Stop writing perfect future utopia sci-fi worlds where there are no disabled people. Stop “fixing” something that wasn’t even fucking broken in the first place.
Stop writing perfect worlds where there is nothing wrong with engineering Perfect Babies, because that is a literal form of eugenics, which is a nazi-related concept.
Stop implying getting rid of people with physical disabilities, neurological disorders, mental illnesses and the like is easier than giving people with those things the accommodations they need. That’s absolutely terrifying to be looked at that way.
Y’know, if being asked to stop portraying the systematic murder of disabled people as excusable in your fiction offends you, that says A LOT about what you think of the feelings of disabled people and disabled people IRL in general. Have fun being shitballs, everybody in my inbox, you’re all disgusting
Disclaimer: Not disabled, but this shit has bothered me since FOREVER.
The options in sci-fi for dealing with disabilities always seem to fall into four categories: “We cured them”, “We fixed the ‘broken’ bits with robotics,” “I hand-wave them out of existence,” or “My dystopia kills them all.” Let’s take them one by one.
1) LOADS of problems with this. For starters, some people with disabilities do not need/want ‘curing,’ e.g., the Deaf community, the autistic community, the Aspergic community. Secondly, there are some conditions where any cure, short of eugenics, is impossible. Take Down Syndrome for example – the disability is in an extra chromosome. You can’t get rid of that without straight-up changing a massive amount of someone’s DNA, which brings up a lot of ethics about whether changing that much DNA is the same as changing someone’s personhood. Finally, while I’m sure there are plenty of, for example, paraplegics who’d love a medical cure that’d enable them to walk, there’s always going to be some people who, for various medical, religious, or personal reasons, can’t or won’t use your sci-fi-future-magic treatment. They should be around too.
2) I am totally down with prosthetics becoming more responsive, badass, and generally awesome, but if you’re just going to be giving everyone robo-legs/eyes/arms that are functionally indistinguishable from fleshy ones, then you’re really just using disabled people for colorful future-scenery. No robotic part, however badass, will ever be exactly the same as one you’re born with, in some ways that are good and in some ways that are bad. If (here’s lookin’ at YOU, Star Trek) you’re going to show off how your blind character can now see UV and infrared light as well as visual-spectrum light thanks to his robo-prosthetic, you should probably also talk about how he can’t take it with him to the pool, or when it breaks, how expensive it is/long it takes to replace, or how edges get blurry when its batteries are running low. In general, you need to ask yourself if that character you wrote with the super-strong-robo-arm (here’s lookin’ at YOU, Cowboy Bebop) is there so you can waggle your fingers and go “FUUUuuuuUUUUttuuuRRReee,” or so you can actually represent people with disabilities.
3) I understand the impulse to do this because pretty much every single piece of popular culture ever made does exactly this, and it’s just so darned easy to say “there happen to be no disabled people anywhere in my story because shut up.” But, it still means you’re reinforcing a status quo that erases the experiences of people with disabilities, which makes you kind of a dick.
4) This trope, done right, could create a horrifying, thought-provoking dystopia. More often than not, though, it’s just thrown in to avoid dealing with people with disabilities. To figure out which camp you’re in, just answer this question: are you going to take a significant amount of time to address and give examples of how horribly fucked up this is? Like, more than two pages/3 minutes? If not, gtfo.
Hey people who write / read tumblr writing blogs, here is a tip
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Kimchi and Justice 