SCOPE's Disabled People - Press
Portrayals Project
Pressing Disability into
Invisibility by Dr
Paul Darke
With the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act
and the election of a Labour government seemingly capable of doing no wrong in
the eyes of the liberal or conservative press it is no surprise that disability
as a subject is on the increase in the press. I was going to write 'disability as an issue' instead of
'disability as a subject' but in the process identified why disability in the
press was still problematically discussed and disseminated. Disability, the result of socially
created obstacles, barriers and socio-economic exclusion, is almost never
discussed in the press.
Thus, 'disability', per se, as an issue is hardly ever
covered in the press at all. On
the other hand disability as impairment is the rule of interpretation;
disability is often the subject of the press but merely as a story of
impairment. That most disabled
still live in poverty, or are trapped in residential homes that are more prison
like than prisons, routinely abused sexually and physically, is almost never
present. The social model of
disability - as advocated by disabled people themselves - and the issue of
disability seems to be a dirty word or too complex an issue, even for the
quality press. I do not expect The
Sun to report on
disability with any degree of awareness, if at all; but The Times …
The same sad old tales of triumph-over-tragedy must be
getting boring even to those who argue that disability must be shown as
attractive. But even pure
sweetness can make one sick after a while if it is all you ever get fed. The lack of originality in press
reporting of disability can often take one's breath away - a bit like The
Daily Star. The lack of insight, and the
de-politicisation of one of the most important political issues of the 21st
Century, is often as acute in the broadsheets as is the lack of intelligence is
in the reporting of feminism on page 3 of The Sun.
The rise, and rise, and rise, in the hegemony of medicine
and science in the last few years, especially genetics (you ain't seen nothing
yet!), has seemingly arisen with virtually no seriously informed comment on it
in the press from those it most affects: disabled people. Let us not be mistaken, genetics is no
more of a threat to disabled people than medicine has been in the last 100
years: medicine has always sought to eradicate disability in any way
possible. Hitler may have
practised with the gas chamber on disabled people (around 250,000 were
exterminated in the Nazi eugenics plan) but he has nothing on Western
Medicines; since the legalisation of abortion on social grounds in most Western
societies since the 1970 over 5 million disabled people have been aborted. The Allies may have won the WWII but
disabled people lost the battle of validation in modern society. Disability, and impairment, are not a
tragedy but the lack of serious reporting of how most disabled people are
treated in society is. Most
disabled people do not even make it to being people.
Is this 'Political Correctness', yes it is, but what is the
problem for intelligent people being informed about the true nature of social
practices rather than deluded and fed illusions that we live in a civilised
society. The Ancient Greeks may
have let the deformed baby wither and die in the sun, and Luther may have
wanted all disabled people battered to death as they were the sins of the devil
but, and this is the question that the press never raise. Is it any better to be quartered in the
womb and incinerated after a rinse in a modern NHS hospital sluice?
Political Correctness is about revealing the hidden and the
mystified behind what is so often taken for granted as 'common sense', 'only
natural' or 'obvious'. I have yet
to see any political correctness in the press in relation to the 'issue of
disability'. What I do see is the
sanitisation of what is apparently
to disgusting for the press's educated readers to accept: the truth. A hundred years ago when a hundred
disabled children were conceived some would die in child-birth, some would die
in infancy, many would be locked up for the rest of their lives and few would
live an ordinary life. Today, and
in the future, when a hundred disabled are conceived the vast majority are
'terminated without prejudice' (90-99% of people with Down's Syndrome or Spina
Bifida - usually with the support of those organisations set up to represent
their interests). An even smaller
number than ever will die in infancy or exist in a nightmarish world of a
residential home run by some supposedly-christianesque charity, and even fewer
(less than ever) will live an ordinary life. But wow, won't those of us who do make it be better off and
treated with equality. Who has
progressed? Certainly not the
disabled pilgrim.
Genetics promises nothing new for disabled people, it will
not offer the cure we do not want anyway, but then medicine never has delivered
what it promised (minor alleviation and the old euphemism of 'prevention') or
listened. Tragically, genetics
will almost certainly see the elimination of various groups of disabled people
- those with Downs Syndrome being prime candidates, along with other easily
identifiable genetic 'disorders'.
Is society, are you, now really so obsessed with order and the absolute
necessity for the 'norm'!
It does not really matter what terms are used to describe
people, any people from any group, what really, and only matters, is that what
terms are used is understood. It
does not really matter what concept is appropriated as long as it is
appropriated from a position of knowledge, understanding and truth. All disabled people have ever asked for
is that their lives, as a group who share a form of oppression that no other
group has so unquestionably been forced to exist under, be shown as truthfully
as possible.
It is easy to say that we will all get the world we deserve,
but when we do get it, I hope it is reported accurately. There is a poem, about the holocaust,
which I forget in the main, but, to paraphrase, starts with how 'first they
came for the Jews' and 'then they came for the union leaders' …
The fact is that first they came for the disbaled; they are
still coming; and you are they.