Hello Substack, Here at Last for Disability Pride Month!

I've fought hard with other disabled activists all my life. That's where my pride lives.

July is Disability Pride Month, and today is Disability Pride Day, which is a big hurrah for me because the UN International Day of Disabled People is 3rd December and it's often too bloody cold to do anything. 

I tell you this. I'm proud of my disabled identity. That I've fought hard with other disabled activists all my life. That's where my pride lives.

Can you be proud of your disability? Is that the right question? There's an old formula amongst disability equality trainers of 80/20.  That 80% of a disabled life is created by the big barriers. Those in the environment, those of information, those of negative attitude. The 20% concerns an individual's medical condition. I am proud of the fight and my comrades within it.

Let’s celebrate how far we've come, even while the fight goes on to keep our successes from governments that at best see us as an inconvenience, at worst as scroungers in need of culling. Some achievements have been lost, e.g. the Independent Living Fund, which encapsulated the ideas of the independent living movement in America and evolved to be a power all of its own. The radical concept that disabled people did not desire to lose their autonomy and that independence is a much broader concept than whether you can wipe your own arse or not. The Tories said we were privileged – a joke if it wasn’t so decimating. Right up to this day we fight for those basics and I’m proud of that.

During this month, light a candle for those we've lost. I think of those friends with pride, all the way back to my best friend who died aged 19, in 1977. My poem Linda is for her – She showed me things they called obscene, Linda in her velveteen. She would be amazed at the freedoms we have now, those that activists have fought for and won. Linda was, in her own way, one of us, knowing that the personal is political, you an individual to live in their own home and you free their thoughts to realise they have choice and control.

As many of you know, I am a staunch campaigner within my writing for further understanding of the social model of disability. It's not a perfect fit, but it's the best we've got and it should grow and evolve. In terms of oppression hitting through negative attitude, here's the biggest barrier for those of us fighting long-term health conditions, fatigue and pain. My pain doesn't vanish by the removal of any barrier, except… if healthcare providers are more responsive and open, if society accepts me as the whole that I am, then I may feel comfortable in the place I find within it. It's ironic that we now have working from home as an acceptable practice because of Covid. But it liberates so many of us and is certainly allowing my work a bigger reach.

July, Disability Pride Month. There you have it, some initial musings, and I intend to write some more. While we celebrate what we have done and how powerful we are when we come together, I suggest we remain open to debate and agreeable to other ways of thinking – because that’s how we grow, innit!

‘Who are the Disabled? Read more in my Byline Times column.’