Episode 84: Born This Way? Maybe

TRANSCRIPT OF “BORN THIS WAY? MAYBE”

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MALE VO [00:03]
This is Bad Attitudes.

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LAURA [00:20]
Hello friends and strangers! Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast about Disability. I’m your host, Laura.

With apologies to Lady Gaga, maybe I was born this way, but maybe I wasn’t.

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As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community but I am not the only voice.

[02:10]
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Let me be clear. I was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, aka brittle bone disease. That is not up for debate. I was born with a particular gene mutation that makes my bones more fragile and prone to breaking than average. Facts.

For ease of explanation, I’ve always said that I was born with my disability, but is that really the case? Was I born with OI? Yes. Does that mean I experience more fractures than the typical human being? Yes. Did it necessitate use of a wheelchair? Yes. Was I born disabled? Not so fast.

The easy explanation is, I use a wheelchair, therefore I am disabled. But, all things being equal, does my using a wheelchair REALLY differentiate me that much from the next person? The slightly more complex explanation is that I use a wheelchair in a world that is not designed for wheelchair users, therefore I am disabled.

This is a very simple explanation of the concept of the social model of disability, which I discussed, along with the medical model, in an earlier episode. The social model states that people are not disabled by their bodies and any conditions thereof, but by the environments in which they live. If our world was built in such a way that included the particular needs of wheelchair users in its design, I would not really be disabled at all. My disability is a direct result of the world’s lack of accessibility.

I use a wheelchair. The world is not made for wheelchairs. Therefore, I am disabled. I am not disabled because I use a wheelchair, I am only disabled because the world is not accessible to those of us who do.

If the world were more accessible to wheelchair users — or to anyone who uses any mobility device — it wouldn’t be less accessible to non-disabled people. I think that’s a popular, albeit strange, misconception non-disabled people have. That if the world was more welcoming to its disabled citizens, it will be less welcoming to its non-disabled ones. Kind of like the whole concept of rights not being pie, and more rights for someone else doesn’t mean fewer rights for you.

More accessibility for me does not equal less accessibility for you. If you are a non-disabled individual, how would it affect you if you used a ramp to traverse between two different levels of a building than if you used stairs? Short answer, it wouldn’t. You still walk up the ramp just as you would walk up stairs. The difference is that the ramp is not unusable by an entire subset of the population.

This isn’t applicable to everyone, because not everyone ascribes to the social model of disability. For many people, especially those with chronic illnesses, their bodies are the source of their disability. But for people like me, acknowledging that our disabilities are a direct result of the environments we inhabit can be especially beneficial. 

So many disabled people blame their bodies for being disabled when, in reality, if our environments were more inclusive, most of us would barely be considered disabled at all. If more of us understood that our bodies are not at fault for being disabled, even if our disabilities aren’t a direct result of our environment, it would relieve much of the internalized conflict disabled people deal with. Dealing with disability can be as much a mental and emotional struggle as it is a physical one.

Let’s take another type of disability into consideration. Deafness. If captions were an accepted common practice, if sign language interpreters were a visible part of all public events, and if interpreters were readily available in doctors’ offices, airports, and ALL public spaces, being Deaf would not be nearly as disabling as it is. Yes, a person might be born Deaf, but their Deafness does not become disabling until they are exposed to an environment where it is not taken into consideration.

If the world was completely accessible, would that counteract ALL difficulties faced by disabled people? No, of course not. Personally, I’d still have to deal with a hire incidence of bones breaking and general aches and pains, at the very least. But if my environment was more inclusive, the playing field would be much more level between me and the average non-disabled person. As it stands, all other factors being equal, the average non-disabled person has a distinct physical advantage over me. For one thing, they don’t have to go around their ass to get to their elbow in order to find an accessible entrance to a building. Considering the amount of time I spend seeking out the paths with the least number of barriers, I could probably sleep a little longer.

Will I stop saying that I was “born this way”? No, mostly because explaining the intricacies of the social model of disability to anyone curious about my situation would take a lot more energy than I feel like dedicating to the cause. People understand being “born disabled.” They don’t — and many are not ready to — understand how the most disabling factor in our lives is the decisions made by other people.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you in the next one.

[07:51]
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