Advocacy Fatigue: Self-Care, Disability Discrimination, and Legal Attrition

Abstract

The need for self-advocacy and community organizing is a constant in the lives of people with disabilities. In enforcing their rights under civil rights laws, people with disabilities are drawn into a game of attrition through litigation — where their limited economic means, community supports, and physical and mental resources are leveraged against them as they have to choose between basic needs and broader policy changes and legal justice for all. This phenomenon can best be described as “advocacy fatigue.” I define advocacy fatigue as the increased strain on emotional, physical, material, social, and wellness resources that comes from continued exposure to system inequities and inequalities and the need to advocate for the preservation and advancement of one’s rights and autonomy. Advocacy fatigue can diminish emotional and physical health, career prospects, and financial security because of the ongoing exposure to stress and discrimination.

While this concept has been explored in part under the term “compassion fatigue” in fields such as social work, teaching, and nursing, I view it broadly and inclusively. Other scholars have focused their work on the negative effects of crisis and care-giving on professionals paid to do that kind of work. While those concerns should inform public policy and professional training, this kind of emphasis on providers has left out the traumas that come from reliving discrimination and being placed in a disadvantaged position in an adversarial system that views disability rights as the bestowal of charity.

Using a disability studies perspective, I will first define advocacy fatigue, drawing on such fields as psychology, gender studies, critical race theory, and socio-legal studies. Then, I will show how concerns in the professional literature around care-giving have reinforced views of people with disabilities as the sources of problems, rather than the bearers of them. I will conclude by presenting examples of advocacy fatigue in action in education, work, and healthcare, and offer strategies for better capturing and responding to this experience in the United States and Canada.

Keywords: disability discrimination, advocacy, education, law and society, sociology of law, comparative legal studies