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SF and ablism (or: a not-as-such brief thought)
I'm having sort of a genre related thought about ablism.
Right now I'm considering sci-fi, particularly SF set in the far future when humanity is far more technologically developed and there's sort of a theme that follows in this subset of the genre that bothers me a lot when I come across it, and that's the idea that nobody in the future will ever be disabled. Disease have been erased! Genetic abnormalities sorted out! There's a pill or treatment or medi-pod for anything that ails you!
It seems as though when science fiction envisions a better, or at least more advanced, version of humanity it is one without disability, and thus one without disabled people. When you imagine a future without disability, it is a future in which you imagine that there are no disabled people.
I'm sure someone will rush to say, "No! No! They'll exist, they just won't be disabled, that's all! They'll be cured in the future, isn't that great?"
Not so great, actually.
First, because we are not in the future, thus when you say such statements, you're impacting actual people in here and now. You're saying, "Wow, won't it be great when you're not like that anymore. When you're different?" Which is saying, "The way you are now is not okay."
Second, because your idea of "great" is finding ways to make disabled people "normal". I put scare quotes around normal because, well, normal is about the most oppressive, offensive, evil word in my vocabulary.
More people have suffered more evil and oppression on this Earth because they didn't fit somebody else's idea of "normal" than any other single thing I can think of. "Oh, look, people of a different culture and race! They're not normal! Let's shoot them with these nifty guns we have and take over their lands and then tell complete lies about them!" or "Oh, look, those other people there are having sexual relations with the wrong people. They're not normal. Let make nasty laws and beat them up!"
A gross oversimplification, of course, because oppression is ever so much more complex, layered, and insidious than all that. But I hope that it makes the point. People in general value "normal" without stopping in many instances to wonder if it's worth valuing - both here and in the future and the literature of the fantastic and the future.
This future we imagine, this disability-free ideal place is not one in which we've decided to stop narrowing the definition of normal and able, in which we've decided to stop shoehorning based on ability and disability decided to expand what we consider to be just another part of the wide spectrum of collective human ability. This future is one in which we (for the value of "we" which is society/humanity) pick the limitations of ability, of normal, and finally manage squeeze everyone into it ability-wise. And often, it seems, these same stories tell of a future in which we've finally squeezed everyone into the same culture and same gender definitions and sexuality. At long last, homogeneity!
This future is not one in which we have better definitions, just better medicine. In those worlds, our science evolves, our compassion and tolerance and understanding do not.
I do not like this future. It scares me and it erases so, so many people.
Why do so many writers assume that disability wouldn't follow us to the stars? What disabilities that don't even exist today would exist tomorrow? What would be reclassified as a disability or not a disability?
It seems to me that there is some confusion due to ignorance and stereotypes about disability between "normal" and "functioning".
Function is, in my own Meg-specific definition, being able to do what you want/need to do in a way that works for you. If that means using an assistive device or taking a bit longer or using different methods, that all fits under "functioning". You can have levels of functioning - because some stuff works better than others - but function is relative. It all depends on what works for you, what gets the job done for you.
Then there's normal. Normal is being able to do what others want you to do in a way that other people expect you to do it, and it often is the opposite of functional. Normal is an ever moving goal post of other people's expectations. It's the cry of "but you can walk, why are you using a wheelchair?" to a person with a pain disorder or spinal injury or some other invisible disability. It's the cry of "why can't you just get over it?" to someone who has depression or "that's not that bad, at least you didn't go to war!" to someone with PTSD. It's insisting that meatspace/offline activities count for more than, say, online ones even though online activities (academic classes, activism work, creative endeavors) are often more accessible (thus granting more function).
Alas, society values normal over functional and so does sci-fi many times.
Lose a limb? We'll regrow it! Get paralyzed in a space accident? We'll fix that, hop in a medical pod/chamber/box o' insta-healing! Blind? Here, have some nanobots. Deaf? Oh, there's a pill for that. You, too, can be made Normal.
Never you mind that you don't see a lot of mental disabilities/disorders. I can't remember the last time I read about main characters who have, say, ADHD or autism spectrum disorder or Down syndrome or an eating disorder. Because apparently these people won't be with us in the future, and they certainly won't be allowed aboard Spaceship Normal.
What's worse? Sci-fi can be the kind of genre that could really inspire others to imagine a different course of events, a different society.
I can see the value in imagining a future with better ways to help people have greater function. I can see the value in imagining sidewalks that automatically adjust themselves to better suit use of assistive devices or the value of imagining classrooms where there are computer/laptop screens made for those students who may be dyslexic or dyscalculic to help them better read and do math.
Because that? Doesn't value normal over function, it doesn't seek to reform people so that nobody ever needs an assistive device or that nobody ever is dyslexic or dyscalculic. It doesn't value the way one group of people accomplishes certain tasks over the way others accomplish them. In fact, it values a society that broadens its ranges, that instead of telling these people to adapt to it decides to adapt to them by concerning itself with accessibility, with function over inflexible, rigid ideas of how something ought to be done, or what people ought to look like, or how they ought to live.
I'd like to find more SF (or even fantasy) that talks about different worlds, that talks differently about people with disabilities.
What things in SF/F bother you from an ablism standpoint, readers? What things do you encounter over and over and wish would stop? What things do you want to encounter (or encounter more of)?
If anyone has any book/story recommendations, that would be absolutely wonderful and I'd love to hear them! Which authors and works get it right in your opinion and why?
Right now I'm considering sci-fi, particularly SF set in the far future when humanity is far more technologically developed and there's sort of a theme that follows in this subset of the genre that bothers me a lot when I come across it, and that's the idea that nobody in the future will ever be disabled. Disease have been erased! Genetic abnormalities sorted out! There's a pill or treatment or medi-pod for anything that ails you!
It seems as though when science fiction envisions a better, or at least more advanced, version of humanity it is one without disability, and thus one without disabled people. When you imagine a future without disability, it is a future in which you imagine that there are no disabled people.
I'm sure someone will rush to say, "No! No! They'll exist, they just won't be disabled, that's all! They'll be cured in the future, isn't that great?"
Not so great, actually.
First, because we are not in the future, thus when you say such statements, you're impacting actual people in here and now. You're saying, "Wow, won't it be great when you're not like that anymore. When you're different?" Which is saying, "The way you are now is not okay."
Second, because your idea of "great" is finding ways to make disabled people "normal". I put scare quotes around normal because, well, normal is about the most oppressive, offensive, evil word in my vocabulary.
More people have suffered more evil and oppression on this Earth because they didn't fit somebody else's idea of "normal" than any other single thing I can think of. "Oh, look, people of a different culture and race! They're not normal! Let's shoot them with these nifty guns we have and take over their lands and then tell complete lies about them!" or "Oh, look, those other people there are having sexual relations with the wrong people. They're not normal. Let make nasty laws and beat them up!"
A gross oversimplification, of course, because oppression is ever so much more complex, layered, and insidious than all that. But I hope that it makes the point. People in general value "normal" without stopping in many instances to wonder if it's worth valuing - both here and in the future and the literature of the fantastic and the future.
This future we imagine, this disability-free ideal place is not one in which we've decided to stop narrowing the definition of normal and able, in which we've decided to stop shoehorning based on ability and disability decided to expand what we consider to be just another part of the wide spectrum of collective human ability. This future is one in which we (for the value of "we" which is society/humanity) pick the limitations of ability, of normal, and finally manage squeeze everyone into it ability-wise. And often, it seems, these same stories tell of a future in which we've finally squeezed everyone into the same culture and same gender definitions and sexuality. At long last, homogeneity!
This future is not one in which we have better definitions, just better medicine. In those worlds, our science evolves, our compassion and tolerance and understanding do not.
I do not like this future. It scares me and it erases so, so many people.
Why do so many writers assume that disability wouldn't follow us to the stars? What disabilities that don't even exist today would exist tomorrow? What would be reclassified as a disability or not a disability?
It seems to me that there is some confusion due to ignorance and stereotypes about disability between "normal" and "functioning".
Function is, in my own Meg-specific definition, being able to do what you want/need to do in a way that works for you. If that means using an assistive device or taking a bit longer or using different methods, that all fits under "functioning". You can have levels of functioning - because some stuff works better than others - but function is relative. It all depends on what works for you, what gets the job done for you.
Then there's normal. Normal is being able to do what others want you to do in a way that other people expect you to do it, and it often is the opposite of functional. Normal is an ever moving goal post of other people's expectations. It's the cry of "but you can walk, why are you using a wheelchair?" to a person with a pain disorder or spinal injury or some other invisible disability. It's the cry of "why can't you just get over it?" to someone who has depression or "that's not that bad, at least you didn't go to war!" to someone with PTSD. It's insisting that meatspace/offline activities count for more than, say, online ones even though online activities (academic classes, activism work, creative endeavors) are often more accessible (thus granting more function).
Alas, society values normal over functional and so does sci-fi many times.
Lose a limb? We'll regrow it! Get paralyzed in a space accident? We'll fix that, hop in a medical pod/chamber/box o' insta-healing! Blind? Here, have some nanobots. Deaf? Oh, there's a pill for that. You, too, can be made Normal.
Never you mind that you don't see a lot of mental disabilities/disorders. I can't remember the last time I read about main characters who have, say, ADHD or autism spectrum disorder or Down syndrome or an eating disorder. Because apparently these people won't be with us in the future, and they certainly won't be allowed aboard Spaceship Normal.
What's worse? Sci-fi can be the kind of genre that could really inspire others to imagine a different course of events, a different society.
I can see the value in imagining a future with better ways to help people have greater function. I can see the value in imagining sidewalks that automatically adjust themselves to better suit use of assistive devices or the value of imagining classrooms where there are computer/laptop screens made for those students who may be dyslexic or dyscalculic to help them better read and do math.
Because that? Doesn't value normal over function, it doesn't seek to reform people so that nobody ever needs an assistive device or that nobody ever is dyslexic or dyscalculic. It doesn't value the way one group of people accomplishes certain tasks over the way others accomplish them. In fact, it values a society that broadens its ranges, that instead of telling these people to adapt to it decides to adapt to them by concerning itself with accessibility, with function over inflexible, rigid ideas of how something ought to be done, or what people ought to look like, or how they ought to live.
I'd like to find more SF (or even fantasy) that talks about different worlds, that talks differently about people with disabilities.
What things in SF/F bother you from an ablism standpoint, readers? What things do you encounter over and over and wish would stop? What things do you want to encounter (or encounter more of)?
If anyone has any book/story recommendations, that would be absolutely wonderful and I'd love to hear them! Which authors and works get it right in your opinion and why?
no subject
I think the ableist part of things like this is more often than not the way in which it comes about. Abortion, for example. That would not be okay. But if they found a way to do it without harming those PWDs who already exist, would that be such a bad thing? And why?
ETA: Basically, I want my former level of functionality back. I am currently unable to work, study seriously, or embark upon the career I've wanted to follow since early childhood -- because of my disabling conditions, not in spite of them. Because I have them and there is no effective treatment at present for any of them. For the most part, I am barely functional. I struggle to take care of myself and at the age of 24, I passionately resent that. The way I feel about it is that I want my life back and if they come up with a way to do that for me and other people, what's so bad about it, if they do it right?
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.
no subject
I haven't many spoons today, I'm afraid (bad flare day), so my reply may not be as detailed as I'd like it to be. But, from your response, I feel I understand your concerns much better than in the original entry. This comment clarifies a lot for me, and I can sympathise with how you feel, too. I don't like the idea of erasure, and where to draw the line with this kind of thing always bothers me.
Would I like my rapid-cycling bipolar disorder to be manageable? Of course. Would I want it taken away? Perhaps not, since the attempts that have been made have stifled my creativity to the point where I couldn't bear it. But for people who could start out with no disabling conditions and have that option, to stay as healthy as possible without ever developing any... well, I think *that* would be utopian in the most ideal sense of the word. Not erasure, but healing, for the conditions that a majority of informed and people concerned really feel may *need* it. Manageability without outwardly-imposed limitation. Does that make sense?
Oh, and by the way, I love the variations you chose! Why? Well, in the interests of full disclosure (and mild entertainment on my part), I have all three examples you chose: rapid-cycling untyped bipolar disorder, mild Asperger's, and fibromyalgia. -- On top of that, a spinal neuropathic injury and hypermobility Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, though the fibromyalgia is a secondary condition to both of those, along with asthma, migraines and Raynaud's syndrome.
Anyway, thank you profusely for clarifying your post - it makes your views a lot more understandable for me. I think I have a touch of fibro-fog today along with the bad pain day (gotta love being cis-female sometimes, eh?), so please forgive me if I came across as overly challenging to your viewpoint at all. I simply wanted to understand you better, to see how your views intersect with mine, and now I think I do. ♥