I hate everything about the concept of overcoming disability. I understand that typically when people talk about someone having overcome a disability, they mean it as a compliment. I’ve heard people talk about how FDR overcame his polio to become president, how Helen Keller overcame her blindness and Deafness to communicate, how Simone Biles overcame her mental health challenges to kill it at the Olympics.
I admire FDR, Helen Keller, and Simone Biles for their accomplishments. But to say that they overcame their disabilities relies on the assumption that being disabled is intrinsically a barrier to success. It supposes that a disabled person shouldn’t be able to become president or a celebrity speaker or a decorated athlete and that it takes an individual with unusual strength, determination, or fortitude to do anything remarkable. It assumes that it is remarkable enough for a disabled person to simply live life, let alone become a leader of any sort. It attributes only negative values to disability—and by extension, disabled people.
To overcome is to defeat or take control of. I cannot defeat or take control of my disabilities. All the willpower and strength in the world will not help me see any better or be less anxious. The overcoming attitude assumes disability is a tragedy, something shameful or pitiful. This is the attitude that assumes I would do anything to fix my vision problems.
The late Nancy Mairs, who wrote about life with MS, said, “I would take a cure but I don’t need one.” I’d love to have better vision or to say goodbye to anxiety and depression, but living a life with low vision, anxiety, and depression is apparently my only option, and damn it, I’m going to make the most of it.
I prefer disability-affirming. I see the overcoming concept as directly opposed to affirming. Overcoming disability puts all the responsibility on the person with the disability. Disability affirming recognizes that disability may make life more challenging but it isn’t a tragedy that makes life not worth living. It sees disabled people as equal to non-disabled people, not less than. Instead of arranging people into hierarchies with non-disabled always higher and more desirable than disabled, a disability-affirming approach understands disability as a feature of the normal range of ability. When someone is recognized as having more challenges, a disability-affirming approach does not expect that individual to be the only one working hard—rather, it sees the work as a joint effort between the disabled person and those around them.
An excellent example of disability-affirming is the Phamaly Theater Company, a company of actors with disabilities formed in 1989 in Denver. Over the weekend I saw Phamaly’s performance of A Chorus Line. Every actor in the production was physically, emotionally, cognitively, and/or intellectually disabled.
An overcoming disability approach would have meant that disabled actors in a show like A Chorus Line, which centers on a group of actors auditioning for a place on a chorus line, would need to either overcome or mask their disabilities. An actor who uses a wheelchair or is Deaf or has a condition that makes it impossible for them to stand for the length of a scene wouldn’t even be considered.
But in Phamaly’s A Chorus Line, actors who use wheelchairs move to the beat of the music, Deaf actors have another character sign and interpret for them, an actor who can’t stand for long periods sits on a wheeled stool and spins around the stage. The disabilities are seamlessly integrated into the performance as if being disabled is normal—and it is! The disabilities don’t become a focus or a barrier—they simply are. Just like in real life.
Affirming disability takes away the pressure disabled people often feel to hide their disabilities. A disabled person who is masking puts tremendous pressure on themselves to appear non-disabled and it is done out of shame or embarrassment. When I pretend I can see something I can’t, I’m masking, and I do it nearly every time someone shows me a picture on their phone. Between the small screen, the typical glare, and my low vision, nine times out of ten, I can’t make out anything, but instead of admitting that and shifting the focus to me from whatever the person with the phone wants to show me, I smile real big and exclaim, “Oh, look at that!” It feels harmless in the moment.
But then I feel like a fraud and the next time that person shows me something on their phone, they think I can see it because I’ve created the illusion that I can and it becomes harder to admit the truth.
A disability-affirming approach that I could take would be to say from the very beginning, “I would love to see that picture! It’s going to take me a minute to change my glasses and move out of the glare, but I’m sure it will be worth it!”
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