Internalising Ableism from a Young Age

Jóhannsdóttir et al. (2022) studied internalised ableism based on four focus-group sessions with young people (aged 18-35) who identified as disabled. The participants reflected on their childhood and adolescence and shared their experience that ableism made their impairment "a sensitive marker of something 'abnormal' and 'undesirable', which again made them even more aware of their (...) differences and negative portrayal in society". 

I understand it; I don’t know if I would date me, with everything that comes with it. So, I understand people, even if it is not the right attitude, or maybe not very modern. I cannot get frustrated or angry with people because I understand it 100%.

In fact, having to constantly fight notions of normality, abnormality, prejudice, and stigma, dealing with people's stares, patronising comments, aggression and micoraggression led to exhaustion, anxiety, depression and isolation. Adolescence was referred to as a particularly difficult time. Some participants mentioned isolation and disconnection to be everypresent. Being treated as inferior made them feel unworthy of both love and belonging, that again reinforced shame. And shame was strongly linked to mental health issues and negative body image. A few participants considered internalised ableism to be the main barrier to their wellbing in later life.

The extent to which internalised ableism developed was mediated by family support, peer interactions, networks and safer spaces. In line with prior findings, ableism started early ... sometimes even before birth when encountering doctors. Having a disabled child is often seen as a tragedy or a burden on the family. Some parents actively fought these notions, others identified with these ideas. One participant of the focus groups said:

It’s like if you are born disabled, your parents need education on everything their child can do. Not that the doctor comes and says, “This is what is wrong, and this … and this… and this.” Too often, a grim picture of the baby’s condition is painted. When rather someone should come and say, “These are the resources available for you …. Your child can do this … and this … and this.” The focus is too often on what is wrong with the baby but not what the baby is capable of.

Gender, ethnicity, social status and other intersections also had an impact on how strongly discrimination was felt.

For me, it is complicated to discuss relationships because I am a lesbian. (…) people connected that to my disability, saying that I just knew myself as a woman. And that I did not know men. That is why, according to them, I am attracted to women because it is the only thing I know! (everyone laughs)

The lack of socialising experiences with other disabled children was discussed in a controversial manner showing that this separation might hinder young people from identifying with other disabled people.

I had a very good paediatrician who fought for me to not associate with other disabled children, that is, I would not go to a special school, not go to the summer camps for disabled children, like my brothers. And yes, I spent much more time around non‐disabled children.

I started experiencing that when I was around disabled children. I did not understand what they were going through… I did… I disregarded my disability. Mine was not as important/valid as that of others.

Summer camps for disabled children, i.e., the forced segregation experienced, for many, were ...

Just really hard summers … where we, as young children, experienced the vulnerability of other children in this place. It kind of sticks with me, this vulnerability and aloneness of the other children. We were not experiencing one another’s strengths, you know. There is a huge difference between experiencing peer support through strength and empowerment and enduring what we experienced in that summer camp.

The feeling of disconnection, unlovability, and unworthiness can result in deep shame making people internalise ableism at a young age. There are other ways.

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- Ásta Jóhannsdóttir, Snæfríður Þóra Egilson & Freyja Haraldsdóttir (2022). Implications of internalised ableism for the health and wellbeing of disabled young people. Social Health Illn, 44(2), link
- photograph (Oksana with a leaf of cabbage from the garden of the Internat where she lives in isolation with more than 60 girls and women categorised as disabled. Pretrykhiv, Ternopil, Ukraine. 2016) by Carolyn Drake via

Inspiration Porn

The term "inspiration porn" was coined by disability rights activist Stella Young (1982-2014) in 2012. Here are some excerpts from her TEDx talk in which she explains why disabled people are no objects of inspiration, no objects at all.

I grew up in a very small country town in Victoria. I had a very normal, low-key kind of upbringing. I went to school, I hung out with my friends, I fought with my younger sisters. It was all very normal. And when I was 15, a member of my local community approached my parents and wanted to nominate me for a community achievement award. And my parents said, "Hm, that's really nice, but there's kind of one glaring problem with that. She hasn't actually achieved anything." 

 And they were right, you know. I went to school, I got good marks, I had a very low-key after school job in my mum's hairdressing salon, and I spent a lot of time watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek." Yeah, I know. What a contradiction. But they were right, you know. I wasn't doing anything that was out of the ordinary at all. I wasn't doing anything that could be considered an achievement if you took disability out of the equation. Years later, I was on my second teaching round in a Melbourne high school, and I was about 20 minutes into a year 11 legal studies class when this boy put up his hand and said, "Hey miss, when are you going to start doing your speech?" And I said, "What speech?" You know, I'd been talking them about defamation law for a good 20 minutes. And he said, "You know, like, your motivational speaking. You know, when people in wheelchairs come to school, they usually say, like, inspirational stuff?" "It's usually in the big hall." 

And that's when it dawned on me: This kid had only ever experienced disabled people as objects of inspiration. We are not, to this kid -- and it's not his fault, I mean, that's true for many of us. For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire. And in fact, I am sitting on this stage looking like I do in this wheelchair, and you are probably kind of expecting me to inspire you. Right? Yeah.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you dramatically. I am not here to inspire you. I am here to tell you that we have been lied to about disability. Yeah, we've been sold the lie that disability is a Bad Thing, capital B, capital T. It's a bad thing, and to live with a disability makes you exceptional. It's not a bad thing, and it doesn't make you exceptional. 

And in the past few years, we've been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You may have seen images like this one: "The only disability in life is a bad attitude." Or this one: "Your excuse is invalid." Indeed. Or this one: "Before you quit, try!" These are just a couple of examples, but there are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one, the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn.  And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, "Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person."

But what if you are that person? I've lost count of the number of times that I've been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I'm brave or inspirational, and this was long before my work had any kind of public profile. They were just kind of congratulating me for managing to get up in the morning and remember my own name.  And it is objectifying. These images, those images objectify disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. They are there so that you can look at them and think that things aren't so bad for you, to put your worries into perspective. 

And life as a disabled person is actually somewhat difficult. We do overcome some things. But the things that we're overcoming are not the things that you think they are. They are not things to do with our bodies. I use the term "disabled people" quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.  

(...) 

I really think that this lie that we've been sold about disability is the greatest injustice. It makes life hard for us. And that quote, "The only disability in life is a bad attitude," the reason that that's bullshit is because it's just not true, because of the social model of disability. No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. Smiling at a television screen isn't going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille. It's just not going to happen. 

I really want to live in a world where disability is not the exception, but the norm. I want to live in a world where a 15-year-old girl sitting in her bedroom watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" isn't referred to as achieving anything because she's doing it sitting down. I want to live in a world where we don't have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning. I want to live in a world where we value genuine achievement for disabled people, and I want to live in a world where a kid in year 11 in a Melbourne high school is not one bit surprised that his new teacher is a wheelchair user. 

Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.

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photograph (Isle of Wight Festival) via

A Matter of Dignity: How Minnesota is Failing the Disabled

In 2016, Chris Serres, Glenn Howatt and David Joles interviewed dozens of people for their project "A Matter of Dignity". The five-part series on Minnesota's treatment of people with disabilities started as an inquiry into maltreatment and turned into a six-month investigation exposing systematic segregation and neglect of vulnerable adults with disabilities, people who are denied dignity in housing, at the workplace, in gonvernment services, in romance, and intimacy. The project makes these people visible, humans such as an adult with Down syndrome at a garbage dump collecting trash for two dollars an hour (see photograph), workers with brain injuries scrubbing toilets for half the minimum wage, or a woman with bipolar disorder escaping from her group home and throwing herself in front of a speeding car (via).

A Matter of Dignity: How Minnesota is Failing the Disabled
by Chris Serres and Glenn Howat, 2016 (excerpts):

In a field on the outskirts of town, a man with Down syndrome is spending another day picking up garbage. He wears faded pants, heavy gloves, a bright yellow vest, and a name tag that says “Scott Rhude.” His job is futile. Prairie winds blow debris from a landfill nearby faster than he and his coworkers can collect it. In the gray sky overhead, a turkey vulture circles in wide loops. 

Rhude, thirty-three, earns $2 an hour. He longs for more rewarding work—maybe at Best Buy, he says, or a library. But that would require personalized training, a job counselor, and other services that aren’t available. 

“He is stuck, stuck, stuck,” said his mother, Mary Rhude. “Every day that he works at the landfill is a day that he goes backward.” 

Rhude is one of thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities who are employed by facilities known as sheltered workshops. They stuff envelopes, package candy, or scrub toilets for just scraps of pay, with little hope of building better, more dignified lives. Many states, inspired by a new civil rights movement to integrate the disabled into mainstream life, are shuttering places like this. Not Minnesota. It still subsidizes nearly 300 sheltered workshops and is now among the most segregated states in the nation for working people with intellectual disabilities. 

The workshops are part of a larger patchwork of state policies that are stranding legions of disabled Minnesotans on grim margins of society. More than a decade after the US Supreme Court ruled that Americans with disabilities have a right to live in the mainstream, many disabled Minnesotans and their families say they still feel forsaken—mired in profoundly isolating and sometimes dangerous environments they didn’t choose and can’t escape. 

(...) Minnesota pours $220 million annually into the sheltered workshop industry, consigning more than 12,000 adults to isolating and often mindnumbing work. It also relies more than any other state on group homes to house the disabled— often in remote locations where residents are far from their loved ones and vulnerable to abuse and neglect. And when Minnesotans with disabilities seek state assistance to lead more independent lives, many languish for months—even years—on a waiting list that is now one of the longest in the nation. (...)

Other states are far ahead of Minnesota. Vermont has abolished sheltered workshops and moved most of their employees into other jobs. States across New England place nearly three times as many disabled adults in integrated jobs as Minnesota. Washington offers disabled workers nine months of vocational training and career counselors. (...)

The segregation starts early. As a boy in special education classes, Scott Rhude showed talent with computers and photography. But once he graduated from high school, his mother says, he bounced from one segregated workplace to another, never quite escaping a system that has sometimes amounted to little more than what she calls “babysitting.” 

Away from his job, Rhude has built an independent life. He pays his own rent and shares a house with three friends in Willmar, a town of 19,600 west of the Twin Cities. He sings karaoke, goes on double dates, and started his own book club. His bedroom is packed with trophies from Special Olympics events. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he joked recently, flexing his biceps under a poster of a professional wrestler in his bedroom.

But Rhude’s pursuit of independence ends each morning when the city bus drops him off at West Central Industries, a sheltered workshop on the edge of town. From here, a van takes him to the Kandiyohi County landfill, where he spends the next five hours collecting trash on a hillside as big as two football fields. 

Mary Rhude says she and her son hoped the roving work detail would broaden Scott Rhude’s skills and give him exposure to other employers in Willmar. Instead, she says, it has become a “suffocating” experience that keeps her son isolated from the community. Kristine Yost, a job placement specialist for people with disabilities, calls this system “the conveyor belt.” 

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said, “but time and again, young people get pigeonholed as destined for a sheltered workshop, and then they can’t get out.”

In 1999, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling, known as Olmstead, that prohibits states from unnecessarily confining people with disabilities in special homes or workplaces. In a broad reading of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the court said that fairness demands not just access to buses and buildings, but to a life of dignity and respect. People with a wide range of disabilities —including Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and autism—call it their “Brown vs. Board of Education.” 

In the ruling’s aftermath, many governors closed state institutions for the disabled and the US Justice Department sued Oregon and Rhode Island to close sheltered workshops. But, sixteen years later, the movement has yet to take hold in Minnesota. 

Under sustained pressure from a federal judge, Minnesota this fall became one of the last states in the country to adopt a blueprint—known as an Olmstead plan—to expand housing and work options for people with disabilities. County officials and social workers have begun consulting disabled clients about their goals and interests. By 2019 the state expects counties to complete detailed, individualized plans spelling out work and housing options for thousands of disabled adults. 

Yet even if it is executed successfully, the state’s plan calls for only modest increases in the number of disabled adults living and working in the community. It makes no mention of phasing out segregated workshops and group homes. Its employment targets, Hoopes said, are “woefully inadequate” and a “lost opportunity.” (...)

Sheltered workshops were designed after World War II to prepare people with disabilities for traditional employment. They caught on in Minnesota, and between 1970 and 1984 the sheltered workforce increased from 700 to 6,000 workers, including thousands of people who needed daily activities after the closing of state mental hospitals. Today, state policy perpetuates the segregation. (...)

From a taxpayer’s perspective, the workshop model is highly inefficient. It costs roughly $52,000 to create a sheltered workshop job that pays at least minimum wage, state records show. That’s nearly ten times the $5,300 it costs to help a disabled worker get a job in the community, according to a 2010 survey by the Department of Human Services. (...)

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photograph via

Dear people who feel sorry for people with disabilities,

I have heard people say “Aww, I’m sorry.” But here is my question: why are you sorry? Do you assume because we are disabled we do not have a life that is as full as yours? Or because you think our lives are tough because we need help with things? Don’t get me wrong, as a disabled community we do have our struggles, whether that is accessibility, having the right things we need, etc. But at the end of the day, we are people. We have friends, jobs, we go to school and do so much more.

Let’s get real here. A parent hearing the word “disabled” changes all their hopes and dreams for a “perfect” child. Instead they may wonder: Will they have friends? Will they be picked on? Will they live a full, happy life? Let me answer this question. Yes, they can live happy lives. How do I know this? I am disabled. I have cerebral palsy and I am an amputee. I run and founded a small group in my area called Youth Changing the World with my friends. Last year I became a independent self-published author.

I think many people in society have a problem with the word disability. They are scared because they have a picture in their heads of someone who can’t do anything for him or herself. So they don’t even try to see what we are capable of, and limit us because they don’t know what to do or how to help us. For those of you who feel bad for us, or don’t quite get how we do the awesome things we are able to when given the chance, spend time with someone who is disabled. Help us — not necessarily with basic or everyday tasks, but with more accessibility. Give us jobs and support our right to be heard. We have just as much to say as everyone else if not more. So listen — you may learn something.

As a community we have to stand up and stand out and create and define our own lives, not let others do it for us. When we do, the world will see what the word “disabled” really means. 

Sincerely, 

A disabled woman who is limitless (by Larissa Martin)

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photograph of Sarah Gordy by Jonny Bosworth for The Radical Beauty Project via

Tony Heaton on the Work of Disabled Artists

Tony, your practice is widely established and your work is recognised internationally. However, the work by disabled artists is too often restricted to the community they represent and struggle to reach the mainstream art debate. Do you agree with this thought? If so, what are in your opinion the reasons of this phenomenon?

Well, perhaps the question is, why does the so-called ‘mainstream’ marginalise disabled artists and actually disabled people generally? Should we be forced to knock on those closed doors or should the ‘mainstream’ be opening up and looking beyond their elitist and frankly conservative narrow view of what is art and who makes it, and extending their intellect to engage with disabled artists and disability arts. If they did they would find some amazing work. Ultimately it's about power and rank, disabled people are marginalised and oppressed through poverty, lack of access to goods and services, limited access to transport and the built infrastructure and prejudice. The ‘mainstream’ were not interested in showing or collecting the work of disabled artists, this is the main reason that I initiated NDACA (National Disability Arts Collection and Archive), because if we as disabled people don't make it happen for ourselves then it won’t. NDACA will help to show and promote that history, a history that would have otherwise been lost because that work is not in ‘mainstream’ collections. The mainstream are also reluctant to help us into positions of power and rank, there are very few disabled people promoted onto decision-making boards or in arts institutions, this needs to change, but those with power are always reluctant to change, just as there is institutionalised racism there is an inherent ableism throughout society.

Tony Heaton

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photograph of Tony Heaton in front of the sculpture of a map of Great Britain made of wheelchair parts of one single NHS wheelchair (Great Britain form a Wheelchair, 1994), photo by Hilary Porter via

Disability. A byproduct of society.

“Limits on people's capacities to conduct activities that are essential to everyday life are imposed by structural and systemic barriers. These barriers are part of a social system that regards some bodies as "normal" and some as "other", rather than considering a broad range of bodies and possibilities, for example when designing a building or piece of furniture. This relegates people with disabilities to the status of lesser citizens because of their lack of access. Disability is a byproduct of a society which is organized around only certain bodies which are defined as "normal", in laws, education, institutions, and in popular culture.” 

Meg-John Barker

photograph by Richard Sandler via

The Intersection of Stuttering and Blackness

"I have an ongoing practice of spelling my name JJJJJerome Ellis in certain circumstances. I do this because the word I stutter on most frequently is my name. You can choose which spelling you prefer." 

JJJJJerome Ellis

JJJJJerome Ellis is a black stutterer and artist based in New York. He is interested in how ableism disadvantages people with a stutter since they do not adhere to the flows of time. This disfluency, to him, becomes "a means to exist outside of ordinary time, as defined by a white-dominated world." His work is an approach to experimenting with freedom and to depathologising disfluency (via)

I was interested in the role that clocks and watches played o-o-on plantations in the antebellum south. How slave masters deliberately did not let enslaved people own [them], as a way o-o-of domination and control.

"On the album, I feel safe stuttering because it's just me. I have the opportunity to score my own stutter. That felt very liberating." JJJJJerome Ellis

This article argues that dysfluency, music and Blackness, because of their distinct relationships to time, have the power to forge alternative temporalities and help us heal from ‘temporal subjection’. As a Black composer who stutters, I write from first-hand experience. With reference to my own recordings and scores, I examine the ways I use musical techniques like loops and rubato to create these alternative temporalities. Stuttering (especially in the form I present with, the glottal block) creates unpredictable, silent gaps in speech. I call these gaps ‘clearings’. Slaves sang in the fields, and whites heard them; but they also sang (and danced) in the woods at night, out of earshot. Undergirding the clearing created by my stutter is that other clearing, in the woods, where my enslaved ancestors stole away to keep healing, resisting and liberating through music ‐ work that I continue today.

JJJJJerome Ellis

"Sometimes people just walk away. Perhaps because I didn’t adhere to t-t-the choreography t-t-that we are often used to. So much of the pain comes from not feeling fully human. Not feeling intelligent. People thinking that I might be evading a question. I don’t want my Blackness to come off as a threat and I don’t want my stuttering to come off as evidence of lying.”

JJJJJerome Ellis

YouTube Selection:

::: Loops of Retreat: LISTEN/WATCH

::: Stepney: LISTEN/WATCH

::: Dysfluent Waters: LISTEN/WATCH

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photograph via

Age + Poor Eyesight = Discrimination

According to a study of  7.677 adults aged fifty and over, those with poor vision report significantly more discrimination, i.e. they are 40% more likely to report being discriminated against (e.g. treated with less respect or courtesy, receive poorer service than other people in restaurants and stores, people act as if they think they are not clever) compared to adults who class their eyesight as good. Those experiencing discrimination, again, show a clear tendency to be depressed or feel lonely, and are more likely to report a lower quality of life and life satisfaction (Jackson et al., 2019).

"People with poor eyesight are at increased risk of loneliness and depression. Our results suggest that discrimination may be an important contributor to this. In addition to addressing the injustice of unfair treatment, tackling the issue of discrimination against people with poor vision could also have substantial benefits for their mental health and wellbeing."

Sarah Jackson

"Teaching coping strategies may help older people with poor vision mitigate the risks for mental health associated with discrimination. More importantly, there is a need for efforts to tackle the negative attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people with visual impairment in society to reduce their exposure to these damaging experiences."

Sarah Jackson

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- Jackson, S. E., Hackett, R. A. & Pardhan, S. (2019). Association of Perceived Discrimination With Emotional Well-being in Older Adults With Visual Impairment. JAMA Ophtalmology, link
- photograph (Environment Transformer/Flyhead, 1968, by Haus-Rucker-Co) via

Disabled or Not, We Are All Interdependent.

“Another myth that is firmly upheld is that disabled people are dependent and non-disabled people are independent. No one is actually independent. This is a myth perpetuated by disablism and driven by capitalism - we are all actually interdependent

Chances are, disabled or not, you don’t grow all of your food. Chances are, you didn’t build the car, bike, wheelchair, subway, shoes, or bus that transports you. Chances are you didn’t construct your home. Chances are you didn’t sew your clothing (or make the fabric and thread used to sew it). The difference between the needs that many disabled people have and the needs of people who are not labelled as disabled is that non-disabled people have had their dependencies normalized. The world has been built to accommodate certain needs and call the people who need those things independent, while other needs are considered exceptional. Each of us relies on others every day. We all rely on one another for support, resources, and to meet our needs. We are all interdependent. This interdependence is not weakness; rather, it is a part of our humanity.”

A. J. Withers
 

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photograph by Diane Arbus (flower girl at a wedding, 1964) via

Coronavirus Pandemic: Close Your Eyes

"What culture do you identify with?", people ask me sooner or later, mostly during the stage of small talk as my mother is from X, my father from Y, and I was raised in Z. "None, all of them and more, their synergy, depends on situation, varies with surrounding, don’t know, don’t care, it’s complex …". It‘s only small talk, so, why bother. Often, my reply is the shortest option that sounds okay to me: European.



As a European, I also used to like the idea of the European Union, this "peace project" linking Europeans through values they share, protecting minorites and vulnerable groups, insisting on equal treatment for all regardless of a person’s nationality, gender, culture, disability, blablabla. Except in difficult times.

10.779 people have died of this virus in Italy, 756 in the last 24 hours alone, a whole generation of nonne and nonni is gone. According to doctors, dying of the coronavirus is as if you were drowning while fully conscious, alone, isolated, no family around, no good-bye, no funeral, cities are running out of coffins. Italy is suffering, facing an abyss, urgently needs help and has asked for it. The European Union closes its eyes. Cuba sends doctors, China sends doctors and equipment more than once, Russia sends supplies, Albania sends doctors, Somalia is sending doctors, Israel shows solidarity when Jerusalem and Tel Aviv lighten up with Italian flags, so does Bosnia and Herzegovina - none part of the EU.
The pandemic brings to light the best and the worst in humans: lacking solidarity, nationalism, ageism, ableism. Jean-Claude Juncker once said: "Europe fails when egos prevail." Well?...

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photograph (c) MLM

Coronavirus Pandemic: Dangerous Times for the Disabled

Dementia, brain injury, and "severe or profound mental retardation" are, according to official Alabama public health documents, reasons to be denied a ventilator in the pandemic crisis ... with possible lethal consequences (via).



photograph by Melvin Sokolsky via

The -ism Series (36): Transhumanism

"Things don’t get better simply because we have the latest and greatest technology. While I would certainly argue that there is such a thing as genuine progress, such as universal literacy or peaceful and free societies, these are not guaranteed either by the trajectories of history or the development of technology. Technologies can be used to support both freedom and tyranny. Technology is not inherently either the problem or the solution, but is instead a tool through which ethical progress might be implemented or hindered."
DeBaets (2011)



There are different sub-movements within transhumanism "ranging from environmentalists and feminists of the left to religious and cultural conservatives on the right" (DeBaets, 2011), from a moderate approach that focuses on enhancing human characteristics to a strong one that is about overcoming the so-called limits of human nature (Friberg Felsted & Wright, 2014), including death. And ageing, of course, as this is regarded as its main cause. These transhumanists believe that we should merge with machines to remake ourselves "in the image of our own higher ideals" with enhanced physical and mental capabilities (via). Technology's possibilities can surely make us enthusiastic but there is a downside to it: the feeling of superiority and the message that you shall not age and shall have an abled body.

History is littered with the evil consequences of one group of humans believing they are superior to another group of humans. Unfortunately in the case of enhanced humans they will be genuinely superior. We need to think about the implications before it is too late.
Blay Whitby

The human body as a site of inquiry is not a contemporary concept, and notions of what classifies as a human body has largely influenced biopolitical regimes and sovereign power. Biopolitical discourses that culminated in the Nazi eugenics regime during World War II held the belief that specific types of bodies were inferior to others, and ultimately classified as inhuman, which resulted in the liquidation of countless individuals under the rubric of racial hygiene. Nazi eugenics is an extreme example of both the sovereign power over life and death, and a quest for corporeal perfection; more subtle examples can be seen in contemporary Western society, such as the treatment of disabled individuals.
David-Jack Fletcher (2014)

Ageing is regarded as a process of increasing deficiency, as something that needs to be overcome and is feared (via). Similarly, disability is eradicated by altering, improving, enhancing or erasing the "undesirable deficits or disabilities" (Fletcher, 2014). By doing so, transhumanist technologies enhance so-called normal human bodies and "provide therapy to those deemed Other" which again may perpetuate "notions of acceptable bodies and biopolitical hierarchies" (via). In extreme cases the assumption is made that society would be better off if there were no persons with disabilities born (DeBaets, 2011).

While most would agree that disability denies individuals the same quality of life as those deemed " abled, " this eradication ultimately relies upon secular humanist notions of the perfect human. Transhuman technologies hold obvious implications for the human body, however they also hold implications for what it means to be an acceptable body; ultimately these technologies aim to create the perfect human by eradicating the disabled Other.
David-Jack Fletcher (2014)

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- DeBaets, A. M. (2011). Enhancement for All? A Feminist Ethical Analysis of the Discourses and Practices of Democratic Transhumanism. Conference Proceedings, LINK
- Fletcher, D.-J. (2014). Transhuman Perfection: The Eradication of Disability Through Transhuman Technologies. Humana.Mente, 24, LINK
- Friberg Felsted, K. & Wright, S. C. (2014). Toward Post Ageing. Technology in an Ageing Society. Heidelberg et al.: Springer.
- Manzocco, R. (2019). Transhumanism. Engineering the Human Condition. History, Philosophy and Current Status. Cham: Springer.
- images via and via

The -ism Series (2): Ableism

The term ableism refers to "a particular understanding of oneself, one’s body and one’s relationship with others of humanity, other species and the environment, and includes how one is judged by others".  Ableism reflects the value and promotion of abilities such as productivity and competitiveness over empathy and kindness. It has historically been used by certain social groups to justify their higher status in relation to "others", to justify a hierarchy and exclusion. The preference for "speciestypical normative abilities" might lead to the discrimination against people with disabilities as less able. This notion rejects the so-called variation of being, the biodiversity, the acceptance and accommodation of the people affected.



Most interestingly, ableism does not only refer to the obvious, to people one might automatically associate with. In fact, sexism is partly driven by ableism as it favours certain abilities and at the same time labels "the biologically fragile, emotional and incapable" woman as not having them. Like sexism, racism (claiming that some ethnic groups are less intelligent, i.e. less cognitively able than others) and other -isms are driven by ableism.



The Swiss organisation "Pro Infirmis" started the rather spectacular campaign "Because who is perfect?" in order to raise awareness for body diversity and the lack of representation of people with disabilities. Five persons with different disabilities were used as models to create mannequins that reflected their bodies. The mannequins were displayed in shop-windows next to the "perfect" mannequins. Here is a four-minutes clip (in Swiss German with English subtitles).



Wolbring, G. (2008) The Politics of Ableism. Development, 51, 252-258
Photos and clip via and via