When I saw the “beautiful” tribute cartoon of Hawking walking away from his whee
When I saw the “beautiful” tribute cartoon of Hawking walking away from his wheelchair it really rubbed me the wrong way. “Gross” would be the best word to describe how I felt about it. It is difficult to articulate exactly why, but I’ll try:Part of it is the way disability, for better or for worse (usually a bit of both), becomes a part of one’s identity; indeed, that’s part of acceptance. For me, it is not everything I am, but it is a part of everything I am, everything I do, every day. Do I occasionally dream about being “normal”? Yes. But when I do, I don’t know how to see myself – I have no picture of what life would be like, of what *I* would be like. And so, as disability becomes part of one’s identity, the value a society places on people with disabilities can hugely affect one’s self-worth – and our society places very little value on people with disabilities.We are confronted with a sort of twisted social Darwinism that only takes into account certain aspects of being human as good or strong. “Do I deserve to have children?” I would ask myself, “What if I pass this on?” Never mind all the great things I might pass on, the disease and the stigma placed on it so often win out.But then there was Stephen Hawking. The glaring and shining, *undeniable* example of the value of people with disabilities. The literal embodiment of the ability of humans to be weak and strong at the same time. Ever since I was a child and my diagnosis made me question my value as a human – as a diseased, disabled human – I thought of Hawking. I thought of Hawking with his twisted body in his chair and all his brilliance, humor, and talent, and remembered that I had worth too.It didn’t feel like sympathy when I looked at that cartoon of Hawking leaving his chair, it felt like dismissal. I can’t speak for the Hawking, obviously, but as evidenced by Teen Vogue’s article on the subject, as well as social media response, a lot of people felt that way.Hawking himself wrote that one of his biggest regrets in life was not having the chance to run over Margaret Thatcher’s toes in his wheelchair. Now THAT is the tribute cartoon I’d want to see – so here it is, I scribbled it this morning. -- source link
#ableism#disability