Hello, how are you doing?
It’s happened again, lads. I’ve gone accidentally viral on Twitter. This time, inexplicably, with a post about straws.
I am actively bored of the conversation around disabled people needing plastic straws. I first wrote about it about a thousand years ago for my very first job at the BBC and precisely nothing has changed since. People get irrationally angry about a very basic fact (every time I tweet about it, I am deluged with ableism and responses that show an alarming lack of critical thinking) and honestly I can’t be bothered to relitigate the whole thing here.
What I do want to talk about, though, is the Have You Tried Brigade.
Every. Single. Time a disabled person with a platform shares a problem online, there’s a whole host of nondisabled people ready to jump in with suggestions or reasons why, actually, it’s not really a problem.
This time, hundreds of people took time out of their day to tell me about all the other types of straws I could use (“Have you tried the metal ones?”. Spoiler alert: none of them are suitable.
There are several reasons that this is painfully annoying but the one that really makes me want to scream is the assumption that a disabled person has encountered a problem and simply thrown their hands up in despair.
As if we are not professional problem solvers.
As if we haven’t tried.
As if we can’t possibly think for ourselves.
Ableism wrapped up as helpfulness is still ableism, kids.
When you gently point this out, though, the bare-knuckled ableism quickly comes out.
It’s a basic tenet of any liberation movement that members of a minority group are the experts on their own lived experience. It shouldn’t even need saying.
But for the avoidance of doubt, if a disabled person tells you about a problem, it’s a problem. They have likely been thinking about it for a while, and it is highly unlikely that the ‘solution’ you offer after five seconds of thought has already occurred to them. Instead of denying their experiences, why not amplify their voices and help get the change they need?
Food for thought for the ableds of Twitter.=
See you next week,
Lucy
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That’s right! My debut book is out on 7 September and it’s now available to pre-order!
It’s a memoir about life as a disabled woman, how ableism and sexism interact in complicated and multifaceted ways, and how we often have to fight to be seen as women at all. Find out more here.
I put my heart and soul into this book and I’d love it to reach as many people as possible. Pre-orders will help it do so, as they encourage media coverage and stock buying by booksellers.
"Ableism wrapped up as helpfulness is still ableism, kids."
Gawd, this so much.
"Have you tried yoga?" "Have you tried cutting out (insert latest disordered eating as a fad)" "Have you tried MANIFESTING?"
I see ableism as a double-edged sword where on the one side you have straight up eugenics and the idea that our lives are just less valuable and worth living and on the other side you have pity, paternalism, charity and infantilising ideas about us. Both cut deep.