Ignore the provocative title – comedian Rosie Jones’s Am I a R*tard documentary has a crucial message

There are many things that are difficult to watch in Rosie Jones’s new documentary, Am I a R*tard?. But there’s one in particular that I keep thinking about: the fact that she has to wear headphones every time she leaves the house alone. Not because she’s a music-obsessive (although she does love Steps), but because it’s the only way she can drown out the abuse that follows her around. When she appears on TV and makes her audience laugh, Jones is something of a national treasure. But out and about – and in the Wild West of social media – she is a disabled person. And that means people are nasty and cruel.

The documentary, which airs on Channel 4 on Thursday, aims to put the spotlight on ableism and the abuse it feeds. Understandable backlash around the documentary’s controversial title has, sadly, distracted from its crucial message: ableist abuse is constant, horrific, and too-often ignored. Jones’s open and frank exposing of the abuse she faces sends that message loud and clear – and forces the audience to question why it has been tolerated for so long.

That tolerance is starkly exposed when Jones reports a tweet calling her the r-word to Twitter, only to get an email saying it does not break the social media company’s guidelines. Digging deeper, she discovers that the word – a hateful slur used for disabled people, especially those with learning disabilities – is not even banned by Twitter, so its vetting algorithm does not see the tweet as a problem. It’s only when Jones turns up at Twitter’s London offices with a giant cookie (“tech guys love cookies”) with the slur written in icing that the offensive message is taken down.

Perhaps the hardest scene to watch comes at the beginning of the documentary. For a few years, Jones has commissioned a specialist company to screen the messages she receives online so that she doesn’t see the torrent of abuse that comes her way. But, as part of making the film, she agrees to see the messages that have been hidden from her. We watch as scores of abusive, ableist comments flood a giant TV screen. A usually grinning, bouncy, joke-cracking Jones goes very quiet, reading all the hate people have for her, just because she is disabled. It’s painful to watch, even though for disabled people like me, the pain stems from the fact we recognise Jones’s experience, rather than because we’re shocked by it. Nevertheless, I do hope it shocks non-disabled people into re-examining the world around them and recognising how deeply ingrained ableism is in society.

There are a few missed opportunities in the documentary, such as a lack of other disabled voices sharing their experiences (in the last few weeks, it has emerged that several disabled people who were going to be included pulled out because of the use of the r-word in the title). Jones’s friend and disabled BBC journalist Nikki Fox does make an appearance, but the programme would have been stronger if it reflected a more diverse range of voices.

I also found myself wishing it went a little deeper; while Jones looks at the personal and mental health problems of those who troll people online, there is little about the societal exclusion and often outright hatred of disabled people that creates the conditions for these messages in the first place. After all, trolling doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and disabled people are as likely to experience ableism offline as they are on the internet. Jones alludes to this when she explains her constant use of headphones, but the link between real-world and digital ableism isn’t explained. Nor are slurs the only use of ableist language, which crops up everywhere from rhetoric about benefits shirkers to random strangers demanding to know what’s “wrong” with us, but at times the documentary can seem to suggest that banning certain words from social media platforms could fix the problem. While I’m sure that’s not what Jones really believes, the editing of the film does oversimplify a complex problem. Of course, a one-off programme cannot possibly address the innumerable manifestations of ableism in society, but a hint at the wider context would have helped Jones achieve her goal of challenging online abuse.

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Nonetheless, as an introduction to ableism for a public largely unaware that it exists, and as a plea for change, the documentary is effective. Jones doesn’t hide away from just how vile the ableism she receives can be. Despite the pressure on disabled people in the public eye to always be positive and strong (lest we invite even more unwanted pity), Jones makes the tough decision to show the emotional toll being on the receiving end of hatred and abuse inevitably takes. In doing so, I think she manages to take what some might perceive as weakness and turn it into strength.

For too long, society has ignored ableism and the constant abuse of disabled people. In sharing her personal story, Jones is asking us to look the problem in the face. The documentary isn’t perfect, but it is desperately needed. I hope people watch it, sit with their discomfort, and work to make the internet – and society generally – a better place for Jones and the millions who share her experiences.