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The TV Tells Me My Disability Isn't Real
May. 6th, 2013 06:58 amI am here today, ever so slightly late, for Blog Against Disablism Day to talk about two storytelling devices (yes, this means I’m linking to TV Tropes, you have been warned) that are astonishingly popular for how blatantly offensive they are with regards to how they depict disability, or more accurately, the lack of disability. Obfuscating Disability and Throwing Off The Disability are sister tropes, and I can’t decide which one is worse.
In the modern West, there is this undercurrent of thought, rarely outright stated, that people with disabilities somehow have it easy, and that there’s a bunch of not disabled people trying to get one over on all of us by pretending to be disabled. I know it makes no sense when I say it out loud, but yes, it is there, I promise. I have written about this phenomenon before. As a person with disabilities, the moment I mention my disability, or have to use assistive technology, or in any way become visibly disabled, people, not all people, and not all of them able bodied, start, consciously or not, watching me for any kind of sign that my disability isn’t real. And since like many people with disabilities, I have good days and bad days, there is usually something for these people to hang their suspicions upon, and from then on, they treat me like a liar. I am forced to constantly justify the existence of my disability and any accommodations I need because of it. I have had people secretly contaminate my food or my belongings with things I’m severely allergic to, believing that I wouldn’t react, and they could hold that up as proof that I’m not really sick, that I am a fraud. It’s extremely unpleasant, and it’s exhausting. And it makes no sense. People with disabilities do not have it easy. Society does not give us a free pass and a cupcake for being disabled. We don’t get pats and sympathy. We get irritation, derision, and invisibility.
( This is the world in which the fictional character Obfuscating Disability has become common. )
( This trope’s heroic sister is when a character throws off their disability, and there is so much wrong with this trope I honestly don’t even know where to begin. )
In the modern West, there is this undercurrent of thought, rarely outright stated, that people with disabilities somehow have it easy, and that there’s a bunch of not disabled people trying to get one over on all of us by pretending to be disabled. I know it makes no sense when I say it out loud, but yes, it is there, I promise. I have written about this phenomenon before. As a person with disabilities, the moment I mention my disability, or have to use assistive technology, or in any way become visibly disabled, people, not all people, and not all of them able bodied, start, consciously or not, watching me for any kind of sign that my disability isn’t real. And since like many people with disabilities, I have good days and bad days, there is usually something for these people to hang their suspicions upon, and from then on, they treat me like a liar. I am forced to constantly justify the existence of my disability and any accommodations I need because of it. I have had people secretly contaminate my food or my belongings with things I’m severely allergic to, believing that I wouldn’t react, and they could hold that up as proof that I’m not really sick, that I am a fraud. It’s extremely unpleasant, and it’s exhausting. And it makes no sense. People with disabilities do not have it easy. Society does not give us a free pass and a cupcake for being disabled. We don’t get pats and sympathy. We get irritation, derision, and invisibility.
( This is the world in which the fictional character Obfuscating Disability has become common. )
( This trope’s heroic sister is when a character throws off their disability, and there is so much wrong with this trope I honestly don’t even know where to begin. )
