I have developed acute plantar fasciitis in my right foot. Hopefully you have never heard of plantar fasciitis but if you have, then you will know all about it. When I stand up I wince with pain – some times of the day are worse than others. I was moaning about it to my husband the other morning. “It’s so undignified, having to hobble and limp around the place”, I complained. Then I heard myself, I caught myself on, I felt shocked, I repented.
Do I really equate dignity, being worthy of honour, with having strong feet, or an able body? Not consciously. And yet there I was saying it, meaning it, carelessly and casually giving voice to our perfectionist culture which oppresses so many.
Again and again I hear people with different kinds of physical or mental disability explain how dealing with the challenges of the disability itself is not the worst thing. Often more painful is navigating the shame and stigma unwittingly laid upon them by an ableist culture. This starts early, before birth. A friend of mine had a baby which was diagnosed with spina bifida in the womb. She found the assumption that she was going to terminate her pregnancy by the health professionals “caring” for her far more traumatic than the prospect of parenting a disabled child.
Our culture’s discourse is peppered with careless phrases and assumptions which have the cumulative effect of undermining and diminishing people with disabilities. These are sometimes called “microaggressions” and can be compared to a mosquito bite. One bite is perfectly bearable, even two or three – these things happen. But when the bites are constant and unremitting and come from all sides at any time, they can add up to a burden too onerous to be borne silently.
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What makes microaggressions so pernicious is that they are almost always delivered unintentionally by people trying to be nice. Naturally it’s a comfort to know that someone isn’t being sadistic or abusive on purpose! Ableist microagressions that make it into the Top Ten are: “You’re too clever to be disabled”, “Have you tried heat packs?”, “I’m so OCD about keeping my desk tidy”, “At least you don’t look disabled”, “Your husband must be a very special person to have married you”.
The notion of microaggressions is a contested one, often conveniently dismissed as “political correctness gone mad” or the like. Phrases like “confined to a wheelchair”, “crippled with self-doubt” or “that’s so lame” are just part of our inheritance and people who say these things mean no harm, therefore no offence should be taken. Perhaps often no offence is taken. Yet I believe that once we become aware of ways that we automatically denigrate disability, and therefore the experience of disabled people, the time has come to seek different words, carve fresh ways of thinking. Some phrases persist long past their sell-by date.
Just because we do not intend to harm does not mean that we do not harm. Not intending to be hurtful is a low bar. If I, say, accidentally step on your foot, I have still hurt you. I wouldn’t dream of insisting that because it was an accident there was no need for me to be concerned about your pain.
We get it badly wrong in the church in many ways, despite the freedom and space and respect and honour that flowed from Jesus in all his encounters with people. In her blisteringly brilliant book My body is not a prayer request, Amy Kenny challenges the mainstream Christian view that her disabled body is a “result of the fall”. All bodies are implicated in the fall, she reminds us, as are all clothes – yet we never sing hymns about “no more jeans in heaven” because we’ll finally be healed and whole!
Rather, she claims, disabled bodies display the prophetic witness of what is true for all humans – temporarily non-disabled people just don’t realise it yet. Our bodies are not self-sufficient. We cannot rely solely on ourselves. We must become interdependent to thrive.