Thoughts on Disability

Defining Disability and Driftwood

You have to love this author, Alison Kafer. She begins her chapter, “A Future for Whom: Passing on Billboard Liberation”, by commenting on Superman.  She comments while looking up at a billboard of Christopher Reeves which is intended to inspire recognition at his dreadful accident and acknowledge his courage.  However, the public relations campaign behind this feel-good message is subversive. Actor Reeves is associated with his most famous role of Superman. Now he is paralyzed and unable to survive without help from personal aides.  Kafer points out that the billboard image of his disability, other than an oxygen tube in the corner, lessens the impact of his disability. . The considerable financial and medical resources which supported his existence are not visible. They are invisible by intent. “Values.com/Foundation for a Better Life” sponsors the billboard and their agenda is politically ultra conservative. 

Reeves is white, male, and his billboard photo appeals to conservative values by taking advantage of America’s white/male/hegemony. He is obviously super-masculine in spite of his physical paralysis. This is deliberately tendered as success due to his manly “courage”.  If you are a different gender or race, you are invisible.

Community values trump individual obstacles. By making public perception one of individual vulnerability, by not acknowledging the enormous numbers of physically and mentally impaired coming home from war, the attitudes presented by FBL’s Superman billboard thrust the burden of disability on the individual. The message is one of “buck up” instead of “how can we help”.

This politicization of disability is intended to diminish and quiet activists who campaign for accommodations for the handicapped, or as Kafer puts it, the “queer crips”. Anyone who is outside the norm, whether sexually, racially, or disabled is different and queer.  Numbers of elderly are expected to swell the ranks of those outside the norm. Consider that stereotyped wheelchair persons are commonly perceived as less intelligent and therefore undesirable. For decades, handicapped persons were sterilized so they could not have children who might pass on “defective” genes.  Politicizing ignores reality and makes the elderly and disabled expendable.

A wheelchair bound person spends a lot of time waiting for suitable vehicle transportation which leads to the concept of “crip time”. Crip (read crippled) time has to allow for situations that do not accommodate physical needs.  Not only is the issue one of access, but the unexpected aspects of physical transport lead to living in the moment. This philosophy arose out of the HIV and AIDS era, when recovery was dismal and any future belonged to others. Crip time cannot be regulated by the clock; it moves to a disjointed rhythm that depends on need and services.

             Perhaps the most egregious attitude toward handicapped people is the notion that a disabled person is limited because they are not trying hard enough. Kafer writes, “…FBL’s website clearly delineates the group’s perspective by encouraging ‘adherence to a set of quality values through personal accountability and by raising the level of expectations of performance of all individuals regardless of religion or race’ (89)”.  By emphasizing community values over personal needs, the conservative position makes it clear that vulnerable disabled have to, and should, fend for themselves.

Disabled who dare to speak out, these“queer crips”, have to fight hard for ramps, elevators, public access across many venues, but more importantly, just to maintain their position in public consciousness. Kafer says, “I envision a media campaign that favors dissent at least as much as unity, that recognizes political protest and activism as signs of courage, that is as concerned with collective responsibility and accountability as personal (100)”. It doesn’t take much to give a hand up. Someone living in a physically challenged body just wants to get on with living.