Are you invisible?

[lee]

When we were dating, my husband was on canadian crutches. He could not walk unaided, at the time we thought this would be permanent. When we were together, I swear he was invisible to all others but me. If we were in public, nobody addressed him directly. They would talk to me and if they needed to find out something about him, they would ask me. It was as if he were invisible, and inaudible.

A while later he had a surgery that allows him to walk again. After intense physical therapy he can walk unaided. Suddenly I became invisible. People no longer acknowledged me until he introduced me and even then often would treat me the same way they used to treat him.

I have witnessed some people doing the same thing to a black person. I swear in seems like some wait staff cannot see minority customers. I have witnessed this repeatedly in various parts of the country.

Have you ever been invisible or witnessed invisible people? What do you do? Where do people learn to ignore certain others so thoroughly?

[Kyla]

Wow, this is a heavy question that I cannot answer at the moment, as it is too hot to think. But please tell me what Canadian crutches are?

[Alpha]

I'm always invisible when we're with my wife's friends.
We'll both be there, drinks in hand, telling about our trip.
Then her friends will ask her how I dealt with this or that problem, if I enjoyed myself, etc. as though I weren't there. Fortunately, she'll usually ask me to respond for myself, but the next question goes the same way, like I'm from some small Balkan country and my wife is the interpreter.

[tatertot]

I get this all the freakin' time when I'm out with Hubby and we run into some Army folks. Sometimes, I get a brief nod, acknowledging I'm there.

What really drives me nuts is when they tell Hubby something like "I ran into your father in law yesterday". Hello?!? Or, "I really admire your father in law." And I'm standing right there!

Even if I don't wear combat boots, I'm a person, too!

[lee]

Are those metal ones with arm cuffs instead of armpit pads. They are usually only used by the permanently disabled.

[Show_Biz]

Old people are routinely ignored.
Everyone will leave a family gathering while an old person is in the batchroom and have to return for them.
At the hotel where I rent lobby-side rooms for speaking groups, someone is always doing that, and we have to listen to the Left-ee try to get the staff to figure out where everyone went. Usually to a neighboring restaurant.

[Sassy]

Women dining alone are often invisible. I judge restaurants by that - and there are those I will not patronize again.

[Sadderbut]

I can make myself invisible. I get into movies that way, and many a banquet and convention. You dress like a maintenance guy, and enter in a hurry, more interested in the "part" you are bringing than the doorman. Once in, change in the bathroom from clothes in your tool case. You can party all night that way.

[Biotop]

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasm. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they only see my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me."

So begins possibly the greatest work of 20th century American fiction: "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison.

This book is as relevant today as when it was published in 1947. It is the definitive work on the topic we speak of here, and an awful lot more.

[Byzantine]

I'm such a mouthy bitch that I am never invisible. But I can and do steal notice from my companions... I just like attention. What can I say? If you feel invisible, make yourself known! It's no one's fault but your own. (I really didn't intend for that to rhyme...)

[lswote]

I don't think I have ever felt invisible except in the presence of beautiful women. I feel I am judged pretty fairly for who I am by most people except when it comes to beautiful women and then I feel like I have melted into the wall.

[Edwardina]

I used to be, but never anymore. Unless I want to be.

[Saint Zero]

I have been invisible for years. It was only via the internet I found a woman who wouldn't judge me the minute they saw me. Average looking fat guys don't get much attention. Ever. And when you do, it's some thoughtless moron asking "Have you ever thought about losing weight?"

Does wonderful things when the only time people notice you is to make fun of you. Makes you sink deeper into invisibility.

Okay, yeah, I'm still invisible, but my wife can find me easy. :)

[Kyla]

Now that the weather has gone back to normal, I can answer this question.

A few years ago, I injured myself pretty badly in a bike crash. Most of the injuries were pretty superficial, but I looked terrible. The entire left side of my face was completely torn up. People would stare at me, and when I glanced their way, I'd see the sudden turn of a head. The pointed ignoring of my injuries almost screamed, "What happened to you?" It was pretty irritating, but I didn't realize how much until I met a class of fifth graders visiting my school on a field trip. They all wanted to know what I had done, had I broken anything (I had crutches), had I gotten any stitches, how much it hurt, everything. Their honesty was refreshing.

[Homer]

So begins possibly the greatest work of 20th century American fiction: "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison.

Ha! That book SUCKED! The title character was a moron! All his problems were of HIS OWN CREATION! He was too damn stupid to see that, and blamed it all on society, race, and status. All that shit was his own fault, and then he went crazy.

And just so you don't think I came about this conclusion all alone, that basically is what my entire English 314 class though, black persons and other minorities included!

--Tim

[Byzantine]

"And just so you don't think I came about this conclusion all alone, that basically is what my entire English 314 class though, black persons and other minorities included!"

Thought.

But I digress.

Does the phrase, "the lady doth protest too much" mean anything to you?

Like, we will support your right to hate that particular story since blacks and minorities also did?

Can you explain that?

Why, some of my best friends are black persons and other minorities and they'd like to know too!

Sorry, Homer, but that was just weird.

[TVeblen]

FWIW, Homer, I thoroughly disagree with your stance on Invisible Man. We can't change each others minds on this, but just wanted to offer my disagreement.

A friend in a wheelchair is routinely overlooked; she's a funny, fine person who happens to be a quad. It's like people see only the wheelchair and not the person in it.

Just recalled a lady who comes into work frequently. She has very noticeable growths all over her face and arms. (I think it's the "elephant man" disease.) It's painful to watch people's eyes land on her face and then skitter away. She has to feel so isolated.

Don't know why this happens: discomfort, laziness, rudeness, etc.? Seems like anyone who's the slightest bit different, outside the established lines, just gets shunted aside.

Veb

[JimmyNipples]

I am so visible.....it hurts.

Life is too short to be ignored. I'm a psuedo entertainer, I MAKE SURE I'm not ignored.

[Medea's Child]

I thought Invisible Man was a beautiful work. Very elegant and it did examine this topic. The character had to go through those things in order for the work to be beautiful. That was sort of the point I got. It wouldn't have made the impact it did if everything went hunky dorey and teh main char was perfect. He was human, in a larger than reality way. Like the old Everyman idea.

IMHO, of course...

[Silver Fire]

When I'm somewhere with my SO (he's not my husband) I become invisible. I don't know many of the people he knows. Even so, if we come across someone I don't know, (at the mall or whatever) he will not introduce me. The ONE occasion that he actually DID introduce me, which was when I met his parents, it was: "This is Sarah." Not, "This is my girlfriend, Sarah." Just my name. When he doesn't introduce me, I either introduce myself or walk away. Usually the latter, which he complains embarrasses him. But how does he expect me to feel, standing there like an idiot??

(FYI: His parents now know that I'm his girlfriend, only because his SISTER told them I live with him. He couldn't even tell them THAT! But I 'spose this is a whole different subject huh? Okay, I'm done know.)

[purrplebear]

I have spent more years, more time, on crutches than I care to remember. <Knee injury as a teen, took years to get fixed right> I often felt invisible when negotiating sidewalks and hallways and such on them. Annoying, and it hurt at the time.


Much more recently I had surgery on my left foot <heel spur repair, called a Plantar Fascia Release> that necessitated me being in a wheelchair for the month of Dec.'99. The couple of times I got Mr Bear to take me shopping for presents I was completely ignored by almost everyone. And, I kept getting stuck, and he'd have to back me out and find another way around the store because the aisles weren't wide enough for the wheelchair. The walkways between racks was even worse. And, no one would move out of my way, or help me get by a rack of clothes <most of which hit me in the face or arms as I attempted to get by>. I've never felt so invisible in my life, before or since.

I thank God every day that it was only temporary for me. Too many people can't say that, and have few options. I gained a new appreciation for what handicapped people must face every day, everywhere they go. I can't even tell you that one person actually looked down at me, at my face. They would address their remarks to my hubby, as if I wasn't there.

So, yes, to answer you, lee, I felt invisible all last December. Except to my family and close friends of course.


:wally

[2sense]

[Crunchy Frog]

I know exactly what that's like. I was in a car accident that broke my left leg, left arm, 3 ribs, I hyperextended my right knee, and hit my head so hard I now need to wear glasses (well, I'm supposed to, I rarely do). While both legs were healing, I was being pushed around in a wheelchair. I'm already cranky that I'm in the damn chair, and then someone would completey ignore me and ask my mother, sister, or father (whoever was puching the chair at the time) how I was doing. While usually I would be ok with it, not wanting to talk about the accident anyway, occasionally that would just grate my last nerve and I'd answer before anyone else could, in my most sarcastic voice, "I have one working limb, I can't move, I can't even bathe myself, it hurts to breathe, but other than that I'm fuckin peachy." This kept up after I got out of the wheelchair and during my stint on canadian crutches (yep, had to do that too). People didn't start asking me how I was doing until I was using just a regular cane. (I walk just fine and unaided now, if anyone was wondering)

I just don't understand why ask someone else a question about someone who's right there.

[soulsling]

all the time.
:rolleyes:
whenever i was with my ex and we ran into friends, a whole conversation would ensue without my being introduced once, and then if i was, it was after i said something like, "hi, i'm nobody important, just this guy she hired to eventually take home tonite, my names Allan :) piàcere!...."
and then she'd be both upset at my snide self introduction, and embarrassed at her mistake. In retrospect, i enjoyed those moments most and least at the same time.


HEEEELLLLLLOOOOOOOOO! YOU LISTENING???, SHEESH
i am invisible. :(

[lee]

I am listening.

For those that think you are too mouthy to become invisible, you are wrong. You might not stay as invisible for some breif moments, but believe me, if you were disfigured, in a wheel chair, on canadian crutches, then ppl would treat you as invisible by default and it would take constant battling not to stay that way.

To add to this topic, one of the difficulties that my husband and I faced when we were first together was that people got mad that we would be affectionate in public. Even holding hands drew stares.

The student union would be littered with couples actually laying on top of each other groping and liplocked and yet if I sat next to him, his arms around me, and me occasionally kissing him, then ppl got mad. We were asked by a school official not to be affectionate in public because of his condition. We were told that it was simply innappropriate for him to act like that. Has anyone experienced that sort of thing?

[Crunchy Frog]

We were asked by a school official not to be affectionate in public because of his condition. We were told that it was simply innappropriate for him to act like that. Has anyone experienced that sort of thing?


That doesn't even make sense to me. What possible justification could they have for asking that you two not be affectionate? That sounds like plain old prejudice, and as such, stupidity.

[soulsling]

yes lee, a girlfriend i had 3 years ago, we worked together, and it was the same thing. We were told not to show any type of affection on the floor, yet, any married couples there (there were 2) would be groping at given moments and not a word was said to them. i was still invisible to her friends though.

can you see me? i'm not visible.

[struuter]

Hurt my leg on a trip--way to spend five days, ugh--and to cheer me up, my friends and hubby took me to my favorite restaurant. It was packed. All the benches were taken in the waiting area, so we moved out of the main walkway. I think every person there took some serious time to look me over. I felt like I'd run over somebody's dog. Not one of them smiled sympathetically or offered to get up so I could sit (it was obvious I was struggling with the crutches). My friend noticed all this and said jokingly that I should know better than to upset these nice healthy people with my ugly injury. How were they supposed to enjoy their meal with me hobbling about? If I was really hurt, I should have just stayed home. That got me laughing, which caused some people to actually grimace. Wow.
Finally, a bunch of people were seated in the restaurant and an older gentlemen who had just arrived saw that a bench was free. He came over to me and insisted I take the bench. When I thanked him and my husband explained how strange people treated us, he replied sadly, "Just wait until you're old."
Gave my perspective a serious whack into alignment.

[soulsling]

...then there was the time i broke my foot and incurred a contusion in my heel from a rock climbing fall, was on (american?) crutches for 2 months, nobody let me sit on the subway the way i always do for others with physical disabilities or who just look plain tired, nobody bothered to move aside just a bit or help me out going up stairs on the subways the way i always did, just ignored the guy with crutches. A lady even stepped on my foot once, then gave me a dirty look. rat bastard b!+*$ that she was. made me wanna stop being nice to anyone. just completely invisible. perhaps it's a talent of mine. i love the way the general populace just stares at someone and doesn't move to do anything, hope they all realize that's exactly what's gonna happen to them just the same. putzes!

[Biggirl]

People try to make me invisible. I am a not beautiful, not skinny, not white, not male person who, at first glance, seems mousey and unassuming. I also try to be polite and not butt in to other people's conversation.

Then the waitress passes by me for the fifth time without pausing. . . and I trip her!

See, I have no shame. I will and have embarrassed my whole family because, although I look unassuming, I'm actually very loud and attention-getting. And it is true that people will look at me as if I've grown another head when I make my presence known.

I will not be ignored.

[SwimmingRiddles]

It's getting better as I get older, but it used to be horrid if I went out to dinner with some chicks. It's like the waitress was thinking, "Hmmm...young women. They look fairly bohemian. Won't leave good tip. Not out to impress anyone. Low on my priority list." I took to bringing toys into resturants, and playing with them while waiting to order. THAT usually got thier attention quickly, a customer with her head in her hand playing with a collapsable string doll.

My father is a disabiltity activist (not professionally,) and I wish invisibiltity was the only problem. It's pretty hard to be seen when you can't even get into the building. Feh.

[soulsling]

purplebear, pinky, swiddles, i notice you. you're not invisible. hell pinky, i noticed you didn't trip the waitress at dinner at nyc doperfest, and we were definitely being ignored for some time, what gives? that's the least i could've seen since there was no puke...

[Ellen Cherry]

So many of your stories have prompted me to make a renewed effort at politeness and courtesy to EVERYONE! I'm aware of the problem; one of my good friends has a severely mentally handicapped daughter. She's often ignored. Of course when I see her I always greet her, kiss her or pat her head, as I try to do with any child. My friend's sister-in-law is the worst, though; one time she brought McDonald's for all the children and skipped Emily. Like the kid doesn't eat!

And, if it's ok, I'd like to off hugs to soulsling and Pink Slinky. Hope that's OK. You're very visible and very beautiful, to me. :o

[Biggirl]

purplebear, pinky, swiddles, i notice you. you're not invisible. hell pinky, i noticed you didn't trip the waitress at dinner at nyc doperfest, and we were definitely being ignored for some time, what gives? that's the least i could've seen since there was no puke...


Hey, I said I was polite! I knew the people at the restaurant were friends of yours. Anyway I was inside, not in tripping distance.

[Retief]

I have had the opposite problem, Normally I am not invisible just get normal attention like anyone else. I took to wearing my hair long a few years ago and in a pony tail, since I bear a slight resembelence to the actor Steven Segall (sp) people began paying too much attention to me , some of his teen-aged fans called me "Nico" one of the characters he played on screen. When it got to the point I felt some of them wanted to try kick-boxing, I said enuf is enough and cut it short again. Now I am back to normal visibility. I pity those people who have become so well known they get the opposite treatment, they are too visible. I imagine it is as bad in its own way as being in a wheelchair.

About disabled "invisibility" feel that it is often that people do now want to stare, and are trying to be polite but overdoing it so they refuse to look at all.

[Byzantine]

Okay, I'm thinking, I won't post again... because it will sound mean. But then I think to myself if I don't post, I'm not being true to myself.

So, I have to be true to me. I already know a bunch of folks are just gonna jump my butt but:

GET OFF YOUR DUFF!

I think it was Eleanore Roosevelt who said, "No one has the right to make you feel inferior unless you give them permission" or some such.

Are you being ignored? Are you letting yourself be ignored? Then speak out! I can't do it for you because Gods know I would if I were with you.

If you won't take up your own space and say here I am world I have a hard time doing it for you.

I'm not Cindy Crawford, I'm not Brittany Spears, I don't even look like these women on my best days but Gods know, you will see me.

I'm not yelling or screaming or practicing scales... I'm just me. I've had my entire face bashed in with an oar... ugly and dark and really, fucking, scary... but no one ever ignored me. I've hurt my body I don't know how many times during boating, hiking, whatever... that doesn't mean I become some washout, relegated to the back fence...

Who the fuck do you people hang with that you get treated like this? Not only that but why the fuck do you ALLOW yourselves to be treated that way?

That is obscene. Someone needs to get a clue and I think it's you.

I would NEVER let anyone shove me into the corner and I don't think you should either.

[lee]

Byz, you are an ass.

Sometimes I would like to have a nice dinner out, sometimes I just want to have a good time. The constant crusade to remain visible is tiring and has gotten me kicked out of more than one establishment. I boycott places that persistin doing that to either of us, but I see no way to prevent people from acting like that in the first place.

"Excuse me, I am standing right here and just asked you a question. Why are you talking to my companion instead?"
Sometimes when one of us says that, the person being addressed leaves rather than deal with the person being ignored.

[soulsling]

....then there was the time i when all my friends and i were tripping and somehow i ended up being left behind in a room for 4 hours watching a scorpion hunt, kill, and eat a grasshopper in a small tank only to find out that afterwards all my friends had come back from their outdoor adventure in the 5 boroughs to end up in Staten Island and were looking for me there for the past 5 hours before realizing they left me back at the dorm with the scorpion and that they should hurry back to see if i was still alive...

[SwimmingRiddles]

Pinky I thought they stuck you in the booth on purpose. As it was, what with me moving every 10 minutes, I think the waiter would have quit on the spot if he had to contend with the Foot of Pink.

and Soul you're not invisible. Trust me. If acid can make the walls melt, it can make you loose track of who is adventuring with on a particular day.

About disabled "invisibility" feel that it is often that people do now want to stare, and are trying to be polite but overdoing it so they refuse to look at all.

Whaaaa? Why would you stare? "Golly, gee, that chick's in a wheelchair. I ain't never seen nuthin' like that. That's almost as excitin' as when that black guy came to town a coupla weeks ago, ah-yup!" Prejudice is prejudice, regardless of what your rationalization is, :wally.

[Ellen Cherry]

Byzantine you're having trouble with empathy. You're unable to see another's point of view. As inconceivable as it is for you to be ignored (apparently), for others it is just as inconceivable to be assertive. I can't completely characterize the feeling because I tend to be more gregarious than retiring. However, to tell someone to just shake it off and buck up is as unrealistic as telling someone who's clinically depressed to just cheer up.

Actually we're talking more personality traits rather than disorders, so that may be overstating it a bit. Still, a little more sensitivity on your part would help us examine the problem and discover solutions, rather than smiting those who're experiencing it.

[purrplebear]

Thank you soulsling. You are such a dear. I definitely notice you too. <and flirt with you every chance I get!;)>


{{{{{{soulsling}}}}}}



Byz, I see your point, but it's not that simple. Like lee said, the constant crusade to remain visible does get tiring. Sometimes, it's just easier to take the path of least resistance. I'd give you some examples, but I don't want to upset hubby, so I won't. <no, it's not anything he's ever done>

I agree with you, Ellen. Thanks.