The Disabled Everyman

Is there a Disabled everyman?

When I think of the ‘Disabled community’ my thoughts turn to the internet. Shadowy notions of people, with impairments and therefore disabilities, hiding behind usernames. I know some by their tales of the daily gruel of well-meaning fools asking foolish questions; some by their hatred of non-disabled actors playing Disabled roles and others by their over-chipper surreal take on their life as a Disabled person. We thrash out issues which concern us with an opt-in system, picking and choosing the internet topic headings of interest. Often the debate reverts back to who we are and how we are defined by society.

In fact to hear Disabled people you would think we all spent a hour every morning staring in the mirror trying to remember what life was connected to the face we see before us.

My Disabled friends, who over-dominate my social circle like hairdressing salons on a high street of a middle class area, I don’t see as ‘The Community’. Of course they are members, but there is something about the concept of a community that oddly makes you conceptually exclude anybody you know very well.

Disabled people are united under the social model by the black cloud of non-disabled oppression. However, with a food hall full of impairments out there it is hard for us as a group to be generalised. In fact it is hard-wired into us as a community not to be clumped together because it is seen as echoing institutions of the wider world.

If I was into physics I would now make an analogy about equal forces pulling us in opposite directions, but I’m not into physics. However, the pressure to be individuals does conflict with the pressure to put on an united front.

So what for the Disabled everyman?

‘The everyman character, however, is written so that the reader or audience can imagine himself or herself in the same situation without having to possess knowledge, skills, and abilities outside his or her everyday experience. Such characters react realistically in situations that are often taken for granted with traditional heroes’ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Maybe we as Disabled people are still too freaky / exotic to be considered to be the everyman yet by the outside world. Equally maybe our desire to live our lives on our own terms stops us accepting the notion of an everyman within the Disabled community.