Just when I was about to feel bad about all the bitchin and moanin on this blog, (in case anyone reads it besides myself and maybe my mom -- sorry, mom), I caught word from the twitters of a great entry from This Ain't Livin' blog entitled "Why Disability Matters: Supercrips and Accomodations" (excerpt):
There are a lot of complex issues bound up in the identity of the supercrip, and one of the hazards of it is that, whether you are willing to be used this way or not, you will be used as a weapon to beat other people with disabilities. Some supercrips definitely feed into this, as is evident from the way they talk about disability. They frame it very much as a personal problem that can be overcome with enough effort and they make a point of stressing that they owe their success to not being ‘coddled’ by petty things like accommodations. They suggest that other people with disabilities are not toeing the line, and it’s ok, you can ignore them, really. Tough love.
Other supercrips, though, are just natural outliers who happen to be disabled. Not every nondisabled person can be a star athlete, and we don’t take Olympians as evidence that everyone should be able to complete incredible feats of athleticism. But incredibly accomplished disabled people? They are taken as evidence that other disabled people are failures. If they weren’t, they could be running businesses and sailing around the world and competing in athletic events and doing other fantastic and amazing things ...
The supercrip is used as evidence that people don’t need accommodations, they just need to try harder. That, in fact, denying accommodations is perversely for the good of the person with the disability—you see, if you weren’t coddled along, you’d be able to have some self determination and do something that matters in the world.
And, from the article in Bitch Magazine referenced in this entry ...
Supercrip is the Good Cripple taken to dizzying, perhaps nauseating heights, and chances are, if you’ve had any exposure to media depictions of disability at all, you have been exposed to this trope. Supercrip has been, in his and her various iterations, sunny, kind, overachieving, possesses a “can-do” attitude, and does AMAZING! and INSPIRING! things and can thus "overcome” his or her disability. Supercrip’s personality traits overlap quite a bit with those of the Good Cripple, but above all, Supercrip’s main function is to serve as inspiring to the majority while reinforcing the things that make this majority feel awesome about itself. In short: Supercrip provides a way for non-disabled folks to be “inspired” by persons with disabilities without actually questioning—or making changes to—how persons with disabilities are treated in society ...
Disability activist and writer Lorenzo W. Milam expands upon the Supercrip stereotype in a passage from CripZen: A Manual For Survival: “Less obvious, but more hurtful, is what we call the Roosevelt Syndrome—scaling great heights, smiling…becoming SuperCrip, convincing everyone that there is nothing going on inside, nothing at all.” Nevermind whatever anger, rage, sadness, or less-than-positive thoughts you may have; if you are a person with a disability, you are expected to be just a canvas onto which non-disabled people can project their need for “inspiration.”
Excellent, excellent must reads for anyone feeling that they or their disabled friend/relative/etc are just not trying hard enough to get better or to "stay positive" ...
Just keeping it real.
There are a lot of complex issues bound up in the identity of the supercrip, and one of the hazards of it is that, whether you are willing to be used this way or not, you will be used as a weapon to beat other people with disabilities. Some supercrips definitely feed into this, as is evident from the way they talk about disability. They frame it very much as a personal problem that can be overcome with enough effort and they make a point of stressing that they owe their success to not being ‘coddled’ by petty things like accommodations. They suggest that other people with disabilities are not toeing the line, and it’s ok, you can ignore them, really. Tough love.
Other supercrips, though, are just natural outliers who happen to be disabled. Not every nondisabled person can be a star athlete, and we don’t take Olympians as evidence that everyone should be able to complete incredible feats of athleticism. But incredibly accomplished disabled people? They are taken as evidence that other disabled people are failures. If they weren’t, they could be running businesses and sailing around the world and competing in athletic events and doing other fantastic and amazing things ...
The supercrip is used as evidence that people don’t need accommodations, they just need to try harder. That, in fact, denying accommodations is perversely for the good of the person with the disability—you see, if you weren’t coddled along, you’d be able to have some self determination and do something that matters in the world.
And, from the article in Bitch Magazine referenced in this entry ...
Supercrip is the Good Cripple taken to dizzying, perhaps nauseating heights, and chances are, if you’ve had any exposure to media depictions of disability at all, you have been exposed to this trope. Supercrip has been, in his and her various iterations, sunny, kind, overachieving, possesses a “can-do” attitude, and does AMAZING! and INSPIRING! things and can thus "overcome” his or her disability. Supercrip’s personality traits overlap quite a bit with those of the Good Cripple, but above all, Supercrip’s main function is to serve as inspiring to the majority while reinforcing the things that make this majority feel awesome about itself. In short: Supercrip provides a way for non-disabled folks to be “inspired” by persons with disabilities without actually questioning—or making changes to—how persons with disabilities are treated in society ...
Disability activist and writer Lorenzo W. Milam expands upon the Supercrip stereotype in a passage from CripZen: A Manual For Survival: “Less obvious, but more hurtful, is what we call the Roosevelt Syndrome—scaling great heights, smiling…becoming SuperCrip, convincing everyone that there is nothing going on inside, nothing at all.” Nevermind whatever anger, rage, sadness, or less-than-positive thoughts you may have; if you are a person with a disability, you are expected to be just a canvas onto which non-disabled people can project their need for “inspiration.”
Excellent, excellent must reads for anyone feeling that they or their disabled friend/relative/etc are just not trying hard enough to get better or to "stay positive" ...
Just keeping it real.
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