Disability is the next LGBT
I was on Twitter some days ago and came across the following remarkable video.
Sara Luterman at the 19th explains. This is a “visual self-description,” a practice that is meant to be inclusive of blind and low-vision people. The event was a commemoration of the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), a landmark civil rights law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. By describing what she looks like — that she is a woman, she is seated at the table, she is wearing a blue suit — Vice President Harris is providing information that visually impaired people cannot easily glean, thereby making the occasion more inclusive of such people. According to Jasmin Bailey of the American Assocation of People with Disabilities (AAPD), “When I’m in a meeting, I’m always curious: What is the speaker wearing? What do they look like? That’s information sighted people just have. It’s information I would like to have as well.”
The visual self-description followed an announcement of pronouns, another inclusive practice meant to support transgender and non-binary individuals. Announcement of preferred gender pronouns used to be restricted to LGBT conferences, but since the 90s, it has expanded across academia, business and government due to the persistent efforts of activists. Although only reaching a cultural peak in the late 2010s, such efforts to promote LGBT have been going on for decades.
Likewise, visual self-description is “a normal part of meetings and other programming” of the AAPD: it hasn’t yet spread to institutions that aren’t explicitly focused on disability. But that’s only for now. An enormous cultural current has been brewing in the disability space. There is a lot of energy and a great number of activists, lawyers and politicians that have been pioneering forward in the fight for disability inclusivity. It is not unreasonable to predict that visual self-description will become as commonplace as pronouns. After all, both transgender people and visually impaired people are very small minorities, but that’s no reason why institutions won’t employ practices to be inclusive of them.
There is a “disability inclusive” practice that has already become quite widespread: sign language interpretation. By now, a substantial portion of the screen in any political video is taken up by a sign language interpreter.
The ADA has already had a transformative affect on the United States. Every parking lot has disabled parking spots, and buildings are required to have ramps for people with wheelchairs. These much older changes are part of the same cultural and legal history of disability activism. But disability is moving in new and interesting directions, and it is poised to become the central political issue of the 2020s.
It’s useful to compare disability with LGBT, which dominated the 2010s, since the two are in many ways parallel movements. Both are seeking civil rights for a group of people that has apparently been marginalized in the past: LGBT people and disabled people. Both believe they are fighting widespread prejudice from mainstream society: homophobia/transphobia and ableism. Both support an array of practices, seen as harmless, not inconvenient, and inclusive. Both have the general sympathy of the American public and have a strong hold on the aspirations of Gen Z. Both advocate systematic changes in language: bans on old words, and a suite of new words as official replacements, as well as new words for entirely new concepts.
Both the LGBT and disability involve several quite different subcommunities. They are better thought of as large tents that contain groups that see themselves as allies in a common struggle and have shared social and political goals. What was once simply the gay rights movement eventually morphed to gay and lesbian rights, LGB, LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTTIQQ2SA, LGBTQ+, etc. in an effort to be ever more inclusive. Indeed being gay and being trans are quite different things, but that hasn’t stopped these groups from considering themselves both part of the “LGBT community.”
But “disability” is extremely broad, and much bigger. As we have seen, it includes being blind or deaf as well as being in a wheelchair. But these are only physical disabilities, and the ADA includes mental disabilities as well. A condition does not need to be severe or permanent to be a disability. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the government agency which administers the ADA, disability includes the following list of conditions, which is by no means exhaustive: deafness, blindness, an intellectual disability (formerly termed mental retardation), partially or completely missing limbs or mobility impairments requiring the use of a wheelchair, autism, cancer, cerebral palsy, diabetes, epilepsy, ADHD, HIV infection, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, and schizophrenia. All of these are subgroups of the “disabled community.”
Like LGBT, there is a certain nebulous quality to the property of being disabled that allows potentially anyone to identify as such, and this allows the community to rapidly expand. The newest CSPI report points out that identification as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has exploded among Gen Z, mostly in the bisexual category, which has the easiest requirement for admission. In addition, gender is a spectrum, and apparently anyone who is not at either endpoint of the spectrum as 100% male or 100% female can be considered non-binary. The number of new queer identities is proliferating, and these are not defined by any objective characteristics that can be verified by another person. After all, the defining tenet of gender ideology is that gender identity is a completely subjective, interior state that is completely unrelated to biology or any physical marker. Anyone who likes to dress flamboyantly can be queer.
Disability too is seen as a spectrum by disability activists. The blind are simply the most extreme form of being visually impaired, but anyone who has glasses can count themselves part of the tribe.
The definition of “disability” today essentially subsumes mental illness, which, like being queer, is substantially subjective. In fact, it is quite standard for high schoolers (usually from wealthy families) to have a diagnosis of a mental condition like ADHD and so they get more time on exams. Rates of mental illness diagnosis have also been skyrocketing, especially among Gen Z, and LGBT identification correlates with mental illness. There are astonishing statistics on disability identification in Gen Z. Of the first year class at UC Berkeley, 14% are LGBTQ+ and 10% are disabled. These disabled students are part of the Disabled Students Program and get special accomodations for taking exams: if I remember correctly, a DSP student gets 5 hours to take 3 hour final exams.
Disability is a major plank of social justice or “wokeness,” exactly mirroring several patterns we have seen in the past with LGBT. In many ways, the disability movement will have an easier time achieving its aims. Certain Christians may view homosexuality as a sin, but have no ideological opposition to disability rights. Indeed, whatever taboo there is on topics like gender and sexuality does not affect disability. To say you are a LGBT activist may not be socially acceptable (or at least might be somewhat uncomfortable) around a more socially conservative crowd. On the other hand, I cannot imagine anyone having any negative feelings regarding disability activism.
Republicans will go along with the coming disability revolution, or even say, essentially, “Democrats are the real ableists.” There will probably be a veteran-related spin, where conservatives will support disability laws in the name of helping disabled veterans. The haziness of the definition of “disability” will cause any conservative resistance to struggle linguistically in expressing itself, lest it be perceived as anti-disabled or ableist. Conservatives love to think of themselves as the true champions of civil rights, while being oblivious to the Left’s larger goals, as well as the toxic and tyrannical aspects of civil rights law. In the end, we will see a transformation of society occur with little to no political resistance.
In summary, why is disability poised to become the biggest issue of the 2020s? The key factors are:
Disability is clearly growing in the cultural sphere, and seems to be reaching an inflection point. There are continual controversies about “ableism” in pop culture, which has by now almost become a household term.
Elites, who hold the most political power in this country, are especially passionate about disability. Twitter blue checks often self identify as disabled along with listing their pronouns. As the examples at the beginning of this essay indicate, its tendrils now reach into the most prestigious institutions in the country.
Law ensuring disability protections already exists in the form of the ADA and its various offshoots. As Richard Hanania has written about, wokeness is not purely cultural, and in fact relies on a substantial legal apparatus. It is this legal apparatus that makes it hard for any institution to resist wokeness for fear of lawsuit.
There is an industry of lawyers who are making good use of disability law. They are the ones pushing the ball forward by punishing those who refuse to comply with the newest demands of disability activists. Richard Hanania writes:
The number of disability lawsuits, by the way, is skyrocketing as other kinds of civil rights lawsuits have leveled off. There are entire firms that now specialize in extorting small businesses over minor violations.
Finally, the parallels between disability and LGBT are all too familiar. The road forward has already been paved by the LGBT movement, disability has a clear path to follow. If the past has been a useful guide, we know what is coming next.
An interesting read on a similar theme: How to Use Civil Rights Law to End Mask Mandates