Excellent post. It’s so interesting how the nature of the visibility of one’s disability affects the way people behave around that person. Like for me, ha! It’s the exact opposite of being invisible and being walked into. My god that would NEVER EVER happen to me. No, people can be literally 15 feet away from me as we pass each other in a corridor and as i get close to parallel with them, they suddenly leap back as if they had to make that sudden jump to avoid me just ramming full force into them. It always happens. So weird. If im in a situation where it’s cramped and some sort of wheelchair to body contact is inevitable, i dont know how many times a person has banged the hell out of their bare shin on the metal “leg” of my chair and immediatedly become ridiculously effusively apologetic, as if i was the one hurting. I always smile and say “it’s ok, my chair cant feel anything”.
Also, people do not stare at me. But people are absolutely, overly aware of me. They steal sideways glances, as if it’s not painfully obvious. Its also painfully obvious when i pass a person and i look at them and see their eyes looking as hard as possible in the opposite direction as me. Its fucking comical. In an attempt to not make me feel stared at, they end up achieving the exact opposite.
For me, i always say this: treat me just like you would treat an able bodied person. You dont have to think it, or overthink it. That always results in awkward, convoluted, forced interactions. If i appear as if I need help with something, go ahead and ask me if i need a hand. The key is, respect my answer. Whether im telling you that it is actually easier on me if you dont get the door for me, or that i do not want or need a hand getting my wheelchair into my car, respect my answer. Sadly, its a regular thing to have people reinterpret my “no” to actually mean “yes” (for a few different, but equally absurd and frankly offensive, reasons) and force the “help” on me that i explicitly declined. And 99% of the time, i just shake my head and go thru that door (i never let someone try to put their hands on my chair and put it in my car).
And ive read studies that looked at the different responses seeing people with various visible disabilities elicited from a group of non disabled people. In line with your experiences, those with assistive devices like canes and walkers (but canes were the worst) were seen as differently than those with wheelchairs. Less helpless.
Imo, a big part of the difference is due to the large height disparity in interactions between wheelchair users and the able bodied. It totally distorts the dynamic and puts the able bodied in a more authoritarian position and the disabled in a more child-like position.
I think another part of it is that many peoples’ experience of wheelchairs is hospitals along with dire illness/injury. Canes are what your beloved grandpa had as long as you can remember, maybe grandma had a walker with a seat and pretty basket for carrying things, and crutches are what you used for two months after breaking a bone skateboarding or something. I think those experiences also shade peoples’ attitudes. For most people there’s a lot more negativity surrounding their personal experience of wheelchairs. Canes and walkers and crutches were either temporary or not absolutely essential to the users, wheelchairs, though, scream OMG TRAGEDY even when they shouldn’t.
I remember, almost 50 years ago, when I had my botched appendectomy at a teaching college. For two weeks, while I was recovering in a ward of 30 men, the surgeons would bring a group of students around, and introduce the various patients. I was “the appendix.” Someone else was “the gall bladder.” There even was a guy who was “the testicles.”
Then they’d talk about each of us as if we weren’t there.
except for a wheelchair ive been dealing with all that since i was 7 0r 8 my school record is variations of "smartest kid in the x grade now only if he could write and talk and possibly in complete sentences "
Well, yeah; I’ve heard it called “hitting a raw spot”, “the Chinese water-drop torture”, “hammering a nail that’s already inside”…
… and yeah, when the person who’s on the receiving end of it finally gets “the drop that overflows the glass”, too often they’re told it’s them who are being “too sensitive”
A little to the side of the topic but I used to be twice my size and used a walking stick a lot. I was always given the designated disabled seat on public transport upon request, all was good, I figured that was just how it worked. Fast forward a few years and I am smaller, fitter, stronger but hurt my leg doing something silly in the gym so I pull out my old walking stick and get on a train, suddenly four people in disabled seats just stand up and move away over my objections (I was fine standing with the cane and a hand strap) This happened over and over like I had magical people moving powers.
I can only assume that fat people deserve their disability, I deserve sympathy and assistance. It was really quite awful to realise that but I think I preferred asking over it being decided for me that I required the help.
Drop the beefcaking for cheescaking Ambivalid, many of your issues with other people being overly helpful will likely disappear.
Can I ask you what you mean by this? I enjoyed the rest of your post but this part gave me pause. Chances are I’m misunderstanding you. Hopefully I am, for it would be disappointing if my intial take on this sentence was correct.
It read to me as “just take it all in stride and smile, people are just trying to help. You’ll be better off that way.” This is a bromide I’ve heard countless times over the years, practically never coming from those who’ve walked (er, rolled?) a mile in my shoes (er, wheels?). After so many times hearing it, i just smh. And it is fundamentally wrong. First of all, I’m not angry, I just demand to be treated with the respect of a fellow non-disabled adult. By smiling and accepting anything less, I’d die a little bit inside, inch by inch.
God no, sorry. I meant stop the workouts and start eating instead. I was trying to be amusing, not aggravating.
I have lived and worked in the disability sector forever but of course you don’t know that and I shouldn’t have assumed my joke would make sense without that context.
I am with you.
Just to make it clear, as a fat disabled person nobody came near me, as a smaller one they drive me batty with unneeded attention and not listening to me.
Oh geez. I am so sorry! First of all, I should have waited for your response before i said anything else. And I’m probably a bit bias to interpret slightly ambiguous messages a tad cynically. no harm no foul?
And fwiw, I’m the most out of shape ive been in more than a decade. Today, for example, I went to the gym for the first time in close to a month. And i have been cheesecaking. And cheeseburgerin. And Dairy Queenin’. And I’m happier than ever because more important areas of my life have finally begun to turn a profit, so to speak. (I still need to get back in the gym tho, im going stircrazy, happy or no).
I’ve heard people say that explicitly. They were on a bus and did’t give up their seat to the fat lady with the cane. “Oh, she’s fat, it’s good for her to stand on the bus”. Um no…
I think height makes a huge difference in how we unconsciously react to each other. I had a weird experience with my 10 year old (short) son. He asked for a costume of a tall man for Halloween. And a talented relative made him one. And I realized that I reacted differently to my own kid when he was wearing a costume with a head that towered over me rather than looking short.
I try to adapt for that bias when I interact with people in wheel chairs. I try to look at their face, and see an adult person, and not be distracted by their being shorter than most children. I confess it is a challenge. And I apologize to you if I fucked up.
I can only make stuff up because I don’t know, I was fat from childhood so presumed the way the world treated me was how the world was, you ask for what you need when you need it, otherwise you get left alone to do your thing (I mean by “good folks”, there are always those who like to tell you what a waste of space you are of course). I am still getting used to “good folks” being annoying when they deem me in need of assistance and the main difference in me is size so leap to my conclusions.
I was in the pool this morning, I’ll be in the gym later. Blokes often try to help the saggy old chick there too but get over it pretty fast when they see me in action. I usually have to add plates to their discarded loaded bars.
Looking up to people physically makes us look up to them emotionally; ibid for looking down. I’ve used it to get an insecure coworker to feel mighty and strong (he was the shortest person in the team, I sat on a chair with broken hydraulics so I’d be shorter) and noticed some interesting behavior in meetings:
insecure person stands up for practically the whole meeting, whether they’re presenting or not, while everybody else sits down
as soon as someone else stands up (simply to point at something on a poster), the insecure one either gets away from that person or gets closer in an attack position.
The first one and its cousin “keeps standing up and sitting down, earns nickname Jack-in-a-chair” have been a lot more common. There might be some material for psychology studies there, but IANAInSchoolRightNow…
I hope she fell on them at the first corner! Buses are the worst for standing even for those with working parts, the rest of us really need those damned seats and not just for our safety.
no harm no foul?