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"Nature IS healing!" I wrote on Facebook this afternoon. "I just got queue jumped in Tesco by a couple who I assume don't think that I can see them doing it. That hasn't happened to me in ages."
Some of the comments were sympathetic. I liked the one that was just a screenshot of the seven possible Facebook reactions -- like, love, care, laughing, surprised, sad and angry -- explaining "I need to express all the emotions." (I'm amused that this comment itself got half of them; like, love and laughing).
But a couple of them reminded me of something that happens as regularly as me complaining about individual ableist treatment like this. "I hope you whacked them with your cane!" "I really want you to have said something. It would have brought me such joy." I don't want to pick on those friends in particular, both because they're nice and I know they mean well, and because like I said this always happens and it is always different people, so it doesn't matter who it was this time because it could be anybody. Everybody thinks the idea of a badass fighting bigotry is awesome. Everyone thinks exceptional people of whatever marginalized axis -- disabled people, women, Black people, brown people, indigenous people, queer people, trans people, etc. -- are the way to fix ableism, sexism, racism, anti-Blackness, and so on. Because its more appealing to believe that and fantasize about that than it is to understand that we live in a world that grinds down exceptional people the same way it does everyone else, we live in a world that punishes the bullied kid for fighting back against a school bully.
I am sure my friends don't literally expect me to hit anyone with my white cane, but it horrifies me to imagine. It's not a fucking weapon, it's a precision instrument. It wouldn't be any good as a weapon, it's light -- they're made of stuff like aluminum or carbon fiber -- because it's a precision instrument; its job is to transfer information to me by touch, and it's made of stuff chosen to propagate vibrations and to be possible to carry around and sweep back and forth all day long. It might sound like I'm overreacting, that my friends don't mean "assault someone with your cane" but just "make a point of bumping into them with it and claiming you didn't see them," but people really do think white canes are, or can be, weapons. An elementary school took away an 8-year-old's white cane and made him use a pool noodle as a punishment after first claiming he'd used the cane to hit a child and then saying it was a "preventative measure to make sure the boy didn’t hurt himself or others." This is insulting on the face of it, as the kid is far more likely to hurt himself without his white cane, but it's also a sign of how little sighted people understand about white canes: how they work, and how poorly their job is done by something like a pool noodle. I don't even like jokes about hitting people with my white cane, while such misunderstandings are still present in the world and still damaging people.
As for "you should have said something"...that's perhaps slightly more plausible. I have done that (not about queue jumping in particular, though I did get one guy to slink away once just by the power of glaring at him) and I considered it for a nanosecond today...but no longer. I was wiped out: I'd had a lot of migraine symptoms this morning and needed a nap before work. Work was proving challenging even before I got to Tesco, which is probably the part of my job I detest the most. I was barely standing by this point. And I thought it just wasn't worth saying something; I needed that energy for other stuff.
A disabled friend of mine actually replied to that comment, pointing out the problem with saying something: "people often react by yelling and/or physically getting in your face = potentially spraying COVID germs all over you", a very good point. I've always been very aware of my perceived femaleness in such situations, it makes me feel more vulnerable especially as it's very often a man or a small group that includes men who are doing the stuff I find most annoying. And if I flatter myself that I look less feminine these days, well then I'm just another white guy who would, in this case, be harassing a South Asian couple and even if they were taking advantage of me on the basis of my disability, the optics of me yelling at them would, understandably, not necessarily be in my favor because of my race and possibly gender -- I'd potentially either be a Karen or a gammon, depending on how the gender thing shakes out.
Dealing with any of that seemed like a lot more work than keeping my mouth shut, so I did that and just posted on Facebook instead, heh. But even that I thought deserved a little PSA: don't expect your disabled friends to be badasses, don't expect cinematic choreography or snappy one-liners from us. I'm not a badass, I'm just tired. Let us be tired.
Some of the comments were sympathetic. I liked the one that was just a screenshot of the seven possible Facebook reactions -- like, love, care, laughing, surprised, sad and angry -- explaining "I need to express all the emotions." (I'm amused that this comment itself got half of them; like, love and laughing).
But a couple of them reminded me of something that happens as regularly as me complaining about individual ableist treatment like this. "I hope you whacked them with your cane!" "I really want you to have said something. It would have brought me such joy." I don't want to pick on those friends in particular, both because they're nice and I know they mean well, and because like I said this always happens and it is always different people, so it doesn't matter who it was this time because it could be anybody. Everybody thinks the idea of a badass fighting bigotry is awesome. Everyone thinks exceptional people of whatever marginalized axis -- disabled people, women, Black people, brown people, indigenous people, queer people, trans people, etc. -- are the way to fix ableism, sexism, racism, anti-Blackness, and so on. Because its more appealing to believe that and fantasize about that than it is to understand that we live in a world that grinds down exceptional people the same way it does everyone else, we live in a world that punishes the bullied kid for fighting back against a school bully.
I am sure my friends don't literally expect me to hit anyone with my white cane, but it horrifies me to imagine. It's not a fucking weapon, it's a precision instrument. It wouldn't be any good as a weapon, it's light -- they're made of stuff like aluminum or carbon fiber -- because it's a precision instrument; its job is to transfer information to me by touch, and it's made of stuff chosen to propagate vibrations and to be possible to carry around and sweep back and forth all day long. It might sound like I'm overreacting, that my friends don't mean "assault someone with your cane" but just "make a point of bumping into them with it and claiming you didn't see them," but people really do think white canes are, or can be, weapons. An elementary school took away an 8-year-old's white cane and made him use a pool noodle as a punishment after first claiming he'd used the cane to hit a child and then saying it was a "preventative measure to make sure the boy didn’t hurt himself or others." This is insulting on the face of it, as the kid is far more likely to hurt himself without his white cane, but it's also a sign of how little sighted people understand about white canes: how they work, and how poorly their job is done by something like a pool noodle. I don't even like jokes about hitting people with my white cane, while such misunderstandings are still present in the world and still damaging people.
As for "you should have said something"...that's perhaps slightly more plausible. I have done that (not about queue jumping in particular, though I did get one guy to slink away once just by the power of glaring at him) and I considered it for a nanosecond today...but no longer. I was wiped out: I'd had a lot of migraine symptoms this morning and needed a nap before work. Work was proving challenging even before I got to Tesco, which is probably the part of my job I detest the most. I was barely standing by this point. And I thought it just wasn't worth saying something; I needed that energy for other stuff.
A disabled friend of mine actually replied to that comment, pointing out the problem with saying something: "people often react by yelling and/or physically getting in your face = potentially spraying COVID germs all over you", a very good point. I've always been very aware of my perceived femaleness in such situations, it makes me feel more vulnerable especially as it's very often a man or a small group that includes men who are doing the stuff I find most annoying. And if I flatter myself that I look less feminine these days, well then I'm just another white guy who would, in this case, be harassing a South Asian couple and even if they were taking advantage of me on the basis of my disability, the optics of me yelling at them would, understandably, not necessarily be in my favor because of my race and possibly gender -- I'd potentially either be a Karen or a gammon, depending on how the gender thing shakes out.
Dealing with any of that seemed like a lot more work than keeping my mouth shut, so I did that and just posted on Facebook instead, heh. But even that I thought deserved a little PSA: don't expect your disabled friends to be badasses, don't expect cinematic choreography or snappy one-liners from us. I'm not a badass, I'm just tired. Let us be tired.