Kathryn Bromwich

Culture is rife with ableism

It has been an exhausting summer to be disabled. Every day there seems to be a news story. The Lizzo ableist slur, followed by the Beyoncé ableist slur – the exact same one – mere weeks later. The model whose prosthetic leg was edited out of a celebratory “beach bodies” advert. The virulent bullying of the deaf Love Island contestant Tasha Ghouri, both on social media and in the villa.

Some of the slights have been more subtle, woven into the fabric of the work surrounding them so seamlessly that they could, and probably will, be explained to me by able-bodied people as being perfectly fine. But it was disappointing to see the final episode of Derry Girls – lauded as “a triumph” by reviewers – using a disabled cast member as shorthand for a party not being as cool as it first appeared. The Oscar-winning film Coda, although well-meaning, centres on the struggles of an ablebodied person overcoming the impediment of having a disabled family. In her medieval fable Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh, usually an incredible and fearless writer, uses her characters’ disabilities as a way of evoking eeriness and discomfort. Able-bodied writers lazily turning to disability for horror is a time-honoured literary tradition, but perhaps we ought to move on.

None of the people involved in these unfortunate contretemps would ever admit to the faintest trace of ableism, of course. All of them, almost certainly, would argue they do not have an ableist bone in their body; too often, apologies take the form of “sorry if you were offended”. Lizzo and Beyoncé listened to the criticism and changed their lyrics. But whether the hurt is intentional or not, it is still painful when you’re on the receiving end. What is difficult to comprehend is the lack of scrutiny at all levels of the entertainment industry: commissioning editors, producers, publishers and reviewers breezily waved it all through.

It should not take disability activists to point this out. As Audre Lorde wrote in 1984, it is still

“the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes … there is a constant drain of energy which might be better used”. As a form of self-preservation, we’ve trained ourselves to laugh off inappropriate comments. Even if inside it feels as though a dreadful weight is pushing down on you, pointing out that something is causing you pain can feel like spoiling everyone else’s fun, like you’re being overly sensitive and finding offence where there was none.

But enough is enough. We need allies to truly care, to shift their thinking and try to see things the way we might. We need them to change the way things are from the inside – to stop intolerance creeping into their work in the first place. What we need is empathy – not pity, or being put on a pedestal, but to be seen as fully rounded human beings with feelings that can be hurt.

There have been positive movements in depictions of disability: Rose Ayling-Ellis’s Strictly Come Dancing win; the BBC TV drama Then Barbara Met Alan. What we need more of are incidentally disabled casting choices, where the actor’s disability is not the character’s defining feature, or even mentioned – as with Daniel Monks in Jamie Lloyd’s production of The Seagull. Rather than another disabled-only theatre group, what we need is integration: we live in the same world, not separate ones.

Over the past years, it has felt as though a seismic shift has begun on race, gender, sexuality and body size. But it feels like disability is left behind. Diversity is often seen only through the lens of race or gender; body positivity is associated primarily with weight. Mass protest for the disabled community poses logistical difficulties, especially with Covid rates so high and vulnerable people still shielding, so our suffering often feels invisible. Now that people have belatedly started to “do the work” on racism, they might want to add disability to their list.

Ableism is pervasive, inextricably woven into our society and language: deformed, disfigured, crippled, handicapped, lame – these are objectively negative terms conjuring up something grotesque, to be avoided at all costs. Ableism in popular culture is just the tip of the iceberg: day to day, disabled people have to contend with the cost of living crisis, carer shortages, discrimination at work, inadequate medical care, disability benefits delays, feeling left behind by those who think the pandemic is over, and more. We need momentous change to start the fightback against thousands of years of prejudice. It’s not going to happen overnight. But if change doesn’t begin with the small things, the more important things will never follow