A Disabled Woman's Scorn

Two months later….

     Everybody cheer I am not actually typing with alcohol nearby….just a sprite. Oddly I don’t drink as much as I make it sound but that is only because I don’t drink as much as I would like to drink. Why do I have not so occasional and often intense needs to drink or otherwise pretend certain parts of life don’t exist? To put it simply…you folks are stupid. (Me too don’t worry). Recently I talked to a faculty member at my alma mater about the women’s studies program and at some point it came up I might feel friction with the racial studies side, as I am white and might be seen as having it easy. I, too curious for my own good, asked what kind of role my disability would have on that sentiment to which her response was basically un surety. That made sense seeing as she was neither disabled nor knew anyone in the program that was, but in an attempt to give some kind of answer she said that at least I was a ‘pretty’ disabled. Everyone let that sit for a moment and sink in….done? Fantastic. 

     So here I am sitting in an office talking to an attractive and intelligent woman who I can only assume worked very hard to get where she was in the field of women’s studies and I am trying really hard not to slam my head into her oversized desk. Now I understand what she was trying to say which was that 1) at least I was physically capable enough to access all the available resources and 2) that since I was attractive and generally found myself with quite and unobtrusive disabilities I was likely to get farther because of reason I covered in my previous post. I get what she was TRYING to say but that doesn’t change the fact that the woman called me a ‘pretty disabled’ a term I find so insulting I can’t exactly express why…yet. First of all this women’s studies academic just used a common and degrading social view used on and against women by our species as a whole; being that a woman’s worth is based on how attractive she is to others. Secondly she just seemingly demeaned the struggle of a disabled woman by making it sound as if an attractive woman somehow feels the social condemnation and borderline banishment less than a person who is less physically appealing and that is plain bull shit.

     As a child I was apparently very cute, being blond and blue eyed. My mother talks of times when we lived in Korea as part of an army position and women would rush her in the street of town, pushing the hands of their children forward to touch my head as blond hair was extremely lucky. As child in elementary school none of the kids cared I was once pretty. I was knobbed kneed, rough and tumble with scabs and scars on my legs, and I was a cripple. I was THAT kid, the child every child is glad he or she isn’t with the thought of “I may not be the most popular but at least I am not…that kid.” In the power struggle that was an elementary school full of half fed army kids, moving every three years and learning to shop double coupon, the pecking order was an intense affair. My fifth grade year a friend of mine was adopted, as it were, by the popular crowd and given a task. To amuse them with my misery. My once friend, spurred on by the requests of the others, began to torment me daily. She called me names, jeered at me every given chance, spit at me, forcibly removed me from play equipment at recess, smashed my ankles with rhythm sticks and kick my knees out from under me at gym, removed my assignments from the inbox only to place them in the garbage and even on one occasion followed me home only to beat me up in my own back yard as the other girls gathered around and watched. If you think she cared that I was a ‘pretty’ disabled then you are painfully obtuse.

     In high school this changed as I 1) started swinging back and 2) grew boobs. At sixteen I weighed 120 pounds and sported an H cup so attention wasn’t an issue. Guys stopped making fun of me and started commenting on what ‘other things’ a tremor might be useful for besides shaking my drink. They groped, touched themselves in my direction, whistled and made suggestions daily. My only saving grace where a handful of friends who are almost all currently in the military, dead, or addicts but at the time routinely threaten those who harassed me with rather specific bodily injury. Unfortunately they couldn’t be everywhere and in one particular home economics class a boy sexually harassed me in a way I have yet seen repeated. He would ask for my number (laughing as he did), demand to sit next to me, lean over into my personal space, try to touch my hair, ask what underwear I wore, if my shaking made ‘it’ easier, stated the way I wrote (with my face very close to the paper) looked like I was ‘blowing’ someone and insisted on touching himself through his jeans and moaning every time I did my work. It was not so much the what that bothered me as the intensity and consistency, even the way the rest of the class would watch and laugh as I squirmed and pushed him away. My appearance helped absolutely nothing with those that sought to find their amusement at my expense and at times it even seemed to only peak their interest and creativity.

     I suppose this is all to say that this woman deeply insulted me by insinuating that my life was somehow easier because I was pretty. She assumes, having no knowledge of her own, that those that find themselves attractive are somehow given an easy way out of the cruelty society finds pleasure in dealing. I am not here to wine or gather pity but to simply give you the examples I know best of just how wrong those assumptions are in actuality. It seems society shuns that which it does not want to see or believe, either out of horror or discomfort, and in a modern age of prevalent guilt they also seek to ease their  own conscious by denying their involvement. White people say they aren’t racist because their ‘best friend’ is black and they too are part Native American (yeah…1/82^nd), men say they aren’t misogynistic because they love a ‘strong’ woman, and the healthy say they are not ableist because they provide assistance. Meanwhile only 8.8% of residents in Atlanta live in integrated neighborhoods, men scream Ice Queen to the virginal, Whore at the sexually active, and Irresponsible at the pregnant, and the disabled still have to use the back entrance at the University of Alabama.

Peace,

Nest

Personal

Hey boys and girls,

So I am posting in an alcohol induced stupor, fyi, so excuse any ramblings or misspellin; if you were under the impression that this was a politically correct blog where I pretend to be a perfect angel of a disabled American than well...we haven't been reading closely have we? The fact is that I drink, curse, scream, socially smoke, and generally act in ways my grandmother would rather wish I not because in all seriousness society has never much wanted me so I find little room for thier regulations. Any who...to the point.

In the last several weeks I have read a mulitude of articles involving the disabled that have bothered me deeply. The first, to sum up, is a recent occurrence in my home state of Alabama where teachers could be heard taunting a student with Cerebral Palsy (Disabled Boy Taunted). For those playing at home, but not reading the intro, that is what I have. In this article it explains how several teachers not only neglected to instruct this student but went so far as to taunt him and called him 'disgusting' nermerous times to his face. Cerebral Palsy is a neurological disorder described in several websites, if you bother to look, but for the sake of this post the important difference is this; cerebral palsy does not affect mental functions but motor function (Cerebral Palsy) meaning that this child was mentally and emotionally capable to understanding what the teachers said. Unfortunately he was wholly unable to express his unhappiness. Imagine, if you will, that you are unable to sit up or speak properly. You find yourself hard pressed to write, eat, drink, or even communicate without assistance but you are as intellectually capable as you are now. Now imagine that you are neglected and taunted daily but are either too embarrassed or unable to tell someone and so must endure this perpetually, hoping that your 'care takers' will either grow bored or develop a conscious. You might, likely not, have some idea of what this child endured for what I can only hope was a short period of time. (Many schools have a specific 'special needs class' so in reality this child could have had the same teachers for years.)

Now many of you are likely scoffing at the idea of such cruelty. How could anyone be so mean to a special needs child? YOU would never treat a child like that right? Well thus is the issue. To millions around the world the child was not a child but a 'special needs child'. Jose, the boy's name for those who didn't bother reading, was not viewed as a future valuable member of society but as a burden. Society doesn't really care if he was mistreated or even abused, America is just mad because it makes us look bad. Even the friend of mine who posted the article was not so much worried over the abuse as he was how it made his society look, stating "Stay classy, Alabama... We made international news again". Who the fuck cares about Alabama? This boy was mistreated for what I can only guess was years and your only worry is how it makes you look as an Alabama resident? (His name is purposefully left out because he is, in reality, a good person and to make others think otherwise would be unfair. Sorry lovely.)

As much as this may make my friend seem bad it is really a view of our society. Proof? My Autistic Son's Life: Not Less Valuable. In this article the mother of a boy with Down Syndrome responds to the country’s reaction after a friend murders her own son, also with Down Syndrome, and then commits suicide only to be sympathized with for her 'burden'. WHAT? A woman murders her child due to postpartum depression  and America is up-in-arms but a woman shoots her disabled son having no other mental issues and suddenly it is understandable? Shannon Des Roches Rosa was not reaching to say that society devalues the lives of the disabled. Even as a child I was viewed as less important than my classmates and so was given less attention, assistance, and even love. I was considered a burden on my parents and humanity by teachers, peers, and on occasion my family because of my disability. I have had to fight for every accomplishment I have ever had and every ounce of scholastic attention I was given because everyone, EVERYONE, saw me as less valuable than my healthy peer. Even now my closest friends assume I am incapable of even simple tasks and playfully tease me about my inability to do certain tasks, having very little to say about my capability other than my physical looks, which I am told are pleasant. The reality is that if society viewed me as valuable they would have more to say than 'nice tits...I bet you give a good hand job.' (I have heard that word for word)

So, I am sure many of you are doing the usual 'no not me'. Of course YOU couldn't be this horrible. There is no way you, with your non-aching arthritic hand and piercingly painful back, could ever add to the constant degradation of the disabled. Obviously you didn't understand EVERYONE...google it. Have you ever been somewhere, say a restaurant, and seen an obviously disabled person roll/walk in. They fight the door, order food, carefully take their tray, struggle at the drink machine and all the while you do your best to not look at them. Yes..NOT look at them. Secretly you say it is because you don't want to stare but in reality you look away because you really wish they weren't there. You shift uncomfortable because you feel you should help, or at least offer, but if they accept you would have to get up and interact. *Cue dramatic music* It is...inconvenient. The fact is your life would be easier if that disabled person wasn't around, if I wasn't around. So I guess what I am saying is that I cannot think of a single 'healthy' person who has never devalued the life of a disabled person, even myself. That is right; I am guilty of the same offenses that I charge you with. As a disabled woman I have watched a wheelchair bound person fight a door dumb struck and not knowing what to do. Do I off to help? Would that be offensive? Perhaps I should go to another door....I don't want to disturb them after all. As a disabled person I don't have some magic text book with the answers in the back. I can’t tell you what to do or what we all think because believe it or not the disabled are not secretly telepathic. We are not hive minded like some bad remake of Indiana Jones. I have my views, opinions, and hang-ups just as anyone else because when I go to sleep I do so as a human being, no more or less valuable than anyone else.

Peace and Biscuits y’all

Nest

Act II

I am back; twice in one month. Yay! Ok, focus. This is going to be one of those theoretical mumbo jumbo posts with less rants and more philosophical and internal realization crap. You are warned.

I recently bought a book of poetry written by a Hispanic man and realized something. I can’t honestly think of any piece of art work created by a disabled person that really spoke of their experiences. You can find with out too much effort novels, poetry, or art that is considered ‘black’ or ‘hispanic’ because of the ways in incorporates certain cultural ideas and ways of life but when has any one ever seen that for disabled people?

Of course I am not saying we should wallow in self pity and let ourselves be wholly defined by our physical body. To let society label us as broken and wrong for existing the way we do  with out a fight would be to willfully degrade ourselves to second class citizens but, at the same time, to resign ourselves to a quiet life of simple non-existence is disgusting. Society should not be allowed to define us and our place and I even find myself annoying in my sudden need to group ‘disabled people’ together. Our culture likes to group everyone, particularly minorities, women, and the disabled. The fact is that there is no one ‘disabled perspective,’ the disabled are people with a large variety of personality and backgrounds so to think we all agree on shit is ridiculous.  

I could blather on forever, as you have come to find, but I will try to keep this around three paragraphs. Basically I have recognized a shift in my life separate from my course of study or possible occupation. I have spent most of my life, all but a year or two, trying to convince myself I was ok. I drank too much, drove too fast (not at the same time), listened to loud music, and dated emotionally abusive men and all of this accumulated over years of confusion and anger. The fact is that I am a vastly emotional woman who has survived on anger, condemnation of society, and a feeling of necessary vengeance. I have lived a life best described as a scream, a 24 year long scream that says ‘I am not wrong.’ I guess this post is really about my sudden need to make society hear me because I have finally heard myself.

Hooah,
Nest

Iago: society redressed

So it has been forever since I posted, just as I figured would happen eventually. Fear not readeries I have not abandoned you…yet. I have recently finished my first semester in grad school and have started working at a fast food restaurant as the lobby cleaner. (Side note: The napkin dispenser is NOT made to dispense 10 napkins at a time so don’t force it. Stop fucking up my shit!) As you might imagine working in a fast food restaurant with customers that are often not the brightest crayon in the box is not always pleasant, particularly if you can be seen as comical. This experience brings about a few thoughts. Thought 1: The disabled are not somehow magically unaware you are laughing at them just because you look away when they pass by…that actually makes it MORE obvious. Personally I don’t see how the misfortune of others is comical, particularly when it is a painful misfortune being experienced, but whatever. This leads to my next thought (queue rant). Thought 2: The disabled are in fact capable of whooping your ass pretty boy. Let’s see how funny we are when we shove our crippled fist down your throat motherfu… Inside voice….I feel better.

As for grad school….fail. I passed with much bitching but I have decided to change programs to (drum roll please) creative writing. Raise your hand if you are surprised. No one? Odd. While I was going to grad school in a program I must have been drunk to think was for me (what was I smoking?) I met a teacher that annoyed me. The only way I can describe how this woman made me feel is to say she made me want to eat babies. Do you know that feeling? Like a temper tantrum where you just want to go home and beat puppies….with kittens. Bless their heart. (Cookie if you name the reference) I am often amazed at some people’s ability to stare me straight in the eye when I express my, in this case, disbelief in their teaching ability and still brush me off. You speak Engrish?(Said in horrible Asian girl voice) Are we speaking the same language here? I managed to tell this woman that I no longer wished to have her as an advisor, that I stopped putting forth effort, and no longer cared about her class. What happened? I got BETTER GRADES. How the f&$% does that work? P.S. I have 0 filter.

I have subsequently found out that she has treated some of my classmates unfairly, to the point that half the class of highly intelligent students dropped or failed because she has favorites and has for years. Everyone in the program knows this, ‘good’ students included, so this is not just angry student syndrome. My question is this: Why the hell would I be a favorite? Let’s face it, I am not exactly a poster child for loveable. I am loud, brutally honest, foul mouthed, a bit of a lush, and generally everything my old south grandmother isn’t but yet I am attending a graduate program in a SMALL town in lower Alabama. My cousin works at one of the only two bars in town for God sake; I am talking banjo music and Baptist revivals people. So why would I be a favored student, particularly after telling her she basically sucked? Because it is hard to be mad at a cripple girl. I feel that this woman, at one point a social worker, feels sympathy. I can only assume if this is true that is it because of my disability and generally sickly look I had this semester as we are otherwise similar in background and status. So, **Misconception 5: When a disabled person airs their grievances it is a genuine problem and not that of an over reacting mind. We aren’t ‘emotionally damaged’ to the point that we find ourselves unable to have rational thought and thus rational issues with subpar behavior. You just really do suck and you need to take us serious. **

           Of course I may be reading the issue wrong and I really just remind her of some cousin twice removed or some shit but that is how I read it. Either way this is an issue I have experience before and has a name; ‘gas lighting’ but usually refers to the way in which men characterized women as over emotional and irrational. The idea is that women are trained by society to see themselves as irrational and emotional so when we are hurt by others we are often made to feel wrong for being upset. The same goes for the disabled. That person wasn’t actually being insulting by saying you couldn’t take bread from an oven so you are over reacting and should take their help as we all know you need it don’t we? Really folks??



Yay comment!

Enter: Stage Left

   

I have been considering doing this for a while, a blog based on the idea of a public and often angry or annoyed diary entre, and put it off because I either believed it would be pointless or even a sign of weakness and inability to cope with the mental exercise that comes with being disabled and thinking. Of course I have obviously decided to take part in this phenomena known as blogging, perhaps because I am self-absorbed enough to think other should or will read it or because it is just plain easier than writing a poem...and involved less intoxicated bouts of insomnia. Despite this decision I am sure about two or three posts in and I will run out of shit to say or find I have turned this into my own personal temper tantrum time and decide to look less like a pouting three year old by taking it down but until then I blather on. I suppose I should get to the point eventually.

For those of you who haven’t read Shakespeare; Caliban is a character in his play The Tempest that is a slave of the protagonists Prospero and his daughter Miranda while they are ship wrecked on an island over a span of 18ish years. Caliban is described as a ‘mooncalf,’ a term often used to describe the aborted fetus’ of farm animals and often thought to be caused by evil spirits. For the point of the play the term is most likely meant to lead the producer of the play as well as the actor playing him to see the character as deformed, ugly, and likely crippled man of questionable spirituality. The name of this blog, if you still hadn’t caught on, stems from the plight of the enslaved and ridiculed disabled man as I often relate more to Caliban than the other character. I relate to Caliban so strongly because I am also disabled, a mooncalf as the renaissance tongue may say, and often am subject to less than pleasant opinions.

Of course now we are not under the belief that deformation or disability is derived from inherent evil as in the past but that does not go to say that we are free of false beliefs and misconceptions. In fact there are too many for me to even consider rattling them off for you here but perhaps I will give you a few ensamples. I have what doctors call 'mild' destonic Cerebral Palsy, or CP, that affects the upper extremities and back more than the lower. The ‘mild’means I managed to stay out of a wheelchair without use of a walker but I still have a variety of issues such as hand tremors and several unseen issues such as irregular breathing rhythm and scoliosis. Basically these issues manage to collide in just the right manner as to make me generally sickly, pain riddled, but otherwise mostly physically capable short of spilling every damn drink I am ever handed all over myself. With that said here is a personal example. Once when I was about twelve or thirteen I moved back to Tennessee and my parents proceeded to try and find a suitable private school to enroll me in, because apparently public one were not disable friendly…HA. Any way; while visiting with one particular principal my mother explained my disabilities and how it was a physical one. The principal, of the ‘best’ private school in town, requested I write my name so as he could observe and thus be prepared for any issues. It is not what he did but how. When asking this he first spoke to my mother, as if I was incapable of understanding speech, but was quickly told to ask me himself. When the man did eventually get to me he proceeded to speak so slowly and articulate so carefully it was as if he was trying to describe the laws of special physics to a rock. **Misconception 1: Just because I am physically disabled doesn’t mean I am fucking stupid. Just because I can’t write in cursive doesn’t mean I need a padded room and a drool bucket…jack ass.** Needless to say my mother was amazed at my ability to keep from monkey hopping that douche bag’s desk and throttling him …and I quickly started at a public school.

Example two: I once heard a religious man state that we should take care of the mentally handicapped because they were inherently innocent of all sin and so had a free ride to heaven. This idea make my brain want to go skinny dipping in bacon grease then run through a dog pound for several reasons but firstly, this idea groups together all mental disabilities when there are a huge variety and so lends to sounding uneducated. READ A BOOK. Secondly, this is extremely derogatory as it assumes the disabled are incapable of mean, complex, or personal thought and only think what you or God put in their head. This is both incorrect and insulting so I suggest any who suffer from any similar misconceptions watch The Ringer, very funny and up lifting. Thirdly, and most bothersome to me, is that this also sounds dangerously like a way to self gratify at the expense of others. You may no longer be able to feel big and important or pious by lowering blacks or woman but find yourself a ‘retard’ and you’re set. **Misconception 2: The mentally or physically handicapped are not put on this planet as vessels for your holiness. They have their own feeling and thoughts so go stroke your ego elsewhere.** (For those upset by my use of the R word do not be under the impression I condone its use, quite the opposite)

Ok so, obviously this is not a blog where all hold hands and talk about our day over tea. Neither is this a politically correct blog where I stick to my ‘southern belle’ roots and quietly keep to myself so if you are looking for either of those the ‘back’ button is up to your left. Feel free to comment!

Peace and biscuits y'all
Nest