A letter was delivered anonymously to the mother of an autistic child in Ottawa this August. It was posted on twitter, and both buzzfeed and Huffington Post picked it up.
READ THE LETTER and the come back here so we can talk about it.
In the thread on which I first found this letter, someone said “I don’t think this is real.”
I feel like this is really common when it comes to hatred directed at disabled people.
We read about disabled children who are being abused by the parents, and people don’t think it is real.
We talk about very real discrimination on the basis of disability and people don’t believe it.
We publish articles about sexual assault and disability and people question whether or not it really happens.
There are social, historical and educational reasons for why our society does not believe it when bad things happen to people with disabilities.
For one, the history of disabled people is almost entirely untaught. With the exception of Helen Keller, I cannot think of a single disabled individual who was celebrated in my educational history – at least that we were told about. When I was in graduate school, we studied all sorts of minority groups, from Latina, to Asian American, to African American, to white feminists, to LGBT feminists.
You know who we never talked about?
Disabled feminists. We didn’t really discuss the concept of disabled feminism, or for that matter, disabled activism.
Everyone has been educated about the civil rights movement for black Americans – but there has been no education about, say, the Deaf protestors at Bell South.
I believe this links into the very real rhetoric that people with disabilities are helpless. The myth is that we cannot fend for ourselves and that we cannot speak our minds. We are pathetic to many, and inspirational to others (but only when we do something THEY can do.)
Going back to the letter –
THIS is what ableism looks like.
The kind of seething hatred the author of that anonymous note spews in response to the sounds of an autistic child is terrifying. She suggests that no one will love him, that no one will hire him, and that his own mother should KILL him rather than “subject” others to his very existence.
This is the kind of hatred we face every day. It isn’t that people think we’re sad or pathetic, it is that many people think we should just DIE. That our lives are not worth anything, and therefore we should just give up.
Families are told that their children are worthless, adults are told that they should just stop trying to have sex, or trying to find a job.
The bleak atmosphere which ableism creates is devastating, and is more than just depressing, it is a vicious attack, which kills.
The fact that there are people who do not believe that these kinds of hateful things are real – that is the most hurtful of all. It is the detrimental effect of knowing that if you are attacked, if you are afraid for your life, that maybe no one will believe you.
Because who could hate someone with a disability?
Damn, this is an eloquent post. Thank you.
I grew up with close family friends who have profound disabilities and this letter felt like an attack on them too. They are human and they are loved. *I* love them. And my life is better having them in it. Full stop.
That letter hurt my soul reading it.
Hi, Elsa…
You are so right. No one is against the disabled, but…
If you are on any kind of federal or state assistance, be prepared to lose it if you want to get married. In some states, if you live together for more than five years, it’s considered common law for benefits purposes . So you lose assistance anyway.
If you are a student, and you work hard to get a scholarship, be prepared to lose “assistance” also. Scholarships can count as income.
That new campus where you go to school has an elevator, yay! But no electronic button that will open the door for you, (and your walker).
That new coffee shop across the way with the Amazing pastries? The one built 5 years ago? No ramp. Good luck getting a wheelchair in .
Qualify for Vocational rehab services to find a job? Great! Your counselor already has 110 clients. So chances are you’ll be waiting a while to even talk to him.
Your County has accessible transport. In theory you could get to a job. The van ends service at 5 pm. Your boss needs someone who can work till 6. You can ask for accommodation in this regard. Chances are , the boss will hire someone else , no matter how qualified you are. Because he Needs someone to work till 6…
Nah, no one is against the disabled, But…
Yup Nessie, you got that right. I have a diagnosis which not only has made me feel like a social pariah in many ways, but ordinary human things like having a guest in my apt. “home” are strictly forbidden me unless they are out of the apt. by 9pm and don’t return until the morning, including out of state, our of the country lifelong friends. If I break this rule, I’m evicted. Which means homelessness. Again. No overnight guests. At all. Until recently their rule used to be 5 nights out of the year only with extensive background checks of the visitor. Now it’s nothing. I wasn’t even informed of this change when they, the powers that be, made it. Not even deserving of simple human courtesy. So, there’s no possibility of a real human relationship with another human being for me or else I’m evicted, no questions asked, as well as, as has been recently been posted about on this site, lose my benefits, which are so way below the poverty level they can’t be seen with the naked eye, so to speak. But I can’t survive without the subsidy, even if I were able to rejoin the workforce, they deduct what you earn from the benefits. One can’t have more than $2,000 in cash or assets at any given time or else. So getting ahead, trying to break out of the financial trap is daunting, to say the least. I am treated as if I weren’t a thinking person, an adult. I’d sure like to just see them try to live on $720 a month which is probably just pocket change for them or the cost of their electric and water bill, or both. On top of the official diagnosis they’ve labeled me with I have acute post traumatic stress disorder. I have finally self imposed isolation upon myself because not only do I feel safer, I’ve really had as much as I can take of things such as unjustifiable police brutality and bullying for one lifetime thank you very much. As well as that seemingly endless parade of sadistic Psycho-Nazi shrinks and their ilk. Wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to find a way of permanently separating me from my quilt making fabrics and supplies, the one thing that really sustains me, giving my life meaning and purpose and beauty. Creating fabric art. Yup Nessie. I’m one of those “lost causes” who has no “right to live” much less defend herself. Others I’ve known have been gunned down by trigger happy police and gotten a slap on the wrist as their punishment, if anything. In their micro world of hatred and fear of the disabled, they are each paying a micro cent a year or their precious tax dollars to support us. Occasionally I amuse myself with the thought that perhaps some day long after I and everybody else on the planet is gone, that is, if the human race is still here, my quilts might be valuable and filthy rich future folks will be bidding on them greedily and ruthlessly at Sotheby’s in 2214 as an investment and will sell to quilt museums at top dollar. I call it the Van Gogh Effect. You know. Artists have to go completely insane and die, or just die, for their work to be of any “value”. Well, the haters and spewers of vitriol against me (us) probably won’t have to wait too awfully long for that. I’m at the jumping off point of old age and my health has been suddenly been a bit fragile of late and nobody lives forever,so once I’m outta here I figure that that will serve to make the “normies” world just a tad more “abled”. Not that they’ll notice or care. Until then I’m a good, obedient little mentally disabled person who sticks with her meds and obeys the rules because I’ve had enough of their shit and just want to survive, if not be left alone to even thrive a little. Thanks folks for letting me vent a little here. And for giving me a place to vent among folks who are also sensitive souls who also strike me as being as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. We have a right to live, to heal, to be here. Period. No targeted people can be oppressed forever. They’ll get what they deserve in the end and know the reason why, I have to believe that. I have to believe that someday, somehow, there will be justice for the oppressed, the silenced, the tortured, the survivors. Ultimately they can’t take away the power of our voices, not forever anyways, no matter how aggressively and egregiously and cruelly they try. Their actions will come back to haunt them. You know the old saying….”What goes around, comes around”….We’ll overcome their blithering stupidity, don’t you think?