A friend linked on FB to this Yahoo article in which people are denouncing some of the tone and content of the coverage of the death of Stephen Hawking.
Typical example: “Today’s a day to avoid people. It’s too difficult seeing all of the (expletive) “he’s free now!” around Stephen Hawking’s death when for me, a wheelchair represents the freedom to experience grand events in life with my family, and an overall decrease in pain. #Disability”
Another: "I mean, he did pretty amazing stuff but it wasn’t amazing because he had ALS and used a wheelchair and AAC. Those are just things.
The amazing stuff Stephen Hawking did was amazing because he thought and said amazing things."
As a general policy, I don’t like saying things that imply that I am wiser about an issue than people who are vastly more knowledgeable about it than I am… for instance, because they are actually living it. But, I gotta say, I feel like these complaints are somewhat off base.
(1) First of all, it’s certainly true that there’s some conflation going on. When people say “Stephen Hawking is free of his wheelchair”, what they mean is “Stephen Hawking is free of the horrifying crippling disease he tragically suffered, of which his wheelchair was an everpresent reminder”. In fact, his wheelchair (and the amazing technology in it) was something that helped him live a life despite the disease. So saying he’s free of his wheelchair is kind of backwards, in that it feels like it’s putting the wheelchair on the same team as the disease instead of the opposite team… but everyone understands that! Everyone realizes that the real burden was not the wheelchair, it was the disease. And I’d bet every dollar I own that there are certainly times when even disabled people themselves look at their wheelchairs and feel anger/depression/rage/whatever, rather than directing those feelings at the specific disability they suffer.
In this age of pluralism and openness, we’re very used to using our language in a way that doesn’t make it sound like any characteristic of a group of people is objectively better or worse than any other. And I think that’s a good and correct policy when it comes to sex and race and many other immutable human characteristics. But having ALS is unfortunate. It’s bad. If I got to wish whether my child either would or would not have ALS, I would choose “would not” in a heartbeat. People with ALS are every bit as human and valuable and deserving of rights and so forth as everyone else… but that doesn’t mean that ALS itself is value-neutral.
(2) If Stephen Hawking were a woman and people kept saying “she accomplished amazing things, despite being a woman”, that would be (obviously) ridiculously sexist. If he was a black man and people kept saying “he accomplished amazing things despite being black”, that would be racist. (Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, because of racism/sexism they may have faced, but that’s outside the scope of this thread.) Are those any different from saying “he accomplished amazing things despite his disability”? I’d argue that they are. Unlike race/sex/sexual orientation, a disability, kind of by definition, makes it HARDER to do things. Anyone who, say, wins the Oscar for best picture has does something impressive. It’s very very hard to accomplish that. If someone does it from a wheelchair, it’s even more impressive, because they had to do everything the able bodied winner did, but face a bunch of additional obstacles. Why is that not something that should be acknowledged, recognized and celebrated? I mean, sure, the tone of that acknowledgement could be condescending or obnoxious or any number of other things, but should we just pretend that’s not the case at all?
thoughts?