Aiming to create an inclusive society, these women are telling all about how they are getting on with life in a wheelchair—from toilet troubles to sex.
Have you ever wondered how people confined to a wheelchair go to the toilet? Or how they have sex? In other words—have you ever wondered how people confined to a wheelchair get on with a ‘normal’ life?
Recently in Japan, a handful of wheelchair-bound women have taken to social media and mainstream media, to explain the challenges of life in a wheelchair. They are doing it to change the narrative around disability to one that includes them as part of everyday life.
“
Recently, on the internet, on SNS, I talked about having defecation disorder. I said that I call it
unko
(poo) day and that I abbreviate that to UD. I got 200 likes for that. Someone replied ‘me too.’ My friends say, ‘Ryoko, tomorrow is your UD, right?… It’s made it easy to talk about it.
”
But the focus of her activities is bigger than herself. “If (the term) UD spreads nationwide, then women working now who are in wheelchairs may be able to get UD to leave. It is my dream to spread ‘UD.’”
Breaking down barriers
Mako Shibuya, who lives in Yamagata Prefecture, started her YouTube page by also talking about defecation disorder and having to use a catheter to extract urine. Since falling off the roof of a house two years ago while apprenticing under her father—a thatched roof maker—the 28-year-old has been confined to a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury.
Although she can extract her poo and doesn’t have to spend an entire day on the toilet, she can’t feel the internal accumulation of excretion. “Even more than being able to walk, I wish the excretion sensation would return somewhat—that’s how difficult it is,” she says in her YouTube video.
Shibuya started posting to YouTube last year, after being unable to find any information online about women in wheelchairs, or women with spinal cord injuries.
In April, she told the Asahi Shimbun that she wants to share information with others who are struggling with the same issues but are unable to ask about them. “I hope I can give disabled people who live in the countryside ideas about ways to do things,” she said.
She also wants regular people to know about undiscussed issues—like defecation disorder—that she and other wheelchair users face, because understanding, and being understood, helps break down barriers between us.
As she explains in the YouTube video about the reason for making it, “Leaking pee in front of someone who understands and leaking in front of someone who doesn’t, is completely different.”
