Episode 22: The Hierarchy(s) of Disability

TRANSCRIPT OF “THE HIERARCHY(S) OF DISABILITY”

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

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LAURA [00:19]

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

You may not agree with me, but I believe there is a hierarchy when it comes to disability. And that’s what we’re talking about today.

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[01:28]
As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. Although some aspects are universal, 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.

[01:49]
To my mind, there are actually two hierarchies of disability. One has to do with the comparison of one disability to another, and the other involves the relativity of disability experience.

Understandably, a lot of people don’t like the idea of a disability hierarchy because it can seem to invalidate some disabilities as being, quote, “not disabled enough.” As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as being “disabled enough.” If you are disabled, you are disabled. Simple as that. And while the language is lacking, it is possible to compare two disabled people and see that one is quantifiably, quote, “more” disabled than the other. This means that Person 1 may encounter more barriers to access, may deal with more complicated symptoms, or may have more pain interfering with their everyday life.

It does not mean that Person 2 isn’t disabled. It just means that the struggles they deal with as a disabled person may be slightly “less” than another disabled person.

[02:56]
The hierarchy of disability depends on context, perception, and perspective. It helps to just give concrete examples, so here’s one from a friend who uses a powerchair.

My friend was washing his hands in the restroom at his work. Another man, who is blind, comes in the door and is using a cane to help maneuver through the space. His cane bumps into my friend’s powerchair and he asks my friend, “What’s that? A trash can?” My friend informs him, “No, that’s actually my powerchair.” And the man immediately becomes overly solicitous, opening the door, and generally tripping over himself to help my friend make his way out of the restroom.

Obviously, to this man, the idea of using a wheelchair seems much harder than being blind, whereas to my friend, it’s the other way around. Speaking as a wheelchair-user, I, too, find it preferable to use a wheelchair rather than to have a visual or hearing impairment. I can only imagine what it is like to be blind or deaf, but my imagination says those are definitely harder than my actual situation.

Let’s consider people who have the same disability, like my condition, osteogenesis imperfecta. Allow me a slight tangent to say, I don’t really know how to refer to having OI. Technically it’s a disease, but it doesn’t really fit the definition of “disease.” And technically my disability is the fact that I need to use a wheelchair, not the OI itself. I guess condition is the best word, although it basically just seems like a way to make “disease” more palatable. I could call it my “genetic mutation” but I get the impression that would weird people out. All this to say, I have OI but I don’t like calling it a disease, a condition, or labeling it as my disability, and so I don’t know how to say it.

But, like most things, OI is a spectrum. Some people exhibit no or very few external symptoms of having OI, while others deal with dwarfism, using a wheelchair, bone deformities, etc. I fall almost smack in the middle. I would consider people who have OI but have no mobility issues, few breakages, and generally a simple OI experience as having an easier disability experience than I do. Conversely, I would consider people who have higher mobility needs, more frequent breakages, etc. as having a harder disability experience.

But this is less about the actual disability than about the struggles with access, medical care, pain management, and general experience with ableism. The less you present as disabled, the less likely you are to deal with overt ableism. (Until you insist you actually ARE disabled but that your disability is invisible, but that’s a different kettle of fish.)

Cerebral palsy is another disability in which there is a variety of expression. Some CPers show virtually no sign of their disability while others have to deal with speech affectations, loss of muscle control, and needing to use a wheelchair and beyond. And I think it is safe to classify the former as having an easier disability experience than the latter, but again, this is less about the actual disability and more about how that disability is accommodated by the world.

Some aspects of disability can be quantified. More or fewer operations. More or fewer broken bones. More or fewer access barriers. And those quantifiers make it seem easy to say that one disability is harder or easier than another. But, like I said before, that really depends on context, perception, and perspective. From a blind man’s perspective, it is harder to be a wheelchair user. But, from a wheelchair user’s perspective, it would be harder to be blind.

Regardless of whether your disability is viewed as easier or harder than another, it is still valid. The idea that it invalidates certain disabilities is the biggest opposition to the concept of a hierarchy of disability, but it can’t be denied that there are people with certain disabilities who experience more struggles than others. 

I believe that the strength of your support system also influences where a disability falls in the hierarchy. The stronger your support system, the easier it can be to navigate an inaccessible and unaccommodating world.

So, yes, I think we can say there is a hierarchy of disability. There are situations in which one disability may be perceived as harder than another. But all disabilities are valid, even disabilities that don’t seem to be very difficult.

[07:48]
I also think another hierarchy of disability exists, and that is the hierarchy of disabled experience.

Immediately, anyone who does not have actual, lived experience with disability goes to the bottom of the food chain. That includes medical professionals, educators, parents of disabled children, and anyone who has ever “taken a class.” They can fight out their relative positions in the hierarchy amongst themselves, but it will always be below anyone who is disabled.

To me, the individuals who would reside at the top are the career activists who are also disabled. The ones who actually go out and get in people’s faces and “fight the good fight” as it were. Their work is hands-on and active in the community, and they are consistently taking the fight to the people who see fit to deny the disabled community its right to access.

Then you have the people who are technically disabled, but don’t truly live the disabled experience. You know who I mean. The ones who are like, “My knee hurts when it rains on a Tuesday in months with an R but only in the afternoon.” They want the perks of disability (ie, the parking) but don’t really care about access or disabled rights or even really consider themselves part of the disabled community. They call themselves disabled when it benefits them and will argue with another disabled person that it’s actually okay to refer to disabled people using a slur. THOSE people.

They can also fight it out with the people who have taken a class.

Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, which is pretty standard in any kind of hierarchical arrangement. We are fighting the disability fight every day, speaking up against discrimination and injustice when we encounter it, spreading the word about the disability movement, but we aren’t necessarily “in the trenches”. We may not attend the protests or the marches. We may not speak on the Senate floor. But we are out every day dealing with the realities of the disabled experience.

This hierarchy is much easier to quantify, because you can’t argue that what someone learned from a textbook isn’t outweighed by someone’s lived experience. You can TRY, but you will fail. In fact, I would like to amend my previous statement. All the people who think they know something about disability because they, quote, “took a class” can just get straight to the bottom of the food chain and sit quietly with their thumbs up their butts. This includes medical students and doctors who’ve never had any interaction with a disabled person.

Now, it doesn’t really matter if an uneducated, non-disabled person thinks one disability is harder or easier than another because they don’t understand the nuance of disability anyway. So how they view disability in terms of the first hierarchy is really a moot point. Like a cow’s opinion, it’s moo.

But the average uneducated non-disabled person’s view of the second disability hierarchy is a little more treacherous. Because if they think that the guy whose knee hurts on a Tuesday is capable of offering worthwhile opinions on behalf of the whole disability community, we’ve now got ANOTHER person who thinks they know more about disability than someone who has been living with it for the majority of their life.

Now, the length of time you’ve been disabled doesn’t actually factor into anything. Far more important is your experience as a disabled person. If you’ve never been affected by lack of access or lack of resources and support that is sort of the hallmark of the disabled experience, then calling yourself disabled might be a misnomer. (Unless you’ve become disabled in the last five minutes, in which case, we’ll wait.)

[11:42]
I wanted to talk about hierarchies in disability because I wanted to emphasize the point that not every opinion is created equal. If you have the option of listening to a disabled person over a non-disabled person talking about disability, always choose to listen to the disabled person.

All disabilities are also not created equal. Just because you understand one type of disability does not mean you understand ALL types of disability, or the experiential nuances of being a disabled person. For example, I’ve met a handful of other people with OI, but of the few I’ve interacted with, I’m the only one I know that uses a manual wheelchair. If you take the meeting of one disabled person as a basis for the entirety of the disability community, you are going to be REALLY surprised when you meet your second disabled person.

In the same vein, you can’t make assumptions about a disabled person’s ability level just because you know a person with the same or similar disability. The first hierarchy of disability I talked about is extremely malleable. It is constantly changing depending on the person, depending on the disability, and depending on the circumstances.

Some people would argue that saying a disability hierarchy even exists is counterproductive. But what is the point in ignoring the fact that some disabled people have a harder time than others? Denying that fact is denying an entire facet of the disabled experience. All disabilities are valid, regardless of whether they are perceived as being harder or easier than other disabilities. All disabled people have their own struggles, which may or may not be related to their disability at all.

Refusing to acknowledge the differences in our disabilities is just as damaging as refusing to acknowledge disability itself.

[13:39]
Thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you in the next one.

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