January 10, 2015
By Mishalle Camacho-Kolakowska
WHAT MAKES US HUMAN is a regular new section by HiA Editor-in-Chief Mishalle Camacho-Kolakowska. It will feature news covering the human experience in search of universal values and defining traits that arguably make us human and—when recognized—dignify and ennoble the human experience.
This past October, panelists at the University of Maryland gathered to discuss the negative effects that ableism, the act of discriminating against those with mental or physical disabilities, has on the disabled. Katishi Maake, writer for the university’s Diamondback newspaper publication, reported on the panel.
They addressed the implication that those with physical or mental disabilities are traditionally seen as medical and social anomalies. They are, in some extreme cases, viewed by able-bodied and minded people as being immoral and worthless, unable to live without restraint. Because of this implied inferiority, the disabled are forced into a social isolation.
Calvin Sweeney, coordinator for the LGBT Equity Center at the University of Maryland, spoke to the panel regarding her acute Attention Deficit Disorder and anxiety as well as her severe clinical depression and how her disabilities are viewed by her colleagues. “Now, when I say that ‘I’m so tired,’ I don’t know if I can literally, physically make it through this day without laying on my office floor,” she said. “There’s an assumption that you are not as worthy or as valuable as an employee who is literally there, regardless of your output. And I internalize those messages so much.”
Sweeny is only one example of the widespread oppressive tendencies of institutionalized ableism. One in five Americans live with a disability. They are often marginalized by more influential social-activist movements.
In a recent interview for Reality Check, an online source for reproductive and sexual health justice, activist Agness Chindimba, founder of the Zimbabwe Deaf Media Trust addressed the inequities that the disabled face in prominent social movements: “Disability and issues affecting disabled women do belong to the feminist movement. … We cannot afford to leave out other women because they are different from us. At the end of the day, whatever gains the movement may make will not be real and sustainable if millions of other women are still oppressed.”
Many of these participants have come out in an effort to help uncover the injustices they face as a disabled person: denial of government benefits and inability to visit the nearest doctor’s office for lack of accessibility are only two of the numerous accounts of systemic social and political ableism.
A Twitter campaign, #SolidarityIsForTheAbleBodied, emerged in 2013 in hopes of bringing together disabled persons in an effort to turn a quiet conversation into a full-blown shout. Chindimba noted that the response to the campaign disclosed some ugly facts about not only ableist rhetoric and overt oppressive tendencies, but shined light to the staggeringly high amount of sexual abuse faced by disabled persons (particularly women).
Along with the blatant disregard for disabled sexual assault victims, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that in 2011, 43 percent of crimes committed against disabled people were fell under the category of serious, non-fatal violence, including rape and sexual assault. The Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs gathered data that supported the notion that disabled persons are subjected to increased levels of sexual violence. Over 83 percent of women with disabilities fall victim to sexual abuse at least once in their lifetime. Only three percent, however, ever get reported. These same women are two and a half times more susceptible to sexual violence committed by their sexual partner than that of an able-bodied woman.
Disabled women are subject to sexual violence on the premise that they can’t report their assault: the mentally cannot always articulate and the blind can be accused of misidentifying their attacker. Because of their disabilities, not only are they more often victims, they are less likely to be trusted.
The panelists at the University of Maryland all agreed that, by creating campus-wide disability education, the amount of sexual violence committed against disabled women would drop. With this education comes an understanding of oppression against both disabled men and women.“A number of people … grew up in able-bodied societies and had none of these conversations and they don’t know to cope,” Gay Gullickson, a wheelchair bound panelist said. “That’s because we are failing to educate people and initiate discussion.”
Image Copyright © 2012 Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz via The Feminist Wire
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