Regarding ULK 57 and “disability”. A deaf person is hearing
impacted. A paralyzed person is mobility impacted. Together they are
physically impacted. Their physical states are influenced by what
impacted them – some ailment, incident, or birth condition.
“Disabled” and “challenged” takes something away, some quality or value
of the person, as if they are the sum of their physical condition,
objectified. “Disabled” in today’s reactionary culture and mindset
conveys inferior, a tacit separation that, repeated ritually to and by
the impacted person, becomes psychologically embedded and the person
feels actually inferior – has self-doubts, is self-conscious.
I’ve been deaf since age 15 and could never say that I was “deaf” even,
but said I had a “hearing problem.” When referred to as being “deaf,” I
felt lower than everyone else. I’ve gotten over it by now, of course, at
age 63, but just to say that semantic runs deep with physically and
mentally impacted people, and can be a very sensitive thing. Another
angle is that transgender people are considered in Western medicine to
have a mental “disorder,” and so on. Well, that’s my 2¢. The article was
rather interesting to me.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Language is an important part of culture,
and something that revolutionaries have a responsibility to use for
political purpose. So we appreciate this comrade raising criticisms of
our use of language in ULK 57.
As a launching off point in this discussion, we will bring up our use of
the word Chican@. We use an @ symbol instead of an ‘o’ or ‘a’ to
convey multiple political points: the @ is not gender-specific; the term
is encompassing an oppressed nation and explicitly rejecting Amerikan
labels like “Hispanic.”
With that in mind we want to look carefully at this term “disability” to
consider these criticisms. We do not want to suggest that someone who
cannot hear or cannot see is inferior to someone who can. All people
have different abilities. Some of these abilities can be trained, but
some are things we’re born with. Some people, for instance, are stronger
than others. The weaker folks aren’t inferior, but they might be better
suited to tasks that don’t require as much physical strength.
This was discussed in the book Philosophy is No Mystery which
describes struggles in a village in revolutionary China. One of the
challenges they faced was strong young men acting as if their work was
more valuable than that of weaker folks (mostly wimmin, but also elderly
people and children). However, upon deeper discussion everyone came to
agree that the work done by all was critical to their success, and
valuing strength over other types of labor was counter-productive.
Let’s address the question of whether the term “disability” is similar
to saying a transgendered persyn has a “disorder.” Transgender folks are
often said to have “gender dysphoria” which is the stress a persyn feels
as a result of the sex they were assigned at birth. The assigned sex
does not match the persyn’s internal identity. That’s a situation some
transgender people seek to address by changing their physical body to
match their internal identity. Transgender folks face a difficult
situation that needs resolving for them to lead healthy and happy lives.
It’s true that when we hear “disability” we generally think of things we
would want to fix. But is that a bad thing? When people have vision
problems that can be corrected, we want to use medical science to
correct them. For instance, removal of cataracts cures blindness in many
people. Similarly, if someone is missing a leg, getting fitted with a
prosthesis is often a very good thing. In these situations someone lacks
the ability to use a part of their body to its full potential. And in
some cases this ability can be restored.
So perhaps the analogy we would make is that missing a leg is like
someone being assigned a sex that doesn’t match their internal identity.
The gender dysphoria they experience before transitioning is like
lacking a prosthesis for someone without a leg. Making the transition to
a sex or gender expression that matches their identity is for any
transgender persyn somewhat analogous to people with physical
dis-abilities getting them surgically or prosthetically corrected. If we
can resolve gender dysphoria, by changing society or improving the
persyn’s individual situation, we should do that. Just like if we can
provide prosthetic limbs and cataract surgery, we should do that.
Where using the term “disability” becomes more complex and muddy is in
cases where the persyn impacted doesn’t want to make a change. There are
some good examples of this, like neuro-atypical folks who have developed
highly specialized skills because of their neurology, but struggle to
socialize or interact with other people. Some argue this is not
something to be fixed but is just a humyn difference. And so we
shouldn’t call that a disability, but rather just a different ability.
However, in the types of cases that were discussed in the issue of
ULK in question, the ailments and physical limitations are things
we all agree should be fixed if possible. We don’t see anyone arguing
that keeping cataracts help people in any way.
The question here is whether we can distinguish between conditions
that people don’t want to change, differences between humyns, and
conditions that people can generally agree we should change if possible.
If we can, the term “disability” may be appropriate for the category of
conditions we would change if possible. And then the final question we
must answer is whether the term “disability” in our social context
implies that someone is inferior. As we’ve already said above, we want
to use language to empower and build revolutionary culture. This last
point is the most difficult one and we’d like to solicit input from
other readers, and especially those who contributed to ULK 57.
Send us your thoughts on this topic and we will study it further and
publish something in an upcoming issue of Under Lock &
Key.