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Am I disabled?

“With my pen hovering over a form, there is no easy answer: better to provoke stigma with support, or resist classification?”

Joanne Limburg writes about the dilemma she faces when filling in forms that ask “Do you consider yourself to be a disabled person?”

Joanne was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) around the age of 42. Until then, she’d considered herself non-disabled. Even now, when she pictures disability, she pictures stock images of wheelchair icons, guide dogs, other more visible disabilities.

“Inside every Yes box is a flat, painted wheelchair stick-figure, asking me what I’m doing in their parking space”. Joanne considers ticking the No box, as her disability is invisible, and she can “sneak out in an able-bodied disguise”. Then there’s Prefer not to say – when that’s an option on the form.

Joanna says she tries to pick the option based on her best guess about what the asker thinks disability is. Does the asker think in terms of the social model of disability, for example?

“I’ve come to understand that when I pass as non-disabled, when I say No, the best that I can hope to be is an inferior version of an ideal of normality that allows only for the narrowest range of body types, cognitive styles and life trajectories, that equates the worth of a person with her economic productivity, that fetishes independence and disavows our connections to each other, and that seeks to discriminate arbitrarily between those who are allowed their full humanity and those who are denied it.”

Joanna shares her default answer to the question at the end of the essay. I won’t spoil it here!

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