Honestly, speaking as a PWD, I like the idea that disabling conditions could possibly be a thing of the past in SF, fantasy, the future.
I'm really worried here that I'm going to show out or say something hurtful, because I get totally where you're coming from. And I certainly wouldn't want anyone in reality to be denied a treatment that they want that could help them do what is best for them, nor do I think research into treatments that can help people is wrong or bad or anything. Goodness, no. I'm all about giving folks MORE and BETTER options. Nor do I think you're wrong in what you'd like to imagine or that you're even part of the problems I'm talking about when it comes to SF books/stories that bother me.
But at the same time? There are a lot of different things that fit under the umbrella of disability - and things that might become disabilities in the future and I can think of circumstances where a person might not want that treatment depending on their individual situation. For instance, a person with Asperger's might not WANT a treatment that would automatically rewire their neurology to make them neurotypical (or course, someone else with Asperger's might DEFINITELY want that) - and either way would be valid so long as it is that person's choice.
But I can also see why someone with a severe pain/fatigue disorder (or one that causes such a thing) would love to have a pill that could manage/get rid of their pain and give them energy. That is totally NOT wrong if that's what that person wants.
I think I may have expressed myself poorly in the above entry. Totally on me and my bad if I did. I'm not saying it's wrong to imagine better and better medicine. I HOPE we as a species continue to develop better medical/technological options. I really do.
But I don't think it's always about imagining better choices for folks when people write disability-free futures. I think it can be about erasure, or imagining that disability is the same to all people in all circumstances, both things that bother me deeply. I myself deal with mental health issues and I've got other friends who ID as PWD. We all go through different stuff, you know? What disability means to my friend with fibromyalgia and CF isn't what it means to me or to my friend with bipolar/anxiety disorder or my other friend with autistic spectrum disorder.
So I get a bit weirded out when people imagine frictionless treatments in which nothing ever goes wrong, it's accessible to all, and has no consequences/cost for the person undergoing them in ALL INSTANCES EVER in worlds that are decidedly not Utopian to begin with. Because I think isn't so much about a future hope as a present ablist attitude.
Is it wrong to imagine a future where there are better options and people have more available to them to make the choices they want to make? I don't think so. As long as it's framed in a way that it's their choice, and they're not being forced into it and that it's about them getting what they want in life, not being reformed/fixed/remade because they were so hideous and unbearably abnormal. I get a lot of that from what I read, a sense of, "Oh noes, you have [insert condition], that's so terrible and tragic! It would be impossible to carry on and let you be the hero unless you were fixed and made perfect again!"
So many books imagine that instant, consequenceless cures are the best option for EVERY SINGLE THING and that every person would automatically want that treatment or that treatment doesn't come with it's own risks and hazards and meaning for everyone, then I think that's a problem. I also think it's a problem when the imagined ideal is not a body and mind that simply functions in the way the person wants it to, but one that fits into the contemporary ideas of an a perfect, able, non-disabled body/mind.
Because it doesn't seem like the creation of so many SF futuristic worlds are about having better choices freely available or framing treatment in terms of function and individual suitability. They seem framed to be part of social conforming. It doesn't seem like these writers and these worlds would be satisfied with superior pain management or really awesome prosthetics or more access and ways to help folks have function that they want to have, even if it still means they aren't completely "normal". They want a world where body and mind can be medically/technologically remolded to fit a very strict paradigm of perfect/normal/healthy.
In some ways, I feel like such futures are a way of authors pointing to a perfect (and many times thin/white/male/straight/cisgender/gender binary as well) body and saying, "This is the only kind of body worthy of making it into the future. This is the only kind of body I want to imagine humankind having.'
I hope that make sense and I really, really hope I've checked my own privilege in this and if it's not, please, feel free to call me out on anything and everything.
no subject
I'm really worried here that I'm going to show out or say something hurtful, because I get totally where you're coming from. And I certainly wouldn't want anyone in reality to be denied a treatment that they want that could help them do what is best for them, nor do I think research into treatments that can help people is wrong or bad or anything. Goodness, no. I'm all about giving folks MORE and BETTER options. Nor do I think you're wrong in what you'd like to imagine or that you're even part of the problems I'm talking about when it comes to SF books/stories that bother me.
But at the same time? There are a lot of different things that fit under the umbrella of disability - and things that might become disabilities in the future and I can think of circumstances where a person might not want that treatment depending on their individual situation. For instance, a person with Asperger's might not WANT a treatment that would automatically rewire their neurology to make them neurotypical (or course, someone else with Asperger's might DEFINITELY want that) - and either way would be valid so long as it is that person's choice.
But I can also see why someone with a severe pain/fatigue disorder (or one that causes such a thing) would love to have a pill that could manage/get rid of their pain and give them energy. That is totally NOT wrong if that's what that person wants.
I think I may have expressed myself poorly in the above entry. Totally on me and my bad if I did. I'm not saying it's wrong to imagine better and better medicine. I HOPE we as a species continue to develop better medical/technological options. I really do.
But I don't think it's always about imagining better choices for folks when people write disability-free futures. I think it can be about erasure, or imagining that disability is the same to all people in all circumstances, both things that bother me deeply. I myself deal with mental health issues and I've got other friends who ID as PWD. We all go through different stuff, you know? What disability means to my friend with fibromyalgia and CF isn't what it means to me or to my friend with bipolar/anxiety disorder or my other friend with autistic spectrum disorder.
So I get a bit weirded out when people imagine frictionless treatments in which nothing ever goes wrong, it's accessible to all, and has no consequences/cost for the person undergoing them in ALL INSTANCES EVER in worlds that are decidedly not Utopian to begin with. Because I think isn't so much about a future hope as a present ablist attitude.
Is it wrong to imagine a future where there are better options and people have more available to them to make the choices they want to make? I don't think so. As long as it's framed in a way that it's their choice, and they're not being forced into it and that it's about them getting what they want in life, not being reformed/fixed/remade because they were so hideous and unbearably abnormal. I get a lot of that from what I read, a sense of, "Oh noes, you have [insert condition], that's so terrible and tragic! It would be impossible to carry on and let you be the hero unless you were fixed and made perfect again!"
So many books imagine that instant, consequenceless cures are the best option for EVERY SINGLE THING and that every person would automatically want that treatment or that treatment doesn't come with it's own risks and hazards and meaning for everyone, then I think that's a problem. I also think it's a problem when the imagined ideal is not a body and mind that simply functions in the way the person wants it to, but one that fits into the contemporary ideas of an a perfect, able, non-disabled body/mind.
Because it doesn't seem like the creation of so many SF futuristic worlds are about having better choices freely available or framing treatment in terms of function and individual suitability. They seem framed to be part of social conforming. It doesn't seem like these writers and these worlds would be satisfied with superior pain management or really awesome prosthetics or more access and ways to help folks have function that they want to have, even if it still means they aren't completely "normal". They want a world where body and mind can be medically/technologically remolded to fit a very strict paradigm of perfect/normal/healthy.
In some ways, I feel like such futures are a way of authors pointing to a perfect (and many times thin/white/male/straight/cisgender/gender binary as well) body and saying, "This is the only kind of body worthy of making it into the future. This is the only kind of body I want to imagine humankind having.'
I hope that make sense and I really, really hope I've checked my own privilege in this and if it's not, please, feel free to call me out on anything and everything.