I EXERCISE POLITICS

08.07.04

Using Dada’s comment as an opportunity, (to be found in the text I wrote on 5/7/2004), I would like to write the following: I wish I could say the opposite but the women who quit their husbands for the purpose of carrying the can are too many. Those women are destined –in my opinion- to keep their mouth shut and open everything else, simply because their participation in any conversation would presuppose the use of their brain, which they sadly don’t find in place, especially when they need it.

Not all women are like that of course! How can we forget, for instance, the movement of the Suffragettes in the last century in England? They managed to remind us of the fact that we don’t claim rights because we represent a minority but precisely because we believe that the aforementioned term (=minority) often underestimates our human characteristics. First of all we are humans and then everything else.
This is exactly why we, having to think a bit more, believe that it’s necessary to represent ourselves in everything that is of our business, whether this has to do with the measures taken up to ease our mobility in the city or with what kind of clothes we’ll be wearing when we decide to go out.

I enter the store with a companion. I want to buy summer pants and a ‘Hawaiian-flower’ shirt. I look at the saleswoman’s eyes and get ready to say: ‘I’d like a…’. She looks at my companion and says: ‘What would the young man like, what’s his size?’. The answer that comes to my mind is ‘what about the size of your mind, you sicko!’. What are you looking at, you idiot? What do you expect? That I light fireworks until you lower your sluggard-look and address me? I came in your store (where I would come even without help if you had at least one ramp by its entrance). I’m interested in your bloody clothes. I’ll give you my dear money. Isn’t it tragic to have to explain the evident every time? Is it normal to go out for a walk and yet be frustrated with everyone?

Don’t ask me what I would do to all those people if I didn’t have to consider the rules of criminal law. In case I decided to let them live, I’d definitely want to torture them. I’d tie them hand and foot on remote-control wheelchairs, I’d gag them and I’d send them far away. We’re talking about very far here; as far as this figurative suitcase can go every time we decide to refer to such issues.

The essence of the problem lies elsewhere: in the state’s arbitrary power of finding solutions for us without us. Is it possible to plan an environment friendly to people with a disability without asking them to participate? Is it possible that the accessibility secured for people with mobility –and even more- problems is determined from able-bodied people who know next to nothing about our needs? The answer is obvious. What I need to underline regarding all this is that we bear most of the responsibility for what happens when we refuse to take part in procedures that deal with us. I refuse that as well many times but at least I have the willingness to give information, to stress issues and to suggest solutions. Even if I do this by virtue of a weblog.