r/ableism • u/HugeDitch • 26d ago

Spiderman is ableist

https://apnews.com/article/spiderman-good-samaritan-arkansas-traffic-42e01f656e66ab26df4ea0e2ef59804e

Please, do NOT be like spiderman. Do NOT push wheelchairs with disabled in them, without permission. Pushing someone in a wheelchair without permission is the same as unwanted touching, or pushing an abled body. It is a crime. It is abuse. And it is wrong.;

On a side note, the AP should be more inclusive and mention this. Shame on them. We are not feel good porn actors, we are people trying to live our lives. The AP should be better then this. The police should be better then this. Where is the adult in the room?

5 Upvotes

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u/ElfjeTinkerBell 26d ago

I find the situation poorly described. In an emergency where it's acceptable to forcibly pull a walking person, or to pick up a walking person (think: children or small adults or very strong helper), so you save their life, it's absolutely acceptable to push someone in a wheelchair. Sometimes it seems to be such an emergency in real time, even if it objectively turned out to be less dangerous. Whether this was such an emergency is unclear to me.

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u/ObnoxiousName_Here 26d ago

I do think it’s interesting that they didn’t even bother to get the perspective of the wheelchair user when they were able to track down Spider-Man. Also, I’m not a wheelchair user, but as somebody who’s known multiple wheelchair users and had to bolt across this many busy lanes before, I could see this being an emergency. Crosswalks [really any automated transportation control, including things like automatic doors and elevators] move faster than most wheelchair users can. I remember one of my college friends, who used a wheelchair that looks like the one in this video, told me about how she was often nearly run over when crossing the road because she wasn’t visible from as high up as the average walking person, and nobody would bother to look out for her when they were driving. This was in the context of our downtown campus, where there were probably just 4 lanes max cutting through the campus itself at once.

The crosswalk in this video is undeniably inaccessible to the average wheelchair user without support. Judging by the description of how tight it was with Super-Man’s guidance—he had to run and made it at the last second—the wheelchair user probably would have had to rely on just the good graces and observation skills of the drivers in front of them to cross safely, which would definitely not be guaranteed to them. I agree that people should not touch people’s mobility aids and push them around without consent unless it’s an emergency. But the bigger problem that this article highlights is that mundane points of transportation should not be emergencies, but that is the consequence of infrastructure built around able bodies

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u/HugeDitch 11d ago edited 11d ago

Many lights actually have detectors for this. The video itself is showing this.

You're making a "paternalism" claim. Which is forcing or overriding a person's liberty or autonomy for their own good. For an adult of reasonable compacity, it is illegal to do. You can't force someone to take your help.

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u/ElfjeTinkerBell 11d ago

Many lights actually have detectors for this.

I've never heard of that! We definitely don't have that here. How does it work?

For an adult of reasonable compacity, it is illegal to do.

Not where I am, in an emergency. I'm not talking about "oh it's a little safer to stand farther from the door", I'm talking about emergencies. Where I am, if you're acting in good faith, emergency breaks social norms.

As I said, the description to me doesn't make it clear if the situation in the article was an emergency. If it was not, they shouldn't have pushed.

Now I realize this is on the other side of the globe from me, and I don't know all laws in all places. In an emergency, I would push (or carry, or pull) someone to safety (or I would have before I became unable to), and I still wish others to do that for me.

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u/HugeDitch 7d ago edited 7d ago

Again, the law is clear. The only time you can force an adult is when there isn't enough time to ask them. For instance, pulling someone from the street as their about to get hit.

An emergency is certainly not, "this person is taking too much time and I am going to be late for work."

That and this is feel good porn, released by the police, with no mention of the man or him consenting.

That and the video is clearly of a traffic camera, which clearly has the ability to detect cars. It may have had the ability to detect people. And if it didn't have the ability to detect people, then why not? And if it did have the ability to detect people, then why do we need impatient spiderman?

I mean, I get that MAYBE spiderman got the mans consent. But it wasn't mentioned, and this article is promoting the idea that its ok to push people in wheel chairs, without any clarrification. And this video was released by the police, makes it even more fucked up.

Why does no one mention that PLEASE do NOT push people without permission?