Snickering was involved

This weekend, something happened to me that hasn’t happened since I was a child: a group of people were staring, pointing, and commenting on my arm. Snickering was involved. 

My husband and I decided to go and grab a drink on Friday night, and we were sitting at the bar catching up after a really busy week. He’s my husband, so I see him every day, but between client work and launching my ableism trainings we’ve hardly had time during the week to talk about what’s actually going on. So there we were, me filling him in on the exciting and amazing partnerships and clients I was excited about working with for Disability Pride Month, and I noticed a group of four fully grown adults looking at my arm and making gestures on their elbow, the place that my arm has fingers.

“No way,” I thought, “There's no way these people are so ignorant that in the middle of one of the busiest restaurants in the North Loop, that they’d point and stare and make my little arm the focus of their conversation.” I pressed my lips together, enlarged my eyes, and made a subtle gesture as if to say “yeah, I see you guys” and they all snickered. 

It confirmed what I already knew: these ignorant individuals were making my disabled arm the focal point of their happy hour conversation. I had to choke back immediate tears, and whispered calmly to my husband what was going on so as to not give them the satisfaction that their rude behavior was getting to me.

“Don’t you have anything better to talk about?!” 

“Do you live under a rock?!”

“I’m signed with four modeling agencies and you sure as hell aren’t.”

“This is so ignorant and embarrassing for you.”

“This is why I do what I do, this is why we need to educate people.”

“I have a hot, amazing, incredible husband next to me - I’ve come so far and opinions like this don’t matter.”

“Fuck them.”

It didn’t matter how much self-consoling I did, my reaction was the same as when I was a child: I wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear. 

It immediately brought me back to being a kid at recess - other kids not wanting to play with me, calling me a T-Rex, and running away from me. In that moment, the hardest part wasn’t just ignoring the idiots across the bar from us - it was reliving the experiences I had as a child and knowing that I didn’t have any self-consoling statements back then. I had no idea how my life would turn out. All I knew was that the way I was born was outside of my control, and all I wanted was to have a friend.

I talk about this stuff for a living. I willingly go into circles of ignorance to help people move from “What is Ableism?” to a full blown ally to disabled people. I provide continued education to insure the progress continues. I’ve developed programs, resources, and training modules to help people and businesses grow with a better understanding of what 25% of the population experiences: ableism. This is my job, this is my passion, this is the thing I believe I was born to do - and I’m proud of this important work. 

One thing I talk about often is the idea of funnels of oppression. 

They start as a simple, but negative, implicit bias that goes unchecked. Then those individuals with unchecked biases create systems within society, and because they are not including disabled people within them, the systems themselves are not inclusive. The non inclusive systems these people create then go on to reinforce negative implicit bias and the cycle grows and grows. 

The inappropriate behavior of these bar patrons stems from the implicit bias reinforced at Freakshows. 

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the only place in society that disabled people were allowed to be seen were Freakshows where non disabled people would pay money to point at, gawk at, be horrified by, and snicker at disabled people. The original implicit bias was that disabled people are rare and scary, which led little capitalists to see an opportunity in exploiting disabled people. The system that was created were Freakshows. The Freakshows reinforced negative implicit biases for attendees, and those attendees went on to build non inclusive systems. 

Freakshows reinforced the belief that disabled people were unsightly, ugly, and not worthy of being seen by society. This same funnel has led to disabled people not being featured in media, marketing, and entertainment - despite disabled people being 25% of the population, we are only represented in these industries 3.1% of the time. Having been in the marketing and entertainment industries for a large portion of my career I know that this is a systemic issue - while there are concentrated efforts to make sure that other marginalized groups are represented and celebrated, those same efforts do not exist for disabled people. While 90% of companies say they have a plan for DEI or diversity, only 4% include disabled people within that. This is unacceptable, and this system leads to biases like these individuals at the bar we went to. 

The thing that has been at the forefront of my mind ever since was that these people were likely in the middle of their careers. They were in their upper 30s to mid 50s and had never had their implicit bias questioned. These people were likely at least at some form of a managerial level, and you know what managers do? Create systems. Hire and promote. Make decisions about who is included and who isn’t. 

I bet their supervisors have no idea what is going on internally for these people, and they’d likely be horrified knowing this story. Likely these individuals have never been presented with information about ableism or how this implicit bias has been developed, they’re going along with what society says about disabled people, and as a result when they get a few beers in them they treat people from marginalized backgrounds horribly. I would be willing to bet the remainder of my left arm if their supervisors knew this was how they behaved they’d be embarrassed, they’d feel remorseful and they’d wish they had educated themselves and their team about ableist implicit bias. 

The studies show that companies that prioritize disability inclusion throughout their entire company have 28% higher revenue. We know that people who have a close relationship to disability have over $8.68T in disposable income in the USA alone. The numbers are there as to why prioritizing disabled people and inclusion needs to happen. 

Chances are if you made it this far, you already recognize this as such a huge need and you want to be a part of the solution. I appreciate that - and you - so much. Disability Pride Month is in July and it is a great time to think of how to start taking steps in the right direction to prioritize disability year round. 

I accepted long ago that I likely won’t see the end of ableism in my lifetime, this is problem spanning multiple millenniums and it’s not going to be fixed overnight. But just because the road is long, and hard, doesn’t mean that we throw up our hands and do nothing. It’s time to roll up our sleeves, prepare ourselves to get uncomfortable and get to work. Growth happens when we’re uncomfortable, internally and business wise. Regardless of where you’re at in your journey - total novice or ready and willing to educate your entire workforce - if you’re committed to our community, I’m committed to creating systems to help you do this.

Let’s work together so that disabled people can have their basic civil and human rights with no snickering involved.