The word that resonates strongly in recent months is pride, a very significant term that every year sinks its roots deeper and deeper. With the end of June we left behind the month of Pride to enter that of Disability Pride. A lesser known pride than that of the LGBTQ + community but which is of great value to me, and I hope it will soon get the same resonance. The choice of the month of July is no coincidence, just as June commemorates the Stonewall riots, July celebrates the anniversary of the approval of theADA (Americans with Disability Act), a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability.
If the LGBTQ + community has always been pushed by society to feel ashamed of their sexual orientation and gender identity, to show pride means to claim oneself within a heteronormal culture. But what does it mean for a person with a disability to feel pride?
This is a question that I have asked myself many times and although I have long been on the road to awareness, I feel that my path is still in the making.
It is difficult to associate a single definition with disability, because it is a multidimensional concept where a series of conditions often very different from each other pass through.. What we can say, however, is that it has a lesser influence on people’s lives, an influence that in many cases is given by a society that has never foreseen our existence.
In a world used to dictating standards, disability has always been associated with an abnormality of the body (as if the body was not in itself an imperfect machine) and what does not work in the collective imagination generally receives two types of reactions: aversion or pity, which manifest themselves with a fantasy of behaviors on which I had way of making fun of it many times.
Among the stereotypes that revolve around disabled people, infantilization he’s always been the one I’ve met the most. Amazed looks in front of a degree or professional experience, unsolicited physical contacts and little voices that would make Alvin and the Chipmunks envy, have brought out my best sarcasm. Yet despite having always been able to respond properly to excessive wonder or to certificates of esteem more false than a three-euro banknote, these behaviors have ended up however, infiltrate the micro-cracks of my psyche, and digging like water into a rock have unconsciously influenced some of my choices.
Over time I have learned to defuse many attitudes dictated by chasing a life without disabilities and I’m still working on some of them. This is why my path to full liberation is still ongoing.
Being born into a culture that instills fear of becoming disabled in people has always had a big impact on me. It was not easy to claim a condition that the world considers synonymous with misfortune and incapacity at all levels. It led me to a spasmodic search for action and conquest, to the point that sometimes I wonder: where does my ambition end and where does my desire to move away from a label that has been associated with a fallacious product begin?
Recognizing what our desire really is from what comes from external pressure is an ongoing exercise that I am learning to live with. And this is where Disability Pride for me peeps out: stop chasing a conformity that does not belong to me to follow only what is akin to my person, putting in goals and failures, abilities and limits, where disability in the end is simply part of all this.
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
