Why it’s a problem: The left’s lack of solidarity with disabled people has been discussed many times in the disability community, as has the pervasive ableism in liberal circles. This is why it’s disappointing but not surprising to see that in an op-ed today in The Nation describing Democrats’ complicity in the “escalating… war of extermination against trans people,” Jack Mirkinson writes that conservatives “want the public to see [trans people] as enemies of the state—as mentally ill savages pulling the country into the moral abyss.”

In “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History,” the disability scholar Douglas C. Baynton described the ableist impulse of political actors and activists throughout history to elevate one marginalized group’s status by disassociating their identity from disability while simultaneously legitimizing the denigration and dehumanization of disabled people. Baynton wrote, “disability figured prominently not just in arguments for the inequality of women and minorities but also in arguments against those inequalities. Such arguments took the form of vigorous denials that the groups in question actually had these disabilities; they were not disabled, the argument went, and therefore were not proper subjects for discrimination. Rarely have oppressed groups denied that disability is an adequate justification for social and political inequality. Thus, while disabled people can be considered one of the minority groups historically assigned inferior status and subjected to discrimination, disability has functioned for all such groups as a sign of and justification for inferiority.”

Baynton’s entire essay is worth reading, but here I will just add Baynton’s conclusion: “This common strategy for attaining equal rights, which seeks to distance one’s own group from imputations of disability and therefore tacitly accepts the idea that disability is a legitimate reason for inequality, is perhaps one of the factors responsible for making discrimination against people with disabilities so persistent and the struggle for disability rights so difficult.”

It’s in this context of legitimizing disability as a marker for discrimination that Jack Mirkinson’s statement is so egregious. When Mirkinson refers to “mentally ill savages,” he is not merely repudiating any associations between the trans community and mental illness, he is asserting that mental illness is akin to savagery. When Mirkinson writes that “Right-wing commentators are pushing the idea that trans people are ‘prone to violence’ and responsible for a huge proportion of mass shootings,” it is significant and telling that Mirkinson doesn’t mention that people on both the right and the left have far more frequently scapegoated people experiencing mental illness for violence in order to score cheap political points. Mirkinson correctly avows that it is wrong to characterize trans people as violent, but he simultaneously equates other marginalized people to monsters and savages. Mirkinson correctly pushes back on Ronny Jackson’s horrifying suggestion to institutionalize trans people “en masse,” but he has been completely silent on both Republican and Democratic rhetoric calling for the institutionalization and extermination of unhoused people. While Mirkinson is absolutely correct to call out Democrats for throwing trans people under the bus, his characterization of people experiencing mental illness as savages must also be called out for the harmful, ableist, and racist rhetoric that it is.

The history of LGBTQ+ activism and the community’s successful campaign to remove “homosexuality” from the DSM has been extensively documented and often hailed, problematically, as good activism. Autism advocates, as well, have correctly noted that autism is a natural part of human diversity, rather than a disorder in need of a cure. But rather than cultivating solidarity with other marginalized groups, these groups, often led by white people, have often thrown other marginalized communities under the bus by playing the politics of respectability. These groups have rightly pushed back on medicalization of their identities, including coercive and dangerous treatments like ECT and ABA, while often legitimizing or being silent on the medicalization, pathologization, and coercive treatment of other communities, including psychiatric survivors. To our detriment, we are too often willing to play politics’ zero-sum game of sacrificing the rights of the most marginalized groups for our own self-interests.

Source: The Nation