Writing Disabilities, Part 4: Villains and Disabilities

Happy October Listen Up readers! It’s time to start getting ready for the holidays or, if you are a fellow writer, it’s time to prepare for National Novel Writing Month! To celebrate both of these, today’s blog post starts with a creative experiment! Take out some markers or colored pencils and a sheet of paper. Take five or ten minutes to draw a monster.

If you chose to skip the drawing, this experiment will also work with a monster you’ve seen in a movie, TV show, or book. Let’s begin!

Explain why the monster is a monster. What characteristics make it a monster? Is it the way it looks? The way that it is shaped? The way that it hunts? Write down why. Lastly, does your monster have physical deformities, scars, or any disabilities?

If you answered “yes” to the last question, you don’t need to feel guilty. The truth is the majority of people have been taught to associate disabilities with villains and monsters since the time they have been engaging in stories. The literary world has a longstanding trend to use disabilities or other physical differences as a way to highlight or reflect other negative characteristics, which may not be otherwise apparent in a character. Since we start to see this as kids, we end up learning to unconsciously associate disabilities with these villainous characters. As we get older, those associations become built into stigmas that surround disabilities today.

Let’s talk about a few examples. Think about your favorite stories as a kid. How many can you name that have physical differences to “mark” the villain? How many villains are mentally unstable or become unstable as the story goes on?

Scar from The Lion King and Captain Hook from Peter Pan not only have physical differences from the perfect-bodied heroes, they don’t even have a name outside of their differences. The Wicked Queen in Snow White takes becomes more and more mentally unstable as her efforts to kill Snow White are repeatedly foiled.

Another example is The Hunger Games. The villain in this series isn’t a specific person but rather a society. Throughout the series, Katniss meets several characters marked with disabilities, all or nearly all of them had their disabilities inflicted by evil acts of the Capital. Even though the Capital isn’t a person or disabled, readers are taught to associate the Capital with disabilities because it highlights the cruelty of the Capital.

Perhaps the greatest example I can give is the Star Wars franchise. Almost everyone associated with the dark side is disabled or has physical differences. Scars, deformities, missing limbs, mental disabilities, among many other examples. On the other hand, the Jedi and their allies, are always able-bodied. This ablest mindset is reinforced particularly when Obi-Wan speaks of Darth Vader. “He’s more machine now than man: twisted and evil.” This statement implies that Darth Vader is no longer a person because he has multiple disabilities and needs several pieces of assistive technology for his daily life. Secondly, it implies that he is not worth saving because of his disabilities.

What about Luke Skywalker? Luke, one of the main characters of the franchise, acquires a disability in Episode V. That’s where things start to get interesting from a literary analysis standpoint. Even though Luke is an example of a disabled hero, he appears completely able-bodied for the rest of the second trilogy. Furthermore, Luke became disabled because of Darth Vader. In other words, it is a case of the hero being permanently marked by evil. It’s not really disability representation, but rather meant to be a symbol of evil.

It’s a complicated subject and I imagine I will be writing a whole blog post series on Star Wars, especially because they have been trying to address the ableist nature of the franchise by bringing forth more characters with disabilities, such as in The Bad Batch and Rogue One.

Another way to look at the subject of disabilities and villains is with the nullification of disabilities theory. Disabilities are often seen as undesirable or as a weakness, which ends up being significant because villains are designed to lose. With the nullification of disabilities theory, we start to see how disabilities are used to play a role in power status.

An example is Azula from The Last Airbender. Azula is easily one of the strongest and most cunning characters on the show. However, the closer she gets to her goal to be the Fire Lord, she becomes more and more mentally unstable. In other words, the closer she gets to power, the more disabled she becomes. In the grand finale, Azula almost succeeds in killing two of the show’s main protagonists as a testament to how powerful she is. Azula, in her prime, I don’t think she would have been defeated by the good guys. But her mental health was disrupted to a point that she was making rash decisions in battle and over-committing to moves, which ultimately led to her defeat. Azula would not have been defeated unless she had a disability.

To summarize the basis: bad guys, or villains, have disabilities and/or physical differences. The good guys, or the heroes, are always able-bodied (some may say perfect-bodied). I recognize that part of this is due to beauty standards. A lot of people don’t see disabilities as something that can be beautiful. But most often disabilities or physical differences are used as a metaphor for evil. Especially mental disabilities.

This subject has affected me for a long time. Recently I was reflecting on my childhood and I recalled that I would often call myself names such as “mongrel,” “cursed,” “monster,” “half-breed,” and the like. I was at a critical point where I was beginning to build a larger awareness of my disability and becoming aware of how it made me different. I wondered why I was disabled. I wondered if I had done something bad in a past life, so I had to be punished. I wondered if my parents had angered God, so he punished them by cursing me.

Now that I am an adult, I understand that none of these things are true. But as a kid, I was building awareness of my place in the world. It’s natural to question why things are the way they are and sometimes we come to the wrong conclusion. My conclusions, as wrong as they were, were the only way that I could make sense of my disability with the knowledge and examples that I had seen demonstrated in the world around me. Disabilities were marks of evil. I was disabled, therefore, I must be the result of evil.

Monsters and villains, more often than not, are designed to create fear. I, for one, refuse to believe the best way to highlight negative characteristics is to rely on disabilities or physical differences to cue the reader to the presence of evil. It’s been a longstanding tactic for many writers, but it’s time to start addressing the messages these tactics are setting. It’s also not okay to use disabilities as character “flaws.” Disabilities run so much deeper than what you see. Disability is an identity just like skin color, religious affiliation, gender identity, or sexual orientation. It has history and cultures built around it. The experience of disability is unique from person to person as well. Even if the two people in question have the same disability, they will find unique ways to adapt.

As you go out shopping for Halloween costumes this year, take note of what costumes seem to emphasize physical differences. Are they imitating disabilities as something to inspire fear or suggest evil? Pay attention to movies and how villains are presented. Are they given physical differences or disabilities, whereas the hero is not? Being aware of these issues is the first step toward building a better representation, and therefore, a better future.

For further reading: here is a link to an awesome article that talks more about the harmful implications of tying disabilities to villains and other harmful forms of disability representation. I found it very informative.

What are your Halloween plans this year? Comment below and let me know! I have yet to decide on a Halloween costume myself.

Disability History, Part 3

Aktion T4 and the Holocaust

Today’s post is near and dear to my heart. It is a great example of the disabled community being silenced as almost no one has been taught about the Aktion T4 program. The T4 program was a political mass murder campaign by involuntary euthanasia, which ended up serving as the precursor to the Holocaust. The history that I’ve compiled for this week is, and should be, shocking. As such, I feel that I need to put a warning here that this post will talk about some of the horrendous things that occurred before and during WWII which include: mass murder, eugenics, abortion, forced sterilization, assisted suicide, and the torture of children. I encourage readers to decide for themselves if they would like to engage in this material.

The early 1900s was a dark time for those with disabilities. In addition to facing discrimination in employment, education, architecture, it was also the age of eugenics. This meant that scientists and politicians were trying to shape the human race by eliminating undesirable characteristics. Those with disabilities were especially targeted. In America, new laws passed such as the “ugly laws” which prohibited the appearance of people who were “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object (1).” Another example is sterilization laws, which allowed disabled people to be sterilized against their consent. America was not the only country to do this. Sterilization laws were also in effect all over Europe. In the Deaf community, oralism (communicating by voice rather than by sign language) was enforced. Deaf teachers were fired while deaf students were punished if they signed. American Sign Language was nearly wiped out of existence. Alexander Graham Bell, largely known for creating the first telephone, used his fame to push for laws that would prohibit Deaf people from marrying or having children.

The purpose behind these laws was to further segregate disabled people from non-disabled people. In addition, they pushed disabled people to fit into the status quo. This discrimination and segregation—particularly the sterilization laws—inspired scientists and political leaders in Germany, who were also heavily discussing Darwin’s ideas of natural selection and survival of the fittest.

In support of these ideas, the Nazi party began producing propaganda that blamed Germany’s social and economic problems on people with disabilities. Anyone who didn’t contribute to the well-being of the society was considered a burden to the point they were called “lives unworthy of living (2).” After the propaganda, came action.

In 1933 the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring” was passed and lead to forced sterilization of people carrying hereditary defects, which was anything from mental illness to deformations to sensory disabilities such as deafness or blindness to biracial children. Many who were sterilized were children, who often did not know what the operation meant until years later. You can hear a few of these victims tell the story in their own words here.

After this, more action came with the registration of disabilities. Political leaders wanted to know how many people with disabilities were in nursing homes, being born in hospitals, and living at home. It became required for doctors, midwives, and nurses to report this information. Once that information was gathered, Aktion Tiergartenstrasse 4 (T4) began. In a nutshell, the T4 program was a campaign of mass murder of people with disabilities. It began in 1939 with the quiet killing of infants and children under the age of 3 who were suspected of having a hereditary disability. Parents did not have a say in their child’s future. If they fought the decision of the doctors, their baby was taken away.

When WWII broke out, T4 expanded to older children, adults, and the elderly with disabilities. Disabled people were being trafficked to special “institutions” and “special sections” where it was believed that they would receive better treatment. In reality, they were being sent to various places to be slaughtered. These were the first instances of mass murder in Germany and, of course, needed to be undertaken secretly. This meant there was a need to develop new technology to kill several people at a time and provide a way to efficiently dispose of the bodies. That’s how gas chambers were invented and why furnaces became the top method of disposing of bodies.

The Nazi party kept T4 secret. Most parents who dropped their children or family members off at these institutions didn’t know they were delivering them to the arms of death. While most adults had the mercy of being killed quickly, for children it was a different story. Children were often locked in rooms and either starved or beaten until dead. Those with mental illnesses were sometimes kept for experiments. One particular doctor, Heinrich Gross, would preserve the brains of disabled children in jars for further studies. He is credited with killing more children than any other doctor under the T4 program and has never been formally charged for these crimes.

I am sad to say that Gross’s victims were not laid to rest until April 28, 2002. Gross kept their brains as part of his collection of study and research, continuing to dissect their brains as late as 1998. (3)

After the success of the T4 program, the Nazi party turned to target Jews, Blacks, Transgender, Homosexuals, interracial couples, and many others. With the new technology developed under the T4 program, they had the means to do mass exterminations the likes of which had never been seen before.

T4 continued through the war until Germany surrendered to Allied powers on May 7, 1945. The last murder of the program took place on May 29, 1945. It was a boy named Richard Jeene who was four years old and classified as a “feebleminded idiot” (4). While the exact number of people who were killed under T4 isn’t known, estimations range from 200,000 to 360,000 (5).

Had the T4 program been prevented or failed, it is likely the Holocaust would never have come to past. From this history, we can see how when one group successfully justifies the extermination or discrimination of another group, there will always be another group to target. Because the disabled community is one of the most invisible and oppressed minorities on the planet, it is not uncommon for them to be the first target.

Unfortunately, discussions about disabilities and eugenics continue to this day. As an example, many believe that disabilities need to be cured or eradicated. Abortion laws around the world often allow fetuses who have been diagnosed with disabilities to be terminated at much later dates than allowed for a non-disabled fetus. This assumes that children with disabilities will have a lower quality of life or be too much of a burden. Another example, some groups are pushing for assisted suicide for disabled people, which would allow someone with a disability to legally seek out voluntary euthanasia. This arises from assumptions that people with disabilities are so miserable that they want to die. This particular issue strikes a personal nerve because I spent most of my childhood wishing I was dead. And then I grew up and I learned about disabilities and the barriers in place that made me feel that way. I developed pride in myself and my disability. I overcome those feelings and now I can’t imagine wanting to die. Assisted suicide is not an answer until we first break down the barriers that prevent disabled people from being fully integrated into society.

A third example is found in efforts of trying to cure disabilities similarly has a mindset that disability makes a person less useful. Whereas focusing on accessibility and building better technology for disabled people focuses on breaking down barriers. If disabilities are completely eradicated we stand to lose so much diversity and innovation. Instead of assuming that disabilities need to be wiped out or that they are a burden, maybe society should look at the barriers that keep people with disabilities from contributing. Instead of saying “people with disabilities are burdens” try saying “what barriers prevent people with disabilities from contributing to society? How can we challenge or remove these barriers?”

One of the reasons I started this blog was to combat the persistent negative views surrounding disabilities. Disabled people are often seen for their disability rather than as people, but we are people first, foremost, and forever. As a nation and as a global village, we are entering into a new age. As I’ve mentioned before, I am part of the first generation of the disabled community, worldwide, to grow up with civil rights. This means that disabled people are no longer segregated from non-disabled people and we are in the process of becoming a more visible community. Perhaps a better way to explain this is with a quote from Judy Heumann’s book.

“We were a people who were generally invisible in the daily life of society. I mean, think about it. If you didn’t see us in school, because we weren’t allowed in; or in your place of employment, either because we couldn’t physically access it or because we couldn’t get hired; or on your form of public transportation, because buses and trains weren’t accessible; or in restaurants or theaters, for the same reason—then where in your everyday life would you have seen us?”
Being Heumann, Page 103

When I first learned about the T4 program a couple of years ago, I felt like I had been betrayed. Why hadn’t I been taught this in school? Why wasn’t everyone taught about it? We learn about the Holocaust in detail, but nothing about how it came to be. It seemed like such an important detail to leave out. Isn’t that why we learn history? So we recognize the signs if it starts happening again? The T4 program assumed that life can be measured by usefulness while further assuming only able-bodied persons were useful, a stereotype that persists today. I have to wonder if disabilities and eugenics would still be under discussion if more people were educated about T4. Things like selective abortion are not too far off of the beginnings of the T4 program. It is discrimination. It is a matter of life and death. It is important to understand and recognize these things before they escalate into something bigger. Something more terrible.

Something that should never be silenced.

References

Schweik, Susan M, and Robert A Wilson. “Ugly Laws.” The Eugenics Archives, 5 Feb. 2015, eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/54d39e27f8a0ea4706000009.
Cook, Ian. “The Holocaust and Disabled People: FAQ – Frequently-Asked Questions.” Ouch!, BBC, 17 Oct. 2008, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/fact/the_holocaust_and_disabled_people_faq_frequently_asked_questions.shtml.
Erlanger, Steven. “Vienna Buries Child Victims Of the Nazis.” The New York Times, 29 Apr. 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/29/world/vienna-buries-child-victims-of-the-nazis.html.
Krausz, Tibor. “You Were Born to Die for Germany.” Tibor Krausz, The Jerusalem Report, 28 Nov. 2005, tiborkrausz.com/html/book_review/You_were_born_to_die_for_germany.html.tiborkrausz.com/html/book_review/You_were_born_to_die_for_germany.html.
Berenbaum, Michael. “T4 Program.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 21 Feb. 2001, http://www.britannica.com/event/T4-Program.

Defining Disabilities, Part 2

The Disabled Identity

I was born six years after the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This act is what granted disabled people civil rights. What this means is that I am part of the first generation not to be denied access to education and protected against discrimination in public services and employment. This particular group is called the “ADA generation.” Our society is at something of a turning point in history where the ADA generation has grown up, graduated college, and is now employed in the workforce. They are bringing new perspectives and new ideas to the table because previously they weren’t allowed, which is why it is becoming more common to see the story of disability being brought forth.

Of course, there is still a lot of progress to be made. When I learned about the history of the disability civil rights movement and the importance of the ADA generation, it taught me a lot about my own disabled identity. In part one, I discussed how difficult it is to define what is and what is not a disability. Everyone has different disabilities in the same way that everyone has different abilities. But that doesn’t mean everyone has a disabled identity.

Identity is a complex construction made up of many different parts. I find it helpful to think of identity as being a city. Each block is a different part of your personality and experiences. Within the blocks are buildings, which are the people, moments, and memories that contribute to who you are. Some things are bigger parts of you than others, thus they will take up more space in your city. Maybe you have an entire neighborhood dedicated to your religious experiences. Maybe you are an athlete and you have seven soccer fields all within one mile of each other. Everyone’s city is unique.

To make things even more complex, your city is always under construction where new parts of yourself are being built up. And there are parts of you that have abandoned or grown out of, which remain in various states of decay and marred with graffiti. There are intersections in your city where parts of your identity overlap. The roadways of being a mother overlap with the roadways of being a daughter. Intersections where religion crosses with your heritage. This concept is called intersectionality, referring to the overlapping of socially constructed categories that converge in each individual.

Sometimes intersectionality can cause a person or a group to experience more discrimination than another. For example, I am a woman and I have a disability. Both groups face certain amounts of discrimination, and I experience discrimination on both counts. For another person, they may be a Christian and transgender. A third example, a person of color who was born and raised in Germany, who has immigrated to America. In each of these examples, the people have major parts of their personality that seem to conflict in the outside eye.

I consider these things to be roadblocks. Let’s take one of the previous examples. Susan is a transgender Christian. She’s driving around her city then has to slam on their breaks because somebody put a road-block in their way. “You can’t be Christian and be transgender at the same time,” the stranger says, “It goes against the scriptures.” Susan is forced to take an alternate route, but again, the same thing happens, so she has to take another detour until she finally reaches her destination. Roadblocks are things that society puts in place to try to get people to be a certain way or because society doesn’t acknowledge certain overlaps in identity.

Coming back to disabilities, a good example is how being disabled crosses over with sexuality. Many people assume that disabled people can’t or shouldn’t be attractive or in any way sexually expressive. This shows up in things like adaptive clothing. Adaptive clothing is designed for those with physical disabilities. For example, shoes that use a zipper or velcro for someone who finds shoelaces challenging to tie. Or for someone that struggles with buttons, there are magnetic closing shirts instead. Or clothes with specially placed holes and pockets for a medical device and tubes.

Unfortunately, adaptive clothing is often designed without any sense of style. They look like medical clothing, unattractive, or the adaptation is painfully obvious. This means that some people with disabilities don’t have clothes with which they can express their individuality or sexuality. Imagine going through life without ever being able to wear something that makes you feel pretty or handsome? That’s the reality for some people. Society throws road-blocks in disability city saying, however unintentionally, “Whoa, stop. You are disabled. You can’t be attractive. You can’t have stylistic clothes to express yourself.”

In my city, some of the frequent road-blocks I experiences are when I go to the movie theater, only to find out that they don’t keep their closed caption devices charged. Roadblock, I have to take an alternate route. They start charging two. When the first one runs out of battery, I go to get the second one, which thankfully lasts for the rest of the movie. Another roadblock is when I’m checking out at the store and the cashier asks me a question. I have no idea what they are saying. I have to ask them to pull down their face mask so I can lipread or I ask them to write down what they are saying on a piece of paper—that’s a detour I have to take regularly. When I hang out with a friend and I happen to be driving, I can’t carry a conversation in the car and drive safely at the same time. I have to detour, explain to my friend I can’t understand them while I’m focused on another task, and we wait until we reach our destination to continue our conversation.

Members of the disabled community are used to facing roadblocks and detours every day. We adapt ourselves to a world that wasn’t designed for us. The deaf in a hearing world, the wheelchair user in a society that relies on stairs, the blind in a world that caters to those who can see, the mentally disabled who are ignored and shunned by those who don’t acknowledge or understand that everyone’s minds function differently. Constantly dealing with roadblocks is a large part of the disabled identity.

Another part of identity is pride. This is the flag of disability pride. It was designed by Ann Magill, a woman who wanted something to express her pride in being disabled. The black field represents those who have suffered from ableist violence, rebellion, and protests. It also represents how disabilities are kept in the dark. The five colors represent different types of disabilities and the wide variety of needs and experiences that divide them. The zigzags represent how people with disabilities must constantly adapt and overcome barriers that society puts in our way. The parallel strips represent that even though every person with a disability has different experiences, we also share a lot of the same barriers and experiences. Essentially it says “we are not alone because we have each other” and “we are stronger together than we are apart.”

Disability pride is something that I have struggled with throughout my life. There are some days that I’m proud to be deaf, to be different, and to be an example. I feel like that when I talk about disability studies or when I take my hearing aids out for sparring at karate. But there are moments that I feel ashamed for being deaf too. Like when I can’t understand my two-year-old niece asking me for water until someone else gets it for them. I feel ashamed when I can’t understand the cashier and I end up holding the line. One of my favorite quotes about disability pride comes from Eli Clare, a disabled, queer writer, and activist. “Pride is not an inessential thing. Without pride, disabled people are much more likely to accept unquestioningly the daily material condition of ableism: unemployment, poverty, segregated and substandard education, years spent locked up in nursing homes, violence perpetrated by caregivers, [and] lack of access. Without pride, individual and collective resistance to oppression becomes nearly impossible. But disability pride is not an easy thing to come by. Disability has been soaked in shame, dressed in silence, [and] rooted in isolation.”

I didn’t gain any pride in my disability until I was in my later teenage years. It started with taking a sign language class in high school. Then I got involved in the Deaf community for a short time, playing on the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind basketball team. For the first time in my life, I connected with others like me and my disability was cast in a whole new light. I realized I wasn’t alone and I was a part of something bigger than myself because of my disability. When I first learned to spar in karate, I was uncomfortable taking my hearing aids out. It is a side that I never let others see.

When the time came for me to attend my first belt test where sparring was required, I was afraid of being yelled at by instructors who didn’t know about my deafness and being punished for not following instructions I couldn’t hear. I decided I needed to mark my sparing helmet in some way so that my Sensei could point me out to the other instructors. But at the same time, that felt similar to Jews being marked with a star of David during WWII. I didn’t want to label myself as different.

At my request, my brother made me a special sticker to put on the back of my sparring helmet. The words I had chosen were “DEAF PRIDE.” At first, I was embarrassed, but later found it empowering. Every time I put on my sparring helmet, I knew I was representing an entire community. I knew that such a mark would make people watch me and judge me, how they would think of me as a charity case, how I was excepted not to amount to anything because I was disabled. And despite everything that everyone thought about me, I was still here. And I was proving them wrong.

January 2020 Tournament, 3rd place Sparring

The last thing I want to talk about today is stereotypes. They are one of the most harmful things when it comes to disabilities because they are unique for each individual—no two individuals have the same experience even if they have the same disability. I have found that the best definition of a stereotype comes from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TEDtalk The Danger of a Single Story. She says, “the single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they aren’t true, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

For example, stereotypes about being deaf will tell you that I am nonverbal, rely on sign language, and if I talk, I have a heavy accent. In reality, I rely on verbal communication, have no accent other than my Utah one, and while I do have some knowledge of sign language, I am far from fluent. At best, I might be able to communicate with the skill and finesse of a three-year-old in sign language. I do rely a lot on lipreading, which is steeped in many stereotypes on its own. For one, lipreading is extremely inaccurate. This is because most sounds of speech are made inside the mouth, nose, and throat. I can only “read” what happens at the front of the mouth. Even the best lipreaders in the world can only understand a third of what a person says.

At the same time, because I don’t fit the stereotype people assume that I’m not deaf or not disabled. I had that happen once, back when I was working at a local fudge factory. We were working on hand-wrapping fudge slices and I was talking something about being deaf. A coworker of mine pipped up, “But Rachel, you aren’t really deaf.”

“What?” I said. (It would be helpful here to say that I have two kinds of what; “what” as in, “I didn’t catch what you said and could you please repeat that” and then I have “what” as in did you really just say that?)

My coworker, thinking it was the first kind of “what,” repeated herself. “You’re not really deaf.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Well, you have hearing aids. And you talk just fine. You aren’t really disabled.”

I set my fudge slice aside and made eye contact with her. “I have hearing aids because I am deaf. Hearing aids do not correct hearing in the way that glasses correct vision. Hearing aids function like a cane helps someone walk. Not a cure, not a correction, just there to help. Just because you don’t know my struggles and you don’t see the things I have to do every day because I am deaf, doesn’t mean you get to label me as not deaf. What you mean to say is that I don’t fit the stereotype of deafness, which really, doesn’t fit anyone at all. Plus, the reason I talk so well is that I went through years of speech therapy. I was taken out of English, math, and science classes because learning to pronounce “star” was more important than knowing how to do my times tables. People like you-” I stop abruptly, trying to get my temper under control. It takes a moment before I continue. “Listen, I understand that I might not seem disabled. It reflects well on you that you don’t see me as disabled. But most disabled people are people just like me. You shouldn’t believe in stereotypes. Every stereotype I’ve ever heard of is wrong. I am deaf, through and through, whether you believe it or not.”

Disability pride and identity come with being seen and with connecting with others who are like us. The disabled community differs from others because anyone, at any moment, can become disabled. When we refuse to talk about disabilities in classrooms or represent them in books and movies, we are not preparing people to become disabled. We are not teaching that it is okay to be disabled or that it is normal to have a disability. Oftentimes, a character or a person becoming disabled is presented as an “end of the world” or “worst-case scenario” kind of thing. In a way, it is an end. But it is also the beginning of another world. The construction of a new block in a city.

Each and every person who has a disability comes to understand it in a different way. It is a life-long journey. I remember feeling lost as a child, wrestling with the complicated intersections of being deaf. I experienced shame and embarrassment for being different and it wasn’t until I started learning that there were others like me out there that I began to overcome those thoughts and feelings. In writing characters with disabilities, something that is important to think about is their sense of identity and pride. Where does their pride come from? What experiences have they had? What is the disabled community like in your world? Thinking about these things can help writers develop more well-rounded characters. Disabled people are not usually born proud of who they are. It takes a long time to redevelop your sense of identity when you have or develop a disability. It’s a story that isn’t often discussed or written about. I think it’s time we changed that.

What are some experiences that have shaped your city? Comment below and let me know!