We almost forget that all human beings need a daily self-help vocabulary to train in the mirror and endure the lock. PCDs are no different.
The road is long and in the curves of life we slide, limping and trying to hold on so we don't crash - but sometimes we don't, we really fall.
And we realize that we walk around with a dictionary of illusions stored in our chest and that has nothing to do with the fact that we have a disability - but because we are people.
We got used to living in such an empowering world, that when we recognize ourselves as a standard human being, other people get scared. Does that seem like overkill to you?
Questions that people WITHOUT DISABILITIES receive from strangers:
What's your name?
Do you always come here?
What do you work with?
What happened to you/ what do you have?
Was it born that way or was it an accident?
Is there a cure?
It hurts?
After we answer the interrogations with rich details, the comments arrive: "If it were me, I wouldn't be able to stand it" or "Everything you go through in your life and still manage to smile" - as if our life were a beautiful shit and we almost had an obligation to complain constantly.
Sometimes, we almost forget that all human beings need a daily self-help vocabulary to train in the mirror and endure the lock. PCDs are no different.
Realize that I also need to get my brain to not reject this body - over and over again. And isn't that precisely the drama of all people?
Either because of appearance, which is never satisfactorily up to standard, or because of the limitation caused by natural aging, which comes to all those who don't die young, at the height of their physical shape.
I try to assimilate daily why people with disabilities are still taboo in 2021.
Why are we the subject of endless curiosity - which goes beyond the limits of common sense and does not bother to use a tone of voice with the least respect?
And why is it so aggressive to look at a crooked, scarred body? Why is it so subversive to love a disabled body?
How long will people with disabilities be used to personify “overcoming”?
How long will women with disabilities have their sexuality annulled and their sensuality cancelled?
And how long will the images of our bodies, simply existing, be tied to the old phrase: "And what's your excuse"?
It's a lot of questions, right?
So it is. It's exhausting having to answer, rethink and resolve all the questions that other people feel free to raise about our bodies, disabilities and experiences. And I won't even get into the personal questioning part, where our relationships are called into question and our partners are always MORE awesome than us (never AS cool as us) and we should be on our knees to thank for finding someone who "steps up to that bar."
Today's reflection is: don't think in a capacitist way, don't act as a capacitist and, above all, fight against capacitism!
People with disabilities are still there at the end of the diversity guidelines, but we are fighting and we are not going to stop.
Let's keep occupying spaces, shouting louder and spreading it around that before any disability, there is a person!
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Amanda Lyra is a singer, songwriter, producer and presenter, wheelchair user and creator of the Solyra Project . Follow her on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM .
Paloma Santos is an illustrator, wheelchair user and feminist. "In my work as an illustrator I try to represent female diversity".
