Week Fourteen: The Disability Conversation

In modern society, disability is still widely regarded as a failure or something that is abnormal. We fail to recognize that people with disabilities should be treated the same way as any other person would be. In Ben Meyer's Ted Talk, he goes on to discuss the importance of disability advocacy. As an eleven year old, Meyers was asked to give a disability advocacy presentation which consisted of an interview in which all of the people at the meeting had to ask questions about his disability. Once the presentation started, no one asked any questions. He then asked himself "Hey Ben, what's wrong with your hands?" After that, a bunch of questions were asked and he realized that people want to talk about disability but are afraid to because they think they might offend the person with the disability. This "disability taboo" is everywhere. Because we are a "xenophobic race, we fear what is foreign to us".

In Living Under Circe's Spell, Soyster talks about how multiple sclerosis  affected his life and how he is coping with his disability. He first denies the fact that he has this disability and states "[g]rowing crippled is a bitch". This directly goes onto what Meyers was saying about how people are scared of what is unfamiliar to them. Because Soyster was not used to having to live with a disability, he didn't want to believe that he had multiple sclerosis and felt "helpless".

"We can fix this". As Meyers stated in his Ted Talk, we can overcome this problem by not using words related to disabilities with a negative connotation. We need to start thinking more about disability and stop relating it to bad situations because disability is not something we need to avoid. 


Link:  "The Disability Conversation" Ted Talk