Attitudes - about disability - episode 3

Angel 00:02

Welcome to the Attitudes podcast. This podcast is the brainchild of Attitude Foundation and Northcott to chat about attitudes about disability. In 2021, the University of Melbourne published a nationwide survey on Australia's attitudes on disability, which will be the focal point of our season one.

I'm your host, Angel Dixon. I'm a person with disability. I dedicate my time to furthering the inclusion of people with disability. I'm a model and the former CEO of Attitude Foundation. In an effort to bring life to the numbers in the survey, each week I'll be joined by current and former board members and one friend of Attitude Foundation to discuss one of the survey's findings.

This week I'm joined again by Emma Benison because our topic last week was just too rich not to have a part two. And the topic is that 61% of people agree that people make fun of disability.

Angel 01:11

I think the very close ties between self-advocacy and standing up for yourself as a person with disability to abuse is something that needs to be spoken about more often.

I think that whenever a person with disability stands up for themselves in a vulnerable moment because a lot of the time when these kinds of instances happen, there is a power dynamic at play. And I think we need to acknowledge that it's not always safe for people with disability to be their own advocates. And a lot of the time those instances are swept under the rug for that reason.

Emma 01:40

Yep, and if there was one takeaway that I'd like people to get from this conversation, it's that as non-disabled people, the best thing you can do is to learn to be a good ally and to not always assume that a person with disability is going to be in a position to do that self-advocacy.

Emma 02:05

I was just having a conversation actually about this with someone today about the fact that there's often an assumption that those of us who are advocates and like you and I, Angel, who've been doing this for a long time, that we've got it all sown up and that we're always, you know, we've got it all sown up and the people that are newer to this really struggle and we've got it all sown up.

Emma 02:33

I mean, I don't think that could be further from the truth. It's the other way around. Because I think that the, I think there's a huge underestimation and we're just starting to see it now, I think, with the Disability Royal Commission report having been handed down.

Emma 02:51

There's a huge underestimation, I think, about the cumulative trauma that our community is experiencing and has experienced historically and how difficult it makes it to continually sometimes on a daily basis have to keep standing up for ourselves, as you said, in really vulnerable moments.

Emma 03:12

And I think that the more you have to do that and the more you have to do that on behalf of your community, the more challenging it becomes over time. So, I think this notion that those of us who are so-called disabled leaders and advocates that we, you know, we know how to do it and everyone else, you know, is learning, is just wrong.

Angel 03:41

We're the ones that need to pass the baton, we're the ones that want to, we're ready.

Emma 03:47

Yeah, we're tired. We just want to go to sleep.

Angel 03:49

It's funny. I mean, when we first got on this call, you know, we both went, oh, we're tired.

Emma 03:56

And this comes back to the topic I think that, well, I know in my own circumstance, my experiences of abuse, a lot of them have been historical and so they weren't even really within the remit of the Royal Commission, although I did make a submission.

Emma 04:17

But the reason I raised that is because I don't think we've even scratched the surface, I'm sorry to say. And I think that there's still a whole lot of truth telling that that needs to happen. I'm not diminishing the work of the Commission when I say that, but I just think that actually what I'm seeing, and I don't know whether you're experiencing this, but what I'm seeing is that the release of this report and the exposing of what we anecdotally have always known, which is that inclusion in Australia is in a pretty sorry state, I think that's opened a lot of people up in a way that they haven't been opened up before.

Emma 05:05

And I think there's a lot of work to be done in our community to just go through a process of real truth telling. It's also worth probably surfacing the fact that making fun of disability actually can also happen within the community.

Emma 05:23

So we see lots of instances of lateral violence in the community where people with disability actually make fun of or bully other people with disability. And it's not necessarily impairment based, but the point is that sometimes there's a fair bit of judgement that can go on and there are assumptions that can be made and there's lots of fear within the disability community itself.

Emma 05:59

I mean, we're not a homogenous group of people. So, you know, an example of that is that I worked for an employer, my employer was actually a person with disability in an organisation that I worked for in the past.

Emma 06:15

And that was a fantastic thing initially. I'd never worked with a disabled leader before. So it was absolutely fantastic. But unfortunately, over time, the behaviour of this person really deteriorated and, you know, there was some bullying and, you know, some really unexpected behaviour that occurred. And, you know, ultimately, he ended up leaving the organisation and I took over. But, you know, that was incredibly difficult because I think the hurt of that was magnified because he was a person with disability who, you know, was perpetrating bullying against another person with disability.

And, you know, a lot of that was based around the fact that the person felt threatened by me, I think.

Angel 07:22

That's really interesting, Emma. I just, I want to flag something here too because there's an addition to this that I think we could, we could talk about again for a long time, is that I think when we are talking about the nature of inclusion in Australia, and I guess the ecosystem of inclusion in Australia, I have spoken to people with disability, particularly people who have been Paralympians and all that sort of stuff, where they almost discuss a hierarchy of impairment.

Emma 07:53

Totally.

Angel 07:54

Which is quite confronting. And unfortunately, when we talk about the advocates that are in the public eye more often, the people that are noisier in this space, we are talking, you know, it's pretty cookie cutter sometimes.

Angel 08:12

And what lots of people with disability and disability led organisations have been trying to do is to get a more diverse group of people in this space, in the advocacy space to make more noise. But what has happened with that is that there is this almost rivalry within our community because there are almost limited positions for people with disability to be noisy.

Emma 08:42

You know, you're right. And the other thing I think that happens, and this comes back to another of my passions, which is disability leadership, because one of the things I think that happens is that, you know, particularly in the media, if we're talking about people with disability in the media, there is a tendency for the media to go back to the same people all the time.

Like people assume that it's the fault of the people with disability who are constantly in the media. It's not always. It's often the fact that the media tend to just go back to the people that they know because they consider that they're a safe bet, they're a safe pair of hands.

Emma 09:28

And that's really unfortunate because there are thousands of really, really articulate, credentialed people with disability who need the opportunity to be profiled, but we don't see them because it's just easier, you know.

Emma 09:46

And the reason I mentioned leadership is it reminds me of an experience I had once where I applied for a role. And one of the board members was silly enough to actually be honest about why I didn't get it.

Emma 10:03

And he said, look, you were really well qualified, probably overqualified for the role. But look, we just didn't think you were a safe pair of hands, you know, because there was a fair bit of travel involved. And we just didn't think that you'd be up for that. And so we just made the decision not to employ you. And, you know, that's, yeah, no, I still can't believe it happened. And I still can't believe that I reacted to it with such equanimity.

Angel 10:33

You would have been so graceful.

Emma 10:34

I was, but I shouldn't have been, and this is one of the other things. It goes back to what you were saying before about the way that inclusion in Australia has been framed. We've all been taught not to rock the boat, and we've all bought not all of us, but many of us have, unfortunately, and in some cases, this is because of the experience of abuse. I think we have to be real about that. Many of us have discovered, have learned, often from a very young age, that it's safer not to rock the boat. It's safer just to accept that when someone says something like that to you, to just accept it and move on and be graceful.

But we shouldn't. We shouldn't be graceful.

Angel 11:24

It's interesting. I mean, there are so many different perspectives on how to create change, and I did ask this of Emily in our last episode, and so now seems like the right time to do it. So thinking about the statistic that we're talking about, what is your theory of change for us getting beyond that really high number of 61 percent?

Emma 11:51

I think it is absolutely imperative, as I said before, that non-disabled people take on some of the emotional labor. We cannot do it alone. It is absolutely imperative that people who are not disabled take up their positions as strong allies. We need to educate people more effectively on how to do that. You know, we spend an enormous amount of time and money on educating people with disability, because we're apparently the problem on how to advocate, on how to be good leaders.

I mean, God, if I had a dollar for every disability leadership program that's been put out by governments, I'd be rich. But how many leaders with disability have they actually spawned? But we really need to educate people.

Emma 12:48

We need to educate our children from a young age on how to be good allies and how not to walk past that kind of behavior. And we also really need for people with disability to come to an understanding that this is not your fault. This is not your fault. You are not deficient. And, you know, this is about people's fear and ignorance and lack of exposure. It is not a symptom of anything that you've done or failed to do. And I really have to say that because I have seen so much evidence that people with disability really often don't actually believe that.

And that evidence shows up in people's confidence, people's self-esteem, you know, people's mental health. There are so many ways in which that internalized ableism shows up in the world. And so I really think we have to keep reminding each other and ourselves that this is not a deficiency in us that's causing people to make fun of disability. It's a fear-based response.

Angel 14:17

So you mentioned allyship and that we need to increase the understanding of what that is. Can you tell me a bit about what you think that would look like?

Emma 14:32

Well, you know, I think, first of all, we need to teach people about disability in a way that is not, as you said before, you know, the simulated kind of, you know, try out the wheelchair or put on a blindfold.

Emma 14:48

Like we actually need to demonstrate to people, there are so many examples of people with disability who are making extraordinary contributions to society, be that, you know, in employment, as parents, you know, whatever it might be. But we, and we really need to be educating people about those stories, which is of course what Attitude is doing through the work that we do. But we need to do that in a far more, in a far wider sense than anybody has done up to now.

Emma 15:24

And then I think we need to teach people the skills of, I mean, people with disability learn advocacy skills from a young age by necessity. We need to teach those same skills to non-disabled people so that when these sorts of things happen, they can actually stand up and say, no, that's not okay. We need to give them the tools to be able to do that, to say, no, that's not okay. You know, you shouldn't be making fun of that person or that disability or that impairment. So yeah, I think it is about skilling people up.

Angel 15:59

I think it's interesting, when I work with people without disability, particularly at the university, when we're doing research and things like that, and I see people at the start of a, you know, most research is grant-based, so I see people at the start of a project and they're all very hopeful and they think, yeah, disability, I can get on board with supporting, you know, this kind of project, it's going to be great, and then I kind of check in with them halfway through, and all of a sudden they've realised that disability isn't what they thought it was, it's actually, you know, social barriers, and they're everywhere, and what do I do about it? I'm going to go and sit at home, I'm not working anymore, I'm not doing these projects ever again, and they fall in a heap, and my job is to try and get them back up again.

Emma 16:59

It's so interesting that though isn't it? It's like I always say that it is confronting for non-disabled people to be confronted with the reality of the daily experience, life experience of people with disability.

Emma 17:19

But the thing is, they can go home and actually forget about it, right? If they choose to, they might have to, you know, have a gin and tonic or something. But, you know, they can, they can go home and switch off from it. We don't, we don't get that opportunity.

Angel 17:37

I think the one thing that I've discovered, yes, they can do that, and a lot of people do, they feel badly about it, but a lot of people can do that. But what I have found, particularly with the people that I continue to work with, is that when they do come out of that hole, they come out very strong advocates. And it's not because they see people with disability as others. It's actually, they almost see it as a Social Model, and they can start to see that social model everywhere, and they start to see barriers in their own lives, and they're not doing the whole, well, everyone's disabled bit, because that's not good either, but they're finding somewhere in between.

It seems like they find a balance between, well, I also have barriers, so I can have some empathy for the experience.

Emma 18:36

Yeah, that's right. And I think everyone, this is the thing too, I think everyone can think of a time in their life when there's been a barrier, you know, whether you are a parent trying to get a pram up a flight of stairs or, you know, whatever it is, like everyone can have an understanding, a personal understanding of what it feels like to have a barrier put in your way.

Emma 19:04

So, you know, that is, that is absolutely true. And I think people who do become really strong allies, they, they not only do they have an understanding of that, but they also have an understanding or they, they start to recognise that while yes, it is very overwhelming, they do actually have real empowerment to help and to make a difference.

Emma 19:31

Like it's, it's a real opportunity, allyship, I think, if it's, if, if it's done well for people to, to make a difference and have an impact, which, you know, it's great, everyone should do it.

Angel 19:46

There is actually a story that I probably want to bookend this conversation with because we started with parenting and I think I want to finish with parenting. It's not my story. It's actually Catia Malaquias, who is one of our previous board members.

Angel 20:01

It's a story that Catia shared with me a long time ago, and I think it's hilarious. And it's about, I'm sure she won't mind me sharing it, but she got a call one day from her children's school. Catia has three children, one of whom is a person with disability and his two siblings are two very vocal advocates for disability inclusion, as you can imagine, and at school one day the teacher called Catia, I think, and said, you know, like we've had a bit of an incident at school, you're going to have to come in and talk to us.

Anyway, someone in the school yard had been using the word retarded as a put down for another child. And for those who are listening to this and don't know, that is not an acceptable word to be used in that context. That is actually a significant disability slur because that is a word that has been used in diagnoses for people with disability. And so this little girl stood up for her brother and said, F you. You can't say that.

Angel 21:22

And she got in trouble. And so Catia came in and she's talking to whoever it was, the teacher and the teacher saying she can't swear at other children and she's going, you know what? I'd rather that she swore than use a disability slur so you can do with that what you will.

Emma 21:41

You know, that's so interesting because that's actually a really nice place to end on because you know, we started off talking about my daughter having a bad experience, but you're absolutely right that on the upside, both my children are exceptional advocates.

Emma 22:00

They're way better than me at advocacy, like I've learnt so much from them. And not only that, they do have some really close friends who are also exceptional advocates because they've spent so much time in our house and they've gotten to know us and they've gotten past the kind of stereotyping that occurs and they've learnt and you know, it's just it's just normal to all of them.

Emma 22:30

So, you know, there is there is hope. There is hope and we should always end on a hopeful note. Very hopeful here.

Angel 22:41

Thanks for joining us. This has been the Attitudes Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about the survey, visit the University of Melbourne website or head to the Attitude Foundation website for more information on us.

Angel 22:53

This podcast wouldn't have been possible without Matt Field from the Attitude Foundation and Alex Varley from Northcott, hosted by me, Angel Dixon, produced by Lucy Griffin and edited by Simon McCulloch and Evan Munro Smith.