the ballpark of equality. Whether it be inaccessible housing and transport, under-funded support systems that continue to be rationed by Government wherever possible, or a lack of fair access to mainstream education, these are all issues that the disability community passionately fight to rectify every single day. 

They aren’t just disability issues but basic human rights going unmet in many well-documented examples which are just the tip of an ever-growing iceberg. 

I am quite sure that Polly has no such issue with any of these fascists in her daily life if her primary complaint of the week is the suspension of her social media account. Either that or we’ve sadly gotten to a place where we value our social media platforms and abilities to use them as a sort of measuring stick to what accessibility truly is. 

This might come across as a bit of an angry reaction to a simple sentence in what I’ve already described as an interesting column otherwise, but it shows a complete lack of understanding of what disability actually. 

Furthermore, as a few of us disabled writers pointed out on Twitter, Stuff would be better suited using their platform for a more intelligent assessment of disability and the myriad of sub-normal barriers that is presents. 

Such coverage is needed far more in mainstream media, and it needs to come in large part from disabled people like us. Being into my fifth year in this industry, opinion writing is going nowhere any time soon, but news companies need to do it in a better way when it comes to disabled people, and any other marginalised community for that matter. 

So please, do better. And a bit of advice for fellow writers out there, think carefully about labelling yourself as one thing without doing the proper research to find out what is actually is.

I’m Disabled, My Possibilities Are Limitless

Just because a term may have an official definition, that doesn’t make it true or worthy to be fighting against.

As a disabled person myself and a passionate activist for the rights of disabled people, I’ve never identified with how the use of words like ableism is currently being applied. I agree that discrimination exists and that disabled people face a variety of social, economic, and educational barriers that continue to prevent us from having the equal platform that we’ve been fighting for.

However, that isn’t a concession that ableism is ok and should continue to be used in the manner that it is.

After 27-years of facing inequality in all the areas mentioned above, I am not convinced that the so-called ‘ableism’ as its labeled is a simple matter of blatant discrimination. Furthermore, I am growing uncomfortable with how we label non-disabled people when we ourselves are the first to be outraged when labels are placed on us.

Are we suddenly stooping to the same level as those who’ve labeled as? And if so, why?

Maybe I am playing devil’s advocate here, but further to my earlier point, I also remain unconvinced that the disability community should be using words like ableism, ableists, abled allies, and more in the manner that it is. Especially recently, I’ve noticed a big increase in the use of these words, especially how we are accusing non-disabled people of being ableists and placing the blame squarely on them for all the frustration we feel due to the treatment we often receive.

Take the recent #ThingsDisabledPeopleKnow social media movement for example. The number of times you would have read the word ableism in some 20,000+ tweets would stagger you, and I immediately argued that simply because a word has an official definition (aka ableism), doesn’t make it true.

It’s all about interpretation, and speaking of interpretation, some of the things I’ve read in recent weeks suggest to me that many disability rights activists are prepared to now start a war against non-disabled people and the institutions they serve.

Furthermore, our community can often get extremely angry toward the so-called “abled allies”, take the recent Crutches and Spice blog as a good example where Imani Barbarin wrote that “Bryan Cranston is everything I will not be accepting from abled allies in 2019”.

The question then becomes – is all this a result of years and years of frustration coming to a head and finally making some legitimate headway?

The numbers of disabled people worldwide facing discrimination cannot be ignored and this is not some made up myth. Speaking of myths, disabled people are educated and can bring a lot of benefit to the workforce. One of the biggest reasons this myth exists amongst some non-disabled is down to how invisible disabled children are in the schooling system. If New Zealand is anything to go by, many disabled learners are often grouped together in special education units separated from the mainstream classroom.

I’ve personally argued for years that one of the best things we can do to better serve lifetime inclusion of disabled people is by starting from the earliest moments of entering the education system and having disabled kids visible to their non-disabled peers in a way that doesn’t suggest some kind of poignant difference.

Disabled people are not special just because of their disability, and we are (in my mind at least) entitled to nothing more than an equal footing in all the areas I mentioned at the start of this blog.

But it’s how we go about achieving this equality, and we should always ask ourselves how productive the things we say within our own community are when it comes to reaching the eyes and ears of those outside of it. Personally, if I wasn’t disabled and I heard someone labeling me an ableist because of my ignorance, I’d do little to change my behavior because I’ve just been labeled something that I’d likely not understand in the first place.

Ableism Doesn’t Restrict My Life

Call me an apologist for the non-disabled, throw all the stats, state all the personal examples of your own personal experiences to back up why using these labels in discourse is appropriate because I remain unchanged on one simple argument.

That argument, dear reader, is a two-fold one. First, as disabled people advocating for the equality we crave, we must accept that a big key to success sits outside of our own community and will likely not be controlled by us, we don’t hold the cards and we shouldn’t own all the conversation, either. The cards sit in the hands of a productive, co-design approach to all levels of policy, leadership, and data that impacts and influences social, economic, educational, and really, all drivers of modern society.

Second, and I say this as a disabled person… one of the biggest keys to advocating and thinking critically about the best ways to achieving equality for disabled people is having the ability to place ourselves in the mindset of non-disabled people and think about things from their point of view.

Yes, we are frustrated and yes, we have every right to be. It’s beyond comprehension that in 2019 we are faced with some of the barriers that we are.

But let’s be productive about this. Creating a community, sharing information, and linking with people of similar mindsets is great. But what about where all of that goes? Where does the current level of discourse go in the long run?

Keep in mind, this is just one man from New Zealand’s point of view, but I choose to challenge myself first. As a disabled person, my possibilities are limitless. Literally none, and I mean none, of the success, failure, and missed opportunity I’ve experienced in 27-years has been down to my disability or the attitudes of those in front of me who don’t experience what I do each day.

I’ve just made a conscious effort to keep it real, trust in my own abilities and acknowledge my weaknesses, and not be forced into thinking a certain way about disability. As I said, my possibilities are limitless. It’s all on me, I am owed nothing and I work to make my platforms in life as equal as possible. That’s literally all I can do.

So, what do I think about terms like ableism? Simple. You get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.