IT'S TRUE what disabled people say, you're either invisible or treated like a child. After a serious accident in which I broke my back and smashed my ankle, I spent several months in a wheelchair, before learning to walk again. In the process I got a unique insight into the discrimination people with disabilities suffer, as well as the problems faced by women in wheelchairs.
First there's the general problem of access - it's impossible to use public transport, many public buildings are inaccessible unless you have at least two strong people to yank you and the chair up steps, and the pavements and roads in London are insuch a state of disrepair that getting around under your own steam in well nigh impossible. Apart from such logistical problems, the attitude of other people to you is quite extraordinary.
Having spent five months in a sheltered hospital environment going out was a shock. The most common response is that you're not there - people glance at you, notice you're disabled and look quickly away.
Whether this is because they are frightened of what they might see on closer inspection, or just embarrassed, the effect is to make you feel invisible. Given that women in our society get used to being looked at, this has a particularly negative effect on a disabled woman.
The other, even more devastating response from strangers, is to greet you, either smiling or remarking on something. This has the effect of making you feel like a child - the only other known recipients of such behaviour in the South East, where strangers avoid all eye contact, let alone talk to each other!
Does she take sugar?
This is further reinforced by the tone of voice which at its worst assumes that someone who has lost the use of her legs is probably incapable of intellectual activity of any sort - the 'dóes she take sugar 'syndrome.
But there are other more subtle problems which women who are in any way incapacitated have to deal with. These I felt most strongly while in hospital in Stoke Mandeville. About two thirds of the patients in thespinal injuries centre were young men, mostly injured a car and motor bike accidents.
Because most of the care was carried out by women -nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists - a relationship with (hetero)sexual overtones was set tip between male patients and carers - a relationship which excluded the women patients.
And because woren in our society are expected to play the role of carer, becoming incapable of caring because of being in a wheelchair, removes the central function society prepares us for. This had a disastrous effect on some women patients, who became very depressed.
All this was reinforced by a complete lack of positive visual images of female paraplegics. Although the hospital was very well designed, built and equipped, nowhere were there any picture of women in wheelchairs. Instead we were surrounded by paintings of athletic young men throwing the javelin, playing basketball and other sports - stereotypes which undermine older men as well as I am walking on two sticks now and people's reactions are less extreme, though I still get more strangers talking to me than would an able-bodied person. Upright again people think I have regained my mental capacities, and get treated with exaggerated courtesy, with people rushing to open doors for me although I can do it myself - to say nothing of the friend I'm with who could easily do it for me.
No longer in a wheelchair the experience has made me very sensitive to the logistical and psychological effects of disabilities nearly all of which could be removed by greater social awareness and relatively small sums of money. cerowicz defence. walesa's suppon was Dulm aunno nis pendo as a veber: since ne became part of the government, disillusion is growing