I Hate "Teachable Moments": Disability and Fanfiction, or How Not to Fail at Disability in Comments

[attackfish]

Writing my current chapterfic, Children of Mars, is becoming a didactic exercise.  The writing itself is as much a pleasure as ever, and has even gained a sense of catharsis, but when it comes time to post, I want to just save it to my computer and never let one more idiot reader anywhere near it.  Now I know not all of you dear readers are idiots, and one of the things I like best about writing fanfiction is the social framework and critique of fandom (yeah, I write for the comments, such a bad girl) and I have never felt this way about posting a fic before.  Before I have always written about able-bodied characters.

My writing Snape with a disability along with werewolfism is part protest at the way characters with disabilities were portrayed in the books I read as a child and part personal expression of myself as a writer with disabilities.  We don’t have the same disability, in the story Snape uses crutches, whereas I’m oxygen dependent and have an immune disease, but we share a certain status as people with disabilities, or (good God) disabled people.  It’s wonderful, and freeing, and it makes me feel so much better after bad days.

But once I post, it seems like so many of the reviews I receive are “teachable moments” and that’s not so wonderful.

Some of you have been saying you can’t wrap your heads around Snape as disabled.  That isn’t because of anything inherent in either Snape as a character or disability, but in cultural narratives that paint people with disabilities as either weak, or more insidiously as plucky, happy symbols of Good, like the damsel in distress in action movies, not a character so much as an object.  Snape will never be a tragic, passive, stoic cripple (a word that I see a lot in reviews and makes me throw up a little in my mouth each time).  He will never be helpless.  He is and always will be a snarky git.  So many of the reviews talk about how horrible all of the other characters are to him.  Well, he’s horrible to them.  Besides which if anyone, even Lily, especially Lily, were suddenly to treat him like a helpless incompetent child who can’t protect himself or do a thing on his own, he would hex them all into oblivion.  When people do that to me, I wish I could.

When I was a kid, books about people with disabilities seemed to end one of two ways.  Either the pure, good, tragic cripple died, or the pure, good, tragic cripple was cured.  Okay, there were also villains whose disabilities were a symbolic sign of their inner corruption, but I’m not even going to touch that one.  Such endings are incredibly disheartening for me, growing up, because I didn’t want to die, and I was never going to be miraculously cured.  I had to carve out a happy ending of my own that included my disability.   For those of you who keep saying you want Snape’s leg repaired at the end, you are tapping into that same disenfranchising cultural narrative.  Stop it.  Stop it now.  Don’t make me get out my squirt bottle of wrathful smiting.  Whatever ending I write (and I will spoil this, if nothing else) Snape and his disability will be around at the end, along with their happy ending.

One thing I didn’t mention about the perfect tragic cripple trope is that they are always portrayed as lacking any sort of sexuality at all.  They neither have sexual feelings or are appropriate objects of desire for other characters.  What. The. Hell.  Okay, okay, there is one type of character with disabilities allowed to lust, the disabled villain.  Of course their sexuality is always portrayed as deviant, and threatening, and further sign of their evil.  Now, no one has sent me a comment with this bit of fail in it, as Snape hasn’t done any more than engage in some canon unrequited Lily love, but I’m waiting,  When the situation calls for them, I’ll get these too.  I have no doubt.

All of this makes me feel even more queasy as I write this, and I get no catharsis or enjoyment from it.  It shouldn’t be my job, but because I will continue writing characters with disabilities, not just in fic but in original works as well, I have put myself in the position of teaching by example, so for my own peace of mind, I must also teach directly.  I’m sure those characters will get similar sorts of reviews, sometimes, if I’m lucky, from reviewers and writers I respect.  When I send my stories out into the world, the knowledge that people will read my characters differently because of their disabilities will always be there.

Snape is not tragic.  He is not a poor crippled boy to be protected and treated nicely by the noble heroes.  He is the hero.  He will fight against and work with his disability, but ultimately, he will do it on his own, like all of us must do at the end of the day.

I’m sure I didn’t cover everything in this post, and a lot of you will be rolling your eyes going “yes, we know all this” and  this is really basic realize people with disabilities are people stuff, but I keep getting comments where I have to reiterate this.  All of you dear readers who do know all this, thank you, and no fear all, I’m still writing Children of Mars and other fanfics.

Comments

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

One of the lead females is essentially a steampunk engineer, and sometimes she'll geek out over gears and tech, and it's AWESOME.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Girls who geek out? This gets better and better!

Edited

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry. I didn't intend to be offensive. I used the word because House is a bitterly angry/hurt man who believes everyone he ever cares for will damage him and leave him - and that he got that way after his leg was damaged and he became addicted to Vicodin.

But it's truly not worth using one word where 29 will do when the one word is offensive.

Jane Carnall

Re: Edited

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

While House may use the word crippled, or even regard himself as such (self hatred is really really fun to play with!) it didn't seem in that paragraph you were speaking as if from your point of view. The context was too general. After his "leg as damaged" or after his "gained his disability" would have been sufficient, as the rest is easily inferred from cultural osmosis.

Re: Edited

[(Anonymous)]

"After his "leg as damaged" or after his "gained his disability" would have been sufficient, as the rest is easily inferred from cultural osmosis."

Maybe, but it's not what *I* meant when I used the word. I didn't use the word because House's leg is damaged - because he walks with a cane: I used the word because of what House is *like*.

So I edited out the word, and replaced it with a 29-word sentence that covered what I'd meant by the use of the word.

[mary-pseud.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around people thinking that Snape must somehow turn into an entirely different person because he has a walking handicap. I'd picture him as just as snarky with crutches, with the bonus of always having something heavy on hand to thwack people with.

And on a personal-opinion note, I wrote a series of fanfics in which a character who was (canonically) severely physically handicapped ended up being repaired. Was this an offensive concept right from the get-go? Should I not have done that?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely baffled by it. In retrospect, I know centuries worth of cultural assumptions go into that logicless mess, but the first time someone tried to comment with something of the sort, I had to wait an hour before I could even get angry, I was so confused.

I hate to say it's definitely offensive, because I'm sure there are ways to do things like that right, but I have yet to see any.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh yes, seeing myself as disabled was this HUGE thing for me: I have chronic fatigue syndrome, so how I feel and what I can do at any given moment is no worse than how an able bodied person would feel with say a nasty virus, the issue is that I feel that way all the time. And I'm currently looking into mobility aids and still find myself thinking "But I can't use a wheelchair or a scooter! Those are for really disabled people." etc.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, there's always someone over there that's really disabled; I just have this major inconvenience. Really! There are days when I have the tubes up my nose and the oxygen on when I find myself thinking that. Silly.

[mary-pseud.livejournal.com]

I hate to say it's definitely offensive, because I'm sure there are ways to do things like that right, but I have yet to see any.

Open mouth, insert foot, I guess.
And here I thought it was just a clever way for the aliens who are manipulating this character to get him in what is essentially a booby-trapped body (even if they do have, from their point of view, good intentions for doing this).
It's a cliche at this point that whenever one tries to write an original idea, it already is a played-out trope from someone's point of view.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Ah, everyone screws up and does something offensive some time. Booby-trapped body? I think bait and switch wish fulfillment is a trope in and of itself. But, as the TV Tropes wiki puts it, tropes are not bad. It's the combinations and quality of writing that makes it good or bad.

[mary-pseud.livejournal.com]

Maybe booby-trapped is too strong; subtly altered in ways that the character will not be able to comprehend might be more on the spot. But I appreciate your open-mindedness about it.

[reconditarmonia.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom - your post reminds me of a comment in Terry Pratchett's Jingo, the exact phrasing of which I can't remember, but the gist of which was "Real equality is letting the other guy be a bastard, too." It's not anti-ablism if people with disabilities can't be fully developed characters like everyone else.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly! *Pauses a suitable amount of time to worship the brilliance that is Terry Pratchett*. chasingtides here on Livejournal said in her own post, "Somehow disability - whether temporary or permanent - makes our characters more cuddly." Make disabled characters, not metaphors!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

There's one particularly good chapter beginning where she's standing at a shop window oohing and aahing like Audrey Hepburn at Tiffany's, and they pull back and she's looking at, IIRC, gears.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I geek out that way over metalworking tools. My brother gets creeped out because he says they look like medieval torture implement. Now, when he's around, I fake geek out over the tools and describe their made up medieval torture implement functions.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

You are going to like Fullmetal Alchemist.

[alias_sqbr]

*nods*

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

I had to stop watching when they had the episode where they make him go off his meds cold turkey. That was dehumanizing to me as a pain patient who takes narcotics, and the idea that any reputable doctor would have you stop narcotics cold turkey is so many flavors of strawberry crunchy WRONG its not even funny.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I couldn't get through the first episode I saw. There are so many things about that show that leaves the taste of highly concentrated wrong behind. I have a rare chronic illness. I spent my entire childhood watching doctors tell my mother she was crazy, she was lying, I was crazy, I was lying, I was perfectly healthy, I was a spoiled brat trying to get attention, all because they didn't know what I had, and they didn't care. I can't watch a show about a doctor who doesn't care about his patients, believes they're all lying, and reduces them to their illnesses. Not without throwing things, at least. After all that, when he figures out what they have and makes them all better, it feels cheep, hollow, and insulting.

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

I agree, I had a similar reaction to it. I usually like "he's an asshole, but he's *our* asshole" kind of shows, but I have enough jerk doctors (including my pain specialist who did the "I'm diagnosing you with fibromyalgia, but I don't believe it's a real disease" thing-- thankfully I see his PA instead of him most of the time, and she doesn't have that problem) around me that I don't care to see another one on TV. That, and there was one ep with a fat patient that was full of really vitriolic, awful fatphobia. Just can't deal with that show.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

God, sometimes I just hate the medical establishment. Sometimes I really wish I could just switch bodies with people like your pain specialist for a day (preferably a bad one) and have him see that its real and he needs to shut up and believe.

I'm really lucky because my doctor an all of her children have the same disease I do, so she knows how to treat it and what I'm going through, but with my other doctors, I have to search all around to find one that acknowledges that I have a real illness that they know nothing about, and I'm not crazy, I'm not lying, and it will not go away if I eat well (which I do), exercise (which I sometimes do, but since I struggle to keep my weight high enough...), and take antidepressants (which actually make me catatonic, at least Prozac does). Real life doctors like House do a lot of damage.

Besides, the show would be way better if he would just come out dressed as Prince George from Blackadder.

[were-lemur.livejournal.com]

I love House -- and especially HOUSE -- because he is such a fucking asshole.

I know what it's like to be in excruciating agony 24-7, to have the strongest drugs I could get the doctors to perscribe me only knock it down to "bearable" and that's only until they wear off and it's looooong before it's time for my next dose. It doesn't make me a nicer person because I "understand suffering".

House is the perfect antidote (pun intended) for the cultural myth that suffering makes you a better person, more compassionate and patient with others.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I keep getting recommendations for House, and I wanted to be really polite, because I know it's a popular show about someone with a disability who isn't angelic, but I hate the show. I don't hate it because the science is frequently wrong, which it is, but I can ignore that. The real reason I hate it is... well, I'll quote another comment I made on the same subject.

I have a rare chronic illness. I spent my entire childhood watching doctors tell my mother she was crazy, she was lying, I was crazy, I was lying, I was perfectly healthy, I was a spoiled brat trying to get attention, all because they didn't know what I had, and they didn't care. I can't watch a show about a doctor who doesn't care about his patients, believes they're all lying, and reduces them to their illnesses. After all that, when he figures out what they have and makes them all better, it feels cheep, hollow, and insulting.

I do understand what you're saying. On days when I'm sick and hurting, I tend to be very crabby indeed. Pain just makes me pissy and disinclined to move.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately House is not the perfect antidote to the popular cultural idea that people with chronic pain should never be prescribed opiate analgesia, because they'll become junkies.