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

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Excellent post - here via Zvi's signal boost.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and thank you for telling me where you came from. I all of a sudden got a bunch of new comments on this, and that makes me curious.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Thanks for telling me.

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

another comment via Zvi, and YES! No disabilities of my own, but I work with an elderly man who is now wheelchair bound-- I am always telling people to ask HIM the questions about himself, I'm his assistant, not his caretaker.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Silly, don't you realize that when we lack physical abilities the mental ones are absent as well? We're small pitiable children, doncha know.

[taylor-serenil.livejournal.com]

I got here from metafandom too.

I found this post interesting. And the fic sounds interesting too.

I am technically and legally disabled, but with one of the "invisible" kinds (bipolar, and have a seizure disorder). I would cheerfully wave goodbye to the seizure disorder in a heartbeat, but I'm not entirely sure I would even know who I was without the bipolar.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I hope you check it out. I get where you're coming from with that. Oddly, I'd give up my seizures and the rest of it in a heartbeat, but I wouldn't give up having had the illness in childhood. They affected the formation of my personality, and probably had a lot to do with my current brain chemistry. I like who I am.

[lanzhou.livejournal.com]

I traveled over here from ff.net. I am one of those annoying people who read but don't comment, but after reading your profile I thought I should drop you a line.

firstly; I am really enjoying the story. Now I know it's on live journal I'll start posting comments there.

secondly; you are so right about the portrayl of disiabilities in popular culture. I was trying to think of exceptions to what you said and all I could come up with is hugh laurie in house (but i've been madly in love with hugh laurie since I saw him in blackadder so maybe I'm baised).

It is partly because it is outside the experience of the general population (myself included). People don't deal well with things they don't know. I had a close family member die recently, I'm reasonably young so it was something that had not happened to most of my friends. A couple of them responded in a very unhelpful ways. I think they just couldn't relate to something like that happening.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Lol, don't worry, I have a bad habit of not commenting on fics I read too. I only just realized the link on my ff.net profile was to the wrong journal entry about a week ago. It used to direct to a book review of The Westmark Trilogy. Oops.

I need to get back to writing CoM. My novel, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and real life ate my brain for a while, but I'm better now.

ANOTHER BLACKADDER FAN! *squee* part of the reason I have a hard time watching House is that I keep waiting for him to do something silly. (The other reasons I find it impossible to watch are some very problematic ways the show treats sick people) but you're right. House doesn't manage to hit the problems I've listed here. The show Joan of Arcadia has a very good portrayal of Joan's brother, Keven, who when the show starts was recently paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. He finds himself confronting the changed expectations of his family and society for him, and is sometimes a real shit about it, but is still sympathetic. Other commenters on this post recommended it to me, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Avatar: the last Airbender has both Teo, a minor character who uses a wheelchair, and Toph, a major character who is blind. Both have to deal with the ableist assumptions of their parents, and really rang true to me. Other than that, though, good portrayals are few and far between.

Dealing with disability is out of the experience of the general public, but that's in large part because of the system of prejudice and disadvantage that encourages people with disabilities to either interact as rarely with society as possible or act in certain ways within society. It should be simple logic that anyone, with any sort of personality can have a disability, but because of our cultural narratives, it's not.

[lanzhou.livejournal.com]

re blackadder; i kind off fall in love with the entire blackadder cast. including the guy who plays baldrick, (who is now a politician!?). i would watch anything with one of them in it. (except for mr bean)

I think that possibly makes me a blackadder stalker.

re what you said in your last paragraph; yeah, totally agree.

you're american right? I could be wrong about this, but american law ranks degrees of discrimination. eg if you discriminate against someone cause they are black that's really really bad, if you discriminate against a woman that is bad, if you discriminate against someone because of their disability that's kind off bad, if you discriminate against someone cause they are gay that's sort off alright.

(i'm talking in terms of what congress can pass legislation discriminating against, not what happens if you sue someone).

depressingly this is further evidenc that the human race has a long way to go.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Tony's only a politician as a side job. Mostly he's a historian and comedian. He's a damn fine historian, by the way. My college bio teacher looked and sounded exactly like him. It was terrifying. The man played the banjo.

I am an American, yes. You are wrong about that. The laws are patchy and separate, but I'd say the ADA laws are stronger than a lot of anti-sexism laws, and also, there's a big push to streamline the laws. Also, anti-gay discrimination in some areas of the law is pretty bad, though trans discrimination is mostly legal. It's just that our country gets around to passing the same laws that had been passed for the last group for the next group at a slow and uneven rate.

[lanzhou.livejournal.com]

you had a teacher that looked like baldwick! i am so incrediably jealous

really? i'm not american so i clearly shld not be talking about american law. but i am going to anyway, so sorry if I have gotten it all horribly wrong.

I read a American supreme court decision that ranked how much they would interfer if the legislature passed discrimantory legislation. they would look more closely at stuff relating to race and the legislature would have to have a better justification for passing it (and so on down the list).

unless this hase been overturned, It means that constitutionally, congress wld find it easier to pass legislation discriminating against disabled people than they would if they passed legislation discriminating against black people. I'm glad that this hasn't actually happened.

of course, where I am from, constitutionally, parliament could pass a law killing all blue eyed babies, without any justification. this does not mean it is likely to do so.

some um... yeah... *walks away embarresed*

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Well, like baldric out of costume and no beard. It was terrifying, really.

There is court precedent that says that the judges tend to be extra careful about laws relating to race, but the rest of it? I'm a political science pre-law student, and I've never heard that, and given my particular interest in minority law and identity politics, I'd know it. It would be very well known in the circles I run in. The supreme court can only rule on laws brought before them by affected citizens, so there's no institutional difference in the way different forms of discrimination are treated, though transexuals are given the short shaft, and depending on the makeup of the court and their prejudices, the supreme court can say they think the law's just great even if it is discriminatory to any group. Also you're going to get laughed out of the courtroom if you claim a law discriminates against people with blue eyes.

[lanzhou.livejournal.com]

i cannot remember what it was called of the top of my head. but checkout http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/epcscrutiny.htm have a look down the bottom. does not mention physical disability but mental disability is listed next to homosexuality as requiring a 'rational basis test'. ie, the state, or congress, only have to provide a rational explanation for passing discriminatory legislation for these groups. this could be 'marriage is between a man and a woman historically'.

I'm suprised this isn't considered a big deal. I'm a final year law student in NZ (i have a week to go before i finish). a class i did two years ago was focused on how discrimination is treated in different common law countries. the case (that i can't remember the name of) got mentioned by the lecturer as this massive blot on American jurisprudence. Not just because of the result, but because of the potential impact on other minorities who don't get strict scrutiny. it really stuck with me.

but this might be one of those things that looks worse to outsiders than it does to people who are actually involved in that particular area.

technically in NZ, parliament could pass a law killing all blue eyed babies. this is because parliament is supreme, our courts cannot strike down legislation. I don't know what wld actually happen, but you wouldn't get laughed out of court. out of the country maybe.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

A bunch of federal laws prevent discrimination in the areas that the courts have failed to protect, and because federal law supersedes state law, the supreme court (and lower courts) strike down discriminatory laws based on the body of the constitution and the ninth and tenth amendments without even touching the fourteenth or fifth amendments at all. There are of course gaps, (Congress just closed one with regards to disability and sexual orientation) and given the extremely right wing tone of our current supreme court, the three tiered system is unlikely to change.

Actually, according to the site you sent me to, the historical argument isn't good enough, but it's not hard to dummy up an argument that is.

Because of the federal laws (The ADA in the case of disability and numerous others in other cases) the courts end up just stating that the state laws violate federal law and strike them down, so the ruling's modern real world impact is minimal. It is a ruling from the 1930s. If it were put to the test by a supreme court with a slightly more liberal leaning than our currant stacked court, it would likely fall, but because of federal statutes, it's not often put to the test with regards to discrimination.

[(Anonymous)]

That's interesting. the case i was talking about is more recent. it rejected the oakes test (which is the canadian test). but apperently it wasn't the first to apply the whole ranking system, so that makes it difficult to find.

it's still strange to me that the 14th amendment is interpreted so narrowly. it seems the most obvious way to effectively protect against anti-discrimination. but if it has no impact in the real world then i can see how there would be no motivation to change it. (or ability to change it, with the current supreme court).

still, there is a possibility of discrimination at a federal level (even if unlikely).

just out of curiosity, does anti-discrimination legislation get applied to stuff like access to medical insurance? or is it limited to public stuff?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

As the supreme court can only interpret the cases brought before it, and nearly all of them are equally examples of state vs. federal law, they've chosen to affirm federal law rather than interpret the fourteenth amendment more broadly. Don't know why, they just do.

Of course there is, which is why there's the potential for the tier system to be overturned eventually. There would also be hell to pay.

It's applied to private things too, but currently one of the big health care reform debates is making it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate based on gender and preexisting conditions. Also women have cheaper car insurance, because statistically men are involved in more car accidents. But employers and banks, and landlords and people selling houses, and just about everyone else have to comply with anti-discrimination laws, and the insurance company exception was a special amendment to the law that a lot of people are very pissed about. (People like me who only have affordable health insurance because I'm covered under my parents' plan, grrr.)

[fishmoon.livejournal.com]

I wonder-- have you read the Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster-Bujold? Miles is anything but a poor suffering saint or weak in the least, and the series is chock-full of plain sense about societal views (I love Cordelia for her "Betan, you know" common sense approach to Barrayaran societal mores, and her dealing with her son(s)).

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't yet. They're on my too read list, though.

[green-blush.livejournal.com]

What a great post. I started reading "Children of Mars" only yesterday and now I'm halfway through... I'm almost relieved to know that you chose to leave Snape in this condition - for a number of reasons.

Hurt/comfort fics usually go like this: a guy #1 gets some health problem and his present/future lover/friend/whatever takes care of him. The author is always ready to describe the details of their misery. The guy #1 suffers because of his condition, the guy #2 suffers from seeing guy #1 suffering... The reader feels that if a cure isn't found soon, both of them are definitely going to depress themselves to death. And then there's a cure and everyone gets their fluff and snot in sugar.

I've always had these questions:
- And what if they didn't find a cure? The authors tend to describe only the "sad part" of being disabled. Happiness is always associated with "fixing" and not with learning to live with a certain condition. It's like "a guy can't use his legs - he's sad - he regains partial use of his legs - he's happier" but NEVER like "he learns how to use a wheelchair - he's happier". It especially angers me if the "hurt" character is supposed to have lots of willpower. Well then, dear author, why won't you show it to us? Anyone can be happy if magically cured, but you need guts to fight for happiness if you're disabled.
- If romance is involved, the attraction usually begins when the guy #1 is still disabled, but a full-blown romance starts only when he's cured. Doesn't it cheapen the idea of their (supposedly) true love? And, once again, what if they didn't find a cure?
- The cure itself. It's usually quick and simple. Why can't someone describe complicated and excruciatingly slow therapy which makes the guy wonder if it's even worth it, but his SuperWillPower makes itself known and he manages to overcome the obstacles?

I think I'm going to look for more data about H/C fics and try to analyse this matter. I can't believe I've never thought about how cheap and unrealistic they are.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The thing about disability H/C is almost all of it's written by able-bodied people who have been steeping in an ablist culture their whole lives, and since it's part of the cultural fabric of their lives, they don't even notice it. H/C doesn't have to be ablist. I'm writing a fic that among other things is H/C and while it doesn't deal with physical disability, I do my best to deal respectfully with trauma, PTSD, and assorted other issues. It's not that hard. You just have to realize the people suffering are supposed to act like human beings.

I need to get back to writing Children of Mars. *Sigh* Avatar: the Last Airbender ate my mind a bout a year back.

[green-blush.livejournal.com]

H/C doesn't have to be ablist.
Before now, I managed to find only one non-ablist H/C fic. It was about Snape and Hermione: Snape loses his sight because of torture and Hermione wants to help him. It follows the regular H/C plot with Hermione doing her best to find a cure even when healers said there were no such thing, but she doesn't succeed. Still, Snape and Hermione lived happily ever after. The ending was much more optimistic than that of any ablist H/C.

By the way, I'm kind of an alter ego of the person who translated "Blurring" into Russian. Would you mind if I put my greedy hands on "Pawprints" and "Between"? ^^

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'd ask for a link if I could stand cross-generational pairings.


No problem! I'm actually writing a sequel to "Blurring" (it also has a companion, "Spectacles") and I hope to top the series off at seven one shots. I'm also playing around with a companion to "Between" after all this time swearing to reviewers I didn't have one in me, and if you want to, you have permission to translate those when I crank them out.

[milleniumrex.livejournal.com]

This is a great post. I spent a lot of time working on a 15K fic about disability recently, and I tried to do a good deal of research into things like this before I started, to make sure I didn't fail. The H/C tropes, and how to avert them were heavily on my mind.

The character I worked with was Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl. In the story, she was training on a planet where she doesn't have powers (as they do in the comics sometimes), went swimming, and injured her neck diving into shallow water. The accident left her with a C4 spinal cord injury, and she was paralyzed from the shoulders down.

I actually wound up writing a lot of the same things into the story that you talk about here. There was a romantic/pairing element to the story (with Wonder Girl), but they were in a romantic relationship before the accident and they stay together, working out issues with their relationship and figuring out the physical part (although not anything beyond PG-13). It's a sci-fi fandom, obviously, so I did include a lot of stuff about Superman trying to develop a "miracle cure" for her. They just didn't work, and Kara was forced to slowly adapt to her disability, such as learning to drive a wheelchair via sip-and-puff. I ended the fic with acknowledging that Superman was still trying to come up with the cure, but by then Kara had adjusted and was going to be okay either way, despite that she still had no movement below her shoulders. There was even some action stuff where she got to play the hero using her mind.

There was some ableist language in the fic by the disabled character, just because it felt right during those early periods of intense anger that are pretty common in situations like this. But overall, I'm really glad I tried to read a lot of meta on disability fic before tackling it. I didn't get too many reviews, but those I did seemed to think I did a good job with those elements.

So in conclusion, thanks for writing this - both the commenter and the OP. There are those "disability fic" writers out there who really try to do a good, respectful job, and we appreciate it immensely.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Every day, I'm glad to see when a writer gets it right. It does happen! And the fact that it can be done is the reason I write meta like this! A disabled character with ablist attitudes in a fic is no bad thing, especially one who has recently gained his disability. Snape in my fic has tons of ablist hangups, and wallows in his misery. Gen, from the Queen's Thief books lets his feelings of uselessness following the gaining of a disability make him actually become useless, hiding in his room for several months. It's his coming to terms with his disability and becoming incredibly useful again that marks his coming of age. The journey to accepting one's disability is a freaking awesome narrative as far as I'm concerned.