An author’s conflict with internalised ableism

Paralympics coverage; gender and disability in medicine & war-torn Yemen; internalised ableism; and plenty of new data and resources

Hello, Folx, I hope you’ve had a good week! Welcome, new subscribers! I’m Priti Salian, the author of this newsletter. Thanks, as always, for your lovely messages and for sharing the Paralympics coverage from the last issue widely. There is more on the topic again, in my reported essay for Himal Southasian published today, for which I spoke to para-athlete Ekta Bhyan.

Ekta Bhyan told me it is crucial to bring out the backstories of disabled athletes in non-inspirational ways in long features or profiles which may include details about athletes’ disabilities, challenges faced financially, infrastructural failures and lack of assistive devices to excel in sports. Such stories “motivate people like me to do something for themselves,” she said. 

But, when it’s time to focus on her athletic ability, there is no reason to bring in her disability, she emphasised. “I don’t like it when the media publishes the story of my accident and injury along with my victory in a competition,” Bhyan said.

Read an earlier edition of Reframing Disability where I had interviewed journalist Aman Misra for the coverage of the Paralympics. 

Doubted and disrespected: These doctors face a double disadvantage

As part of CNN’s #AsEquals series, my story on the everyday discrimination female doctors with disabilities face was published recently. 

 

Women doctors with disabilities in India are doubted and disrespected. For my story, Dr. Anjani Bala told me that such experiences are common.

Some patients, she said, tell her upfront. Others stare and whisper, or simply walk away to look for a physician with no physical impairment, preferably a man.

Doctors I interviewed feel a constant need to prove themselves. 

“Do you stay with your parents? Who takes care of you? Are you married? Who will take care of you when your parents are gone?” are commonly asked questions in a job interview. 

According to a 2023 policy report by Women in Global Health, 70% of the workforce is women, but they hold only 25% of senior leadership roles in global healthcare.

Lisa Meeks, clinical associate professor at University of Michigan Medical School said: “Biases about women with disabilities in medicine being fragile and having reduced stamina, not being able to take on leadership roles, and that working with them would be harder and more expensive, are the biggest hurdles in their professional and academic growth.”

 

Reporting on this piece was challenging. Many doctors wanted to share their stories, but given the high level of marginalisation of disabled women in India, they feared risking their jobs. I also encountered another obstacle: some women expressed that no matter what I wrote, they didn’t believe it would make a difference. This only reinforced my belief that, as a system, we are failing these doctors and other women with disabilities in a big way.

Have you done anything for doctors with disabilities in your region? Or are you a woman with a disability who wants to share a story? Reply to this email and let’s chat!

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Yemen was already a hard place to raise an autistic daughter. Then war started

Another story from the series that hit hard was Haitham Alqaoud’s piece from war-torn Yemen. Amid a humanitarian crisis, a broken healthcare system is unable to support neurodiverse children. The story demonstrates how autistic women and girls face discrimination in a country that ranks the lowest in gender equality.

“While autistic people of both genders are subjected to abuse based on the belief their condition is caused by an evil spirit, “women are more prone to such treatment as a result of fear of being ‘loved by a djinn,’ and the possibility of her tarnishing her family’s reputation, or bringing them shame by her actions.”

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Tarini Mohan, a native of New Delhi, and a friend of Reframing Disability, works as a manager with a focus on disability inclusion at 9.9 Education, a higher education institution building firm.

She studied at Wellesley College in the United States and worked on Wall Street for two years. Disillusioned by corporate life, she transitioned to working in the development sector in Kampala, Uganda. There, Tarini faced a life-altering event when she sustained a traumatic brain injury in a motorcycle accident. 

Despite this setback and the three-month coma that followed, Tarini persevered and earned her MBA from the Yale School of Management in 2020, six years after she had originally planned. Her literary memoir, chronicling her journey of recovery, with an emphasis on the power of community, will be published by Juggernaut Books in early 2025.

Recently, in her newsletter, Tarini wrote about discovering internalised ableism while revisiting her manuscript. She very kindly agreed to share it with the readers of Reframing Disability. Thank you, Tarini!

How My Memoir Exposed My Deepest Biases

Internalised ableism takes root when ableist beliefs creep into the minds of people with disabilities, leading to self-discrimination. It’s the notion that disability is something negative and shameful–something to be hidden or erased. While I can’t conceal many of my disabilities, even if I wanted to, in reviewing my memoir, I realised that during my first year in business school; I had felt compelled to justify needing more support than my non-disabled peers. 

A Counterintuitive Revelation

Crafting my memoir illuminated a counterintuitive truth: I’d spent fourteen years in the development sector, but the word ‘disability’ was a ghost I’d danced around–an altogether negative subject. I was convinced working or even volunteering on disability issues would pigeonhole me in a narrative of endless struggle. Like a tightrope walker, I’d balanced on the edge of vulnerability, still caught in society’s conditioning that viewed disability as a negative concept–a burden rather than a facet of human experience.

I believed that disability work was somehow limiting and undesirable–a mindset that revealed just how deeply entrenched I had internalised ableism. Living with multiple disabilities myself, I was all too aware of the unwieldy challenges faced by even privileged individuals with disabilities, yet I couldn’t begin to imagine the daily struggles of underprivileged people with disabilities. 

I questioned why people with disabilities should be confined to working on disability issues. While there’s no denying that no one should be forced into a field against their will, it’s a sobering reality that disability rights remain one of the last frontiers in the broader human development agenda. 

The Struggle for Empathy

Despite progress in many areas of social justice, the rights of individuals with disabilities are frequently overlooked, leading to discrimination and othering. On more than one occasion in my previous life, I must admit having sighed out loud when a wheelchair user would board a New York City bus I was on. After all, I was in a tearing hurry and resented the delay caused by the necessary securing of the wheelchair. I prided myself on being a busy New Yorker, blissfully unaware of my lack of empathy for those with disabilities.

Through the process of writing my memoir, I found clarity in my question: why should people with disabilities work on disability issues? The answer is simple. Those who experience disability or have loved ones who do are often the best equipped to advocate for change. We readily empathise with individuals facing poverty and at least in the developing world, are just beginning to empathise with those in the LGBTQ community, yet society has conditioned us to believe that people with disabilities lack agency and require fixing.

A Shift in Perspective

It’s only natural that I once viewed wheelchair users as lacking something that those without disabilities possess. Beyond the lack of mobility, there’s a more subtle cause at play here too. The absence of accessible spaces reinforces that people with disabilities aren’t equal to those without. After all, individuals with disabilities are invisible. This was more likely to be true in the United States before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 than it is today. 

A pivotal moment during my nerve-wracking job-hunting process came when I spoke with an executive from Microsoft’s Inclusive Design team. What made the difference was that she didn’t push back my assertion that I didn’t want to make disability my entire identity; instead, she encouraged me to reflect on why I felt that way. She could have taken offence at me speaking about disability with such disdain, but she didn’t.

While rereading my manuscript later on, quite possibly for the hundredth time, I came across the chapter in which I discovered, in my first year of business school, the standard practice of seeking official, personal tutoring from classmates who excelled in the subject. I remember feeling a wave of relief washing over me as I realised I was not alone in seeking the help of peer tutors. Yet, I had prided myself on “pushing through” my disability, viewing it as my strength. On one hand, I glowed with pride, receiving praise for my resilience, while on the other, the thought of actually needing help made me feel like a grape withering into a raisin–diminished and less capable. It took me four entire years after graduating to identify this for what it was–internalised ableism.

I Can and I Will

Dismissing help or accommodations when they are necessary is neither a sign of incapacity nor strength–it is a harmful lie that leads to burnout and mental anguish. Worse still, the refusal to ask for or accept help perpetuates the stereotype that disabled people are “strong” or “inspiring.” Just so you know, I bristle whenever someone calls me an “inspiration.”

I sat up straighter, resolved to confront and accept this unwelcome internalised ableism. Acknowledging its existence was the first step toward change. Gradually, I committed to seeking work in a disability-related field that genuinely appealed to me. Slowly but surely, I’ve come to view disability not as a negative term but as a natural and valuable part of the human experience.

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Resources

Disability Equality in the Media

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has released a guide for journalists to cover disability better. The accompanying 10-episode video masterclass hosted by British TV presenter and disability rights advocate, Sophie Morgan, is a quick and comprehensive series looking into disability equality and representation in the media. The 102-page manual covers a lot of ground and should be used by newsrooms, though I was disappointed that there was no mention of resources or references from India, the most populous country with one of the largest populations of disabled people. (Of course, we lack accurate data on the population of persons with disabilities to verify that).

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Violence against women with disabilities

Figures from the British Transport Police show the number of crimes against women and girls has risen to 11,357 in 2024 from 7,561 in 2021. The number of sexual offences rose by 10% over the same period, whilst sexual harassment reports doubled to 1,908, with disabled women and girls at a higher risk.

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A Guide for Reporting on How Young Disabled and Chronically Ill People Use Online Communities

I love journalist Julia Métraux’s work, a lot of which is related to disability. For her Solutions Journalism Network’s HEAL project, Julia looked into an important topic - how online communities and programs are contributing to the emotional well-being of young people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. 

In addition to reporting three stories for this project, she also created a guide for other journalists, after surveying 47 disabled/chronically ill journalists and advocates. The guide has points to keep in mind when reporting on how young chronically ill and disabled people interact with online communities. 

One important thing I learned from Julia’s report was that people tend to view online communities negatively in comparison to IRL (In Real Life) ones. Julia’s interviewee, Kara Ayers, PhD, said:

“Online communities for people with disabilities have redefined what it means to live with a rare condition. I’ve built a support system that has helped me through a number of triumphs and challenges. Online communities have facilitated opportunities to think about disability and what it means to me, forging my identity and, in my case, a career.” 

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Last but not least, a guide to designing an inclusive museum using a participatory design approach. 

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That’s all for today, folx! Thank you for reading this issue of Reframing Disability! Keep writing to share your thoughts. Your messages warm my heart and I always write back. Let’s also connect on LinkedIn and Twitter!

Warmly,

Priti