Discrimination is not always obvious. Although they may go unnoticed or seem harmless, there are phrases and actions that reveal deep-rooted prejudices. The term ‘micromachismos’ is used to make visible subtle forms of sexism, such as being told ‘you missed the rice’ or that the bank addresses only him. ‘Microracisms’ refer to forms of daily discrimination against people of color, such as being asked ‘where are you from?’ and assuming that a person is a foreigner just because of their skin colour. Can we talk about ‘microcapacitismos’ to refer to everyday forms of discrimination against people with diversity?
“Ableness is the way in which the structural system that values ??certain functions differently is called. It values ??some while devaluing others, so that the expected body is the one that is always capable and productive”, explains the sociologist and anthropologist Andrea García-Santesmases, author of The Desired Body. The pending conversation between feminism and anticapacitismo (Kaótica Libros). For her, “microcapacitismo is a term that can work to talk about those daily, normalized and inconspicuous expressions that, although they do not amount to something that can be considered an aggression or hate crime, end up generating a perpetuation and introspection of inequality”.
“The ‘microcapacitismos’ are ‘micro’, but in the end they act like heavy metals, by accumulation. The weight of those words or looks ends up being overwhelming”, explains Antonio Centeno, founding activist of the Office for Independent Living in Barcelona, ??and adds: “in the end, you have to decide which battles you fight and which ones you let go. If you don’t say anything, nothing changes. But if you say, it exhausts you. Also, sometimes the other party doesn’t even understand it.”
“Unlike what happens with machismo, which is much more deconstructed and worked on culturally, ableism is very naturalized. With which, maybe you get angry, spend your energy, and it is useless because the only thing that the other person interprets is that other cliché that you are bitter because you can’t stand your life as a disabled person. They think that what you are asking of them is political correctness”, reflects Centeno. For him, “there are some mirrors that people don’t want to look into. It is difficult for people to understand that they are discriminating”.
“I think that these ‘microcapacitismos’ come from bigger problems, the lack of education is one of them. At school they teach us many things but not how to treat different people. And people don’t know,” says Mario Salas, 33. What are those ‘microcapacitismos’ that people with diversity face on a day-to-day basis?
“A whole group of people is homogenized based on a personal characteristic, as if all people with a wheelchair were the same”, says Antonio Centeno. For him, many of the labels used to refer to people with functional diversity are a problem. “The disabled or disabled thing still works a lot. The official term to refer to us is that of ‘people with disabilities’, which is very capable, because it defines our reality precisely based on the ability to do certain things”, Centeno indicates, and points out: “What is the scale? Because on the one hand I have a document that says that I am 100% disabled and on the other a paper that accredits me as a graduate in mathematics”.
“Champion, hero, machine, king… they are all superlatives that are used a lot. The disabled body is an object of inspiration, but also of commiseration, of pity. It moves you and encourages you. There are these stories of heroism and self-improvement, which means that we don’t have everyday images where people can see themselves represented or feel identified”, indicates the sociologist and anthropologist Andrea García-Santesmases, and adds: “This type of representation perpetuates otherness, that is, the idea that these people are essentially different from us, from ‘trained’ people”.
“Champion of what? Where am I competing? It is very paternalistic”, says Antonio Centeno and explains: “Although we are between 10 or 15% of the population, the majority is segregated in a parallel universe, which are schools and special transport, the special work center, the day or night center, the residence, etc. When you don’t know people with functional diversity, the representation that you build of them is based on culture, art and the media, where we are practically invisible and, if we appear, it is in a very stereotyped and polarized way. It’s one extreme or the other: either the absolute bastard or what we call ‘inspirational porn’. This in the end what it achieves is dehumanizing. Because what gives you a human texture is a much more dense and realistic story.
“That duality that you are either a champion or a poor thing is a cliché. People who come across you dancing at a party and say: ‘How do you do it?’ or ‘Oh, how cool, you’re partying’”, says the actor and dancer Íñigo Martínez, author of A Life Chimera, and adds: “There is this look that your life is the worst for being in a chair, that you are sick all the time, sick. There are traffic campaigns that warn: “Don’t stay in a wheelchair”, as if it were a tragedy. For me, the chair is a tool that allows me to move around the world”. Last year, Aspaym and the DGT carried out a campaign in León with the slogan ‘Don’t run, don’t drink, don’t change wheels’.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m carrying a sign that says ‘Help me! Many people see you and immediately tell you: ‘I help you!’. Without asking you, they move your chair or call the elevator for you. Is agressive. They want to give you a hand, but what they really do is replace your action. They treat you like a child. Why are you getting ahead? If I need something, I’ll ask you for it”, explains Íñigo Martínez.
“There are two sides of the coin, people for whom I am invisible or do not respect me, or those who treat me as if I were five years old”, says Mario Salas for his part and adds: “One of the things that annoys me the most and that happens to me often is that when I go to take the subway elevator and it is full, I have to get angry so that they leave me space”.
Marisa Martínez (34) has encountered this type of attitude when going to a primary care center. “I explained that I am on the autism spectrum and that medical centers are a challenge for me. Due to the COVID protocol, they made me enter the office alone. I was very bad, crying, ”she indicates. “Well, it won’t be that bad,” a nurse replied.
“There are both extremes. People who treat you like you’re overreacting, who tell you that you should react more age appropriately or take a walk and it’ll go away. Even if it’s to try to cheer you up, this invalidates and takes away the weight of what’s happening to you”, explains Marisa Martinez and adds: “Then there are those who talk to you as if you were four years old and all you need to do is give you a little balloon. That is not what we need, but empathy, humanity and respect”.
An example of this is your dentist. “Even though I’m far away, I always take care of her. When she had to treat a cavity, I explained to her that she was autistic, that the situation scared me, and I began to cry. She adapted. She was not ableist, she was understanding. She spoke to me normal and not like a little girl. She explained and showed me all the material that she was going to use. While she was taking care of me, I was able to pick up a sensory toy to release anxiety and not move my legs, ”she says.
Mireia Ferri García, 29, has intellectual diversity and is one of the philosophy professors at the School of Free Thought in Valencia. She still remembers the time five years ago when her mother and her aunt accompanied her to the hospital. “My aunt asked the doctor to let her into the office and to tell her everything. She told him that I am a girl with a disability and that I don’t know anything. I was 24 years old, ”she explains and adds:“ I got angry with her. I told him: ‘I do understand things.
“This type of continuous assumptions that the person will not understand, will not be able to explain themselves, or that they will not remember things is very recurrent,” says the sociologist and anthropologist Andrea García-Santesmases.
“When you go with someone ‘capable’ to buy something, for example, the person who attends you automatically goes to that other person who goes with you, not to you,” says Antonio Centeno. Íñigo Martínez agrees: “They always go to the other person. You go to a restaurant to eat and they ask your companion: ‘Where is he going?’, ‘He sits in the chair?’. Ask me!”.
That is the question that a doctor recently asked Mario Salas during a medical visit. “I answered yes and he told me: ‘But how can it be? It’s impossible. Don’t friends or family or social services help you?’ I told him no, but I almost replied that my dog ??and my rabbit help me open the drawers, because I am so useless that I don’t know how to open them”, says Salas.
The ‘Do you live alone?’ is a question that Íñigo Martínez also came across many times. “It’s like being asked: who takes care of you? It doesn’t fit them that we are not 100% dependent. They assume you can’t fend for yourself. I love being autonomous. I have mobility, I can cook, I can do things. In a different way than the regulations, with other times, but I can”, indicates Martínez and adds: “It is an underestimation and a brutal ableism”.
When Mireia Ferri García decided to go live with her boyfriend, who also has intellectual diversity, their families did not support them. “They said that we were not capable of fending for ourselves and that we would not last long,” she explains, adding: “At first it made me feel bad but then I said: ‘Let them think what they want. We do our best and that’s it.’”
“It has happened to me from asking for the ramp on the bus and that they did not put it when opening the doors. ‘Ramp, please’, I demanded. The answer was: ‘Wait for the people to come out.’ People… And what category am I in?’” Antonio Centeno asks himself. More than once they have referred to it as ‘the chair’.
In public toilets -says Centeno-, people with functional diversity seem to be beyond gender. “There are men, women and wheelchairs, who have no gender, they are like the third sex,” he says and adds: “This is also part of the desexualization or asexualization of people with functional diversity.”
“It is taken for granted that the person who accompanies is the sister, the caregiver… it is not thought that there can be a loving relationship, but rather it is always assumed that it is one of care, because that body is only seen as essentially dependent,” explains Andrea García-Santesmases.
“It has happened to me from giving me a kiss on the lips and still thinking that the other person was my sister. Automatically, it is assumed that she is a caregiver or a family member who accompanies you, ”says Antonio Centeno and adds:“ Now, with my daughters, it begins to happen to me that they don’t know how to situate that image either. She notices it in her eyes. They don’t quite understand if I’m her uncle or who. My neighbor has come to ask me if they were my daughters”.
“Whenever I have gone hand in hand with a couple, the suspicion in their eyes is noticeable… it will be my sister, a monitor or a sex worker. It is assumed that I can only bond emotionally and sexually with people with diversity”, says Íñigo Martínez and adds: “There is this prejudice that people with sexual diversity are asexual. When we talk about sex it’s weird. At a party, they have even asked me how I was able to fuck. Because of course, who is going to want to fuck with me?
“It has happened to me from being with my mother and having a lady say to her: ‘Oh, how handsome your son is. Looking at her in bewilderment at her comment, she immediately clarified: ‘handsome face, eh’. This has happened to me several times, “says Antonio Centeno and adds:” The ‘handsome face’ thing is as if he was trying to make it clear that he is not making fun of you. He understands that you are not handsome, but hey, bit by bit, well yes.
On a romantic level, Antonio Centeno has also come across the phrase: “It’s just that I don’t see the chair, I see the person.” “If you don’t see the chair, you’re going to hit yourself hard, because it’s there and it’s a very important part of who I am and how I am. It is this denial of your condition as the only way to be able to welcome you and to justify that he likes you ”, he says.
“Sometimes when you explain to a person that you are autistic and you ask if they can explain a joke to you, for example, they say things like ‘Oh, but you don’t look like it, you wear it very well, you look very functional,’” explains Marisa Martinez and adds: “I may say it as a compliment and with all the good intentions, but that is capable. It is as if I were saying to you: ‘oh well, you seem intelligent’. When they tell me this, I get stuck, I get self-conscious.
Another expression that Marisa Martinez often comes across is that of the type: “I am also a bit autistic, because parties are also hard for me and sometimes I don’t want to talk to people”, or “I am also a bit OCD”. She is blunt: “Just because you like to see straight pictures doesn’t mean you’re a little OCD. People with OCD suffer a lot, they have compulsions that respond to rituals. They feel that if they don’t, serious things will happen. This is also part of invalidating and underestimating what happens to us ”, she assures.
The morbidity is another of the things that Antonio Centeno encounters on a day-to-day basis. “There are people who ask you, without knowing you at all: what happened to you? This is a classic. That irrepressible morbidity that makes people feel authorized to get into your life, ”says Centeno.
“The problem that you arrive at a place and that there is no ramp, is not only that at that moment you cannot pass. There is a deeper symbolic question”, Andrea García-Santesmases explains about this and adds: “The lack of accessibility tells you what bodies and functions are expected and welcome. This exclusion is internalized by people with diversity”.
“Many times I have internalized ableism. Once I had to travel alone to Palma de Mallorca to attend a conference. Airports make me very nervous and I don’t take it well. The girl who invited me managed the escort service offered by Aena. They help you do everything and you save time and noise. It had never occurred to me to ask for it before”, explains Marisa.
“In many restaurants, they make you go through where they take out the garbage and this seems accessible to them,” explains Centeno and adds: “It is also very common for them to reserve the ‘quiet table’ for you. You arrive and realize that they have put you at the end, well away from the rest, in the last corner of the restaurant and they tell you: ‘We have put this table for you so that you can be calm.
Another thing that he often finds in shops is that there are stairs and not a ramp, and they tell him: “Calm down, I’ll help you up.” “They are very happy to be able to help you. I don’t want you to help me, I want to be able to manage myself with the same autonomy as anyone else”, says Centeno.
“We must make it visible that we are all the same people and at the same time different, and that the same opportunities must be given to everyone”, says Mireia Ferri García.
