WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #344 - Anti-validism, Telethon: Humiliation and good feelings in prime time (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

For once, the month of December is an opportunity to see disabled people
on our screen. Every year since 1987, the Telethon aims to raise funds
to finance research against genetic diseases[2]. But behind the good
intentions lies a depoliticized and discriminating vision of disability.
---- Imagine a TV show, 30 hours live, broadcast on public channels,
with show biz stars, and at the center of minoritized people. Everyone
feels sorry for their tragic fate and calls for generosity to save them.
Impossible? Yet this is what disabled people experience every year.

On December 8 and 9, 2023, the 37th Telethon will take place in France.
Since 1987, every year, the program which prides itself on being the
longest live broadcast that has ever existed - and which is almost the
only media image of disability - broadcasts a flood of miserabilist
representations with devastating consequences for people with
disabilities: immense impact on their self-esteem and on the way in
which they are considered in society, with undeniable repercussions in
terms of discrimination in access to employment, housing, studies, an
emotional and social life ... It promotes an exclusively medical vision
of disability (the disability is in the body, which must be repaired)
which excludes any social dimension.

Thus, the Telethon never approaches the subject from the angle of the
inaccessibility of society and the exclusion of disabled people, even
though these are the aspects which have the greatest impact on their
material living conditions, and which it would be simple to remedy this
if the political intention was there.

This medical vision of disability suits the capitalists well. Insisting
on the repair of bodies rather than on the adaptation of working
conditions makes it possible to distinguish between people who are
employable, because they are productive - on whom we can therefore put
pressure so that they are always more so - and the others, from burdens.
for society, who can be left to live with a disabled adult allowance
below the poverty line, or exploited even more in ESATs, which escape
the rules of labor law.

Beneath benevolence, discrimination
Validism is unique in that it manifests itself, perhaps more than other
relationships of domination, in a "benevolent" form. Speech paved with
good intentions, dripping with emotion, making it more difficult to
identify and criticize.

And the Telethon is a glaring example, which helps to depoliticize the
issue and create a diversion: we can quietly organize a large-scale
donation campaign, and at the same time reduce hospital budgets or
eliminate medical aid from State, which will deprive undocumented people
of access to care. The "misfortune" that strikes disabled people is then
no longer a matter of public health, but a matter of charity, selective
as to the racial affiliation of its beneficiaries.

For years, anti-validist activists have denounced this aberration that
is the Telethon[1]. Let's listen to them and join them in their
struggles. The fight against ableism concerns our entire social class,
disabled people, and others.

Julie (UCL Fougères)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Telethon-Humiliation-et-bons-sentiments-en-prime-time
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