An articulation about terminology

[kaberett]

I react to being described as "in" a wheelchair (as opposed to using a wheelchair) by snarling, and I've just (in response to a Sociological Images article The NYC subway to a person in a wheelchair) worked out some more of the why.

There's part the first, which is that it's inherently passive terminology that obfuscates or elides my agency. But the thing I've just noticed, the actual big deal, is that it makes it sound as though me being in a wheelchair is a permanent and unalterable state, and that in turn contributes to the idea that if I can stand or walk at all I shouldn't be using one, and that by using one I'm faking -- in a wheelchair precludes the possibility of being out of it. I'm pretty sure this framing contributes directly to strangers' horror if I stand up to reach something on a high shelf in a supermarket, or get up to carry my chair down a flight of stairs rather than taking a sloped half-mile detour, or what have you.

(There's other issues - who's surprised? - with that SocImages article, including the part where actually level and step-free access is important to all sorts of people. It's genuinely very important not to conflate "accessible" with "level access", or to conflate "level access" with "wheelchair accessible"; the former erases a very great many disabilities, and the latter assumes that all you need is flat surfaces and doesn't stop to think about whether aisles are wide enough or there's space set aside for wheelchair users to sit, or what have you. ... but there we go.)

Comments

[kaberett]

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, today I remembered (again) that there's an entire class of non-wheelchair-using non-wheelchair-professionals I don't mind talking wheelchairs with even if they start the conversation and they're strangers, and what it boils down to is "the kind of person who ends up with a job in an indie bike shop". Because fundamentally they just think the tech is super cool and are trying to work out points of overlap and divergence, and as far as I'm concerned that's great. (Yes, I did in fact go to one such today!)

[jesse_the_k]

I entirely agree with this post, and am also known to explain wheelchair mechanics and power choices to total strangers (people with grease under fingernails are preferred, but even nosy older folk with nasty perfumes will get my attention if they need to know for a family member).

[hilarita]

Well, it *is* cool tech. And really, it should be like glasses. Which are absolutely fucking fundamental to functioning in this society, and not e.g. getting run over, but they can look pretty or stylish or whatever as well as being awesome assitive technology.
People are such arseholes about this - there's assitive technology that's "normal" and then there's the other sort. The sort you're "in" or "confined in" rather than "using". But the purpose of the technology is *exactly the same*. There seems a massive category mismatch here.