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…1/82nd), 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
