That post going around saying ‘the UK are executing disabled people!’ is really starting to bug me, because…that’s not exactly what’s happening. That’s not what the article it links to says is happening, either. I know this system. My fiance’s (invisibly) disabled, my mother is (very visibly) disabled, I have my clusterfuck of mental illnesses that technically disable me though I keep it on the down-low for obvious reasons – me and mine are part of this system. Fiance and me waited in a cold, white waiting room on Christmas Eve to see if he’d be found fit for work, and of course he was, and of could there was nothing at all he could do to actually, y’know, turn off his disability. So we spent that Christmas miserable and dreading the future, and despite my own run of luck recently (I found a good job that I can work around my mental illness! hooray!) we’re still……….more futureless than we should be, because the system is awful and nightmareish and yes, obviously very very ableist. Britain is very very ableist. (see?)
But it’s not….well, ‘executing’ is a very emotive and violent word. Everyone knows the images that it conjures up. And to be fair, people have been making (tasteless) jokes about Iain Duncan Smith ‘herding people into disability death camps’ for years, it’s not a new thing. But to see it like that…it makes the whole thing seem so, so far removed from what it actually is. Which is mostly cold rooms, and endless expensive inconvenience that you can’t afford, and getting multiple contradicting letters per week, and going to appointments you know will end in crushing disappointment, and crossing your fingers you get ‘a nice one’ at the Jobcenter or the hospital, and deadlines that are literally impossible to meet and just – drudgery. Endless drudgery.
(The future me and my fiance were going to have was essentially taken from us and I’m furious about it, I’m furious even I’m typing this, I have that awful lump in my throat-) There are many kinds of violence in the world but one of them is apathy, and that’s…a really insidious one. People didn’t care about Francecca Hardwicke, or Mark Wood, or David Clapson. (You probably already know what you’re getting into if you click those links, but yeah, they’re full of hate crime and neglect and horribleness). Iain Duncan Smith, it’s probably safe to say, does not much care about what happens to the poor and disabled so long as he gets to keep his country house. (Oooh, look at it. It’s magnificent.)
Basically, disabled people aren’t being lined up against the wall and executed, but they (me! my loved ones!) are just being…forced down the cracks, in a billion tiny ways that don’t involve guns or guillotines but do involve letters and waiting rooms and crying in front of people and not crying in front of people and all the stuff I said up there and more, more, more. “Disabled people in Britain are being red-taped, neglected, and apathy-ed to death” doesn’t make for a very good (or grammatically correct) headline. But things like apathy, other people’s greed and drudgery can kill people just as easily as gunshots…and are much harder to see.