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Home / Thoughts / Benefits for transabled individuals?

Benefits for transabled individuals?

Written by Sean on Wednesday, November 1, 2006

I have been exchanging emails with a gal with a disability in the United States. She’s curious to learn more about BIID, and seems to "get" my point about just another disability. She’s asked many questions, one of them prompted me to write a rather lengthy response, which I reproduce here as it is a topic that probably interests many people, with or without disabilities, and somehow falls in with the general questioning of the ethics of transability.

i guess i consider this the crappy question. what do you think of transabled people accessing services? i think that if your identity is as a permanently disabled person, than you need the services too? your thoughts?…

I don’t really believe that there are "crappy questions". Difficult questions, certainly, but not crappy. And this is indeed a difficult question, and one that can’t be answered in a very straight forward way. There are many factors involved.

I think that there are services that transabled individuals should have access to, and others where the situation is a bit more muddled.

For instance, accessible toilet stalls. I see NO problem with wheelchair users using the stalls. In a dozen year of wheeling full time, I have had to wait for the stall to be free exactly TWICE because there was another wheelchair user in there. On the other hand, I have stopped counting the number of times I had to wait on some ambulatory edjit that was reading the paper in the stall a long time ago (not counting teenagers doing "unmentionable" things in there…).

Another for instance: I don’t have a huge problem with transabled individuals being able to get accessible parking permits. As my late spouse (who was a para) used to point out to me, I use a wheelchair, I need the space. Considering how many "lil’ ole ladies" are given permits just ‘cuz they are old (and I don’t buy the idea that age is a disability!), I think that certain transabled individuals should be eligible for it.

I should qualify that by saying that the mere fact of being transabled doesn’t qualify you for parking permit. But if someone has been living full time as a wheelchair user, they certainly qualify. If someone has managed to become an amputee, or paralysed, then they should also (obviously?) qualify. If someone’s BIID makes them want need to be deaf or blind, then, they don’t qualify. If someone wants/needs to be paraplegic but hasn’t done anything about it (such as getting a chair, and using it all the time), they shouldn’t qualify. Establishing criterias would be difficult, but I hope you get my drift. :)

Other services… Should a transabled individual who successfully became a paraplegic receive a “free” wheelchair? Should a realised amputee wannabe receive "free" prosthetics? That gets a little more difficult. I think it depends on the situation (everything’s relative, isn’t it?). It seems to me that it would be a bit more difficult to get agreement on it if we’re talking public funds such as the US SSI/SSDI. But if an insurance company agreed to fund it, then why not? Some private insurance companies fund Sex Reassignment Surgeries, why not wheelchair for transabled individuals?

How about "benefits", such as monthly sums to assist daily living costs? I think that would not be appropriate in the least. That is, unless someone’s BIID is so strong that the impairment that doesn’t allow them to work is the BIID itself, then I do think it’s "proper" for a transabled individual to get benefits like that. In other words, getting benefits because you can’t find work as a para shouldn’t be allowed. But getting benefits because your BIID is so strong that you can’t function properly and hold a job, then yes I think it would be appropriate.

Advocacy and anti-discrimination type services from a disability rights organisation? Again, depends. Is the person non-functional because of their BIID? I think they’d "deserve" services (but then, perhaps they’d need an advocate to convince the disability rights activist that they are indeed disabled?). As a wheelchair user (pre or post-SCI), or as an amputee, or as someone who functions as being blind, if we get discriminated against, then we should be able to get protection and advocacy (aren’t we, after all, protected under the ADA’s "perceived to have a disability" prong? That is, for those of us living in the United States).

Certainly not an easy answer.

I would agree that as people who would voluntarily receive an impairment, we must take responsibility for our situations, particularly financial. Especially in a world where an already small pool of funds shrinks like an icecube in the desert.

[tags]SCI, BIID, Transabled, Wheelchair, Amputee, Benefits, Disability, Paraplegic, Paralysed, Parking, Toilets[/tags]