Disability, Publishing, and Canada; March 12 2021

You might know this story already. I’m omitting names for a myriad of reasons, but on the off-chance the person whose story this is reads my blog post, know that I’m so sorry and enraged on your behalf, among other things.

So, I follow an author on Twitter who, up until recently, was represented by an agent. This author is a transgender author of colour. Hell yeah. That was, I assume, all good by the agent they were working with – it’s hard to find someone in the publishing industry willing to champion you when you’re part of one marginalized group, let alone multiple.

The author in question is also open about their disability, and apparently, spoke to their agent about accommodations. Perfectly reasonable, I think.

Their agent must not have agreed, because they dropped the author.

Hitting the querying trenches once more, this author was up-front about requiring help when they were on The Call with new potential representation. They’ve been shot down, on the basis of being 'unable to provide those accommodations'.

Naturally, this issue has taken off. Several agents have made performative statements about the injustice of this, while whisper networks alert fellow disabled/neurodivergent authors that these were the very agents unwilling to work with an author with these needs.

This, in addition to finding out that the Canadian government just passed a bill – Bill C7 – saying that instead of helping disabled people with, say, money, or food, or housing? They'll let disabled choose to commit medically-assisted suicide, if they want.

Our government representatives either don't realize or don't care that this will result in doctors all over the country pressuring their disabled patients to kill themselves, if they don't know how to/want to treat them.

My experience as a white person with a chronic illness is that doctors don’t know what to do with me. This has gotten worse post-pregnancy, since I’ve put on weight. This is a ‘fantastic’ opportunity to discriminate against disabled POC. If you’re overweight, dark-skinned, and suffering from a condition doctors can’t name off the top of their heads, what’s to stop them from pressuring their patient into killing themselves?

Once, when I was more naïve, I would’ve said that people in medical professions care. That they adhere to a code of ethics, that they earnestly want to help. That may be the case for a few healthcare practitioners, but time has taught me better. Victims have taught me better.

So.

That's where I'm at, today.

My life has no value to the government. My career has no value to this industry.