Disabled Journalist Thinks It’s Bad to Help Disabled People

Amy already told you all about YouTuber MrBeast’s incredible feat of generosity, in which he paid for A THOUSAND blind people to get vision-correcting surgery. Naturally, something that wonderful had to piss SOMEONE off, and lots of butthurt liberals answered the call on Twitter.

But one perpetually disgruntled pissant went further than penning a mere tweet or two. Steven Aquino, a self-proclaimed journalist, was so disgusted by this example of charity and selflessness that he wrote a whole article about why MrBeast is particularly naughty.

“In the broadest lens, the biggest problem with wanting to ‘cure’ blindness is that it reinforces a moral superiority of sorts by those without disabilities over those who are disabled. Although not confronted nearly as often as racism and sexism, systemic ableism is pervasive through all parts of society. The fact of the matter is that the majority of abled people view disability as a failure of the human condition; as such, people with disabilities should be mourned and pitied. More pointedly, as MrBeast stated in his video’s thumbnail, disabilities should be eradicated — cured.”

Isn’t it so weird that the first– often only– people to bring up dehumanization based on innate characteristics are the ones who claim to be the heroes? I don’t know about you, but Aquino is the first person I’ve heard to float the idea that people with disabilities are morally inferior since literal Nazis. Sure, he brought it up in the context of it being the WRONG thing to think, but it’s still weird considering the rest of us in Normal People World haven’t even had that idea occur to us because we’re too busy, I dunno, being realistic.

No one wants to cure blindness because we think blind people are “subhuman” or somehow “Other” in an inferior way to able-bodied people. We just recognize that the world is designed for sighted people, so being blind makes things a little more complicated and maybe most people would prefer their lives to be LESS complicated.

“On one level, disability being viewed as a failure of the human condition is technically correct. That’s why disabilities are what they are: The body doesn’t work as designed in some way(s). If disabilities were computer software, engineers would be tasked with finding and fixing the bugs.

Yet the human body isn’t some soulless, inanimate machine that requires perfection in order to work properly or have value. I’ve been subject to a barrage of harassment on Twitter since tweeting my thoughts on MrBeast’s video. In between calls for me to imbibe a bottle of bleach, most of them have been hurling retorts at me that question why I wouldn’t want to ‘fix’ or ‘cure’ what prevents people from living what ostensibly is a richer, fuller life because blindness would be gone. A blind person, they said, could suddenly see the stars, a rainbow, a child’s smile or whatever other romantic notion one could conjure.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning would be proud of the way I count the ways in which this myopic perspective lacks perspective.”

Aquino gets so close to a reasonable take so many times before veering off course to make some absurd claim. How dare people want other people to be able to experience nice things! There’s nothing “ostensible” about it– more experiences, especially pleasant ones, make life richer and fuller. For me, removing the barrier of travel constraints (be them financial, physical, or just practical) would do the trick. For others, the barrier is blindness. There’s no hierarchy here, them’s just facts.

But some people can’t function without hierarchy. Aquino identifies as disabled as the result of being born premature, and he wants to make sure you know that he’s literally a freaking superstar in spite– because?– of his disabilities. And he’s better than the people that wanted their disability treated because he’s defined by his. (And also because Elizabeth Barrett would be proud of him, I guess?)

“I had a mentor my senior year of high school who asked me the day we met in my counselor’s office if I would go back and change things in my life so that I wouldn’t have disabilities. I told him rather unequivocally that I wouldn’t. He was taken aback by my answer, but I explained my rationale was simple: It would change who I am.

. . .

All told, however, my disabilities have enabled me to thrive in many respects. The relationships I’ve made, the knowledge I’ve acquired, the journalism career I’ve had for close to a decade — all of this would not have been possible in an alternate universe where I wasn’t a lifelong disabled person. To me, that’s the ultimate silver lining.”

It’s great that Aquino is comfortable with himself as a person. And for many disabled people, especially those who have had their disability for most or all of their lives, what makes them “different” from the majority of people is more normal to them than what’s “normal.” A friend of my mom’s, for example, said if she could cure her blindness, she wouldn’t. Nothing wrong with that!

But a lot of people would change those circumstances. And, though Aquino directs his condemnation toward MrBeast and his supporters, I can’t help but feel like the people he’s really mad at are the thousand individuals who chose to have their disabilities cured. Whether it’s because they challenge what he wants people to believe about “the disabled community,” that they can have their disabilities treated and he can’t, or some other reason, I couldn’t say. Maybe a combination thereof.

But his position is flawed. Aquino concludes,

“Disabled people don’t need pity. We don’t need to be uplifted. We don’t need cures from ourselves. What we desperately do need is some recognition of our basic humanity. We need abled people to start seeing us as the people we are instead of the sorrowful, burdened outcasts society likes to portray us as.”

If offering to help someone overcome an obstacle doesn’t constitute “recognition of one’s basic humanity,” what does? Participation in the Oppression Olympics? Ending all research on the causes of various disabilities and how they might be treated, prevented, or alleviated? Patting Steven Aquino on the back and hailing him King Cripple for knowing better than all the other disabled people what’s best for them?

I guess if celebrating a guy paying for a thousand blindness-fixing surgeries is wrong, I don’t want to be right.