Gregory Mansfield

@ghmansfield.bsky.social

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Disabled lawyer. Disability Rights and Disability Justice.
Email: Gregoryhmansfield at gmail

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Disability can be a challenge but nothing prepares a disabled person for the presumptive inferiority, devaluation, dehumanization and abled imposed by others upon disabled people.

The access of disabled people should not hinge on the arbitrariness of nondisabled people.

When you see disabled people and assume they have “special needs,” rather than human needs, you devalue and dehumanize disabled people. You equate disabled people with being a burden. Disabled people are not a burden.

Ableism and disability discrimination are bigotry. Not benign. Not well-meaning. Not innocuous. Not harmless. Not rational. Bigotry.

In reality, telling disabled people that we are “special” or have “special needs” is another way of saying we are a burden. Ableism is devaluing and dehumanizing.

Disabled people don’t need to “overcome” our disabilities. Nondisabled people need to overcome their pity, ableism and bigotry.

The presumption that there are certain things that disabled people cannot do is at the core of ableism. Disability is not inferiority.

When you call a disabled person “special,” you are not complimenting them. You are isolating, segregating and devaluing disabled people with the burden of ableism.

Access for disabled people should not be a prerogative. It is an imperative.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, civil rights, human rights and justice are meaningless if they do not include disabled people.

Disability, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is not discrimination. Excluding disabled people from DEI is discrimination.

Disability is not inability and should not give rise to a presumption of inability.

If you are a business and you are inaccessible to disabled people and your response is “We don’t get many disabled customers,” you just don’t get it. Disabled people aren’t the problem. Barriers and inaccessibility are the problem. You are keeping us out.

Nondisabled people have no right to dictate the parameters of access for disabled people. The audacity and arbitrariness are striking.

A wheelchair is not a barrier. Stairs are a barrier. Curbs are a barrier. Inaccessibility is a barrier. Stop blaming wheelchairs and wheelchair users. Blame those who create and perpetuate barriers.

Inaccessibility that keeps out disabled people is not a neutral act. Exclusion is a hostile act.

Disability discrimination is not benign. It is bigotry.

For disabled people, inaccessibility is not an inconvenience. Inaccessibility is injustice.

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Gregory Mansfield

Here's a gift link to Harriet McBryde Johnson's "Unspeakable Conversations," a 2003 essay about talking to Peter Singer, a man who said the world would be better, would be happier, without disabled people like her. It's worth your time reading.

Unspeakable Conversations (Published 2003)www.nytimes.com Harriet McBryde Johnson article recalls her meetings with Princeton Prof Peter Singer, who argues for infanticide of extremely disabled babies; Johnson is lawyer who is severely disabled and is disabi...

Asking a disabled person “what’s wrong with you?” is not an icebreaker.

Nondisabled people should not be setting the parameters of what constitutes access for disabled people.

Access for disabled people should not be at the discretion of nondisabled people.

Neighbor: “Come on, you don’t really expect them to make everything accessible to disabled people. Do you?” Me: “Damn right I do.” No access or partial access is exclusion.

There cannot be equity until there is equity for disabled people. There cannot be civil rights until there are civil rights for disabled people. There cannot be justice until there is justice for disabled people.

There is no middle ground on access for disabled people. Either you are for access, or you are for exclusion.

Nondisabled man at bus stop: “Can I get on first or do I have to wait for the wheelchair?” Driver: “The wheelchair gets on first.” A wheelchair user is not a “wheelchair.”

If you ask a disabled person if they need help, wait for their answer before you start “helping” them. Pushing or grabbing a disabled person without consent is not help. It is intrusive and coercive and may, in fact, hurt the disabled person.

Accommodation of disabled people is not advantage. Accommodation is an equitable measure based on discrimination, barriers and exclusion.

Reposted by

Gregory Mansfield

Eugenic sterilizations are not a thing of the past, relegated to history, to “back then.” Gift link. www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/w...

Despite Bans, Disabled Women Are Still Being Sterilized in Europewww.nytimes.com Governments have declared the practice a human rights violation. But they have made exceptions that are divisive among parents, doctors and social workers.

Hospital staff: “I’m so sorry you are confined to the wheelchair. It must be horrible to be wheelchair-bound. I’m sorry.” No one is bound or confined to a wheelchair. Wheelchairs and the people who use them are not objects of pity.