I am Not a Commodity to be Bought

Recently I’ve started exploring my feelings around being a postgraduate student on this blog, documenting the highs and lows as it were of student life. But I’ve also been writing more about my interactions with others and exploring how I feel about being a blind person. In some ways I’ve always done this. This blog started as something that was deeply personal to me. I was seventeen and I documented my life as I struggled to come to terms with what it meant to be blind. I was growing up and my relationship with blindness was changing. I shared that with strangers on the internet because it felt important that I could find a community at a time when I would have otherwise been very alone.

But over the years I moved away from that. I still brought my personal life into my activism because it’s almost impossible not to. But I targeted my writing at businesses and professionals, rather than the ordinary people who had watched me grow up. I’m not sure if it’s something that I intended to happen. I started to write less, only sharing a post if I felt like I had something to say that others would find important.

Did people care about me? About Holly? The person behind the activism? I doubted it. I was a voice, a commodity to be bought and used in order to learn about disability. And I let that happen.

But that’s not why I write. It never has been. I’ve written for as long as I can remember because it is something I love, not because I am a product to be owned.

I have felt over the years like my introspective writing isn’t what people want to read and so I shouldn’t put it out there. But why not? Nobody is forced to read this blog or to agree with me, in fact I hope that people will debate and ask me to consider their perspective.

Perhaps this speaks to more troubling trends within activist spaces. Disabled people, like the rest of the population, are becoming “influencers.” We’re expected to produce highly polished content that can be consumed by businesses and the mass media, to somehow speak for our entire community. We’re supposed to guide people and convince them that what we think is the right thing. If we sell a product, our viewers should flock to it and buy it purely because we told them it was good.

Introspection and self-doubt cannot be part of that. Vulnerability is only acceptable when it’s palatable and trendy. But what if you’re someone who likes to ask yourself why you exist, why any of us exist, and what the world really means? I can’t sell a product; I never have been able to. And do I even want to? Do I want my thoughts to be something others blindly follow and mindlessly consume, rather than something to prompt interesting discussion?

I’m concerned that if as activists we are free from criticism and debate then the good our activism could do will be stalled. If people view us as influencers rather than flawed human beings, they won’t ever push us to justify why we say what we do. And what does that mean for disability rights activism? What does it mean if I’m somehow protected from being asked to justify my views by virtue of having an online platform?

I shouldn’t be free from criticism. I shouldn’t avoid difficult conversations because they make me consider why I hold a certain viewpoint. And I also don’t have to sell myself and my mind as a product. As activists we can write for the love of writing, not to sell an ideal of disability that doesn’t even exist.