“This programme has a very shocking word in it. The R word. I understand that it will be upsetting to many. But I believe that we need to confront this word and other ableist terms head on for people to realise how damaging it is. So I said to Channel 4, let’s use that word in the title and hopefully by the end of this film, people will think twice before ever using that word again.” So says comedian Rosie Jones at the start of her new Channel 4 documentary, Am I a R*tard?
The Disabled online community has already gone full Mary Whitehouse at the news, with three much loved and respected young Disabled influencers pulling a short segment from the film, expressing their pain at the use of the word, and receiving a groundswell of support, mainly from Disabled people, across social media.
Should we be using the word in any social contexts? It’s a tough one. Rosie is one of a very small handful of people in mainstream media who is very visibly Disabled. She is one of an even smaller tribe who are bluntly outspoken and deal with issues head on – confrontationally.
There is no doubt that Disabled people aren’t generally listened to by non-Disabled people. From cradle to grave, our lives are stacked up with injustices, prejudices against us, and a lack of support we need to thrive. As much as I can understand the softer approach of many, arguably the majority, and often younger people, who choose more reasoned means of protest and requests for social change, I come from a generation where we are more head on. Different strokes for different folks. Not everyone responds to a singular way of being communicated with. Nor a gentle, compassionate one. There is rarely a movement of social change which has started with a polite Father Tedesque ‘down with this sort of thing’. Only Rosa Parks has managed it so far. Social change does, so often alas, need to start with confrontation. Marsha P Johnson. Rodney King. Barbara and Alan.
I’ve noticed as well, that some of the loudest, most head on Disabled people in the public eye, like Rosie, tend to have cerebral palsy – think Lost Voice Guy Lee Ridley, whose humour skirts really close to the bone, courting negative stereotypes of Disabled people as only being ‘in it for the parking’ or having a Disabled people’s emoji – a dribbling yellow face with googly eyes. Or Ian Dury, belting out Spasticus Autisticus. Kurt n Courtney levels of punk rock call-it-in-the-face confrontation there.
Perhaps such a visible level of disability draws out the need to stand up tall, and shout back into the faces of abusers, steel glint in the eye, refusing to be first to look away. But it also forces the abusers to meet our eyes. We can’t scroll genteelly past such overt confrontation. We’ve got to deal with ourselves when called out like that.
It's arguably the most visibly Disabled people who cop the most overt forms of prejudice. Not just the education, housing, travel and job knockbacks, but the slurs, the being pushed over, the being spat on, the being broken into, the having our cars scratched and trashed, our mobility equipment stolen – all the classic bully boy moves by powerless non-Disabled people to take aim at people they perceive as being less powerful. Rosie is one of those people. She’s not using the word to disparage. She’s throwing it back at those who hurt her, a Molotov cocktail to the conscience.
I’ve used some of these words. Before I was Disabled, I’d use them, not directed at people, but casually in conversation, clueless about their impacts on those whose lives they deeply affect. I’m not generally bothered by mean words personally. The sticks and stones mentality has more power than allowing words to be wounding. As someone who has a lifelong fat disorder, I’ve got a thick skin in both senses. And now, like Rosie, I will occasionally use them in person, one on one, to shock someone ignorant into realising what they are doing. A gentle shake often doesn’t wake up anywhere near as well as a cold glass of water in the face. I needed a metaphorical bomb in my face to change my stupid, ignorant behaviour. I’m sure I’m not alone.
This documentary is aimed at former me. Former me would not have come face to face with Disabled people very often. Former me would have likely rolled her eyes at these supposedly oversensitive influencers (former me’s thoughts there – there’s nothing ‘over’ sensitive about being sensitive to a lifetime of bullying from huge swathes of society. Those hurt feelings are utterly justified. I feel the weight of the feeling of those feeling hurt. I get it). Former me would have shrugged off my responsibility to use better language because those people should get thicker skins (I was SUCH an a***hole). Former me wouldn’t have cared about the firestorm all over social media about this. Former me was a massive, offensive, deeply wrong t**t. This documentary isn’t aimed at those who already, rightly, hurt. This documentary is aimed at those who don’t care. Yet.
And former me may, just may, have listened to Rosie Jones, coming at me, verbal fists flailing, after a lifetime of being pointed at, laughed at, and called a r*tard out loud, from playground to comedy club stages, and on the streets, where she wears headphones, at all times, to avoid the potential of having to deal with people pointing, laughing and shouting at her. Every single time she goes out.
She’s a good one, Rosie Jones. Rage, and fire, and softness and sense. Loved, visible, and dealing with unspeakable abuse head on.
The documentary has yet to air. Almost nobody save a few reviewers has seen it. The firestorm is largely based on fear, and offence at the title. And that’s ok. It IS a bad word. It IS a harmful word. And those talking about it on social media already have their heads above the parapet as Disabled people. They get reams of abuse like this daily as public figures. It’s vile, debilitating, and it has to stop.
But maybe sometimes we need to be overt. Maybe sometimes we need all the approaches to reach all of the people. Sometimes the film of the atrocities of the warzone has more power than the gentle put-downable memoir about it.
And maybe, just maybe, words which are not slurs, are doing even more harm. Words like: “I’m going to hunt you down, pour acid down your throat, and rape you.” That’s a message that Rosie has had from an online troll. Everyday words, filled with genuine blood runs cold terror. Every woman I know in the public eye gets these kinds of messages, daily. The toll of those words. The looking over your shoulder. Thoughts of Jo Cox. Do you wear those headphones to block out the abuse, or keep them off, so you can hear them coming and run? (The kicker: we’re Disabled. We can’t always physically run.)
I sincerely hope that there’s no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to this film. Its content really matters. And it hasn't been made for Disabled people. It's been made for those people who use slurs without thinking and really do need to think.
And I hope that the conversation which has already started about the language used to label the film will drip out from its social media silos, into the wider world. That people won’t cower from the deliberately awful title, and will watch the film – which I have seen – and which, from immediately after Rosie’s opening words, hits hard, painfully hard, with the reality of day to day abuse laid bare.
All of it is out there, laid bare, in this documentary – the hateful, threatening, aggressive words of strangers, tsumanis of them, washing over the souls of people just trying to go about their business. In Rosie’s case, just trying to lift the world up a bit by bringing light and joy and laughter to us through her comedy. And the systemic implicit abuse by organisations.
Social media especially has a lot to answer for, refusing to crack down on trolls. Refusing to recognise hate speech. Putting people on the naughty step for talking about gardening hoes, but not banning people for rape threats. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. All guilty. All paying lip service to societal equity, while doing nothing about life-destroying everyday ableism. In fact, the title of this documentary comes from a tweet from a troll which Rosie reported to Twitter. Twitter didn't think there was anything wrong with it. That's why she's highlighted it in the documentary's title. Sometimes we have to shout to be heard. Sometimes we have to go on national TV, with a giant cookie iced with the question 'Am I a r*rard?', and present it to the front desk of Twitter, for it to be heard. And maybe, even then, more often than not, it still won't be heard.
Rosie is trying to lay all of this debilitating abuse bare. And this is what she utterly succeeds in doing. Laying it bare. Putting the words in the sunlight to be made to crumble to dust. A new dawn, new light, forcing the violence of verbal vampires to atomise and be gone, for good.
Are you a … , Rosie? No. HELL, no. Nobody is. Nobody with a learning disability, nobody with cerebral palsy, no Disabled people, nobody. You’re brave, and righteous, and life-changing AF. I’m done with that word. I’m done with all the fear. I’m done with all the abuse. And so should everybody be, from hereon in. If you need help using language about Disabled people, here’s a good place to start.
* Am I a R*tard? Will air on 20 July on Channel 4
