11:21am June 10, 2014

Ableism is at the heart of every kind of oppression, but nobody talks about ableism.

When people talk about the eugenics movement, they always seem to do one of two things.

They talk about race and maybe class, and totally eliminate disability from the discussion.

They talk about disability and maybe class, and totally eliminate race from the discussion.

The reality is that the eugenics movement had to do with race, class and disability. Not as separate entities, but all mixed together in different ways at different times. If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand eugenics. Either the old eugenics, or the new, current eugenics that nobody wants to talk about or acknowledge.

Speaking of things like this.

Nobody seems to get that ableism is behind every other kind of oppression. There is no form of oppression that does not involve ableism deeply, at its very core. So if you’re not addressing ableism, you’re not addressing a core part of the oppression you’re talking about, and you’re likely just shunting off various parts of your own oppression onto disabled people.

There is ableism all the way down to the core of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, sizeism, ageism, classism, and every other form of oppression possible. Without ableism, these forms of oppression would be much less powerful than they are. Ableism is the only form of oppression I know about that doesn’t just intersect with other oppressions, it occupies a spot at or near their center every single time, no matter what the other oppression is.

And yet.

Even though ableism is central to every form of oppression out there.

Nobody deals with ableism.

People still think that “dealing with ableism” just means changing your language. There will be discussions of all the forms of oppression, and at the end they’ll mention ableism and all they’ll say about it is “don’t use words like stupid, they’re ableist”. (Which words are actually ableist is controversial within the disability community, mind you. So never assume we all agree on stuff like that.) People don’t talk about what ableism really is, or how deep it goes, or how it is at the heart of every other form of oppression out there.

Ableism is part of the mechanism for how marginalized groups are considered inferior to privileged groups. If you don’t understand that, then all you’re going to do? You’re going to say “My group isn’t inferior,” but you’re going to let disabled people remain inferior, because you won’t be questioning the ableist methods by which people are considered superior and inferior in the first place.

Any time that you’re dealing with medicalization of your oppressed group, you’re dealing with ableism.

Any time you’re dealing with “scientific” reasons that your oppressed group is inferior to people with privilege, you’re dealing with ableism.

Any time you’re dealing with assessments of the ability of people in your oppressed group, compared to people with privilege, you’re dealing with ableism.

And most of the time, what people do?

Is they question the notion that their group is inferior. But they don’t question the methods by which their group and other groups are pronounced inferior. Or they question the methods, but only in a shallow way that doesn’t get to the core of what ableism is.

Disabled people have been noticing this for a long time. Lots of us, me included, have independently figured this out, over the years. That ableism isn’t just oppression of disabled people. Ableism is something that is necessary for every other kind of oppression as well. It’s deeply woven into the fabric of oppression, so deeply that people can’t even see it.

But it’s there.

Ignore it, and you’ll have two very unpleasant results:

1. You’ll never get rid of your own oppression entirely.

2. You’ll take a step up for you and your oppressed group, but you’ll leave disabled people dealing with the exact same crap you were dealing with. And you may, in your particular manner of taking that step up, reinforce the ableism that disabled people deal with.

So if you want to learn about your own oppression, learn about ableism. Learn deeply about ableism. Don’t learn a list of words that you can memorize and learn not to say. Learn about the history of disabled people, learn about the way disabled people are treated, learn about disablement, disablism, ableism, whatever you want to call it, but learn it deeply. Learn how it affects physically disabled people, cognitively disabled people, psychiatrically disabled people, chronically ill people, developmentally disabled people, learn about it deeply.

I guarantee you will learn about your own oppression in the process, no matter what kind of oppression it is. I guarantee that if you look deep enough, you will learn things about your own oppression that you could never, ever have understood without understanding ableism.

When they say black people’s IQs are naturally lower than white people’s IQs. When they say that radical black activists are schizophrenic and in need of treatment. When they say women are weaker than men, physically and mentally. When they say that homosexuality is a disease. When they say to fat people, “I’m only concerned about your health.” When they say poor people should be prevented from reproducing, or are naturally more suited to manual labor than to intellectual work. When they say that being trans is a delusion, like thinking you’re Napoleon. When they say that children or old people are too incompetent to make any decisions about their lives.

All of these things are not only racism, sexism, homophobia, sizeism, classism, transphobia, or ageism – they are also ableism. And they are more the ableism they have in common, than they are the particular form the ableism takes for the exact oppression it’s being used to justify.

And at that point you have a choice.

You can argue to distance your particular oppressed group from this ableism, without actually doing anything to get rid of the ableism. This will leave disabled people, as well as other oppressed groups, dealing with the exact same crap your group was dealing with – you’ll escape but leave others behind.

Or you can dismantle the ableism at the root of the problem. Which benefits your oppressed group, it benefits disabled people, and it benefits every other oppressed group who is oppressed in the same way through ableism.

It is so strange to me… that ableism is intertwined with the roots of every single kind of oppression out there, and yet it’s also one of the least talked-about oppressions, the one everyone thinks is a joke. No seriously. I’ve watched the tumblr conversations. I’ve seen people – people of color, women, LGBT people, just about everyone – saying that ableism is going too far, that it’s just one more group of people claiming to be oppressed and jumping on the bandwagon. That ableism is trivial. That it’s not real. That disabled people aren’t dying from ableism, that we aren’t being incarcerated due to ableism, they rattle off this list of things that are supposedly not happening, that actually are exactly what is happening to disabled people around the world.

It makes me furious to read this because I know so much about exactly how disabled people are dying and being incarcerated and dehumanized and such through ableism. And also because I know how much every oppressed group would benefit from understanding ableism at a deep level, because without that, they’re missing a huge piece of how to dismantle their own oppression.

So don’t write off ableism as this silly lightweight thing that can be dealt with by memorizing a list of forbidden words. It’s so much more than that. And understanding it might just be the key to understanding your own oppression.