Yesterday I was crossing the road and I found my hands too full of shopping to use my stick. As it was an okay mobility day, I crossed slowly whilst my cane dangled from it’s wrist strap.
When I got to the other side my hips were sore so I stopped, rearranged my bags, held my cane properly, shook out my legs and carried on walking with my cane.
It was then I was caught off guard by a man walking past "oh aye in case the fraud squad are watching ya" he laughed. I thought I’d misheard him or it wasn’t aimed at me so I went "you what?"
What followed next really threw me.
“Well you obviously don't really need that, I just saw you walking fine, you faking it now in case you get shopped?"
A man had just witnessed me attempting to mask my discomfort after crossing a street unaided and instead thought I must’ve been faking the pain.
In his narrow view, he’d just watched someone carry a stick and then remember they were supposed to use it. When what he actually witnessed was someone with a dynamic disability who can do short distances and doesn’t always need to use a cane, but does to make their life easier.
This is because the view of disability that’s presented by the media is so black and white, you’re either “fit and healthy” or you’re viewed as “suffering” from a condition, miserable and constantly in pain, needing help from non-disabled saviours.
I constantly see other writers and creators accused of faking being disabled because they can stand up from their wheelchairs. Blind creators are scrutinised in every part of their lives: “How did you know to do THAT if you’re supposedly blind?”
In real life it’s when we run for buses and then sneered at for holding up bus queues, in supermarkets when we have the audacity to stand up to reach higher shelves or not even being able to go to the gym for fear CCTV footage of us will be shared with the DWP.
That’s why it’s so terrifying to see the disability benefit fakers narrarative being whipped up viciously by the media again.
It’s hard to believe that the media pile-on of disabled people who can’t work has gotten worse since last week’s column, but the last few days have been awful.
At the end of last week, The Telegraph published a calculator that let their readers work out “how much of your salary bankrolls the welfare state”.
It was a clear attack, aiming at inciting hatred of people who “never have to look for a job”, framing us as lazy and workshy over the fact that many of us can't work. Pitting honest hardworking people against us lying conniving fraudsters.
Charity Scope said coverage like this “has a direct impact on how disabled people see themselves and how others see them”.
Disability Rights UK shared their complaint to the press regulator IPSO, saying “at a time when all the evidence shows that sick and Disabled people are hit hardest by the cost-of-living crisis, this type of 'journalism' is even more unconscionable.”
Hot on the heels of this, The Jeremy Vine Show tweeted asking “Nearly twice as many young adults are not in work because of illness, compared to ten years ago. Are they the 'sick-note' generation?”
This was after the show was widely criticised by disabled people last week for asking if it was wrong to indefinitely support disabled people who couldn’t work.
When I pointed out to Jeremy Vine himself that these were dangerous attitudes, he blocked me on Twitter.
As I was writing this, the DWP and its minister Mel Stride shared on Twitter the success of their “fraud plan” and that it will help them to “deliver savings of over £9 billion by 2027/28”.
But what isn’t being shared by the guy who took The Sun with him on a dawn raid is that that the DWP already saves £3.3 billion a year on underpayments and £19 billion a year from unclaimed benefits.
They’re focused on painting us as the bad guys so as to not draw attention to the fact that disabled people are being left to die in the cost of living crisis.
The encounter in public yesterday shook me, but one of my first thoughts was that it could’ve been a lot worse.
I could’ve been filmed and had it shared online, branding me as a disability faker. If the person had known who I was and had I been on certain benefits, I could’ve been reported to the DWP and had them stopped. I could’ve been screamed at or physically attacked in the street.
Charity Leonard Cheshire reported that disability hate crimes rose by 25 per cent in 2021, with violent crimes rising by 27 per cent.
I shouldn’t be reflecting on being accused of not being disabled as a lucky escape, none of us should have to deal with this just for trying to live our lives.
But as long as the media and government keep pushing this dangerous narrative that disabled people are faking it for benefits and turning the public against us, it will only get worse.
I might not be as “lucky” next time.
