Firstly, apologies for the title but this simple set-up does begin to highlight the problem. With polemics and discussions online becoming more heated, divisive, and purely slanderous, we have all been witness to posts when someone’s statement/comment was shouted down for being a ‘retarded’ opinion. Or politicians have been described as idiots, insane, mentally unstable, or simple loony.
Now this is not going to be a feel good talk about how words hurt, as ultimately I personally do not care what you call me. Secondly, I would rather change the state of society first before we focus on linguistics. However, this highlight on ‘insanity’ or ‘retardation’ does have a larger societal implication.
Civil rights movements have been some of the greatest human successes of our history, be it the suffrage movement, rights for ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ peoples, the working class, and the disabled alike. These victories came at great cost of life and limb but are resounding victories which highlight how powerful action driven by political thinking can be.
Since these victories, we are finally starting to see oppressed groups have an increasing presence in mainstream European/American politics (we must highlight how places like Cuba have been ahead of the curve on this). However, we have not seen much of an increase of disabled presence. In Britain the disabled rights movement is so sparse that only really Disabled People Against Cuts are on the grassroots level fighting simple fights — the US, despite entrapping disabled people in legalities like a social security system which punishes disabled people for getting married, does have a more militant and lively disabled rights movement.
In Britain particularly, I believe this to be for a collection of reasons:
1 — the almost never-ending media depiction of disabled people as either ‘burdens’, ‘fakers’, or ‘scrougers’
This particular tactic has been incredibly successful, as simply observing the reintroduction of the Disabled Car badges for autistic people, and witnessing disabled people suggesting — these people are not really disabled like me. It is also a magnificent trap as either the disabled person is a burden because they are not contributing to society, the disabled person contributing to society is obviously not ‘really’ disabled, or the disabled person is just whinging and wants more.
2 — the lack of a militant/revolutionary/commanding disabled movement
As Britain’s disabled movement is far more spread out and sporadic, the civil rights fights have focused on more meager elements — like fighting the change to PIP or Universal Credit. Due also to the complications of a lack of uniformity in ideology/politics/approaches disabled groups are splintered due to various barriers to access or personally inflicted barriers, meaning coordination is twice as hard as would be in a non-disabled trade union setting for example. What this has meant is there are not really any figures to lead or inspire us. African-Americans have M.L. King, Malcolm X, or Rosa Parks to name the most obvious, the Suffrage movement had Syvila Pankhurst, Virginia Wolfe, and Mary Barbour amongst others — and yet despite many disabled people upholding truly radical politics (Stephen Hawking being Pro-boycott of Israel or Helen Keller being a part of the I.W.W. and an outspoken Socialist) we have not had those figures to romanticise in the same manner.
3 — The ableds do not think we are capable of political thought
This final statement, I think is highlighted by the way ‘retarded’ or ‘spastic’ or ‘idiot’ is thrown around in political discussion. A person online suggesting someone is retarded is openly admitting that they do not see the humanity in their thought — now regardless of the specifics of the political thought, what I mean by this is this — declaring someone retarded, politically, simply shows you do not even register them as a valid political entity, an invalid political entity (excuse the terrible word-play). Now this statement does not just exist in this abstract ideological world, as often when one dissects the stereotypes of disabled people, one political is never one, child-like is another. Also finally, the fact that a British survey found 27% of the non-disabled community are ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘do not know how to talk to disabled people’ — how on earth would these people engage us in political thought?
So to come back to my initial premise, why it is important to highlight this is rather simple really:
if your worldview sees being retarded as an insult, you see retardation as sub-human
The same could be said in the opposite:
if your worldview sees being retarded as sub-human, you see retardation as an insult
I am still active in politics, and am not going to be put off by this, but this brief dissection was needed to highlight how easily all sides of the political spectrum forget the disabled and happily throw us under buses to score points on people they disagree with.
