Disability Pride Month dreaming
Hello,
I’ve written many, many times about the silence around Disability Pride Month - why it’s so overlooked, and why ‘happy Pride’ can feel like precisely the wrong thing to say.
This remains true. I saw a tweet recently warning people to enjoy DPM because for the rest of the year we were going to be doing Disability Wrath, which was extremely on point except that, for me, the wrath and the pride are two sides of the same coin. I want to do both.
And yet. I don’t want to spend DPM just feeling rage that nondisabled people are ignoring it. And if I have learned anything from being fully immersed in LGBTQ Pride this year, it’s that progress can be made when it comes to pride movements (there’s still work to do here too, obviously, but it is lightyears ahead of DPM). So, indulge me in some dreaming of what Disability Pride could be, if only we made it so.
I dream of flags on Oxford St and outside fully accessible pubs.
I dream of a table of books by disabled authors as I walk into Waterstones.
I dream of kids coming home and telling their parents about the cool disability history they learned at school.
I dream of companies celebrating their disabled staff.
I dream of panels and podcasts and special episodes. I dream of DPM issues and editions and pull-out segments.
I dream of beautiful disabled people in TV ads and on billboards.
I dream of inclusion.
I dream, too, of smaller things. Of being wished a happy Disability Pride, of the shops selling disability pride flag merch, of being believed when we say we are proud to be disabled.
And mostly, I dream of community.
I dream of DPM events attended by nondisabled people and I dream of ones just for us.
I dream of events we can all take our kids to, and ones where disabled kids see they are not alone.
I dream of better.
And maybe that’s the real work of DPM, turning those dreams into concrete reality. After all, Pride is all in the doing.
With love,
Lucy
Celebrate Disability Pride Month with my book…
Women's lives are shaped by sexism and expectations. Disabled people's lives are shaped by ableism and a complete lack of expectations. But what happens when you're subjected to both sets of rules?
This powerful, honest, hilarious and furious memoir from journalist and advocate Lucy Webster looks at life at the intersection; the struggles, the joys and the unseen realities of being a disabled woman. From navigating the worlds of education and work, dating and friendship; to managing care; contemplating motherhood; and learning to accept your body against a pervasive narrative that it is somehow broken and in need of fixing, The View From Down Here shines a light on what it really means to move through the world as a disabled woman.
