IN FOCUS
You get proud by
Guest writer , Jax Brown writes ...
As a young person growing up with a disability , I had no positive role models , no one to look up to and think : “ I could be like her and do what she ’ s doing when I ’ m older !’’
I rarely saw bodies like mine in the media and when I did it was depicted as a terrible tragedy or disability as inspiration , you know the ones : someone acquires their disability and feels their life is over , or conversely someone climbs a mountain on their hands and knees to inspire and motivate the ablebods . I would come to learn that these were disability tropes or stereotypes , and like any stereotype they don ' t allow the person to be an individual .
What I longed to see were people with disabilities living , full , rich and interesting lives : having relationships , having sex , moving out of home , partying , having children , having meaningful work , feeling valued , respected and finding meaning in their lives .
I spent a long time not feeling at home in my skin , feeling exiled from my body , trying to escape it , not wanting to call my body , this body , home . Maybe you , as a person with disability have felt this too ? I had endured years of medical intervention on my body , intervention which taught me my body was ‘ wrong ’ and I should spend my life trying to make it as ‘ normal ’ as possible . It took me a long time to realise that this idea of ‘ normal ’ is elusive and unattainable . I started to set myself new goals : what if I no longer tried to tame my body , what if I abandoned the fantasy of being ‘ normal ’ and instead worked on being happy and liking myself just as I am , disability included ?
Jax Jacki Brown is a guest writer in this edition of Touchstone . Photo credit Anne Standen .
When I was in my early 20 ’ s I stumbled across something which would give me a different way of viewing my body and my disability , something that would change the way I saw myself and the world : The social model of disability . The social model was born out of the disability rights movement of the 1970 ’ s in the United Kingdom and proclaims that disability is not a personal problem but a social issue of entrenched systematic discrimination and exclusion of people with non-normative bodies and minds .
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Touchstone Summer 2016