Disability is a Stupid Category
A Case in Three Tales
I.
Capshaw Middle School: Santa Fe, New Mexico
When I was in 7th grade, I had two Deaf kids in my class, Lance and Vivian. They worked with an interpreter, of course, and I hope I’m remembering correctly that even in the ableist-af not-progressive-at-all mid-90’s, one message that had finally gotten through the thick skull of culture with regards to communicating with Deaf people as a hearing person was, “Make eye contact with the person you’re in conversation with, not with their interpreter.”
The mid-term project for that year was a high-stakes focus on Speaking and Writing, culminating in a speech that we were all going to give in front of the whole grade. As we gathered sardine-close in a classroom to listen and ask questions about how this epic day of presentation was going to work, one teacher made sure to talk about the accomidations that would be made for Lance and Vivian.
“And Sarah!” a girl piped up.
I looked over my shoulder at her. “Why would you say that?” I asked.
“Well, you know,” she said, first self-assured, then stammering. “They’re…you know…and you’re…you know…so…you know…”
Here’s what we know: a world that says that Lance and Vivian and I require the same ‘adjustments’ and should therefore be categorized the same way is a laughably stupid world. And as a product of it, there that girl was, being really stupid about the whole thing, because this is how she’s learned to categorize Disabled People: they’ve got the thing that’s wrong.
Wrong, of course, being the agreed upon word for “You actually have to think about how they operate in the world instead of making mindless assumptions about what works.”
II.
De La Salle High School: New Orleans, Lousisiana
A boy in the grade above me had spina bifida and used a wheelchair, with, admirably, a sticker on it that read Hell on Wheels. Andrew and I were perfectly cordial, but didn’t have much in common, and, being in seperate grades with no shared extra-curriculars, we never really got to know each other all that well. We had never been seen together, because we were literally never together.
So imagine my surprised when Shana Fullerton rushed up to my lunch table, flanked by a couple of equally blond girls, and said, excitedly, “ARE YOU GOING OUT WITH ANDREW?”
I just blinked a couple times, surprised. “Why would I be going out with Andrew?”
“Because he’s…you know….and you’re…you know…so we thought…you know.”
Ah, this eloquence again. I still don’t know, and I’ll never know.
III.
The Gym, in the city where I live, right now
I often come into the gym Hulked-out, by which I mean that for various reasons, I am ANGRY, and no one likes it, so I rely on my mythic-level-good personal trainer to help me lift/row that shit out, basically, and it’s a relief to announce that it always works. No matter what kind of destruction I’ve barely kept myself from wreaking on this unsuspecting city when I walk in, I walk out in love with everyone, at least for the ensuing several hours.
A couple weeks ago, I was almost over that edge: I’m pretty sure that any fellow gym members could have confirmed that I was starting to turn bright green and my unnaturally-expanding thigh muscles were beginning to rip my leggings. I made a beeline for the desk behind which my personal trainer stood. He’s the only person I’ll reliably take orders from, but today he was the only person I wanted to talk to. Provided I could speak in more than gutteral grunts, growls, and monosyllables, an assumption that was getting thinner by the second.
“HI CAN I BUG YOU FOR TWO MINUTES!” asked an elderly white guy with bright blue eyes. People with bright blue eyes tend to assume everyone’s glad to see them, I don’t know why.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said. My personal trainer, who knows me far better than someone you pay for a service is generally assumed to, had this amusing look on his face that read something to the effect of oh my god this motherfucker is about to get eaten.
“I just need to know what you like about,” and he said my trainer’s name, here, which immediately relaxed me, somewhat.
“Well that’ll take a lot longer than two seconds to minutes,” I said. “That would take several hours, maybe a couple days.”
The reason why he wanted to cut into the limited time I pay for to keep in shape + convincingly human is because his new client — Blue Eyes is a personal trainer too — is because his new client has a physical disability and he figured he could get some pointers from me about how to approach him.
Even though his new client uses a wheelchair, which I do not, is immobile in several physical places, which I am not, and, though he’s clearly alert and observant, he’s essentially nonverbal, which, much to the chagrin of many people, I’m sure, I’m definitely not.
I have a lot of respect for this client of his, and for the mind he’s got that led him to conclude that he wants to join a gym. (No way he was pressured by outside forces: this dude knows what he’s about.)
In terms of physical needs and accomidations, though? This fellow gym member and I have nothing in common, nothing at all. Blue Eyes might as well have asked us if we were dating. (We are not.)
It’s a ridiculous category, Disability. It tells you nothing, and if you do look to it for information, you’re only going to get a bewildering set of contradictions, because none of our bodies are the same. I don’t have a replacement category. I wish it didn’t have to be a category: in a society that doesn’t operate on scripts about what’s normal and expected, we can acommodate as we go, open to every possibility that a body presents.
That’s why my personal trainer is so good, actually. He’s urgently and unshakably aware that every body has different needs. To say that all people with disabilities belong under a united umbrella is as informative and helpful as assuring everyone without disabilities that all of their/your bodies are exactly the same.
It’s widely known that that would be an absurd declaration to make about “able-bodied” people, so why is it taken as unquestioned truth for the rest of us?
