Rhonda Wiebe is on the NDY Board of Directors. Yesterday, The B.C. Catholic published an essay by Rhonda titled “Are we better off dead than disabled?” Here’s the beginning of her excellent piece – a piece that aims to inform sympathetic but otherwise uninformed allies about the most critical barriers and threats facing disabled people:
The perils of the social devaluation of people include legal assisted suicide and euthanasia
By Rhonda Wiebe
The B.C. CatholicIt is not uncommon to hear people without disabilities and people who have recently acquired a disability say they would rather be dead than disabled.
Although politically incorrect, embedded perceptions that life with disability is full of suffering and indignity promote the idea that it’s a death sentence. Able-ist social conditioning equates disability with pain, frailty, incapacity, and poor quality of life. It views persons with disabilities as problems that need to be fixed.
The ‘problem’ of disability
I would argue the “problem” of disability lies more in external social, physical, attitudinal, and architectural barriers.
Please read the rest of her essay at the B.C. Catholic here. –Stephen Drake
Noting that I’ve only done one read of Rhonda Wiebe’s article (ME/CFS illness requires, often, a second, or third read), I want to add the word I “made”, disabilophobia. The meaning is fairly clear if you add it to the list of: homophobia, islamophobia, etc. It is the fear and loathing of being disabled or people with disabilities. Doctors are not immune. I thought Rhonda Wiebe’s doctor story in re having a baby was a good example of disabilophobia by the doctor.
As a person with allergic asthma (from a family of), I have heard the suggestion by some that since asthma seems to have genetic aspects, one would not want to reproduce more asthmatics. (Ironically, that argument realizes that asthma is physical and not psychological, the latter being a common myth which gives us problems because families in denial or others, do a “head trip” on the person with the disabling illness. This has led to children dying when not being taken seriously when showing symptoms, like complaining of not being able to breathe.”)
Also, Rhonda Wiebe mentions how people with disabilities are portrayed in fiction, films and I’d add that the villain is often made to be a person with a disability, which makes me angry. I was pleased to read awhile back, in an introduction to a mystery by Simon Brett that he had no patience for authors who made the villain someone with mental illness, a lazy way out of the plot for the author. As well as perpetuating stereotypes against people with mental illness and mental disabilities.