Thoughts
A Code Number Never Once Asked Me How I Was Doing
· Madeleine Nicholas
Someone else will read that number later, without me anywhere in the room.
💚 Has your own experience ever gotten smaller the moment it became a checkbox?
Every assessment I’ve ever sat through ends the same way. My actual answer gets translated into a code, a number tucked into a category that someone else will read later without me anywhere in the room.
I get why coding exists. Systems need a way to compare and track and justify funding across thousands of people at once. But something real gets lost every time a lived experience becomes a data point. The code doesn’t know today was a hard day. It doesn’t know “mild” on paper stopped feeling mild by three in the afternoon. All that detail gets flattened into whichever option sat closest on the dropdown menu.
What worries me is how much of the actual decision making now happens at the level of the code instead of the conversation. Funding gets approved or denied based on categories, not on people. And once your experience has been turned into a number, it’s a hard thing to argue with using a story.
Measurement itself isn’t the problem, I don’t mind being counted. What bothers me is when the count starts standing in for the person instead of just describing them.
Has your own experience ever gotten smaller the moment it became a checkbox?
If you want to learn how to speak up when a system tries to reduce you to a code, that’s exactly what the Self Advocacy Collection is built for, coming soon. Link in bio, lighteningup.com.au.
Madeleine x