'Do Faster Win More': A Response

Adapted from my oral response at a panel discussion of Jordan Baseman’s short film ‘Do Faster Win More’, one of six commissions made by artists responding to heritage in the national Meeting Point programme, developed by Arts&Heritage and inspired by the history of the National Paralympic Heritage Trust.

Listening to Lora’s experiences with success and failure, a topic that is universal to all of humanity, regardless of ability, made me think about the times in my life where I’ve felt similarly. So if you’ll allow me to be self-indulgent for a while, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about my own relationship to success and failure and how I related that and my reaction to this film. It’s a complicated relationship, and one that, looking back, I think is very much rooted in my disability.

Like many of us, I have my own experiences of failure that I am still hesitant to recall. If I tried to do something and I couldn’t, or I found it hard to stick with something because of my own limitations, I’d quit because of a sense of frustration rather than dealing with disappointment. Now this is something I’ve done for years - piano lessons, singing lessons, even my own PhD - and I gained a reputation in my family for being a “quitter”. I grew very sensitive to when I might be perceived as quitting, to the point where I’d stick with it even if it was hurting me, even if the best thing to do would be to stop. But in my mind I couldn’t, because then I would have failed.

Looking back I can understand that a lot of the ‘quitting’ was my frustration at not being able to do things that my brain could theoretically do but my body couldn’t. It’s taken a long time for me to recognise that my own behaviours - comparing myself to others, feeling like I have something to prove, trying to do things perfectly to prove how capable I am and combat any judgement I thought I faced - are a reaction to the fact that I’ve internalised a perception of disability, one that society has reinforced in me, explicitly and implicitly, since I was young.

As a young person, I grew up in an able-bodied world. I think it’s a testament to both the way I was raised by my family, and the friends that I chose to surround myself with, that I didn’t often think of myself as being 'different'. Everyone around me treated me the same as the next person; they saw the person behind the disability, rather than just the condition.

At the same time, growing up disabled in an able-bodied world meant not having any point of reference for what it meant to be “a person with a disability”. Despite being so (for lack of a better word) visually obvious, physical disabilities were rarely represented in society, and when they were it seemed like the same stereotypes being perpetuated - the helpless victims on one side of the scale, and the heroic person overcoming tragedy on the other.

For a very long time I didn’t see myself reflected in society, nor did I have anyone, in my immediate circle or in the public eye, that I could look up to as an exemplary figure to which I could mould myself and my experiences. And this lack of representation formed the basis of my self-perception and value. In my mind’s eye, I couldn’t understand seeing myself as being disabled. (To some extent I think I still struggle with the dissonance and discomfort I feel seeing that difference in the mirror.)

I didn’t understand the systemic and social barriers that were faced by other people with disabilities - call it ignorance, call it childhood naivety, call it living in my own bubble. I didn’t see myself any differently, nor did I want to be treated any differently. I thought of myself as a regular person living a regular life.

Maybe it was because I had grown up seeing the supposedly “normal” life experiences of disabled people being considered either not good enough, or conversely extraordinary, almost revolutionary, because able-bodied people were conditioned by society to expect less of them. And I suppose, in a way, this had begun to condition me as well.

It’s only when I turned 18 and left that protective bubble of my family, friends and school, that the realisation that I was different hit me like a brick wall. I noticed the number of physical and societal barriers to access that I was starting to face. I noticed the countless microaggressions, inappropriate comments and offensive behaviour that went unchecked. The tendencies I had towards academic overachievement increased, in part to prove the people that underestimated me wrong.

Over time I began the often painful process of rebuilding my own self-image and confidence, building my own resilience, but that still seemed so difficult when society's perceptions of me hadn't really shifted much further forward. By this point, I had already developed certain expectations of myself that largely revolved around comparing myself to my (mostly) able-bodied peers. Even though academically I was overachieving, outside of the classroom I wanted to have the same experiences as them, in the same way as them, at the same time as them - that was my dream, that was my idea of success. So when I wasn’t able to have these same experiences, when I wasn’t able to do what everyone else my age was doing? Well, I felt like a failure.

Now, I’m not saying that my experiences come anywhere close to the experiences of competing for Paralympic medals, far from it. But this idea that Lora spoke about of feeling the need to be ‘the best’ at her sport resonated with me. When the way to get acknowledgement is to be seen by society as being “the best” at it, to “do faster” and “win more”, it’s hardly surprising that we as disabled people begin to internalise the ableism that surrounds us.

I suppose this is why, over the years I’ve come to realise that my feelings for the Paralympics are complicated and conflicted.

On one hand (and my inner academic and PhD researcher side is coming out here), we have to recognise that the Paralympics reflect a hierarchy of disability, “a social construct that makes certain kinds of disabilities more acceptable than others”. A hierarchy deeply embedded in society in which bodies closer to perceived ‘norms’ of functionality and ability are deemed more ‘palatable’ and culturally accepted.

As Lora talks about in the film, athletes of all abilities train with the mindset of trying to be the best of the best; it’s an amazing and admirable thing to aspire to. But we must remember that Paralympians like Lora are not a monolith, and cannot be seen as being representative of all disabled people. The issue comes when these people, this small subset of the population of disabled people, are taken by society as the only “acceptable disabled people” - because when only “acceptable disabled people” are given this platform, it sends a message to society that only some disabilities are successful and worth celebrating.

And when success is predicated on our ability to approach a ‘norm’ that we may never be able to reach — what does that mean for the people whose ability falls below that arbitrary threshold?

Now, this isn’t an issue that can be blamed on the Paralympics themselves, but rather with the way that their successes and achievements are framed and co-opted by the media and by an ableist society, without nuance. The disabled community is not a homogenous group, and we must be able to talk about disability in its many shades, not simply the ones that are able to perform at ‘their best’.

Having said all of that, there is a part of me that is grateful for the Paralympics personally, not for its sporting achievements, but rather for the way it enabled me to undo some of my own internalised ableism, to challenge some of those negative feelings of disability that I had projected onto myself.

London 2012 and the Paralympic Games was a big personal seismic moment of change, that moment that completely shattered my own ideas of disability. Walking into each venue and seeing these events in person, was the first time that I found myself in a place surrounded with people like me - people with disabilities. I could walk around and not feel like people were staring at the way I was walking, or the fact that sometimes I used a wheelchair. I could just be me. And here we weren't being sidelined, and we weren't just being tolerated. We were celebrated.

While in hindsight I recognise the media coverage of the Paralympics in London was at times fairly problematic, I appreciated the fact that it gave me a new mindset to consider disability, especially my own. I was excited that other people seemed so much more welcoming of disability, that I could be more understanding of my own disability, that I was more able to talk about my disability in public. And that feeling of acceptance, of a sense of belonging that I'd never really felt before, is something that will always stay with me.