IDENTIFYING AS A PWD

 

I can pass. And lately I've been contemplating returning to the life of passing.  Having invisible disabilities, they only become visible when I use my cane or my chair (which is an assistive device, not a necessity) or when I "OUT" myself.

A few years ago I found out about the Disability Pride Movement and I felt really empowered by it, and thought "what a wonderful thing to be in the begining and front row of. To be able to speak up about and support," and I embraced Disability Pride whole heartedly. Whereas before I was just "sick" and ill, I became a Person with Disabilities and I was OUT, I was, LOUD and I was proud. I did my best, to the best of my ability to speak about disability issues and associated issues like poverty. I tried to bring sujects like sex and disability into the discussion of your everyday dyke community. And what I've found out is...

It fucking sucks to be a PWD. Of any kind. Once you're seen as a PWD, in many ways, your humanity is taken away from you, or your punished and blamed for your illnesses, differences, struggles. Even if you've had thousands of years in recovery, therapy, etc. and your anger is just, your basically in the position of a woman in the 1950s if not worse. Anytime you dare to speak up and criticize your labelled "crazy," or the more polite "has issues," or "offensive." As in, offensive to those who are doing quite well and profiting quite clearly with the status quo.

It sucks.

Yes, self identifying as a PWD was empowering, because I met sooooo many cool PWDs who basically were the most tolerant, kindest, most open people, generally speaking, that I've ever met. And they were soooo COOL with difference, of pretty much any kind. But the rest of the world doesn't treat or value PWDs the way PWDs value each other, and the rest of the world is a mean, frustrating, and fundementally uncaring place for PWDs. Even those who "study" us, many times don't expect us "ants" to turn around and talk to them and the whole being a PWD SUCKS the big one.

 

So I admit it, I'm feeling burned out, and like it's simply impossible to fight all the ablism and disablephobia in the world. It's not like other predjudices, people with disabilities are, many times, not viewed as fully human beings, at best children for decisions to be made about, or crazy people we don't have to listen to or bother asking what they need help in. We are pretty much considered irrelevant by much of the world and unattractive by the rest of the world. And today I sit here and I think...

Why am I identifying with these wonderful people, when identifying with them, and acknowledging them and myself as one of them, leads to not simply awareness of my oppression as a PWD, but an actual increase in Oppression?

 

Why do this when, at present, I can pass? I pretend to be able body and neurally average. I can lie, decieve, smile pretty and shut up and I can fit in. Or at least, not stand out anymore, a target for everyones snide statements and remarks.

 

I think this, that I'm just going to refuse to identify myself with or as a PWD and I feel at one moment free and at the other moment terribly guilty for abandoning all my visibly disabled sisters and brothers who simply got no choice. Blind is blind, wheelchair is wheelchair, disfigurement is disfigurement, and so forth. Such is the power of the closet.

I wasn't always OUT as a PWD. When I first started exploring my sexuality and the kink world, in fact, I kept it somewhat hidden or minimized, because I didn't want my disabilities to bring on predjudices and the like. But that caused it's own problems.

If I didn't ID myself as "disabled" sure, I got more hits, waaay more hits on the dating site, but the minute that "so what do YOU DO?" Question hit the fan I'd have to lie or at least stretch part of the truth. Or I'd have to practice my passing skills and do my best to come across as a white, middle class TAB.

Having talked about my childhood past for like twelve years, I didn't want to talk about it anymore and considered it noone's business. However, folks then automatically assumed I'd never been raped, or never been abused, and didn't know what I was talking about when I might disagree with some of the mainstream university perspectives on women and sexual violence. It never occured to them that maybe I disagreed because I knew exactly what I was talking about. Been there, done it. THEN when I started talking about my past, reluctantly, because I met other survivors OR because I got sooo damn pissed with people telling me that I couldn't possibly be a survivor of violence etc. well then of course, this is 'proof" that I'm somehow unstable, unhealed, and not to be taken seriously. In other words, you can't fucking win! LOL Frustrating as hell.

The whole process has been fundementally disempowering as the more I talked about disability, disability pride and disability rights, sex and disability, the more I realized how few people give a damn. We don't even make it on the traditional list of peoples traditionally oppressed more often then not, that's how invisible we all are. Ablism is just sooo widespread, even the president of the USA can make jokes about "being a retard," and people excuse it.

*sigh* I have power. I have a choice. I can pass, at least with strangers. But when I pass, then of course I'm expected to do things able bodied folks can do, when I make myself visible, are those expectations lessened? No. I'm told over and over again that I"m not "taking responsibility," or that I 'just am not trying."

 

It's awful. It's horrible. It's soul destroying and it's oppressive as hell. No wonder we all kill ourselves more often then not. LOL And with my disabilities, more often then not, there is NO doctors to help me, because I don't have MS or anything like that, considered a "real" disease. And if I did, well all one has to do is read Screw Bronze to know that this doesn't mean any better treatment by the docs.

I'm seriously considering shutting up about disability and associated factors. For all the PWDs who have thanked me, well it doesn't stop the wounds of all who have attacked me. Fucking Ablism and Disablephobia sucks, and it is, in my opinion, waaaay worse, in experience then homophobia.  I mean if you're blind you cannot see, so why do people keep demanding that you do so? Why can't they just accept your limitations, whatever they may be?

Anyways, this is stream of consciousness writing. I'm tired and feeling down, because I had to deal with my family today and spouse, who, well things are rough on the relationship front. And I just think, "when I pass, my life is sooo much easier, and sooo much better and I'm heard a little more. The minute I self identify as a PWD, make myself visible, ironically, I become extremely invisible, worst then invisible, irrelevant.

I know the concept of passing is not something that people with visible disabilities get to "play" with and ponder. Those who can pass, even shortly, have more power then those who can't, for we have choice in our control, even if it's not a good choice. I get that.  And I know it must seem very insensitive to those sisters and brother PWDs that cannot pass.

I should stand strong with them, tall and proud, fuck the consequences. But the consequences are real, and those of us who are not born PWDs but become them in later life, don't have the same kind of inner blocks, the same kind of tough shell and armour that many of those born disabled or disabled at a young age have. We haven't grown up with it, so we haven't developed the mental and emotional coping abilities so many of our sisters with visible disabilities have. And even then, with all their added coping mechanisms, many times it gets too much for them to handle either. Because being a PWD in a severely Ablist and Disablephobic world, fucking SUCKS.

It sucks, sucks, sucks. And yeah I might feel PRIDE to be a PWD, but when the rest of the world tells me that feeling pride at being a PWD, is a signal of how unglued and sick I am, it's just, bloody, well, demoralizing. I'm not sure I can speak up anymore, for my sister PWDs or dykes with Disabilities anymore. I have to open myself wide everytime I speak, and I have to tell my stories, the same stories over and over and then people say I have 'issues" because I "can't let it go." They never stop to think maybe there's only so many personal experiences a person can have that can be used as examples, and what am I supposed to do, start talking about other womens experiences they've shared with me, and requested I keep secret? Of course not.

I just hate the ablism in the world, I"m exhausted by it, by walking margin to center and raising my voice and speaking up and challenging the ablist status quo. It's exhausting, and I'm tired and I just want to sit in a corner and pout and say, "I'm not doing it anymore. find someone else to be visible, to be in their faces, to speak up and out and get the emotional and psychological shit kicked out of them cause I'm burned out and I'm not doing it anymore. It doesn't change anything anyway.  I''m going back to passing, and if that makes me a "traitor,' then, well, so be it."

No, that's not a concise declaration, this is a sharing of experience and feelings, not a declaration of intent. Tomorrow, when I'm not feeling so growly, restless and irritated, well, perhaps I'll post differently! LOL  More then likely. But today...

*stamps foot and pouts and throws a temper tantrum and screams, "I quit, quit, quit!" Before walking back to the margins, where I was happy and blissful in my ignorance.