Terms you don't get to describe me in #1: wheelchair-bound

[kaberett]

It is strictly inaccurate.

Well, except when I use straps for postural support - and in practice that's still a hypothetical at this point in my life.

A wheelchair is not a tragedy: it is a tool. The answer to "oh no, what happened?" is "I got funding!" I am not stuck in my chair; I do not need furtive glances and discreet lowered voices; what I would like is basic accessibility.

Chairs are, for me, less good than getting to walk without pain or fatigue - but I don't get to walk without pain or fatigue. Making my illness visible is emphatically not the same as making my illness worse: my chair means I can move at "normal" walking pace again. It means I can spend a day wandering around London with the only consequence being spending the following day asleep. It means I can go shopping and attend concerts and visit museums and art galleries.

I'm not bound to my chair. It's not a weight to be spoken of in hushed tones. My chair is not, and never has been, the problem: I am a wheelchair user, and it sets me free.

This posting brought to you by the phrase "getting a wheelchair is giving up on getting better", the lift outside that one department being broken again in hilarious intermittent-hardware-fault fashion, and the charming gentlemen who heckled me aggressively in London when I got out of my chair, bumped it down three steps, then got back into it - rather than take an additional round trip of a quarter of a mile.

Comments

[liv]

This post is great, people being ridiculously rude to you is not great at all. I've been running a minor campaign to remove confined to a wheelchair from our teaching materials here; luckily the faculty are mostly sympathetic.

[kaberett]

Yesssss. Cheerleading from afar. (Chairleading? ;)

[littlebutfierce]

♥

[randomling]

This post is truly excellent.

♥

[untonuggan]

This post is awesome. \o/

As the user of a kindred mobility assistive device (walker with a seat/basket), I can say that it does allow me to go places and do things I would not be able to do without it on days when it is needed. For example, on falling days I often end up going to a store, falling repeatedly, and having to leave with tons of spoons wasted. With my walker, I don't actually fall, and I can either lean on the walker for support or sit down and take a break. It's great.

I do have a fair bit of internalized malarky around it, which means I don't use it as often as I should.

[kaberett]

Yeah, that's no fun at all. The way I got around it when I was still regularly using walking sticks was to get a folding one and put it in my bag and forget about it, so I didn't have to make the decision about whether I needed a stick when I was leaving the house (which tends to be tough anyway). Unfortunately there's the obvious size-related limit on how easy it is to do that. :-s

My internalised nonsense these days is largely about exactly what I describe in the final paragraph of the post - getting out of my chair to use it in a way that makes my life easier, and getting bullshit from strangers for the pleasure - in terms of "I can be a good crip and avoid abuse, or I can actually live my life and not pander to other people's misconceptions of what I should be like" - and it is tough. I mean, in the case of these particular douchebros, I turned around and gave them a fifteen-second lecture on the general theme of 98% of wheelchair users can walk, I live with chronic pain and fatigue, oh and BY THE WAY I'M ON DISABILITY LIVING ALLOWANCE HOPE THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY :D

... I'm not always an entirely pleasant person. >>;

[chiasmata]

... I'm not always an entirely pleasant person.

You are a brilliant person, is what you are. And the douchebros deserved all they got.

[cadenzamuse]

+lots more than 1

[merryway]

Entirely awesome person.

I don't have wheels of my own at this point (hark but the wheels of administration grind slowly) but that is one I feel very odd about even when I'm using the borrowed one or the wonky contraptions supermarkets provide.

I am slowly trying to rework this into 'so fuck you, that's why' and posts like this help.

[stephdairy]

There's a term I've always disliked when folk talk about depression. Mention anti-depressants in particular, and someone will say "I don't like them, they're just a crutch." If it helps someone get around and have a good decent life, there's no shame in a crutch (or a wheelchair, or an anti-depressant). And there's no "just" about that at all.

(S)

[feanelwa]

Hah, "just a crutch". I'd like to see them say that to somebody with one leg, an actual physical crutch and really good aim.

[blue_cat]

I would like to BITE someone for that 'giving up on getting better' comment :P that is like saying wearing glasses is giving up on getting better eye-sight! You use it to enhance your life, not as a ...

damn, language is then trying to say I should use "crutch" but that is ablist. um, .. as a substitute?

[alexseanchai]

Can I link to this post when I find it necessary to critique use of that term?

[kaberett]

Feel free - and thanks for asking :-)

[khalinche]

Thank you for asking, I was going to ask the same thing. This is such a good go-to reference post.

[jamfish]

getting a wheelchair is giving up on getting better — who the hell said that?! boo!

thanks for this post.

[elialshadowpine]

"I am a wheelchair user, and it sets me free."

THIS.

I need to take this to heart. I am at the point where walking causes a great deal of pain, and I do have a (rather crappy secondhand) folding wheelchair that I could use, but I find that I don't as often as I should for fear of people's reactions.

[kaberett]

On my list to write when I've caught up on work: why I started using mobility aids; and separately, how to choose a wheelchair.