Hello,
The thing about being disabled is that the big moments of stark, in-your-face ableism that make the news (or go viral on Twitter…) are not even half the story. There’s all these other tiny, almost imperceptible moments that don’t make you upset or angry but just make you feel a bit weird. And these are the things I think most nondisabled people don’t know about, because you’d never even notice if they didn’t happen to you.
An example cropped up this weekend when I took one of my best friends out to celebrate her birthday (which is today! Happy birthday Soph!). It was a really nice evening of delicious dim sum and cocktails, and the staff were good too. When we’d fully munched to our hearts’ content I caught one of their eye and asked for the bill. I fished out my card to pay for the three of us, and saw a look of momentary confusion pass across the waiter’s face. “All on one card?” he asked, looking from me to Soph to my PA Tilly and back. “Yes,” I said, flashing my most confident smile.
It was fine. I paid and he thanked me and we were on our way. He wasn’t patronising or rude, just momentarily surprised that I wasn’t the one being paid for. Still, it reminded me of an altogether more abrasive situation at a pub a few years ago. My two friends had paid for their meals, and I was about to do the same when the grumpy waitress chided my pals for not having paid enough. “I’m paying the rest,” I said. And she honestly looked at me with such a look of incredulity that I wondered if she was altogether ok. “Really?” she asked Laura, who was frankly baffled and not in the mood to answer for me. “Really,” I said for myself. She tutted. I paid. It was utterly, utterly bizarre.
While these two experiences were entirely different in tone and effect, they came from the same set of assumptions: that people who look like me aren’t independent and therefore don’t have our own money. That we are dependent on others to pay our way, whether that’s our friends, family or, at a wider level, the state (the accompanying belief is that disability benefits are easy to get and extremely generous, which is, er, very much not the case.) Really, this assumption is just part of the wider belief that disabled people are perma-children; the trappings of adulthood (like paying for a meal) always out of reach to our enfeebled minds.
Of course, there are financial penalties involved in being disabled - our cost of living is higher while we earn less, on average, than our nondisabled counterparts. However, every single disabled person I know has a decent job, whether full- or part-time. Every single disabled person I know is successful, hard working and ambitious. And every single disabled person I know can pay for themselves at a restaurant. The assumption that we can’t is extremely ableist, whether the waiter was nice about it or not. (The need to fact-check my assertion that I can pay with my nondisabled companion is another level of ableism entirely, but let’s leave that for another day.)
Just because this stuff is subtle - a raised eyebrow or a failure to handover a card reader - doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. These smaller instances of ableism contribute to all the bigger ones. And, because they’re constant and repetitive and interrupt daily life so often, they can over time become the hardest ones to deal with. So, on a societal and individual level, it’s important to counteract this stuff.
What can you, a nondisabled person, do in the moment? Ask the disabled person you’re with if they want you to say something (sometimes they might appreciate it, and sometimes they might just want to move on - both are valid). If you and they are up for it, there’s fun to be had in challenging this stuff more overtly. I have been known, when out with a big group of pals, to hatch a small plot to mess with a particularly patronising waiter: everyone quickly and quietly transfers me their share, and I pay for the whole lot, watching the poor dude’s entire world view crumble on the spot. 10/10. Would recommend. Sometimes allyship can involve a giggle.
How have you and your friends tackled subtle ableist nonsense when you’re out and about? Let us know in the comments!
See you next week,
Lucy
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