[00:00:00]

 

[theme music]

 

Will Stringer: Hello and welcome back to Developing Ideas podcast from NUS Scotland. My name is Will Stringer, and today I’m joined by Carson Tueller, queer and disability activist, advocate and public speaker. In this episode, we talk about leading activism, internalised oppression and the best way that organisations can change to support a broader range of people to make change, and how that ultimately, of course, benefits us all. It's an episode that is so full of hope, and was a real joy to record, so I hope you enjoy it. Please note, as usual during this pandemic, this was recorded via Zoom, so the sound quality can sometimes be a bit off. And if you have any thoughts, send them either way, either to @NUSScotland on Twitter or Instagram, or search Carson Tueller on Instagram. You can find more information about Carson in the show notes and the description, or you can wait till the end of the episode, where I talk a little bit more about how you can get in touch with them. Without further delay, here's the episode.

 

[00:01:06]

 

[theme music]

 

Will Stringer: We had a brief chat by email before joining today, and I think what we're gonna cover is all things activism, particularly I think we'll focus on disability-led activism, and your journey into activism, and where you see the future is. Like this new now of Covid-19, how does activism work now... it's actually a friend of mine who pointed out to me about this idea of 'new now', it's just like stop saying it's 'new normal', like start talking about 'new now', because it's a bit more like what is happening right now, and that constantly shifting picture that we can find ourselves in. Which is quite apt, because we're like separated currently by this Atlantic ocean, which is very tempestuous and changeable, but I’m gonna try and stop with the metaphors. So, hello, and -

 

Carson Tueller: Hi!

 

Will Stringer: Yeah. [laughs] So, first of all, also I’ve started with an introduction about you, but what I wondered is if you could introduce yourself, and how you describe yourself as an activist, an advocate, a political advisor, and what sort of things you’re involved in.

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah, great, great, thank you for the intro. My name is Carson Tueller, like you said, and I am a - I wear a lot of different hats right now in life. I am engaged in political advocacy for disabled people, for queer people, and also a professional speaker, a empowerment coach, and I spend a lot of time talking with people about the barriers. People in organisations about the barriers to having the lives or the outcomes that they want. whether that’s like systemically with disability and queer issues, or whether that’s individuals who are trying to live more empowered, fulfilling lives. So, yeah, that’s kind of a snapshot of what I’m doing right now.

 

[00:03:17]

 

Will Stringer: That sounds really like such a positive thing as well, like it's to be constantly talking about change, and the positive change that people can make.

 

Carson Tueller: Yes. It's so fulfilling, it's so fulfilling. It's also, I think, disruptive is the way I like to say it, because in order to have massive change that makes a difference in the experience of people's quality of life, it requires some kind of disruption, which can sometimes be uncomfortable. So I’ve lovingly, gently and unapologetically provide that disruption to people and institutions.

 

[00:03:53]

 

Will Stringer: And how do - where do you think that disruptive energy, or your like desire for disruption, came from?

 

Carson Tueller: That’s a good question. I think it comes from my insistence that there is something better, for people, for myself, for the world. I have a very clear idea of how I want to live my life, and how I would like the world to look. That idea is always of course shifting, but I am so clear that we can create something that’s really beautiful and empowering and works for all people on this planet, and so I’m inspired by those ideas, I’m inspired by the idea that things could be better, that people could be, you know, more fulfilled, experience more joy, make more money, have better relationships. So that is really what gives me the strength, the interest in being that disruption in the world. I think it's an expression of love.

 

[00:05:01]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, that’s a nice way of putting it. I think it's such a challenge as well for so many people, including myself, sometimes that it can be really difficult to think of a... a future that is both different and positive. I remember that I went to this seminar, and it was by the woman who headed a part of Mexico City's government, they had an experimental arm of that, and she was doing lots about like positive change, and she said it was so difficult, like when they were doing like surveys of people, or anything which was about trying to imagine a future that was better than what they currently had, they would even if they framed and trued to like force the responses in a particularly positive way, it would always come back with 'things are only going to get worse'. So that’s - yeah, that sounds like a really, kind of a quite positive thing to get involved in.

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah.

 

[00:05:55]

 

Will Stringer: But - so what about your interest in politics? How did you get involved in that?

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah, so I got involved actually pretty recently, within the last probably 18 months. So I was doing queer advocacy for a while, and then started - I think because like I... I have spent less time on earth as a disabled person than I have as a queer person, and so I knew more about queer issues, I knew more about queer advocacy, and as I started to kind of have more experiences as a disabled person, I started naturally finding more and more passionate interest in advocating in disabled spaces. So, about - yeah, so a couple of years ago I started getting more involved in the political scene, and I had moved to New York recently, and CNN had seen some of the comments that I had made about environmental injustice and inequity, and the way that things like, you know, our climate crisis is disproportionately affecting disabled people. And they asked me to come participate in a town hall, where I asked the now vice-president nominee, Kamala Harris, to question about environmental inequity and injustice. And I was a few weeks later, was reached out to by Andrew Yang's political presidential campaign, and they asked me to work on the policy team for policy development, policy advising, and working a little bit as a surrogate. So it was a quick introduction and an intense introduction to the political world, and I learned so much. It was exciting, it was incredible, and I think that I was, of course, continue to be more involved politically in the future. But that’s kind of how that all started.

 

[00:08:02]

 

Will Stringer: How did you find it? So you weren’t involved as - so when you were younger, say in like school, or in college, were you - you weren’t involved in sort of political spaces then? It really did came - which is quite apt actually, around - it's quite a disruptive thing which happened to, I suppose to your life.

 

Carson Tueller: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in a conservative, religious family, and didn’t question a lot of politics. Both of my parents were Republicans, conservative Republicans, and so I... yeah, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about political issues, we weren’t a particularly political family, we were just very - my dad was also a military officer, so that was kind of the environment that I grew up in. And then, when I came out, and when I became disabled, that happened in the same year for me, it happened in 2013. So everything - not everything, but a lot of things about my identity completely shifted and changed in a fundamental way. And I suddenly saw that our world doesn’t work for everybody. I was this ostensibly straight white man, or living like one, for the first 20 years of my life, and then suddenly I realised that I couldn't get married, because - you know, to someone I love, because that would be a man, and suddenly I realised that I couldn't gain like physical access into buildings or parks or public places, and that I couldn't count on the system to value my queer disabled life, in the same way that it valued my straight, able-bodied life. And so that really woke me up, and I suddenly realised - and it's unfortunate, of course, that I, you know, had to experience it myself to be woken up to these issues. And it didn’t just - I just didn’t have a lot of access to the issues prior. So yeah, really woke me up, shook me up, and I started getting interested, and realising like wow, you know, what, if this is the case for disabled people and queer people, like how is it for black and brown people? How is it for indigenous people? How is it for women? How is it for trans people? Like I started to become far more interested and vocal about intersectional issues.

 

[00:10:35]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, I’m glad you touched on intersectional, cause that’s what I was thinking there as well, it's just like, you know... these intersectional identities that are both lived, and then also it gives a sort of insight into the things that you don’t know as well, you know, about people's lives. And I guess, how do you stay informed about those things, you know, whilst - yeah, whilst doing your advocacy?

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah. I read a lot. I stay informed by following a lot of activists, and a lot of intersectional spaces, a lot of leaders who are leading the way on some of these issues, maybe not all of these issues. So reading their content, reading their books, reading their critiques, reading their articles, and being informed about what their life experience is like. So I get that from a variety of places, you know, my... my Instagram feed is in many ways a news feed, and listening to voices on all of these political issues. So - and of course like more traditional routes as well.

 

[00:11:47]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, I think it's how we’ve now built things now, isn’t it, it's around curational... like your Instagram, it's sort of, you’ve curated a news feed for yourself, and - are there people you think that people who are listening to this should follow? Like maybe just a few people that are particularly, as you say,k like leading the way on these intersectional issues?

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah. So it depends on the intersection, you know, and it's important to diversify with a large quantity of individuals who represent the life experience of so many different people, right, so I have the experience of being, of course, a white, disabled queer man, and you'll find someone who is maybe a black queer woman who is disabled is going to have a totally different take on the same issues because of that particular intersection. So I love following Disability Visibility, by Alice Wong. She is a fantastic disability activist. I love following Mia Mingus as well. She has some incredible work out there about transformational justice. It's very intersectional, both of those women are disabled, disability activists. And I mean I have like, you know, I love following some other more prominent kind of like celebrity individuals, like Laverne Cox, for example, other, you know... queer, drag queens and things like that as well, but... yeah, you can -

 

Will Stringer: That’s great.

 

Carson Tueller: I think you can find anyone on all the intersections who is really kind of leading the way in there, in their own lanes.

 

[00:13:37]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, I think for me, I think the first time that I became aware of yourself actually, online was around looking at where, like thinking of where the gaps were in my knowledge, and I remember thinking around disability pride, and I was like 'I have a' - I didn’t even realise this was a thing, and I was like of course - like why didn’t that ever come into my like vision, actually, that that would be a thing. Cause I was aware of Black Pride - but it's these gaps which, you know, you start to try and fill in some way.

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah.

 

Will Stringer: That’s so important.

 

Carson Tueller: Perfectly said.

 

[00:14:15]

 

Will Stringer: OK, so we touched maybe a little bit on maybe some of the... highlights of that journey so far within politics. So what are some of your, I guess your favourite memories of things that have happened during that, that as you say 18 months, two years maybe, that you’ve been working in this field?

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah, yeah. I think, so I... I stopped working, I was working with, you know professionally, with Andrew Ying's presidential campaign until his campaign ended, which was earlier this year. And then I’ve just been kind of doing my own advocacy. I think one of the things - one of my favourite moments, as I have really leaned into the - specifically the disability movement, has been the... which had happened in July actually, July is disability pride month, and like you said, it just is not something that a lot of , and a lot of disabled people don’t know it's a thing, so I really tried to just blast out a lot of information last month, al about what is disability pride, what does it mean, what do we stand for, how - you know, just what is ableism, talking about all of these issues that really do not make it into the conversation, even on intersectional issues. You just won't hear people talking about ableism or disability often. So the existence of Disability Pride, and trying to also work to establish more solidarity, and find the flag or a symbol, or the things that really unite all of us, was really exciting. So, one of the challenges of the disability movement is bringing solidarity, because there are so many, there’s such a variety of experiences, from having physical disabilities, to having mental illness, to having invisible disabilities... you know, the experience of people who are neurodiverse or who are autistic, right, so all of those experiences are so different. And Disability Pride is about celebrating the human - the human body, however it is, and celebrating that it is whole and complete and worthy, worthy of investment, worthy of access, in all the different forms. Whether that means captions on Instagram, which I am always trying to call about, cause Instagram doesn’t have automatic captions still. Or it means a ramp in front of a restaurant that should absolutely have a ramp at this point, so it looks like a billion different things, and we have been pretty fragmented, I think, in our movement in the past. And I really got excited as I started to see how we could come together as a movement, people with diverse experiences who all identify as disabled. So that has been the most exciting thing, has really opened my eyes in terms of what needs to happen next, to really create a world that’s inclusive of all kinds of bodies.

 

[00:17:47]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah. You’ve made me remember actually, I used to - I worked for about five months in a social care organisation, and it was supporting people with profound and complex support needs, maybe people who were congenitally deaf-blind, and it was the sort of realm of... of sexuality was often just completely taken out of those spaces, because they were - you know, they were viewed in a particular way, so I wonder how you - yeah, how - I suppose does this Disability Pride have its provocative in challenging those spaces as well?

 

Carson Tueller: Are you specifically referring to sexuality?

 

[00:18:31]

 

Will Stringer: Yes, yeah yeah yeah.

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that is one of the ongoing conversations inside of... kind of ableism, is looking at what does it look like - what does ableism look like in the area of romantic relationships, what does it look like inside of, you know, partnerships, relationships, and sexuality. Disabled people are often asexualised, and disabled people are as likely to be sexual creatures as non-disabled people, right, and to desire sexual connection and romantic connection. And we have so little representation of what healthy sexual, romantic relationships look like that aren’t fetishised, or aren’t weird, or aren’t in some way like tokenising. So... it is absolutely neglected! [laughs] And disabled sexuality - and I actually think disabled sex period, is so important for improving the sex lives of like human beings all around the world, because we have such a narrow idea of what sex and pleasure has to look like. We - and it looks like, you know, able-bodied people having very just stereotypical sex, like that you see in 90% of pornography, probably. But it's so much more diverse than that, and that always excludes disabled people. So if we can bring in the experience of disabled people to talk about how diverse the experience can be, and how pleasurable, how exciting, how - just filled with exploration and discovery, right, I think that it would be a massive contribution to freeing up the sexuality of all of human beings, because that’s what happens when you make any particular area of life diverse, right? Everyone is more freed up. So yes, I am trying to sound... [laughs] not sound the alarm, but like, yeah, raise the... what’s the term I’m looking for?

 

Will Stringer: Raise the - raise... amplify the voice. Amplify the... issue? [unclear, both speaking at once 00:21:00] Yeah.

 

Carson Tueller: Yes, yes. Bring awareness to the cause of normalising and bringing sexuality into disabled spaces.

 

[00:21:12]

 

Will Stringer: I suppose that’s one of the key things of when you allow diverse groups of people to lead movements, and to become advocates, and... who are advocates, and allow spaces for these voices, that there is so much huge amounts of benefit, that it can bring to such wide and also, sometimes in ways in which you couldn't possibly have imagined beforehand, but just because we - we’ve limited spaces in it for so long, and I think even within like traditional campaigning and political organisations and movements... that are usually more kind of institutionally ableist, whether subconsciously or not.

 

Carson Tueller: Absolutely.

 

Will Stringer: When they open themselves up for disabled and queer people to be involved, from grass roots through to leadership. And I wondered, from your perspective, what are often the common mistakes that you think these organisations take, and any places or experiences that you felt like particularly valued, and what the organisations did, and you had to do as well, to kind of achieve that? It's quite a big, rambling question.

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah, yeah. yeah, so are you talking about, kind of what are the good things that I experience, or even maybe the not so good things, in terms of what institutions or campaigns are doing to stay inclusive of disabled people?

 

[00:22:50]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, for sure, that is a far more succinct way of putting it, so yeah., thanks for that. [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

 

Carson Tueller: Just want to make sure I, you know, am making my answer relevant. So, it's a - of course a fantastic question. So when I jumped on Andrew Yang's campaign, I was so fortunate to have an incredible manager. And she was so thoughtful about what I needed as a disabled person, in a way that I had not experienced before, and - I mean, she had really done her due diligence to like ask questions, to understand what it - what our life ship looks like in general, across intersections, so when I first jumped on the campaign, I did make it clear that I was engaged in a lot of other things, but that you know, I would be interested in being flexible, to work with the campaign full-time. So she and I, we - she just worked with me on giving me any accommodation that I needed. So I worked at home often, I did a lot of like political research and policy advising from home, I was able to... I had some funds that would allow me to use like an Uber to get in and out of the city if it was raining because accessibility in New York City is terrible in public transit, specifically the subway system. So, you know, she and the campaign provided an avenue for me to show up in a way that really worked for me. So I went into the office, you know, in Times Square a couple of days of the week, and then I really got to make my life work for me, because going into the city in a wheelchair was a nightmare. It took me, you know, instead of a typical 20-minute subway ride for able-bodied people, because the subway wasn’t accessible, I had to roll down the street, get to a ferry, take the ferry across the river, roll to a bus stop, and then take a bus up, and then roll several blocks. So it was just like, you know, a real journey, and tiresome. So knowing all of that, she made massive accommodations. I mean I shouldn't say massive, they’re just accommodations for - for my body. And it allowed me to participate, it allowed me to work with the campaign in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise, and that was a fantastic example of providing accommodations to employees, and specifically disabled employees so they can participate. This is something that disabled people have been asking for forever. We've been saying 'Hey, we can actually work from home. We can work from our beds. We can work from these places that actually like, where we can take care of our needs and take care of our bodies, and we have access to everything around us, and we just are gonna have to do that remotely, and that’s made possible in this digital age. So, we’ve been saying that forever, so there is actually, interestingly, this is a little bit of a tangent at this point, but there was a lot of frustration that a lot of us had as disabled people when suddenly the world experienced a pandemic and went remote. Suddenly all of the places that had been telling us forever that they can't do online visits, you know, whether it’s like at a hospital, or online appointments, or that they couldn't work from home for whatever reason, suddenly, when able-bodied people need it, it's suddenly available, when we’ve been asking this for a long time. So I guess all of that to say... investing in the lives and the work of disabled people is the best kind of allyship, is the best kind of inclusion, it allows us to show up and participate fully in society, so making accommodations, asking people what they need, hiring disabled people in the first place. All of those are fantastic examples of how to start building inclusion and safe places for disabled people to show up, and we represent 25% of the population, it's a huge part of the workforce, and a lot of disabled do want to work, but the system isn’t accessible. And that means accessibility through working remotely as much as it means accessibility physically. That was a long answer.

 

[00:27:23]

 

Will Stringer: You just made me - no no, that was great. You were so detailed. It got me thinking about how much more prepared we could have been for something like a pandemic, had we had like organisations and things just listened and allowed, and you know, I’m sure that there are lots of people who were - who are higher up, who were like listening to these conversations, but didn’t then action anything. And I think that that must - it must have been incredibly frustrating, yeah, when then suddenly it was like overnight everyone could work from -

 

Carson Tueller: Sure

 

Will Stringer: remotely, and you know, they were bending over backwards, sort of just to make that happen.

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah.

 

Will Stringer: And it proved that it wasn’t actually that difficult, as well.

 

Carson Tueller:  No, and this comes back to kind of the social versus the medical model of disability. The medical model says disabled people need to, you know, or are kind of a... are distinct from a norm, and that we need to be healed, or fixed in order to get back into this kind of able-bodied norm, but the social model of disability essentially expresses that disabled people are only... only lack the ability to participate in society because society has not made the world accessible equally to disabled people, as they have to able-bodied people. And so it's really a greater focus on the social system piece, if that makes sense. You know, so when you talk about creating space for disabled people, we can fully participate in the workforce, if it's just made accessible. We can fully participate in society, we can take care of ourselves, if there’s just provision for that. And like you said, ultimately, the human body is - it's mortal, it is fragile, it is prone to breaking, to disease. Every body will eventually break down. And disability is a part of the human experience. It's a beautiful part of the human experience. And so investing in all bodies is investing in literally all bodies. Every single human being who, for some reason, might need a sick day, or might need to stay at home. And this even creates greater provision for women who have children, whose bodies need to recover, who need to stay home, right, like, so it's just like all-encompassing - it's a win. It's a win if we could just create a more inclusive space and invest in it.

 

[00:30:16]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, I feel like I’m building up even more of a picture of why you talk about - talked in the start about talking about that as love. Like it does - when you’re talking about it, it does feel like that sort of idea of all-encompassing, you know, being really open and making change which is so inclusive that it provides, so like bountiful, and that’s for so many different... different groups of people. And... in ways that we don’t even know half of them yet...

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah

 

Will Stringer: Like we haven’t actually allowed those conversations to turn into action, sometimes, or, you know, at worst we haven’t even allowed those conversations to come up.

 

Carson Tueller: Yes, yes. That happens, that the listening - the lack of action, I believe that happens because, one of the greatest issues with accessibility is this conversation about efficiency. And... practicality. Is this really practical? Is this really efficient? If just a few people need a ramp, does it really make sense to, you know, da da da da da, make all of these provisions. And that’s why it really is about love. It really is about using the metric of quality of human life, before we value the metric of capital. And we have to create a system - and this is something that Andrew Yang, actually in particular, was fantastic about, because he is an economist, he is an expert, and he talked all the time about we have to change the rules of our economy. You know, we sometimes, in the disabled community, can be a little laser-focused on certain particular policies, that we forget that the actual premises of our economy are the - to blame for our experience. So it's not just the individual policies but the premises on which they are built. And so Andrew always talked about building an economy that works for everyone, and that means changing the rules. That means that we measure - instead of measuring GDP, using capital, we have a different kind of score card that measures human well-being. Mental health and physical health, are people healthy, are citizens thriving? What do suicide rates look like right now? What does mental health look like? What does the experience of, you know, pregnant women or mothers look like? So all of the people who are typically marginalised, he talked about how we had to create a system where the economy - where we're measuring success from a different scorecard. Cause as long as we're using capital as the bottom line to determine whether or not we are succeeding, and capitalism - not all forms of capitalism, but many forms of capitalism just require efficiency in capital above all else. Anyone who has any kind of disability will lose in those situations, because capital will win.

 

Will Stringer: Yeah

 

Carson Tueller: Has to be efficient, and that will come at the cost of human well-being, and quality of life. So, I guess [laughs] I went off on that tangent because I want to point to that - those are the forces that we have to address, is putting capital before the quality of human lives.

 

[00:33:56]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, definitely, and I think that it speaks to this... this idea of like reasonable adjustment, that is often a thing which is, at least within UK education spaces, that is often both spoken about, as just like this - is this reason - can we reasonably adjust to - and its just like well, at the end of the day what is, what is it to not - to not adjust, and to prevent? Cause that’s the - that’s the kind of the flip side of that, and...

 

Carson Tueller: Right.

 

Will Stringer: And I guess education just is, as in all of the parts of our social and civic life, has been restricted for so many people. I was - I wondered what your experience of education was, actually, cause even though I suppose you came, it was - you know, your identities were already brought to the fore in, was it 2013?

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah

 

Will Stringer: Did you experience education after that point, or...?

 

Carson Tueller: I was a - I was doing it at university, finishing my degree at that point, yeah.

 

[00:35:05]

 

Will Stringer: And how - how did you find that sort of navigating those education spaces, with those - with that new identity, I suppose?

 

Carson Tueller: It was - it was a totally different learning experience. I mean, I did a lot of my courses online, which was helpful, so the college that I went to, the university had a pretty robust online curriculum, which was helpful for me. But navigating campus, and just working with... trying to get the accommodations you’re talking about, trying to ensure that I had a parking space, right, trying to ensure that I could actually get to and from my classes, or sometimes even things like... shovel to the sidewalks, because it snowed all the time in Utah, right. Those little things could keep me from getting to class, and had a major impact on my, kind of like my - yeah, academic life and success, so it just took a lot of communication, it took a lot of advocating for myself, saying 'this is exactly what I need, these are the provisions I need you to make for me', and it takes guts and energy to do that all the time. So that was my experience. I was grateful that I never was denied any accommodation that I requested, so - I’m grateful to be able to report that.

 

[00:36:36]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, I suppose that is where a lot of people learn their advocacy skills, and their activism skills, is having to be that advocate or activist for themselves.

 

Carson Tueller: Yes.

 

Will Stringer: Or whether, you know, as a queer person or as a black person, or as a, you know, disabled person as well, it's... yeah, it's real, those - and you then have to, then making that into a - you know, you get to a certain point and then it's like well... how do you do that, professionally, and I suppose you’ve made that transition to being able to harness those parts which you’ve learned, I suppose? And be able to take them forward further, I suppose partly by luck. Was it a... were you thinking of going that route anyway -

 

Carson Tueller: I was -

 

Will Stringer: at that time? You weren’t? OK! [laughs]

 

Carson Tueller: No, not at all! And it's such a - it's so interesting, how it happened. Can I tell you like a little story?

 

[00:37:39]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah. Definitely, I love story time.

 

Carson Tueller: The little story is just like, OK, so when I was - when I broke my neck, and became paralysed, seven years ago, I... you know, so I - I mean, I had all the internalised ableism. And for listeners who don’t know what I’m referring to as ableism, when I talk about ableism, what I mean is believing that there is such a thing as a good, normal, worthy body. And that anything that - anything other than that body is considered diminished, or less valuable, less worthy of investment. So I believed that having an able body was more valuable than having a disabled body. So that was kind of like the internalised ableism. And how that showed up was me feeling worthless and totally broken, because I was disabled. So I became paralysed, and I’ve always been pretty competitive and motivated in life - motivated by those dreams I was talking about earlier, this vision of what could be possible for me in my life, and so I immediately just started ploughing ahead with my new life. I asked my doctors and nurses what - I said 'What has no other quadriplegic done before they have left the hospital?', and I’m going to do that. And so, you know, that was like my mindset, and I went forward like that, but I always thought that - I mean I felt just like I was going to be this kind of like - this disabled, paralysed hero. [laughs] Because that was what was expected of me. People love a fantastic, inspiring disabled person, who is overcoming all of their barriers, and making a big life for themselves despite all of the odds. So I really leaned into that role for the first three years of my paralysis and disability, I was like 'yeah, I’m gonna be the hero, I’m gonna be the one to overcome, and I’m gonna share that with the world'. So I started sharing on Instagram - that’s how this started, cause I started sharing about my grief, I started sharing about my obstacles, and what I shared was how I got over those obstacles. So, as I shared that, you know, people really liked it, but it wasn’t political. I wasn’t addressing a system, I was just talking about my own grit, my own tenacity, and there came a point when I realised that I didn’t have to deal with many of these barriers. And I thought, you know what, instead of being a superhero all the time, I could just get involved with some kind of legislation and remove this barrier so I can just live my life. So I don’t have to be inspiring in order to get to the store, or to just hang out with my friends. I can get smart and remove the barrier before I have to jump over it. And that was the moment when I realised that I had to get involved in politics, and I had to stop talking and kind of requiring disabled people to deal with all of their own barriers, like superheroes, and instead say 'look, we only have to be this way, or do this, because we live in a world that’s not accessible to us, because people haven’t invested in it. Or systems haven’t. So like, let's get smart, and just live normal lives, and erase and address these barriers. So there - I think that there were always be aspects and barriers, more barriers to disabled living than to able-bodied living, at least in my experience. And, there is so much we can do to just allow disabled people to live normal lives, non-in - like lives where they don’t have to be inspiring, in order to just live normally, by making things accessible. So that was kind of the natural progression for me, was moving from 'I’m a hero who's taking on all of my own barriers', to getting smart and realising 'oh, I can' - like there - I can imagine a world where these barriers don’t exist.

 

[00:42:10]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah. That’s really - again, it's quite hopeful, even though it's about addressing the reality of the situation, you know, it's about like going from the kind of individual, to being what can happen collectively, so that mass liberation, I guess, is that the -?

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah, absolutely.

 

Will Stringer: From kind of an individualised... it's not even individualised, well, I suppose it's like that superhero, but it's also feels understandable why you - you realise there is a way of feeling good in certain situations, that you can try and almost like reclaim that, for that instance, and be like 'I am this' - the kind of like the superhero of the situation, because so many other factors, because of the way in which we’ve constructed things in society, or out - or placed out of the control of the control.

 

Carson Tueller: Yeah.

 

[00:43:06]

 

Will Stringer: I think... probably I should have realised, I’ve rambled slightly, but I really wanted to ask this question around Covid-19, because obviously it's had this huge impact on, and we talked about very briefly, on almost every corner of our lives, and across the - across the entire world as well. And I wondered from your experience as a campaigner, but also as an advocate, where you see the future of that, of that campaigning work, in that world we live in, particularly for disabled campaigners?

 

Carson Tueller: I actually think that in many ways this transition into a more tech-savvy digital space is actually really great for disabled people. And so while there is frustration that this happened within the space of a few months, when we’ve been advocating for this for a long time, it's frustrating, it's still a welcome change. And I think that a lot of disabled people are hoping that these changes will remain in effect, moving forward as the world starts to recover from a pandemic and starts to go back to a, you know, a more in-person way of living. And... and the reason I hope that that is true is because so much of our advocacy happens online. It is difficult for a lot of disabled people, whether it's because they have a chronic illness, or because of accessibility, it's more difficult for us to physically gather together. It's more difficult for us to show up in spaces when we're also trying to deal with disabilities and inaccessibility. So... so many of us can participate in online conversations, and in social media, and in other campaigns like that, really really effectively. So I hope that we'll continue to see a building movement on social media. I mean I want to see one of the... great indicators that disabled - the disabled movement is behind in its visibility, is the fact that our adv - like our most visible advocates and activists have - don’t have millions and millions of followers. We have, I mean the most that I know of is people who have a couple hundred thousand followers, as opposed to other intersections, whether it's in queer spaces or black spaces, where these leaders have millions and millions of followers, and the coalition, and the visibility. And that’s just really - and that’s fantastic, obviously, for those individuals, and for those movements. And we just don’t have that visibility in disabled spaces. So I would love to see building momentum online, and so I’m hoping that with this transition into a digital space, because of a pandemic, that we'd see some indirect benefit in the visibility of disabled people. So it's gonna take a lot of the same advocacy though, the same kind of allyship that we’ve all been learning about, especially recently, regarding, you know, racial injustice, and how white people can be better allies to black people and people of colour. The same principles really apply to disability, so I’m hoping that all of this can kind of come together to create a movement that will take us to the next level of inclusion.

 

[00:46:53]

 

Will Stringer: Yeah, I think some person described it to me as, for being in lockdown, there was nowhere to avert your eyes when the... the horrors that came out from the police brutality, and towards black people, you... and in some ways there... you don’t want to have to wait, there shouldn't be a threshold moment like that had to happen before -

 

Carson Tueller: Right, right.

 

Will Stringer: People... avert their eyes, and what we should learn from the Black Lives Matter movement, you know, of course lots of things. But for, it seems like to just start listening to disabled voices... you know, before things become even, you know, become even harder.

 

Carson Tueller: Right, right.

 

[00:47:47]

 

Will Stringer: The last thing that I wanted to ask, even though I think that I said the last thing was the last thing, but I’ll go for it... I wondered what you would say to some of the next generation of queer and disabled campaigners, about what you wish you knew before you started out, cause hopefully they'll be listening to this podcast.

 

Carson Tueller: Yes, yes. I would - oh man. I would say, address your internalised ableism. Like go to work on your internalised ableism. Because we're not - I wasn’t taught about that. I didn’t know about that. A lot of people don’t know about it. And so, I would say, do the work of learning about ableism, learning about what it looks like, learning about what it feels like, and what those mess - like those hidden messages are. Because that’s where all of the advocacy essentially comes from, is this philosophical conversation about what does it mean to have a human body. What does it mean to have ability, or a disability. Cause it's all a philosophical question, that’s really the premise here. And ableism is the structure that values and prioritises able bodies above disabled bodies. So if, you know, this upcoming generation can master and understand in depth this conversation, the shift we have to make in the premise to instead of prioritising a single kind of body that we say is good and right, and the way to be, and instead make it a spectrum, and all the bodies on a specifically are valuable, that will be an incredible foundation to start to open the eyes of - or, you know, bring awareness to, of ableism to able-bodied people, which is a huge part of the work. I mean, we have to know... what the flawed premises are, and I talk about premises a lot, the flawed premises are, or the flawed arguments are, before we can actually make a real difference. So I would start there, and then after that I would say claim your space. Claim your space, advocate for yourself where you have the energy to, where it's safe to, and do not apologise for taking up space. Do not apologise for asking for a ramp, or asking for an accommodation. When disabled people hesitate to ask for what they need, that’s internalised ableism telling us that we have quote unquote special needs, that somehow ours - our needs are marginal, needs don’t count in the same way. I will tell you, you know, my need and my desire to be able to sit in a restaurant and get into the restaurant with a ramp and have a place I can roll up to, so I can actually have the experience of eating with my boyfriend, or with some friends, and enjoying the meal, is just as important as it was when I walked through that door and sat in a typical chair. So I see this a lot in myself when I hesitate to advocate for myself, that’s because I am buying into some message that I don’t deserve it, that I’m a cost to the system, and all that BS. [laughs] So I’d say yeah, take up space, advocate yourself, don’t apologise. Learn, steady, follow, you know, our greatest leaders, so many of which are queer women of colour, who are disabled, doing incredible work. Look to them, and you know, do your research.

 

[00:51:52]

 

Will Stringer: Thanks so much for joining me today. I think that’s really amazing point to end on, and again, you know, although it's about work, it still feels so full of hope, just like how we started the conversation, it does feel so generous to yourself as well... yeah. So it's really, really great to have had you on the podcast. And if people want to follow you, it will be on the show notes, and there will be a little bit of a message after this as well.

 

[theme music]

 

[00:52:30]

 

Will Stringer: Thanks again to Carson for an incredible conversation. Apologies for the sound quality from my side. This is what happens when you record in a basement. If you'd like to follow more of Carson's work, sharing and presenting to corporations, organisations, institutions about powerfully transforming the barriers of our lives, both on personal levels and on more systemic levels, or you can connect with Carson as a personal performance and empowerment coach, providing personalised tools for individuals in their quest for an unleashed life. Access to speaking and coaching enquiries can be made through the website carsontueller.com, but most of Carson's advocacy and activism can be found on Instagram, Carson_Tueller. If you have any thoughts, do tweet us on @NUSScotland, and until next time, see you later.

 

[00:53:26 End of transcript]