alarajrogers:

candidlyautistic:

ladyautie:

socialjusticewargames:

I saw a post the other day where a disabled person wrote about some sci-fi story where technology had eradicated disabilities. And the OP wrote “So in this utopia, I’m not supposed to exist!?” I couldn’t think of a way to explain to that kind of person that wanting somebody to be able to walk is not the same as wanting that person to stop existing.

It’s more complicated than that. 

I’m autistic. Let’s say that, in the future, every disability was erased. Either I would have been aborted, so that my disabled ass wouldn’t have tainted this “utopia”, or I just wouldn’t have been autistic, which mean that I wouldn’t have been “me”. 

My autism shapes the person that I am. Without it, I would have no idea what kind of person I would be. It wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t “exist”, yeah.

Also, you can create a cool sci-fi story with great and helpful technology for disabled people. No need to erase disability and to be ableist.

Unless the story is explicitly about undermining that utopia (apres The Giver), any author that removes disabled people from a story about a “perfect” world or society is showing their biases. A flawless utopia without diversity says a lot about a person.

I think it would be fair to say no current disabilities both exist and are still defined as disabilities, but there’s new disabilities caused by the technology or culture of the future.

For example, if we have the ability to regrow nerve tissue, then no one would have a spinal fracture that leaves them having to use a wheelchair. But what if the ability to regrow nerve tissue comes with side effects that can be disabling?

And then there’s neurodivergences, like autism and ADHD. What if a combination of assistive technologies and social change causes those things to no longer be defined as disabilities, where the parts that directly impact our ability to do stuff – such as executive dysfunction or being non-verbal – are aided with assistive technologies implanted in the brain, and the parts that don’t – such as stimming – are socially accepted and no one has a problem with it? That isn’t the same thing as “autism doesn’t exist” but it might not be considered a thing people care about enough to point out “some people are autistic” any more than we feel the need to say “some people like spicy food” or “some people are introverts”.

I can’t remember if it was fanfic or professionally published, but I recall a Star Trek story where a Cardassian who had been stunned too many times had suffered nerve damage as a result, and had a disability that doesn’t exist in the real world because we don’t have phasers with stun settings. Not that Star Trek has ever pretended to be a world without disabilities – Christopher Pike and Geordi LaForge both come to mind – but there’s obviously less disability in Star Trek than in the real world, because they can fix a lot more problems than we can. In the Marvel universe, they keep giving Charles Xavier back the ability to walk because it doesn’t make any sense that in a universe where new bodies can be cloned for people he should continue to be unable to walk, so as soon as “new clone body” became a plot point they eliminated their ability to keep someone long-term disabled by spine or leg damage. But they have mutants with disabilites caused by the inability to control their powers, such as Cyclops and Rogue, and those can’t be fixed by cloning someone. 

I do think it’s sloppy worldbuilding to try to say “there’s literally no disability whatsoever” (including in stories where they kill the disabled, because some people will slip through, particularly neurodivergent people who are good at faking normalcy.) Better to have some disabilities that have been cured, others that have much better treatment or assistive technology than today, and new ones we don’t have.