Disability History Month: An Introduction
By Leah Martindale, Bristol SU’s Equality, Liberation, and Access Officer
Disability History Month is upon us. Disability history is a field in need of far greater attention and indeed further investigation! So in this piece, The Bristorian gives an overview and introduction to the burgeoning field of disability history, and begins its DHM initiative.
Disability History Month is celebrated in the UK from November 18th to December 18th, though it is commonly recognised as a December celebration. UK DHM is now in its twelfth year running and with an ever-present pandemic looming it is more important than ever to recognise the historic oppression, under-representation, and resilient, joyful survival of the Disabled community.
Disability History Month has multiple aims and multiple achievements. It works to highlight the contributions that Disabled people have made to society throughout history, the atrocities committed against us too often swept under the carpet and the prevalence and pervasiveness of ableism. Ableism is defined as discrimination in favour of able-bodied – that is, non-disabled people, but it encompasses myriads more. Ableism is choosing a venue for an event inaccessible by wheelchair. Ableism is using diagnoses as descriptive or derogatory terms (no, you are not ‘so OCD’ for tidying up). Ableism is choosing to ignore the Disabled users your service could have, in favour of catering exclusively for the able-bodied users you do have.
Whilst ableist attitudes may feel behind us, they pervade in contemporary media, culture and social media. TikTok trends[1] depicting physically disabled people as objects of mockery resurface regularly, including a trend where ‘hilarious’ parents recorded their young children’s visible disgust and fear when faced with their ‘new teacher’ – an image of a someone with a physically apparent disability or facial difference.
Under UK law a disability is defined as ‘a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities’. It is estimated that one in five people have a disability. While we have distinct mental images of what a Disabled person ‘looks like’, an estimated 80% of Disabled people will have a ‘hidden’ or ‘invisible’ disability.[2] For hidden Disabled people like myself, an inaccessible world compounds with ableism, misconceptions, and misperceptions to make daily living a minefield. While the general national picture of disability seems stable, there has been an elephant in every room since March of 2020.
The Office for National Statistics has estimated that approximately 3% of Covid sufferers will suffer with long-Covid[3]– that is, symptoms that last up to 12 weeks post infection. While not a huge percentile, this proposes that 1,618 people will develop a disability from the daily infection figures publicised in 02/12 alone (53,945 infections).
The DHM logo, which runs from 18 November - 18 December
Disability History does not only affect those of us who have Disabilities, or those who will go on to have one. Disability History affects all of us who care about those we live amongst and the world we live in. Ableism has infiltrated too many topics to name. Do you care about marital rights? Do you believe in reproductive rights? Did you take to Twitter to demand a #FreeBritney? Then you, my friend, may well have a stake in tackling ableism.
Reproductive rights and forced, or coerced sterilisation, have re-occurred throughout history as a means of eugenics and population control amongst numerous social groups. These have included, amongst others, mass hysterectomies of women at immigration centres in 2020, contraceptive pills being tested on unknowing populations of Puerto-Rican women in the 1960s’, and the targeting of low-income or incarcerated populations as recently as 2001[4].[5] The Disabled community is no stranger to this minefield.
One of the Nazi government’s lesser-known first steps towards instating the Aryan ‘master-race’ was instituting the ‘Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.’ on July 14, 1933. This law, a classic example of reproductive eugenics, called for routine sterilisation and outlawed reproduction for anyone with a hereditary illness. The Disabled community were labelled ‘life unworthy of life’ and ‘useless eaters’[6].
Though it is easy to see the forced sterilisation of Disabled people as a piece of distant history, or one instance buried in an avalanche of human rights abuses and genocide, there are recent examples. In 2011, the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics issued the recommendation that ‘The free and informed consent of the woman herself is a requirement for sterilization’, and that ‘only women with disabilities themselves can give legally and ethically valid consent to their own sterilization’. A mere decade sits between us and a time before consent to sterilise a human being was even recommended.
Though ableism in history may seem, at first glance, scarce, Disabled people have always been here, and unfortunately, we have too often been the victims of injustices. More often, these injustices have intersected or coincided with other tragedies and travesties, and our history books have neglected to note this. At times, ableism has walked hand-in-hand with other prejudices.
December 1st marked International World AIDs Day. The AIDs crisis was the first public-health pandemic in living memory, and left entire generations decimated. Now, in the Global West, HIV is a disease that can exist undetectably in the body, untransmissible, and is an entirely different beast to the disease that rampaged through primarily gay communities in the 80’s and 90’s.
However, this was, of course, not always the case. Medical homophobia, and the ableist mindset that ‘the strong would survive’ combined, amongst other factors, to create an environment around HIV and AIDs so hostile it pervades decades later. Scholar Nicholas Hynryk writes:
‘Over the course of the 1980s, two seemingly separate issues of disability and disease were woven together, establishing a dichotomy between the unhealthy and healthy, afflicted and non-afflicted, disabled and non-disabled body, which was marked by tension and, at times, hostility.’
Medical misinformation fuelled by homophobic hate led to pernicious practices which left the sick, and at times, dying, without the respect of a dignified death. Ableism fuelled the idea that sickness came as punishment, or that lives cut short by a preventable illness were justified, in part due to homophobic attitudes, and also because of a simple lie. It is a lie many Disabled people will recognise, a lie that was pushed in the media that surrounded the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ebola crisis, the AIDs crisis, and most other public health crisis I can think of. It was the lie that tells us that a disabled life is not one worth living.
From life to death, the Disabled person’s right to life is in question. This includes debating if people should be allowed to abort babies based on a diagnosis of a Disability and also the right of that Disabled person to reproduce. Perhaps it is policy that prioritises able-bodied people to receive life-saving medical help, or in the case of Covid-19, stating that medical providers should ‘not offer mechanical ventilator support,’[7] for conditions including heart failure, dementia, respiratory failure, severe brain injuries, learning or developmental delays, and metastatic cancer.
Disabled people have made undeniably valuable contributions to this world. From Thomas Edison, who was left almost entirely Deaf due to scarlet fever as a child, to Albert Einstein, who suffered from a learning disability in his life undiagnosed, likely through dyslexia.[8] Vincent Van Gogh was ostracised and bullied throughout his life for an undiagnosed mental illness now theorised to be bipolar, a mood disorder, or borderline personality disorder[9]. Even America’s Blonde Bombshell, Marilyn Monroe, battled with depression and anxiety her entire life and momentarily spent time institutionalised at the Payne-Whitney Clinic in New York. Disabled people have formed the bedrock of culture for millennia.
That is, however, frankly irrelevant. Our lives matter had we never picked up a paintbrush or solved any equations. Disabled people’s rights are human rights, they are all of our rights, and they could one day be your rights. If we do not learn from history, we are determined to repeat it.
There are innumerable reasons why Disability History Month exists, and is of great importance. Perhaps most notable and consistently proven throughout the pandemic is that despite laziness, lack of will or a desire to ignore the Disabled population, an accessible world is possible.
Notes
[1] https://www.flowjournal.org/2020/09/tiktok-digital-eugenics/
[2] https://wearepurple.org.uk/not-all-disabilities-are-visible/#:~:text=We%20know%20that%2080%25%20of,during%20their%20adult%20working%20life.
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58584558
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/19/california-forced-sterilization-prison-survivors-reparations
[5] https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1553&context=wmjowl
[6] https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/people-with-disabilities
[7] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ventilators-limited-disabled-rationing-plans-are-slammed-amid-coronavirus-crisis-n1170346
[8] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/87068/12-disabled-scientists-who-made-world-better-place
[9] https://journalbipolardisorders.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40345-020-00196-z