Okay Glee, you have redeemed yourself a little

This morning's episode of Glee was some parts good, one part terrible, and one part better than I would ever have expected.

First off, I want to explain what my problem with the show was in the first place. It definitely wasn't any one line or event. It was just that certain characters were not written morally. And when I talk about writing morally, I don't mean the characters need to be nice; I mean the writer needs to think about the characters the way people should think about other people in real life. Realizing that everyone is complicated, everyone has reasons for what they do, no one thinks of themselves as a villain or comic relief. The thing about writing morally is that it's the same thing as writing well. So for me, when Glee is offensive and when it's a low-quality show, it's both of those things at the same time.

The opposite goes for Mad Men. It's a really high-quality show and it also never offends me. Characters do offensive things, but I never get the impression that this reflects the writers' ignorance. And more importantly, characters who in lesser shows might be reduced to villains or comic relief, or something else less than human, are treated with respect. While we might sometimes see them as funny or villainous, we also see that they take themselves seriously and are doing what they think they have to do.

Anyway. Aspects of Glee from worst to best:

1. Sue Sylvester lets a girl with Down's Syndrome on the Cheerios and is mean to her. Will thinks Sue is being mean, but Sue says she's treating the girl like everyone else. Will wonders why Sue would do something so un-Sue-ish. Then we find out that Sue has a sister with Down's Syndrome who she's very close with.

This was a pretty good example of how the people who write Glee decide to take on issues that they have absolutely no knowledge of and aren't interested in learning about. The characters with Down's Syndrome behave like four-year-olds; Becky, the teenager, walks around holding hands with her friend and is manipulated into buying a cupcake. (Why couldn't Becky just decide to buy a cupcake because it's a nice thing to do?) Sue's sister, a middle-aged woman, enjoys having Sue read Little Red Riding Hood to her. Also, she apparently spends all her time in bed at a place that I think is a hospital, and this is portrayed as normal. If Sue's sister has a significant disability, which I guess she does, I would expect her to live in a group home with other disabled people--not just lie in bed waiting for her sister.

Becky is a perfect example of a character being used as a device instead of being human. Becky has almost no lines and we know nothing about her except that she wants to be a cheerleader. Also, the actress who plays her is terrible (at least I'm pretty sure she is; she has so little to do that it's hard to figure out what she should be doing). There's also the fact that she is in no way qualified to be a cheerleader. Why couldn't Becky have been a good, or even decent, cheerleader? Why did she have to be so clumsy that Sue's letting her on the squad must be interpreted as an act of pity?

I was actually excited when I found out that someone with Down's Syndrome was going to be on the show, but this ended up being by far the worst aspect of the episode.

2. Rachel is told she will get to sing "Defying Gravity," but Kurt wants to sing it instead. He complains to his dad, who is very macho and doesn't understand Kurt's interests, but is supportive of him nonetheless. His dad threatens the school, saying it's homophobic and sexist to not give Kurt a chance to sing the song. So Kurt and Rachel each get to perform the song, and the glee club will vote on who sings it better. Kurt can sing just as high as Rachel, but at the last minute he intentionally screws up, because someone called his dad and said "your son's a fag." Kurt explains to his dad that he is used to homophobia, but his dad isn't, and he doesn't want to be so visibly gay that his dad will have to experience harassment.

This was really good; I like Kurt. He's very stereotypical, but it doesn't bother me because he is human. I feel the same way about Tara from True Blood (maybe I'll post about her another time). I liked that we saw how being gay affects Kurt, and how even though he's really feminine, he can actually be stronger than a masculine guy like his dad.

3. ARTIE!!! This was fantastic. Will says they should have a bake sale to afford an accessible bus, but all the other people in glee club say that Artie doesn't mind being driven to things by his dad. In fact, Artie does mind, but doesn't want to make a fuss. Will sees how hurt Artie feels, and inexplicably has enough money to buy wheelchairs for the whole glee club which he makes them use for three hours every day. He also makes them dance in the wheelchairs. When the other kids have to deal with how inaccessible the school is, how people don't look at them, and how hard it is to dance in a wheelchair, they respect Artie more and work hard on the bake sale. When they end up raising the money, Artie says they should use it to make the school accessible instead, because that will help future disabled students, instead of just helping him.

Also, Artie and Tina obviously have a crush on each other, and two or three times during the episode, Tina tells Artie how much she admires him. Each time, Artie replies, "Oh, well, you have a stutter, so you understand having to overcome something." The last time this happens (after they've just kissed for the first time), Tina tells Artie that she doesn't really have a stutter, and has just been faking it for years because she's shy and it makes people leave her alone. She says that now she's become more confident and wants to stop pretending to stutter. Artie gets really mad at her for faking, and says something like, "You get to be normal now but I'm stuck in this chair for the rest of my life."

I loved, loved, loved this. Artie has never been developed at all, but now that they've finally developed him, they did a really good job. He's very kind and mature for his age, but also justifiably angry about the way people treat him. I think it's common sometimes for people who are minorities to go with the flow and appear unruffled by things, but actually be really angry on another level that they don't show to most people because it's not practical. This is probably especially the case for people who have disabilities that require support; we don't want to offend anyone in case we end up having to ask that person for help. Artie saw Tina as being on another level from other people, someone who could understand, and I think it's because of that that he feels so betrayed and expresses really negative emotions about being in a wheelchair, which I'm not sure he would express to most other people.

Maybe some people would find Artie's negativity offensive, but I didn't. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how social-model the show was about the whole thing. When I heard that the episode would involve the kids using wheelchairs to "see what it's like for Artie," I thought it would be all about how soul-crushingly miserable it is not to be able to walk, but really, we were shown a montage of the kids getting hit in the face by people who didn't see them, having to deal with things that were too high up to reach, etc. And when Artie expressed bitterness at the end, it seemed to be more about looking weird and being cut off from other people.

I just really love Kevin McHale. Even though I think a disabled actor should have been cast, he is really adorable, talented, and great. The best scene in the episode was when Tina kissed him and he put his face in his hands like he was too happy to look her in the eye. He was on True Blood by the way! He was the coroner's assistant who gets blown up.

Two wonderful things

I went into a store thinking of buying a sandwich. The previous customer left, and the woman at the counter looked at me. I said "Sorry," indicating that I hadn't yet decided what kind of sandwich I wanted, and had to spend more time reading the menu on the wall. She said, "That's all right, I'm here until half-past four." (It was 9:30.) After I looked a while longer she said, "We have everything here if you want to look at it--it's a bit confusing to look at everything in black and white. We have small and large rolls." Then I said what kind of roll I would like, and had already thought enough to be able to keep up with her questions about what kinds of things I would like on the sandwich.

Later, I was activating my debit card on the Royal Bank of Scotland website. After I had entered my activation code, I was asked to enter a password and a PIN number. Under that was an item designated as being "for customers with special needs." It gave me the option of choosing not to have forms time out, in case it took me an unusually long time to finish them.

Taking a longer time to do things is not that big a deal unless people make it one.

Like a person

My post yesterday was supposed to be about something else, but I got distracted by the fact that in high school my homosexuality created "special needs" that I had to advocate for. I think it's a funny story and also shows that, while disability is real, many of the worst aspects of having a disability aren't innate to being disabled.

My friend Niyatee said that she interacts with me as though I don't have AS, and she wondered if that was ableist. I don't think it is. At the same time, I like that she thought of it and doesn't buy the idea that people with disabilities, or any difference, should be treated "like everyone else." The "like everyone else" model actually puts a lot of pressure on people who are different to reduce their difference to one very measurable, nonthreatening thing, and be "like everyone else" otherwise. For example, for my teenage self homosexuality couldn't just be as simple as having a girlfriend or wife in the future while a boyfriend or husband was in everyone else's. Because I was attracted to girls, it affected many aspects of how I related to my peers. I ended up feeling like a failure because I couldn't keep my homosexuality "to myself," as I saw it. It was messy. It spilled out into other people's lives.

There probably are lesbian teenagers who have completely asexual friendships with straight girls. Similarly, there are disabled people whose only difference from nondisabled people is that they are in a wheelchair; and while it's hard to find an ASD example of a "like everyone else" disabled person, there is probably someone out there who has developed good social skills and doesn't have trouble with routines and obsessions, but has to use typing to communicate. If you can accept that this person types, you're good; otherwise you can treat them like...well, you know.

One of my favorite books contains the gloriously inarticulate sentence, "Mike needed to treat Randall like an autistic person. But he also needed not to treat him that way." The book is Send in the Idiots by Kamran Nazeer, and Mike and Randall are based on a real couple. Mike was great at advocating for Randall when people tried to bully and manipulate him, but he also patronized Randall, overestimating his guilelessness and dismissing his poetic talent as a savant skill. While Mike was admirably attuned to Randall's impairments, he didn't recognize the parts of Randall that didn't fit a stereotype. To supplement Nazeer's incoherence with my own, the best way to treat other people is always "like a person." Not like everyone else. Not like a gay person or a disabled person or a person of color.

My school treated me like everyone else in a way that was damaging. But on the other hand, what would it have meant for my school to treat me "like a gay person?" I guess, based on my dancing and changing problems, you might institute a system where gay students are classified as the "third sex" we were considered to be in the early twentieth century. It would not be standard practice for gay students to change with the same gender; you would set aside another room. If the atmosphere was especially puritanical (the type of school that doesn't allow boys in girls' residential halls, for example), you would have to set aside more rooms depending on how many gay students there were, with one gay boy and one lesbian changing in each changing room so there was no possibility of misconduct.

I have a feeling that if a school did this, it would be seen as a bad thing by almost everyone. Conservatives would complain that the school was recognizing an "alternative lifestyle," while liberals might protest that it treated gay people like another species. I would have liked it--after all, it's a policy tailored to fit my teenage self--but other gay kids would have been embarrassed that it was made into such a big deal. And of course the policy doesn't mention bisexual or questioning students, who would presumably make up a "fourth sex" not allowed to change with anyone. My school ignored the ways same-sex-attracted students were different, but the third and fourth sex system overestimates it, and assumes that all SSA students are different in the same way.

Actually, putting aside the fact that my school treated me like everyone else in a way that caused special needs, once I actually had those special needs certain teachers did a great job treating me like a person. As I mentioned in the previous post, Mrs. M. either understood, or didn't understand but respected, why I had so much anxiety about dancing with girls. She was also supportive when I dealt with my self-consciousness in idiosyncratic ways, like refusing to workshop my plays until my classmates had signed a contract saying they understood that it was natural for a gay person to write plays about gay people, and that they wouldn't be surprised or judgmental when that plot element appeared. As has probably been obvious, my gay person special needs were completely interconnected with my Asperger's special needs, which my teachers were equally sensitive to even though not all of them knew about my diagnosis. I didn't have to invoke a label for Mrs. G. to believe me and help me when I explained that I couldn't learn a dance by watching other people do it. I almost think it was better without a label, because it meant that Mrs. G. didn't think of a book or movie about autism, but just helped me with the specific problem that I had.

My friend John doesn't believe I have Asperger's. He says that I seem normal and people are overdiagnosed with trendy disorders. But he doesn't make a big show of being amused or baffled by the way I talk, which is something annoying that most people do when they don't know I have AS. This summer, John and I planned to meet in New York City, and based on what he already knew about me, he assumed I would have trouble taking the subway. He offered to take an unnecessary ride so he could find me at the train station and I wouldn't have to take the subway alone. This is a really good example of knowing and thinking about someone's challenges, without making a big deal out of how they are different. And I couldn't care less if John thinks I have Asperger's, because he treats me like a person.

One of the first times I talked to Niyatee, she kept saying how she liked the way I talked because "you just say things straight out." I said that I wished everyone liked it; I actually didn't, because it made it hard to write emails to professors or prospective employers. Then Niyatee said she felt embarrassed because she'd forgotten that I had Asperger's and had assumed I talked the way I did on purpose. This is the only time that she ever needed to consciously think about my AS, and because that was more than a year ago, she thinks it means she might be treating me "like everyone else." But actually, all it means is that when she finds out things about me she just finds them out, and doesn't feel the need to divide them into piles called Amanda and Asperger's, which is good, because those are really difficult piles to make and it also doesn't matter.

Special needs

When I was in high school I was one of the only students who was openly gay. I was extremely sensitive to the idea that other girls might see me as a predator, and I felt like the only way to prove that I wasn't was to not be any more attracted to them than they were to each other. But I couldn't turn off my attraction to girls, and the more I put pressure on myself to be asexual, the more uncomfortable I was interacting with girls, even girls I didn't find attractive. This led to me having special needs.

My special needs were impairments in doing things that most girls don't find difficult: touching girls, and being in a room with girls who were changing. Every year I was in the winter musical, where one was expected to do both of those things. I had to figure out how to accommodate my special needs. Instead of changing with everyone else, I would change in the bathroom. The dancing scenes posed more problems. Like many high school musicals, ours had a mostly female cast, so most of the dancing couples were female/female. In tenth grade, I actually went along with this, but it was really difficult because I couldn't bring myself to actually plant a hand on my dance partner's waist. Instead, I let my hand hover in the general vicinity. During practice, I would let go of my partner's hand every time we stopped dancing, lest I be suspected of holding on too long. In eleventh grade, I was lucky enough to be paired with one of the few boys. In twelfth grade, I took matters into my own hands and under the question, "Would you mind being cast as someone of the opposite sex?" wrote, "as long as I don't have to dance with a girl."

The dance teacher Mrs. G. was incredibly kind to me in ways I'm still grateful for, but I missed rehearsal one day and the next day I discovered I had been paired with a girl. Maybe I'm being melodramatic in retrospect, but if I remember correctly, it was a girl I had a huge crush on. I knew this could not happen. "NO," I said. "I AM NOT DANCING WITH A GIRL."

Mrs. G. looked puzzled. "But your character is a girl. You're not dancing with a girl as a boy." My character was originally a man, but Mrs. M., the wildly talented drama teacher, always thought up new blocking and line readings so that the girls at my school could play our characters as girls, instead of trying to imitate a standard performance.

And fortunately, Mrs. M. was there right then. Mrs. M. was also my English and playwriting teacher, and she had read all my miserable scenes and journal entries, and she had witnessed my incredible embarrassment when another girl read the part of my husband in an absurdist theater elective. "It's not being a boy. Amanda can't dance with a girl," she said, and that was that. Unfortunately, Mrs. G. split up two friends who were dancing together, and I didn't know how to explain to them why I was so insistent. They weren't mean about it but they seemed confused, and I cried when I was driving myself home, feeling guilty about being a burden.