Disability isn't just my identity. The problem with diversity pushback.

This is a follow on from my posts about disability and identity. Over recent years have seen a lot of discussion and movement and needed protection around identity and what and how people can identify and present in public. But we see that disabled people are still left behind in this discussion, as we see that people don’t understand what is happening to people with disabilities because they think the NDIS has solved everything. It has and hasn’t at the same time, it has just simply created a different set of problems, like how you use support time and having enough time for support and how you guide someone with a disability when you are young yourself.

But we often were seen as the person to be hidden away from and to be sheltered from, I know that some clients in the organization I am with didn’t know how to shower and dress without help, or not being able to communicate with others, or to even understand boundaries of other people such as knowing that stealing food is wrong and to ask for help and to stick to a budget.

I am seeing a lot of people coming down hard on the programs that were designed for the disabled the “ inclusion” policies, and we see that these policies have been highjacked to be able to serve a wide variety of marginalized groups, that have fought hard for there rights but we see that they forget to include disabled people in the planning for there inclusion policies and we see that this can become a massive issue.

It has become a political issue that disability as an identity shouldn’t be a political issue, but it has no option to become one, this is not a great option for people who need to be helped to organize, and are through the very nature of being disabled, are at greater risk of abuse. It seems to be a thing that we collectively have forgotten, that these inclusion policies were designed for people with disabilities, and it wasn’t to provide equity, it was to provide equality of opportunities, this is why we need to have lifts and minimum design standards in new home builds.

However we need to be aware that disability isn’t just an identity, it isn’t just a lifestyle it’s part of who we are, as it has at times fundamentally changed the way that we can operate in the world and how we see the world, I have gone from being a very high functioning to high functioning due to the effect of my medications and to understand the pain levels I sacrifice cognitive abilities for being pain-free. I also have a very odd way of sleeping and as I have talked about before, I have an internet addiction, that I am trying to work with, to get better sleep hygiene.

But in going back to the disability identity we see that people who haven’t had our best interests at heart are trying to be an Allie to us and to be a person who has a deep understanding of disability. We see that people try to be an Allie but unless you are willing to learn and see the real systemic issues, it is something that we won’t change easily.

Yet this is not an easy discussion to have because people don’t want to admit that they could become disabled at any time and we see that people don’t understand what it is like to live with a disability. This is where we saw the social media trends say their name forcing people to say the person’s name that was harmed by police in the USA, that moved to say the name of people that have been harmed by caregivers.

As we see that the mass shooting in the USA went unreported because it was people with disabilities were harmed and they are seen in the USA to be a burden to society. We see that people need to be very aware that people need to be seen as people first and we see that people aren’t willing to do the work to be able to have real change as well. I will do another post on this topic and will work towards having a real change in this area. Because we do need change, and this starts the conversation that we are having around the role of people with disabilities and the validity of “inclusion policies” as we see that people are needing to be able to have the right “conditions to qualify for help and this can often be thousands of dollars to get a diagnosis and then finding the right fit for help as well can be a massive challenge, and this isn’t identity politics this is real life issues and these can become a matter of life and death, due to the fact of needing round the clock care and we are finding that some ( NOT all) support workers seem to have all the wrong reasons for becoming support workers and find that they don’t have the skills needed to be able to be a good support worker and we see that this is where Dr. Jorden Peterson, is speaking common sense about what people with disabilities are able to achieve and he admits that he has brain damage due to his psychological addiction to benzo’s during a difficult time into his life.

However, we are finding that people need to be able to understand that “identifying as disabled” is very different from being disabled as “identifying as disabled” is a long mental journey because you need to grieve for your old life as a young, fit, and healthy person. Or if you have had family protection, taking that level of protection away and letting the person struggle can be a good thing, but in my case, it has led to a large amount of brain damage and this has led to a massive loss of functionality and a massive amount of fatigue that is also due to me oversleeping and not accepting help when offered. But it is a part of who I am and not my identity, I also see that disability politics is also quite diverse because people need to have their basic needs met first and this can then become a day-to-day struggle first so why do they worry about accessibility when people are struggling day to day with, pain, with fatigue, with budgets.