London 2012, Redefining Disability And The Abandonment Of The Social Model

During the Paralympics ‘Disability’ was the word on everybody’s lips. However, whilst attention was transfixed on Disabled athletes from all over the world, the term ‘Disabled’ was being rejected, denied and redefined everywhere you looked.

While listening to BBC 5Live’s coverage of the games I heard a Paralympic swimmer talking about his work going into schools, talking to children and challenging perceptions.  He reported that he would regularly ask the kids who was more Disabled, them or him, when swimming.  His point was that he was a much better swimmer than them, even though he is Disabled and they are not.  His message that we all have different abilities in certain situations is hard to disagree with.  However his choice to challenge the whole definition of what is Disabled is something that concerns me.

However, this is not just a product of a poor athlete caught a bit on the hop by a radio presenter, looking at him with big wide eyes, waiting for him to say something profound about only having one leg (insert your favourite impairment here).  No, Philip Craven the President of the International Paralympic Committee appears to have a major problem with the term ‘Disabled’.  So much so that he publicly campaigned for the word to be totally absent from any of the games’ coverage.  In the London Evening Standard of 17^th April 2012 he is quoted as saying:

“The term disability is something I don’t like. The use of the D word collects together some mythical group and marginalises them. We have to recognise that everybody is an individual. It doesn’t matter if you use legs and I use wheels”.

This is an outrageous and offensive statement to me as a Disabled person who has grown up with a shared experience with other Disabled people of a world that, despite Oscar Pistorius running very very fast, still discriminates against us.  It was not a mythical group that I drew strength from when wrestling with my identity in my teenage years.  Nor mythical were the pro-active members of the group that united together to campaign for the rights that Disabled people enjoy today.  The word ‘Disabled’ does not marginalise us, a society that is unwilling to adapt to difference is what marginalises us.  A society which, however, is continuously improving and becoming more accepting must also be more confused than ever over what is acceptable language to describe people like Sir Philip Craven and me.  We learn from Craven in this next quote that he does not seem to gain as much as I do from being united, with others, by the experience of being disabled. 

“Don’t use terminology that gives a negative impression. If you need to talk about the blind, visually impaired, deaf or wheelchair users, no problem at all. What the blind person needs is completely different. What the deaf person needs is completely different. So get rid of that D word.” (London Evening Standard April 2012)

This is a mind-boggling statement, considering that Craven is the President of the organisation that oversees the running of the Paralympic Games which requires elite athletes to be Disabled in order to qualify to compete.

One of Craven’s main reasons for disliking the word is that in other contexts ‘Disabled’ means broken or inactive.  The word ‘Black’ has similar negative linguistic baggage when used in some contexts however Black people, instead of rejecting it, own the word and have redefined it as positive when describing their community.  So too I propose Disabled people are self-confident enough to accept that language moves forward and definitions change within society.                  

A major redefinition of the terms ‘Disabled’ and ‘Disability’ was indeed attempted, but as a recognition of unity, inspired by the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960’s.  In 1975 the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) sought to establish that the reaction to disabled people by others, was in fact the disabling factor in their lives rather than their impaired bodies.

"In our view it is society which disables physically impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society." (UPIAS, 1975).

This approach was later termed ‘The Social Model of Disability’ and actually redefines Disability as being in a position where the society around you excludes you on the grounds of your impairment.  International law, UK anti-discriminatory legislation and Disabled academic studies all use the definitions that The Social Model outline.  In this way, even if you are being introduced to The Social Model for the first time reading this, it has revolutionised the way we all view Disability.  However, the definition of ‘impairment’, the physical condition, and ‘Disability’, the barriers erected in the path of those that have impairment, have not been assimilated into everyday usage.  Moreover when Paralympians suggest they’re not disabled in a pool due to their excellence in swimming it would seem that by implication they are defining being Disabled as being useless.                     

The misguided simplification of the term was evident in a debate on Newsnight, August 30th 2012 -the eve of the Paralympics, where comedian Francesca Martinez claimed boldly that we all, referring to the entire population, have disabilities.  The general gist of what Francesca argued was that everybody has things that they are not so good at. I would suggest that terming things that people are not adept at as ‘disabilities’ is tremendously unhelpful.  Francesca has cerebral palsy but rejects the label preferring infuriatingly to refer to herself as “wobbly”. 

The idea that individual Disabled people can play fast and loose with definitions because the label partly describes themselves, ignores the lengths we have come in terms of Disabled rights.  It is united under the label ‘Disabled people’, which describes our oppression as well as our physical state, that we have been recognised - if very limitedly - as a group with things to offer to society and in a roundabout way has allowed Francesca Martinez to be speaking on Newsnight in the first place.  In claiming that everybody has disabilities Martinez is denying the power and sense of solidarity that a lot of Disabled people feel. This is ironically similar, in result, to Philip Craven’s notion that the word ‘Disabled’ should be phased out.              

I am left bemused by the disowning or neutralising of the label Disabled to different extents by differing good swimmers, comedians and Presidents of sporting organisations. It would seem to me that saying that Disabled people are individuals and share limitless aspirations and opinions with their non-disabled peers is different from saying that Disabled people do not exist.

The three examples above of statements that question in different ways whether the concept of Disabled people is still relevant in 2012 are drastically missing the point.  Moreover they are totally abandoning not only the admittedly abstract notion of the Social Model but also the actual gains the Disabled Rights Movement have achieved by applying it.  As we Disabled people slowly but surely gain more of a voice within British society we cannot use it to deny that we ever existed in the first place.  Disabled people are diverse in politics, ethnicity, economic background and personality as well as endless other things, but we are united under a label. 

I think the word ‘Disabled’ is being subtly redefined all the time.  So when people encounter Disabled people in their everyday life, which happens constantly without the universe melting into an organic sludge, those individuals come to their own conclusion that the term ‘Disabled’ can mean many things all at once.  Which I think is really what Sir Philip Craven, Francesca Martinez and the Paralympian who goes into schools were driving at when they made their various statements about the word ‘Disabled’.  The world is realising that disability encapsulates a broad spectrum of people and experience. I’m not sure whether this control-freakery about what disability means is helping but I’m definite that making confusing statements about terminology will only lead to a stereotype of a group of people who are pedantic about language.