I live here now, thoughts on loosing able bodied privilege (Part One)

I have something or several things wrong with my legs, it hasn’t been exactly clarified what yet, but the symptoms are pain in the joints of my feet, knees and ankles and cramping and spasming in my leg muscles, the pain has been increasing for about four years now and it has got to the point that I need a mobility aid of some sort if i want to go any distance or go anywhere that would usually involve standing up/queuing/waiting

And it kind of struck me what an absolute pain in the arse the whole thing, is, not actually being disabled, i can mostly deal with that (thought I’d like not to wake up with such bad leg cramps that they make me cry like they did last night thanks) but living in a world that wasn’t made for me, that ignores me or patronises me.

I went for a drink with some friends the other day and as I was taking my wheelchair for the first time we couldn’t go to any of our usual haunts because none of them are wheelchair accessible. and seriously I spent quite a long time online looking for somewhere we could go, I did find a list of wheelchair accessible pubs in the centre of Cardiff but half of them don’t have wheelchair accessible toilets, what is even the point of that? so wheelchair users can go there as long as they don’t need the loo!

Often I’ve found wheelchair accessible toilets are used as storage space anyway so its actually really hard to manoeuvre a wheelchair in there, I went to one pub in which the sanitary disposal bin was way out of arms length from the toilet, while this isn’t an issue for me because when I, infrequently, have a period, I use a moon cup, but what the hell is a woman who uses disposable sanitary protection supposed to do? personal I’d just flush it and not give a shit if it clogs the pipes but that’s not the point the point is theres a kind of “look at us and our accessibility, but we cant actually be bothered to think about what you need” mentality there. Getting into the same pub was pretty much impossible because there was enough of a step for me not to be able to wheel up it, a passer by had to help me.

Sometimes being obviously disabled turns me invisible, twice I’ve been on a train with my crutches and no seat and no one offered me their seat, and sometimes something about just being visibly disabled just pisses people of, they get this really defiant blank look on their faces, like I’m demanding something of them just by my presence.

Once I get fit enough in my arms using a manual wheelchair will actually be much, much easier for me than using crutches, because even with crutches I still have leg pain, but also because with crutches i cant hold anything, carry, anything, pick anything up, and maneuvering with crutches, for reasons to do with my spacial awareness and coordination issues, is actually more difficult for me than maneuvering a wheelchair

but apart from wheelchairs being harder to get into places many able bodied people seem to have an idea of a hierarchy of disability which has nothing to do with the disability itself but with the things you use to deal with the disability, using crutches seems to be seen as making me less disabled than me using a wheelchair, when actually the disabilities the same but I’m actually more able (or will be once I’ve increased the muscle strength and stamina in my arms) with my wheelchair

And then there are the times I am tacked on as an afterthought, by people who should know better, by people who are supposed to be on my side, people who are supposed to be fighting privileges, oppressions, power structures, tacked on as a “oh well if its accessible for you, you can come along” and that really fucking sucks, I am not by and large expecting the world to be on my side but I was expecting people who were supposed to be on my side to actually be on my side

All this has been one hell of a shock, it has really changed the way I think about people, about myself, about prejudice, privilege, power, its really made me think about the way I relate to other people with different oppressions from mine.