Ableism

Ableism is bias, prejudice or discrimination against people with disabilities.

Convicts, Lunatics, and women have no vote in Parliament. This poster was made in 1908 and was used to support the rights of women. Even though this poster was made to campaign to let women vote in elections, it also shows ableism towards the mentally ill.

Ableism can be intentional or unintentional. People can be biased against disabled people without realizing it, because ableism is so common that people may not notice it.^[1]

Etymology

The first known use of the word was in 1981, which makes it relatively new. However, the concept of ableism existed before this.

Views

Galton's view of social structure in the UK based on ableist eugenics.

Some people deem ableism a form of oppression.

Not everyone who talks about ableism agrees about what things are ableist.

Disabled people can be ableist, to other disabled people or to themselves. This is called internalized ableism.

Some people deny that ableism exists.

Legality

In some countries, there are laws protecting disabled people from ableism. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also bans disability discrimination.

Forms

Ableism takes many forms. Society is not built for people with disabilities. For instance, many shops are not accessible for people. in wheelchairs because the shop owner is able-bodied and fails to consider wheelchair users' difficulty moving around.

Physical

People with disabilities are often victims of physical abuse, especially if their disability makes them vulnerable. Abusers are usually people without disabilities.^[source?]

Sometimes a person is abused just because they are disabled. This is called a disability hate crime. A disability hate crime can take the form of murder. A lot of these murders are by caregivers, such as the mothers of disabled people.^[source?] A hate crime does not have to be to a person directly.^{[further explanation needed]}

Verbal

Ableism can be verbal. For example, a person might write an ableist slur on a disabled person's car to make them feel bad about having a disability. Many thousands of disability hate crimes are reported every year around the world. Often, these crimes are not reported. This means that the statistics make the problem seem smaller than it is.

The English language has been criticised for being ableist. For example, young people sometimes say that something is "retarded" when they mean that it is bad. This can be offensive to people with disabilities.

Bullying

Many people with disabilities experience "disability bullying". People think of bullying as something that just happens to children at school and is not serious. This is not true. Bullying happens to people of all ages. It causes long-term psychological problems, such as low self-esteem.

Some people kill themselves because they have been bullied. Mencap, a charity that helps people with intellectual disabilities, asked over 500 disabled children and young people about bullying in a survey. 8 out of 10 children with a learning disability said that they are bullied and are scared to go out because they are afraid they will be bullied.^[2]

Mass murder

Further information: Hadamar killing centre and Operation Tannenberg § Mass murder of hospital patients

Memorial for the Aktion T4 – Nazi mass murder of disabled people – at Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin-Tiergarten.

Part of document that lists people from mental hospital to be sent to "other premises" (meaning death camp).

In WWII, the Nazis killed thousands of people with disabilities. They believed in non-voluntary euthanasia and forced eugenics. Eugenics is a philosophy that says people with "desirable traits" should reproduce, while people with "undesirable" traits should not. The Nazis viewed disability as bad and believed that people with disabilities were a burden on society.

Many people still believe in eugenics. In 2013, a councillor in Cornwall called Colin Brewer said that disabled children 'should be put down' to save money. He was found guilty of misconduct, but the council could not fire him.^[3]

Forced sterilization

Disabled people are sometimes forcibly sterilized. This is often illegal because reproduction is considered a human right.

In 2013, The Telegraph reported that some people in the United Kingdom tried to change the law to allow an abortion up to the 40th week in a pregnancy if the fetus was disabled.^[4]

In 2011, Katharine Quarmby published a book called Scapegoat: Why we are failing disabled people. It is about hate crimes towards people with disabilities in the United Kingdom.

Statistics

More than 90% of people with developmentally disabilities are sexually abused in their lifetimes. 49% are sexually abused more than 10 times.^[5] This is higher than the rate of sexual abuse in the general population.

As of 2003, 81% of non-disabled people of working age had a job. But less than half (48%) of working-age people with disabilities had a job. 50% of disabled people who didn't have a job wanted to have a job, but could not find one.^[6]

Disabled people are sometimes not given jobs even if they are capable of doing the jobs because employers think they are not as good as non-disabled people.

Sports

A runner in the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.

Sports are often an area of society in which ableism is evident. In sports media, athletes with disabilities are often portrayed to be inferior.^[7] When athletes with disabilities are discussed in the media, there is often an emphasis on rehabilitation and the road to recovery, which is inherently a negative view on the disability.^[8]

Oscar Pistorius is a South African runner who competed in the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Paralympics and the 2012 Olympic Games. Pistorius was the first double amputee athlete to compete in the Olympics.^[9] While media coverage focused on inspiration and competition during his time in the Paralympic Games, it shifted to questioning whether his prosthetic legs gave him an advantage while competing.^[10][11]