They call it Disability Pride Month. I call it Not Ashamed Month.
I am not ashamed of the body I was born with, or the struggles that come with it. Not the brittle bones. Not the extra costs. Not the days it takes more out of me just to do what everyone else does without thinking twice. That body is mine, struggles included, and none of it is something I hide from or apologize for.
People stare at us, pray for us, clap for us, but won’t fight for us, keeping us feeling like superheroes just for living our lives like humans, because that’s how they want us to feel. Ashamed. That’s why I celebrate Not Ashamed Month.
Not Ashamed Month is a yearly reminder that this fight is not history. We fought so we wouldn’t be warehoused in institutions, so we could live in our own communities instead. Section 504 is the federal law that prohibits disability discrimination by any program that receives federal funding. Right now, Texas and eight other states are suing to gut Section 504 and the integration mandate, the rule that lets people with disabilities receive care in their communities instead of institutions. That’s not a history lesson. That’s a case sitting in a courtroom this year. If anyone thinks the fight for disability rights is over, they’re not paying attention.
Remember this. The disabled community is the only community you can join no matter your background. Doesn’t matter your race, your religion, your income, your politics. One accident, one diagnosis, one bad fall, and you’re one of us. This isn’t someone else’s fight you get to watch from the sidelines. It could be yours by next year.
Now, if you don’t have a disability, this next part is for you. This month wouldn’t exist if society hadn’t made it necessary. So let’s go through exactly what society made necessary. I don’t need the applause. I don’t need the sympathy. I need society to stop making it a thing.
First, there’s “special needs.” Living is a need. Not a special one. Not an extra one. Everybody needs a way to get up in the morning, get to the bathroom, get out the door. Mine just looks different than yours. That doesn’t make it special. That’s called living.
Second, “reasonable accommodations.” Why does the ask need an adjective? You walk into a hotel and ask for a room. I ask for a room with a roll in shower. You ask for a walk-in shower instead of a tub, nobody blinks. I ask for the same shower, built for the body I actually have, and suddenly it needs a modifier, as if it could have been unreasonable, as if my shower was ever up for debate. It wasn’t different. It was never different.
Same conversation, different building. Everybody loves a ramp when it’s their kid’s stroller. Nobody blinks when a mother pushes a double stroller up one. But mention that the ramp is the only way I get into the building, and suddenly it’s a whole conversation about cost, and code, and whose budget it comes out of. Fine. You want to keep debating my ramp? Let’s take away your steps and see how you get in the building. See how silly that sounds? That’s how silly it sounds when you make me fight for mine.
Third, and this one really gets me, “interabled relationship.” What a way to kill a date. Hi, nice to meet you, would you like to be in an interabled relationship with me? Nobody talks like that. It’s a relationship. It includes me, good and bad. It includes him, good and bad. The one I choose to be with, not a category. Yours might include a decade age gap, or two different religions, or a language neither of you speaks fluently, and we don’t slap a label on those and hand them their own hashtag.
Here’s what all that judgment costs you, not just us. Some of the people you’ve quietly decided are lesser, or inspirational, or “so brave for just leaving the house,” have built businesses, raised families, run companies, written books, changed policy, changed minds. This month doesn’t exist because we need a parade. It exists because you haven’t caught up yet.
Stop staring at us. Stop praying for us. Stop applauding us. Fight for us.
So here’s my actual position. We wouldn’t need a month at all if this world stopped judging, stopped segregating, stopped institutionalizing some of us and propping up the rest of us as inspiration for people who did nothing but exist next to us. This month exists to compensate for what society still won’t fix. That’s not something to be proud of. That’s something to be angry about.
If we want to celebrate this month, celebrate this. We are living our lives to the fullest. Yes, we have a physical disability. No, we are not ashamed of it. And don’t you dare try to shame us either.
But hey, that’s just my bellybutton.
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Some more articles for you to read. https://www.audacitymagazine.com/disabled-doesnt-mean-inclusive/
https://www.audacitymagazine.com/when-disabled-people-hold-each-other-back-we-all-suffer/
https://www.audacitymagazine.com/what-are-you-going-to-be-when-youre-disabled/