Disabilarchy?

I've noticed that some portrayals of the disability experience in fiction are pretty much diametrically opposed to the disability experience in real life.

In fiction:

• Employers have no choice but to hire disabled applicants even when they are not qualified, because they could be sued for not hiring a disabled person
• Disabled people's work is disproportionately rewarded even when it's bad, because people feel sorry for us or are just positively biased toward us
• It's easy and profitable to fake a disability in order to get disability benefits from the government
• Professors have to provide ridiculous accommodations for students who say they are disabled, when in fact those students are lazy or not smart enough to be in college
• People with mental disabilities are the perpetrators of violent crimes
• A "black transgender disabled lesbian" has a big advantage in life because people want to give her jobs and other opportunities

In reality:

• Employers often do not want to hire disabled applicants because of their mistaken ideas about what our disability means.  It's easy for them to discriminate against us because they can just say "We didn't think you'd be a good fit for the job" or something like that.  They also can fire someone for being disabled if they just pretend to fire them for a different reason.  Even if an employer admits that they are not hiring someone or firing them because they are disabled, suing someone is expensive.
• Some disabled people are legally allowed to be paid a fraction of minimum wage if their employer says they cannot work as fast as a non-disabled person. For example, Goodwill does this, and plenty of people think it is acceptable. (Articles about Goodwill: here and here, and many comments asserting that disabled people are not good enough workers to deserve minimum wage: here, here, and here; and saying that people who need accommodations do not deserve minimum wage, even though accommodations are their legal right: here).
• In the US and the UK, it is a lot of work to even apply for disability benefits (more work than some disabled people can do); many disabled people are denied benefits for stupid reasons; and the benefits are not very much.  You also then can't save money, or you will lose your benefits.
• It's a lot of work to get accommodations in college (again, more work than some disabled people can do; my post about that here); and even if you do all the work to get accommodations, a professor might refuse to give them to you if they feel like it.  This happened to someone I knew whose professor thought it was stupid for her to get a note-taker, so he dragged his feet on arranging it and then tried to arrange it in a way that revealed the disabled student's identity, which he was not allowed to do.  Many disabled students in college are struggling due to lack of support, and about half the (smart, hardworking) disabled kids I met in college had to drop out.  Still, some people imagine that disabled students are coasting through life on a fluffy cloud of accommodations (here).
• People with mental disabilities are disproportionately the victims of violent crimes and society often makes excuses for the criminals, causing this type of crime to seem more and more acceptable for potential murderers and abusers.
• A black transgender disabled lesbian has to deal with racism, transphobia, ableism, homophobia, and sexism; the intersections thereof; and feeling like an outsider even in minority communities.  Plus, she's constantly invoked as a joke to show how bad "political correctness" supposedly is.

So, you have to ask: why is being disabled portrayed as being so easy and coming with so many opportunities, when in fact it comes with a lot of disadvantages?  Watching TV (and hearing some people talk), you would think that we live in a society ruled by disabled people.

You're (Still) Going To Die In There: boring uses of clueless sensitivity

“If you like the jar with the baby’s leg, wait until you see the jar holding the baby’s head. If one actress with Down syndrome doesn’t provide enough Tod Browning-style otherness for you, don’t worry — there are two. If the line about snorting cocaine off a high school girl’s nipples doesn’t do it for you, maybe the scene of the sobbing naked man masturbating will.”

—New York Times American Horror Story review

One of these things is not like the others!

It’s perfectly reasonable for critics to take issue with portrayals of disabled characters that use them as a genre trope or try to shock the audience with the disabled character’s appearance. Lots of horror movies and TV shows do this.

(While we’re on the subject can I just show you my favorite horror DVD cover of all time:



LOLOL. Terrifying.)

However, I really wish critics, in their rush to be sensitive about disability issues, would actually take a step back and look at what they’re saying. Which in this case, seems to boil down to the idea that a person with Down Syndrome is the same as a jar with part of a dead baby in it. And that an actor with a disability that affects their appearance would only be cast in a TV show or movie as a circus freak.

To be fair, I don’t really think this critic would be against an actor with Down Syndrome appearing in some kind of inspirational/depressing movie about the family of someone with a disability. I don’t think they would consider that a “freakish” performance. But in addition to the fact that you shouldn’t assume all disabled characters in the horror genre are functioning as freaks, I’m also not sure why critics are quick to jump all over the “insensitivity” of characters like Addie in AHS, when they don’t seem especially plugged in to notice what is wrong about more “tasteful” portrayals of disability—which in my opinion can be equally offensive.

I definitely don’t speak for all disabled people when I say this, but I prefer horror tropes of disability to tasteful tropes. Disabled horror characters have style—rusty, terrifying wheelchairs and braces more suited for steampunk conventions than actually helping someone get around. Their unsteady gait isn’t depressing, it stops you in your tracks with fear. If they’re bad, they kill people, and if they’re good, they can help you with their psychic powers. They’re not people to underestimate.

Of course they’re usually shitty characters, but as shitty characters go, I love them a lot. And because their very nature means they are not “tasteful,” they often become more human and likable than the disabled characters in a straight-faced portrayal of disability.

I wish that critics would wait to talk about disability until they’re ready to actually care about it and engage with it genuinely. The more I see people complain about Addie on AHS—in exactly the same way, and for some reason never mentioning other disabled characters on the show, like she’s the agreed-upon thing that’s offensive—the more it looks like they’re doing it to earn some kind of merit badge. “I’m sensitive to portrayals of disability in pop culture!” No, you’re not. Because if you were, you would care about things like whether disabled characters are unique, have realistic problems, are charismatic, are POV characters, and don’t tragically die at the end of the movie. Your primary focus wouldn’t be whether you can lazily compare Jamie Brewer to the actors in Freaks—which happens to be a great movie despite not being “tasteful” in the slightest.

As long as so few disabled characters are good, it’s really hard for them to be notably bad, and there’s something so clueless about condemning Addie Langdon when there are so many worse characters running around in this and other genres. In the end it doesn’t matter if the Burned-Face Man chokes you with a pillow in the attic, or a Lifetime mom ends your suffering in a more wholesome way—you’re going to die in there.

On Shambling

I had the creepiest dream about zombies, you guys. They were pretty out of it, but they could talk so even though you could tell by looking at them that they were dead a lot of people wouldn't read them as zombies. I got on one of those really big elevators with a guy my age and his little son, and then this older guy started to get on who I knew was a zombie. I told the guy my age not to let the guy on the elevator, and he ineffectively tried to stop him but he got on anyway. The whole time we were on this elevator, I was telling the zombie to stay on the other side of the elevator, and picking up this folding chair that was in the elevator and threatening to smash his head. By the time we got to my level (we were in a parking garage) the living guy in the elevator obviously thought there was something wrong with me because I was being so aggressive and rude to this other guy, who seemed really gentle. As I got off the elevator I grabbed the living guy and whispered in his ear, "He's a zombie. He will kill you."

When I got in the car two zombies I knew were just sitting in there like we were friends. Riding shotgun was this really nice female zombie (she reminded me a lot of a particular lady with a disability who I worked with this summer). In the back was the zombie from the elevator who was a little more calculating. I couldn't convince them to get out of the car, so I just started driving. The zombie from the elevator kept saying, "What did you whisper to him in the elevator? He was staying away from me. Why did you do that?"

Finally I was at the end of my rope. "Because if you bite people, they will die," I said. "When you bite people, they die, okay? I didn't want you to bite him."

"Oh, I see why you said that," said the female zombie.

I think this dream was interesting because it was the culmination of a lot of thoughts and feelings I've been having about zombies lately. I've been watching The Walking Dead a lot and obviously--and, yes, this does skeeve me out--pretty much every horror entity can be read as disabled in some way or another. Well, I don't read vampires that way, but lots of supernatural figures and ghosts tend to be creepy because they have nonstandard faces/bodies and/or they move differently. For example, in this completely terrifying short film Mama--which I've never been able to watch all the way through so don't be too hard on yourself. Another example is The Grudge where one of the ghosts often crawls around instead of walking. The Orphanage and Darkness Falls have ghosts that cover their faces because their faces are supposed to be so horrifying.

Recently I saw a YouTube video of people dressing up as and impersonating zombies. One commenter said that "they look like they have cerebral palsy," and was lambasted by other commenters for "making fun of people with special needs." I can't help seeing this as really disingenuous--not that the first commenter was awesome, but are you seriously going to pretend to be some kind of gooey champion of "special needs" when you're into zombies, which resemble disabled people more than any other monster? Like, look at this video of extras in The Walking Dead learning to "walk like zombies":



I mean, without the makeup there is kind of a sketchy feeling in watching this, at least for me. Some of the people still look supernatural, but a lot of them just look like they're doing an awkward impression of a disabled person. (By the way, I'm definitely including people with mind disabilities, including myself, in the "people who zombies movie like" category. For whatever reason, weird gaits tend to be a thing for a lot of people with ASD and ID.)

I think I ended up having a dream where I was kind of friendly with zombies because for the last month I've been developing a sense that I'm basically a zombie. Like, it seems like a pretty simple way to explain stuff. Look at this from the Walking Dead comics Wikipedia page:

Zombies may follow something that has caught their attention for hours, such as a gunshot, after which they may follow in the general direction for days, even if they have forgotten what they originally were pursuing.

From the page describing Romero zombies vs. other kinds of zombies:

The animated dead retain vague impulses derived from former living behavior. For instance, zombies often return to specific locations they frequented when alive...Lacking immediate victims to hunt, zombies will often fumble through crude motions reminiscent of life activities, often when prompted by a familiar artifact such as a telephone or car.

Yeah, pretty much.

I was thinking of writing a story about a person who is bitten by a zombie but thinks she can remain human through willpower. Then I found out from TV Tropes that this is already considered a trope, but I think there would still be mileage in it. Especially because I don't think a zombie apocalypse would happen (can you imagine a bunch of AWVs being powerful enough to destroy society?), I think that the infected person could still be trying to go to school or work or whatever, while losing the cognitive function that enables them to succeed in those environments. And they do a pretty good job, until one day they can't anymore.

(Note: if you found this post when you were googling The Walking Dead or something, please don't start making comments about how I'm too politically correct or whatever. I'm not trying to attack/call out anyone for being into zombies--I mean, I'm into zombies and I obviously am into/am affected by some of the other tropes I'm reading as disability tropes. It's probably kind of fucked up that that's the case, but I'm more interested in reclaiming this stuff and thinking about what it means instead of just saying it needs to go away.)

Reality testing

Last spring, depersonalization was kind of a political act. I'll go more into detail another time. Stuff is a lot better now for various reasons. And I know disability-as-metaphor is dangerous, but it is my disability and my metaphor.

If I'm disabled, and I know I am, and people don't know that and people don't see that, then what I think I know is not real.

If people with disabilities are real and vibrant people, and I know them, and people think of us something other, something sad and tragic, then what I think I know is not real.

If writing here and meeting people through this is a really important, special thing that's changed my life, but no one can see it when they look at me and people think the Internet isn't real life, then what I think I know is not real.

If I need help but I don't look like I need help and I half the time think I'm lying and exaggerating about needing help, and I don't have current documentation to prove I need help, then what I think I know is not real.

If people who say they are my friends, family members who say they love me, can explain without feeling concerned why they wouldn't (or didn't) want a disabled child, why it's okay to talk about disabled people in negative sweeping terms, and these people love me, and I'm still me, then I'm not me, and what I think I know is not real.

So then why is it wrong to sometimes feel like there is no difference between me and characters on TV? Or like my friends are not really my friends, but just a bunch of fake memories imprinted on my brain, leaving me nervous to talk to them because I feel like it's the first time, the first real time, like I'm a clone that has slipped into Amanda's life and is trying to proceed as normal?

I mean, if all this is true, I could be a Cylon.

(I'm making a pun, reality testing remains intact--at least as far as I know.)

Wait you guys, things are sometimes beautiful

Because people my age are really fantastic at pointing out exactly how much everything sucks, but not how much everything is awesome, I haven't yet written about something that happened to me two weeks ago in my nonfiction workshop.

Basically, in a passive-aggressive move against a kid in my class who made what I took to be patronizing comments about the way I talk, and also just as a result of this totally unbearable pressure that's been building all term because I've been so overwhelmed by school, especially this particular class because so much speaking is required and because it's such a long class, and also because of various classes this term where I've gotten to listen to professors and classmates explaining autism, I started writing an essay about being disabled to be workshopped in class.

I was leery of talking too much about "the movement" because I thought that it would seem strange and radical to people who haven't been exposed to it. I also have very little interest in explaining what autism is or how it affects me. So I started the essay by talking about my psych professor's declaration that "autistic kids want people for what they can get from them, not for who they are," and my non-response. Then I talked about Joe and how I feel that people like Joe are cut off from other people not just because they are nonverbal but because of the huge amount of distancing and othering pity that is heaped on disabled and different people by society. Then I moved out to talking (vaguely) about my identification as disabled and my alignment with disability rights, basically explaining how I feel unable to talk about this stuff in real life, how I feel invisible, how I feel like a disabled person is never expected to be in the room when disabilities are being talked about.

The process of writing the essay was really upsetting for reasons I don't have time to describe and I ended up feeling that it had been a bad idea to put myself in the stressful position of trying to write something like that aimed at my classmates. That's when I wrote sometimes the best self-advocacy is shutting the fuck up and I resolved to bite my tongue through what I expected would be a really uncomfortable workshop and never work on this essay again.

However, the people in my class were incredibly kind and sensitive, by and large did not tell me that they wanted more explanations of autism, that I should think about severely disabled people's parents' feelings, that I should describe my childhood, that people with autism can't talk, or basically anything I was expecting. One kid said, "I think this essay proves your professor wrong." Another said, when asked to give negative feedback, "The speaker ends the essay on a negative note by claiming that she isn't accomplishing anything, but that isn't true--she works with kids and has a blog."

I'm mega late for eating dinner with my friend. But I'm just trying to say I feel extremely different in class now, and better about my essay, and also proud and glad about "disclosing," as LF would call it. This week in class quite a lot of things were wrong with me, and I don't know how I would have been able to stay above water sitting at a desk for three hours if I didn't now feel so safe with my classmates, more free about talking badly, and more able to do stimmy things.

(Also, soon after I told her that talking in workshops makes me really upset, my professor decided to change the form of our workshops so that instead of getting only one turn to talk and being required to talk and being expected to cover very specific things, we are still required to talk, but we get several chances to talk about a few different aspects of the piece being workshopped, and we don't have to talk every time. I don't think she made this change only because of me, but it has made my experience of class incredibly different and I'm much more able to participate well and feel comfortable.)

The harder fallacy

I keep thinking about something my friend said after we watched Precious and I was talking about how the portrayal of the child with Down Syndrome was offensive. (I'm going to refer to the character as Quishay, which is the name of the little girl who played her.) My friend kept saying, "Well, it IS harder to raise a kid with Down Syndrome." I said "Do you actually know any people with Down Syndrome, because if you did, I think you'd feel differently." My friend was like, "What do you mean, do you think I wouldn't think it's harder to have Down Syndrome? It's a DISABILITY. It's not a good thing. Are you saying it's not harder?"

I'm probably caricaturing this in my mind because it was a while ago and also it made me really mad. When I quote people who made me mad I tend to repeat the things they say in this particular voice that's both monotonous and overdramatic. I know this is a problem. I should be mature enough to disagree with people without being shitty about it. But it's really hard not to be shitty about it! Plus I hate the "it's harder" strawman even more than I hate the "but bad things will happen to you if you don't pass!!" strawman (#3 in the linked post).

So, I will just say what I wanted to say to my friend, but couldn't get out very clearly. Here are two facts about disability:

1. For whatever reason, nondisabled people tend to get grossed out or uncomfortable around disabled people.

2. By definition, all things being equal, it is harder to be disabled than it is to be nondisabled. Also, it's harder to be the guardian of a kid who is disabled because it often costs more money and the kid might have to live at home longer, or forever. Also, it's sometimes harder to be close to a disabled person (as a friend/significant other, as part of your job, or as a family member) because you are used to relating to people in a particular way that doesn't work with this person, or because you had built them up in your head as a person without a disability.

Some parts of #2 are not inherent aspects of disability. For example it isn't fair that it costs more money to raise a kid with a disability. That shouldn't be the case. But the fact that it's not inherent doesn't make it less real for the people for whom it's real. If a person is spending all their money so that their disabled kid can go to school, because public school does not do what the kid needs, it IS harder for them. So, yes. I'm saying it is harder to raise a disabled child.

But that's not the only thing in the world that is hard. And hard is not the same thing as repulsive or tragic.

In Precious, Precious has two kids. She is a young teenager. Her kids are the product of nonconsensual incest. Having kids as a young teenager is really hard. Getting raped by your father isn't just "hard," it is horrible, evil, and tragic. There aren't enough words to describe what it is. It's a lot worse than having a kid with Down Syndrome or any disability.

Now I guess it sounds like I'm on a track of saying Down Syndrome is okay because being raped by your father is worse. That's not my intent. What I'm saying is, Precious has two kids. The second kid she has, who has no disabilities, changes her life. She loves him tremendously, right away, and her love for him gives her the strength to fight back against her abusive mother and seek help. There are other factors that give Precious this motivation; it's not just the baby, it's that she has gotten support from her teacher and classmates. But still, this thing that is very difficult--a baby born to a single teenage mother--ends up being AMAZING. This exact thing happens to girls in real life, sometimes. Situations that are objectively really hard are experienced as wonderful and joyful.

So, harder doesn't equal bad or gross. And I would say that the portrayal of Precious's older child is as something bad and gross. It is totally unrealistic for Precious to have a baby with Down Syndrome. Down Syndrome isn't an inherited condition, it's a genetic mutation, so incest doesn't increase its likelihood. An older mother increases its likelihood, and Precious is very young. I believe that this plot development, which belongs in a sci-fi movie, is just meant to add to the atmosphere of tragedy and gloom around Precious's life so far. She's physically abused! She's sexually abused! She can't read! She's poor! She had a baby and is pregnant again...AND, her kid has DOWN SYNDROME. WORST THING EVER. Quishay is not shown smiling or interacting with Precious and is not filmed in the loving way that her second child, Abdul, is filmed. (It's true that Quishay doesn't live with Precious for most of the movie, but number one, no one forced the writers to write the story that way; and, number two, we could have had shots emphasizing Quishay's cuteness and lovability when Precious gets her back at the end of the movie.)

The movie Precious is hateful to people with Down Syndrome because it uses Down Syndrome as a shortcut to say "Precious's life is horrible." At the beginning of this post I listed two facts about disability. This movie exploits fact #1, nondisabled people's discomfort and revulsion about disability. That is an immoral thing to do. It is incredibly disingenuous to claim that the portrayal of Quishay is somehow legitimate because "it's harder to raise a kid with Down Syndrome." This isn't about difficulty, it's about prejudice and using a disabled child as a horror-movie monster.

I am so tired of this. I call it "the harder fallacy." It sucks because when you're trying to point out that someone is being prejudiced, you get totally knocked off balance by a bogus argument about whether the victim of the prejudice, or their parents, has a hard time. But it's not about that. They're two totally different things.

eta: I'm pretty bad at science, I apologize. Apparently it's not as unlikely as I thought for a teenager to have a baby with Down Syndrome. However, my points about the portrayal of Quishay still stand, and would stand no matter what disability she had.

Everyone has it

I'm rewatching United States of Tara which was the light of my Winter Term last year. (This year it's not starting until March, so I guess I'll have to find happiness in hanging out with my friends, or reading, or something like that.) I don't know enough about DID to know if it is an accurate portrayal and I'm sure that it might be offensive to me if I had more experience with DID. However, I just wanted to share THE BEST SCENE:

Annoying lady: Oh, I kind of feel like everyone has it, you know? A little. I mean, how many different women do we all have to be in one day?

Awesome. I think this happens with every disability there is. Oh, buddy, your real life is such a poignant metaphor for my tribulations! ADORABLE!

Additionally, Tara's son Marshall is by far my favorite gay TV character. He's not some sort of overcompensatory football player like the guy on Dawson's Creek, but he's not like Kurt from Glee either. He is kind of stereotypically gay, but it's in his own way--he wears suits to school, is obsessed with old movies, and bakes. He's weird and unique in a girly way, not just straight-up girly in the most obvious way possible, like Kurt.

Plus, he's completely comfortable with his homosexuality at the age of fourteen, and so are his sister and parents. This doesn't mean that it never causes him problems, but just that everyone is used to the fact that he's gay and it's just another thing he has to deal with. This is kind of the way the family acts about Tara's DID, too--they're just trying to live with it. Which may be completely unrealistic, I have no idea, but it seems kind of positive, maybe?

Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements

This was the book I read and it only took me four days and I wasn't even spending that much time reading, so it was a pretty good experience. My excuse for why it was okay for me to read a YA book is that it is disability-related. Things Not Seen is about a 15-year-old boy named Bobby who wakes up one morning and realizes that he's invisible. His dad is a scientist who gets excited about investigating Bobby's condition. Bobby's parents want him to stay inside so the media doesn't find out about what happened, but Bobby gets bored, so he starts figuring out ways to go outside without people noticing that he's invisible.

The book doesn't do inconsistent things like the Animorphs and Twilight books, which have people morphing into animals while wearing cutoffs or leotards or underwear. If your body developed a weird property like morphing or invisibility, clothes would not be included. So Bobby has to either cover his whole body with scarves, sunglasses, and gloves, or he has to walk around naked. Large sections of the book describe how Bobby learns to manage his condition, and how he feels about it. He likes being able to spy on people, but hates the fact that he can't talk to anyone or pick anything up.

One day Bobby is wandering around naked and he feels lonely, so he decides to talk to a girl who is blind. The girl, Alicia, soon figures out that he's naked, so he has to tell her the truth. Alicia's dad is a scientist like Bobby's dad, so the two dads pair up and do research on Bobby. Bobby and Alicia get bored of this and do some sleuthing around. This is basically the plot (surprise surprise, Bobby becomes visible again at the end) but it feels like background. There's more focus on Bobby's coming of age as he fights to be in charge of his life despite his difficult condition. But it's mostly a love story. We get the impression Alicia is Bobby's first close friend, and besides, he has a crush on her before he even talks to her. The friendship develops, but the crush just slow-burns until the loose ends of the plot have been tied up. The book ends before they officially become a couple, but we know that Alicia and Bobby really like each other and are going to get together.

I don't know anyone who's blind, so I am not likely to be sensitive as to whether this book is a cliched or offensive portrayal of blindness. Alicia's major personality traits are a)bitterness/sarcasm, b)easy-to-read facial expressions, and c)sensitivity (both good and bad). I guess these are probably stereotypical traits. Bobby talks about how he loves watching Alicia ride in a cab because he can see her react to all the sounds she's hearing. If I was blind I would probably think this is like intellectually disabled people meeting every new day with wonder, or ASD people being really good with computers. From the perspective of someone with very little experience, I thought it was a nice detail and Alicia was a good character, but I can see how someone might view it as trope-y.

We learn a bit about the assistive technology Alicia uses, which is cool.

Something that was sort of good and sort of bad is the whole theme of the book, articulated in the title. Much is made of how Alicia "can't see herself" doing the things she aspired to before she became blind. She is scared of "disappearing." Obviously Bobby's invisibility is sort of a metaphor for how Alicia feels about being blind. And also, while he is invisible he feels some of the same things. In the last chapter of the book, Alicia sends Bobby an email expressing her love for him and her insecurity that maybe he won't like her anymore because he is no longer disabled. She says, "I liked being able to help you because usually everyone helps me." Alicia calls Bobby her "invisible mirror" because, through helping him and falling in love with him, she has begun to "see herself" again.

I guess it's probably bad that not being able to see yourself because you're blind is equated with feeling like you have no future. But I'm glad that they portrayed Alicia (and Bobby while he's invisible) as having that kind of anxiety and inertia. I've struggled with similar issues, mostly related to being gay. It's overwhelming to know that your life is going to be different from other people's lives, especially if you don't know adults who are like you. In one scene, Alicia kills time while Bobby is stealing information from Sears (it's a long story) by inquiring about employment opportunities for blind people. She ends up talking to a Sears employee who is blind, and some other people who are very comfortable with blindness. This is obviously a big deal for her, and she seems both happy and upset about the experience. Even though it was couched in weird disability-as-metaphor language, I really liked the "seeing yourself doing things" aspect of the book, and was moved by the way Alicia came to feel, once again, like a real person with abilities and a future.

Quid Pro Quo

"OMG CONNOR LOOKS LIKE HE'S GOING TO SHIT HIMSELF LIKE HE JUST SAW A PYLEAN OR SOME SHIT OMG"
--ontdmadmen "Shut the Door, Have a Seat" thread

This quote is actually not related to my post which is about another boy I have a crush on, Nick Stahl!



I am just being lazy and using a picture I already uploaded to Photobucket in July when I was obsessed with Carnivale. Nick Stahl has this facial expression in almost every minute of every episode of that show. But in the movie Quid Pro Quo, which I watched last night, it turns out that he can make other expressions, too.

Quid Pro Quo is a movie about a guy who works for a euphemism for NPR. He wants to do a story about able-bodied people who would prefer to be paralyzed or amputees. (In real life this is called Body Integrity Identity Disorder.) He meets with a woman who claims to know someone who has BIID, but she's really talking about herself, duh. He has paraplegia from a car accident when he was a kid, so the woman kind of has a crush on him and asks him for advice about how to use a wheelchair and stuff. Also he has a crush on her too? And they have sex? And he finds this pair of shoes that un-paralyze him when he puts them on, and he starts walking with braces and then a cane. And the woman is more and more mysterious and depressed and tells him that she wants him to help her become a paraplegic.

Yeah. The very end of this movie has a twist that really annoyed me because I thought it was cheap and just not necessary and unbelievable. I think the thing about the movie is that because it's kind of a genre film--magic realism/noir/ish--the disabilities become thematic elements, if that makes sense.

It's hard to explain what I mean by this but basically, if you have read Fingersmith or Affinity by Sarah Waters, or seen the movies, they're both gothic thrillers centered on lesbian relationships. Because of the genre, and the way that lesbianism has historically been used in that genre, I think the lesbianism comes off as kind of creepy and gothic itself in both stories; it comes off as something that adds to the theme. And I can see how some people would think this is offensive, because you could say that lesbianism is being used as a trope or a symbol. But personally, I really like it, because when lesbianism is being used a genre thing, it means that you get more interesting lesbian stories, and you get lesbian stories that aren't issue stories about coming out or something. Another example of what I'm talking about is Mullholland Drive.

Anyway, in Quid Pro Quo I feel like Isaac fits better as a noir hero because he looks different from other people when he's going down the street, and because he's experienced discrimination. And then later, disability moves around in a dreamlike way--as Isaac becomes physically better, Fiona becomes mentally worse--general art movie stuff, not trying to do a realistic portrayal of bodies and brains, but kind of messing around with bodies and brains to say something about the human condition, or just create a strange story that's aesthetically pleasing. Quid pro quo, this in exchange for that; the idea that there's some kind of cosmic bargain, or some symmetry, where people like Isaac wish they could walk and people like Fiona wish they couldn't, and it's possible to tap into that pattern, somehow. This is how I would like to think of the movie, and although I know some people just 100% wouldn't like the fact that disability is used as an aesthetic thing or a metaphor, and I understand why--well, I think it's a more interesting story about disability than the straight issue movies that usually get made. And also Isaac is just a cool character because he's basically nice and competent without being boring or "inspirational," and he's allowed to complain about ableism without being an "angry" character.

But okay, would you like to hear the end? SPOILER:

Isaac figures out that Fiona is the person who paralyzed him and killed his parents, because she tried to run away from home and was driving her mom's car when she was like ten years old and she crashed into Isaac's family's car. Also, he always remembered seeing her, but he blocked out the memory? Whatever. I'm not sure that this is a realistic reason for someone to develop BIID, but okay, the ridiculous part is: Isaac confronts Fiona and she tells him that he's not actually a paraplegic and he just has a hysterical condition because he felt guilty that his parents died. Isaac gets really mad and tries to jump out of his chair and attack her, and falls down because he's not used to walking, but as he's lying on the ground Fiona sees his legs moving, and the movie ends with Isaac (presumably now ambulatory) on fake-NPR telling the story and saying how he never saw Fiona again.

This bothers me, because I think I can only accept the disability-as-metaphor thing (instead of finding it weird and offensive when Isaac is "cured" by the shoes) if the movie is not supposed to be realistic. If the shoes are actually magic, then I think the story can be a fairy tale or a parable or something. I think it would be cool if the movie ended with Isaac paralyzing Fiona and then being able to walk without a cane. That kind of thing.

But instead, the surprise ending is that it's actually not magic. First of all this just bothers me because it means that in a movie that uses paraplegia as a symbol and a theme, there are no paraplegic main characters. I don't like this because I think that if you're going to use a minority group like lesbians or paraplegics to enhance your genre movie, you should acknowledge that we/they actually exist outside of genre. Does that make sense? I feel like the movie is offensive if Isaac isn't actually paraplegic because it's acting like paraplegia is just a distant theoretical thing.

And also, I just thought it cheapened the story and was a Big Surprise Ending that wasn't really supported by any previous events or by anything we knew about Isaac.

So, in conclusion, there are some reasons to think that this movie is offensive and/or dumb, but I am glad that Nick Stahl is so good-looking because I probably wouldn't have watched it otherwise and I mostly enjoyed it, and thought it was more interesting than most movies about people with disabilities.

can a visible disability be an invisible disability?

I'm just noodling to avoid writing my paper but one thing: a post about my fake friend David, who has cerebral palsy. Actually he is a real person but I am just pretending his name is David because I feel like I'm spewing his personal information all over the Internet. Except, anyone who even goes to my school will probably know who I'm talking about, so maybe this is a lost cause and I just have to hope no one from my school reads this. SORRY DAVID (can you forgive me since I named you after your favorite person?).

Cerebral palsy is not considered an invisible disability. However when people meet David they don't necessarily immediately understand why he moves differently. Our friend Liz thought he was drunk. I somehow expected David to be "off" socially or mentally (which I know is really fucked up, but in the interest of total honesty; on the plus side, it's probably why we're friends, because I was less shy around him than I was around other people). A few weeks into our first year of college, I remember telling someone how much I liked David. "Is that the awkward guy?" the person asked.

"Well, he's disabled. He limps," I said.

"Yeah, him, he moves kind of awkwardly."

I thought this was a strange way to describe someone who limps. "Awkward" is the way I would describe someone who seems really shy or says socially inappropriate things, not someone who is physically disabled. (I don't remember verbatim what was said, so it may not be clear, but it definitely was clear at the time that the person was using "awkward" as a physical descriptor.) Later I mentioned this to my dad, and my dad said the person was being tactful. I think this is weird too, because "awkward" seems like a worse thing to say. It seems to imply something negative, while saying that someone limps is just a fact. And "awkward" sounds like it's about David's personality.

I don't think it is tactful or polite to describe someone's body using a word that sounds like it is describing their mind. People tend to treat David as otherworldly, and although this is partly because of his personality (he can be very enthusiastic and guileless about things), I suspect it's also because he moves differently. I would guess it's different when he uses a cane and I would guess it would be different if he used a wheelchair. But because there's usually not this giant object broadcasting "physical disability," I feel like people read his CP as body language.

One example of what I'm talking about is the fact that I assumed he had some sort of social or intellectual issue. Obviously I soon found out this was stupid, and will never react to a physically disabled person that way again, but I still can't pin down why I reacted like that in the first place. Another example is that people tend to assume he's asexual and even act sort of disturbed when they find out he's not. I've sometimes gotten the impression from girls he's been interested in that they think it's somehow unseemly for him to be interested in them. But I don't think that anyone is sincerely thinking, "DISABLED PEOPLE SHOULDN'T HAVE RELATIONSHIPS," they're just thinking "...but it's David." Which, okay--but why is it David?

The only 100% for sure example of people equating David's physicality with his brain is the time a professor contacted the disability office because she thought that David talked too much in class. This is straightforwardly ridiculous and offensive. But I can't help but wonder if this whole implication that David is special/asexual/"awkward" comes in part from his disability. And I don't think people think about it. I think they would think, consciously, that it's awful to think about someone with a disability that way. But because David looks different without looking stereotypically disabled like he would if he was in a wheelchair, I think it is likely that people react to him with unconscious ableism.

I think this is an example of a supposedly visible disability actually being an invisible disability. And I think what this means is that the disability is just taken as part of the person's personality or essence, and not consciously recognized as a disability. I'm hard pressed to say this is always a bad thing; I certainly wouldn't like someone to behave as if my disability is something separate from me. But I think most people with physical disabilities do want to be separated, and I know that David does. Sorry I'm rambling and not really making a point. I just think it's interesting. If I was any good at being in school, I would want to write a thesis on the way the average person reads other people as disabled and how they conceptualize that.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

I need to read more, and now that this ordeal of a novel is over, I'm sure I will. I've been reading it since mid-July and it's been hard to get anywhere with it.

John told me he read the first two-thirds and cut his losses. He said, "It's a bad book." I disagree. It's well-composed. It's just that the author's whole intention in writing the book seems to be create something massively disgusting and depressing, and as a result I never wanted to pick it up.

It's probably my fault; I can't remember the last time I read a book without checking ahead to see how it ended. And Geek Love ends horribly. Actually, horrible things are happening from pretty much the first page; if I remember correctly, the book starts with the main character's parents explaining how they intentionally caused their kids to be born with birth defects so they could be sideshows in the family carnival. And this is the most pleasant scene in the novel, since the parents and all their deformed kids are still getting along.

I like carnivals. I like Carnivale. I like Freaks. But the people in Carnivale are regular people, and the people in Freaks are better than regular people. The people in Geek Love all have screwed-up morals, and some of them are downright evil. The most evil character is Arty, who is brilliant and charismatic and has no limbs. He starts a cult based on the idea that having your limbs removed will make you happier. The main character, Oly, is in love with Arty (even though he's evil and her brother). The story is mostly about how Arty destroyed the family, but this is a flashback from the present when Oly is observing the daughter she was forced to give up. Oly's daughter has a tail and Oly will do anything to keep her daughter from getting the tail removed and becoming a "norm," including befriending and murdering the person who's offered to arrange the operation. But it's hard to go undercover when you're an albino hunchback dwarf!

If that sounds like a good book, well, good for you, I guess. Maybe it sounded like a good book to me, at some point--I mean, I like stories about outsiders, the nature of abnormality, and weird love. But I guess I want those stories to have a moral core like Carnivale and Freaks do. Most of the people in Geek Love are the farthest thing from moral, and their motivations are so hard to relate to that it kept me from caring most of the time.

Also, I can't help but be bothered by the way Dunn equates physical disability and difference with evil and repulsiveness. It's all the same to her--luxuriously gross passages about characters' hanging breasts and mildew-infested balls; murder and necrophilia; people who don't have any pigment in their skin or can't walk. Using albinos and people with phocomelia as a metaphor for the darker side of human nature is problematic because disabled people aren't unicorns. It's wrong to write disabled characters for shock value, because real people have to deal with the attitudes you're contributing to.