Functioning, pt 2

 The problem with "functioning" as a concept is not the indisputable fact that people have differing abilities, talents, and skills to differing degrees.

The problem is that some abilities, talents, and skills are classified as "functioning," and real or perceived deficiency in them is grounds for pathologization and denial of autonomy.

I can't play the trumpet, run a marathon, or dance on my toes. These are abilities that some other people have, but I don't. Yet no one is going to call me "low-functioning" or take away my rights because of this.

Okay, but those are hobbies, not necessary for survival. If you don't have abilities necessary for survival, surely that's low-functioning.

Except I also can't hunt or clean an animal for meat, forage for plants, or spin wool into warm clothing. I would be completely unable to survive without the structures of the society I live in. Yet I still do not face the legal consequences of being classified as "low-functioning." I am not denied human rights for this. Primitivists and fascists insult me for this (I don't care), but they have no legal power over me (yet).

Okay, but those skills aren't necessary for survival in my social context, a post-industrial capitalist society. Lacking abilities that are necessary life skills in my social context, that would definitely get me classified as "low-functioning", right?

Except, no, I'm not very good at post-industrial capitalism, either. I can't file my taxes without assistance. I'm hazy on what the stock market is. The complex interconnected computers I use to manage my life might as well be run by tiny elves in hamster wheels for all I understand them. People might make fun of me or look down on me for this. But they don't classify me as "low-functioning." They don't take away my right to make my own decisions about my own body.

But I have trouble filtering out different sounds, speech, and background noise. If I'm in a meeting or a crowded room, and people are have multiple conversations at once, I have no idea what's going on. I sometimes get a look on my face that others read as "confused."

This is what makes people question my "functioning." Because I "look confused," and they don't think I can think.

"Functioning" is not about what skills people have or how well they can survive. It's about how well they can perform normative behavior in their society, and about the assumption that people who do not perform normative behavior are less capable of thinking or decision-making.

"But what about people who can't take care of themselves?" Irrelevant. You can't take care of yourself either. You live in a building you didn't construct, powered by electricity you didn't install and probably don't understand, travel in a metal box powered by a combustion engine to get food you didn't grow and products you didn't build in exchange for tokens with no intrinsic value and spend most of your waking hours doing meaningless tasks in exchange for such tokens. You can't conceptualize what it would mean to "take care of yourself" -- no, not even if you have a small garden or a few animals you like to imagine constitutes "self-sufficiency" (it doesn't). Which is fine! Humans are an interdependent species who shouldn't have to "take care of themselves."

But the concept of "functioning" is not based on skill level. It is not based on "how much support someone needs" (which would be meaningless in the first place -- all humans need roughly the same amount of support; the differences arise in who has the social privilege to access it and whose human needs are framed as "special" or "extra").

The concept of "functioning" is based on the unchallenged cultural assumption that people with non-normative traits are less human, less reasonable, less thinking, less capable of decision-making.

As I wrote in this previous post, humans do not "function." Humans are not machines. Humans are thinking, feeling, decision-making beings. They do not need to fulfill any "function" in order to justify their existence or prove their ability to think, feel, make decisions. The right to exist, the right to communicate, the right to self-determination, do not depend on anyone's possession of any particular skill set.