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1:01am May 17, 2013

➸ “Don't be so humble, you're not that great.”

allies-person:

youneedacat:

alittlecoconuttart:

Some wealthy Manhattan families have discovered a new way to skip the long lines at Walt Disney World. They’re now hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they can jump ahead, according to The New York Post.

The “black-market” Disney guides can apparently be rented for $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,” said one mom who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida, “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

The Post reports that the woman said she hired the guide to escort her and family through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it.

At each ride, the group was sent to an auxiliary entrance at the front of the attraction.

According to Disney policy, each guest who needs a wheelchair or motorized scooter can bring up to six guests to a “more convenient entrance.”

Despite a warning from Disney that there “may be a waiting period before before boarding,” but the moms using the tricky tactic are saying it’s well worth the cost, which happens to be cheaper than Disney’s VIP Tours.

Disney offers a VIP guide and fast passes for $310 to $380 per hour.

The Post says passing around the Dream Tours guide service’s phone number recently became popular among Manhattan’s private-school scene during spring break.

The service apparently asks who referred you before they even take your call.

Social anthropologist Dr. Wednesday Martin told the Post she caught wind of the underground network while researching her new book, “Primates of Park Avenue.”

“It’s insider knowledge that very few have and share carefully,” she says.

Ryan Clement runs Dream Tours Florida with his girlfriend, Jacie Christiano, whom has been pointed out as being one of the hired guides.

Clement refused to put The Post through to her and denied that she uses her disability to bypass lines.

He did, however, say she says an auto-immune disorder and uses a scooter on the job.

Disney has not returned The Post’s requests for comment.

When I read stuff like this it makes me intensely uncomfortable. But not just with the entire situation. Which is a mess in its own right. But with the way most people see these situations.

Most people have this idea that disabled people get all these freebies. That like our entire life is made up of running around getting special treatment everywhere. When the reality is so totally different. We get treated like crap everywhere. The few supposed perks we get don’t make up for that. And some of those “perks” are not special treatment at all, but treatment that’s making things equal in its own way. (For a person with severe fatigue issues, even going on the ride at all is more tiring than an ordinary person standing in line for hours and hours.)

I hate when people tell me they wish they could stay in bed all day and never have to go to work. No no no. You don’t. You really don’t. You don’t know how much I’d like to get out of bed and have a job.

But that’s how a lot of people think about disability. And so they are always looking for frauds. Even though frauds are rare, and the consequences of people posing as disabled are usually far far far less damaging than the consequences of the fraud that goes on in the business world every day. And yet people are always looking for disability fraud (someone pointed out that social security spends more money looking for fraud than they would lose to fraud — and in the process they deny benefits to tons of people who really need them), and ignoring the kind of fraud that really causes the damage in our society.

So when I read articles like this I fear more of the same. More of the outrage people get because they’re looking for the wrong scapegoats for the wrong reasons, because they think disability is all about getting a free ride.

And then I think about the actual situation being described in the article.

And yeah it is disgusting in its own right. But what disgusts me the most is that disabled people are put in a position where we don’t have much money, and hiring ourselves out to rich people to bypass lines in Disneyland becomes an attractive option. I wonder about the people who do it. What their stories are, why they do it, how they feel about doing it. But nobody will ever ask the right questions, and they will be too fearful to tell anyone anyway.

And it disgusts me that rich nondisabled people are doing this without of course giving a shit about the situation that provokes it. I wonder if some of those rich people are the same ones doing the real fraud that hurts the rest of the country so badly. The fraud that gets overlooked because our society is too busy looking at disability fraud.

I wonder if, if I had no disability benefits, or no Medicare or Medicaid, I would have to do something like that in order to stay alive. To have money to eat, to get medication. I wonder if I would do it. I wonder if I could do it. I doubt I could. I don’t have the kind of energy required to go on lots of rides, or the people skills required to network in that way. I can barely get out of the house ever. But I still wonder, if I could, if I had to, would I. It’s certainly more attractive than prostitution.

I wonder how many people will think I’m a monster for even asking the question, for not instantly condemning disabled people who are supposedly capitalizing on the goodwill of people blah blah blah. My words have been taken out of context in worse ways before. But seriously if I were desperate I don’t know what I’d do and I don’t think anyone can honestly say they know that until they’ve been there.

I’m sure it’s not just economically desperate people who rent themselves out. But that’s one really really obvious reason I can see for disabled people to do things like that. And I can’t condemn people. If that means food on the table, if that means medications, all the other things disabled people have so much trouble getting in this society, I can’t blame them. And getting the money off the rich people who have likely created the entire stupid situation for the rest of us, too. That’s almost funny.

Unfortunately I can’t say all of my opinion on all this. On the rich people, on the disabled people, on the people who react almost violently to the story, as a horrible disgusting thing because of a dozen different possible ways they relate to the whole idea of disability perks. But this is part of it.

And another thought. If disabled people choose to go to the park. And choose to bring a bunch of people with them. Then whose business is it whether those people are family, or friends, or people paying them to get to the front of lines? Like I get that the entire situation is messed up, but I don’t see how it’s so horrible that some disabled people choose to bring a certain set of people with them. There’s other horrible things potentially going on. But not that part. Disabled people should be able to bring in whoever we want.

There’s just so much story to this.

As in, people are always telling ourselves stories about how the world works. We see the stories, more than we see the world, unless we have made a serious lifelong effort to get rid of the stories. Some of us are more wound up in stories than others, but there aren’t people who don’t have them, not without years of struggle to dismantle the mechanisms that make stories at every possible level.

And a lot of people tell themselves a lot of stories about disabled people. About what we get from society, what we need from society, and why. And almost none of those stories are real. Neither are the stories about what happens when people start getting more special treatment than they ought to.

And people’s stories about disability are all over this news story, as well as all over their intense emotional reactions to all this. Including probably many disabled people’s emotional reactions. It’s not as if disabled people don’t have the same stories about disability, as often as not, as other people do.

I have reactions. And yeah disgust is one of them. But it’s disgust pointed in different directions. At different points in what is happening. For different reasons. And I have a whole lot of other reactions too. A whole lot of thoughts and feelings I don’t even have words for because they don’t go with mainstream stories, and it’s so hard to find words for things that don’t go along with mainstream stories.

There’s even some admiration for the resourcefulness of the disabled people in question. Because we have to be resourceful to survive. But I know I’m not supposed to feel that.

That doesn’t mean the rich people involved aren’t being manipulative assholes. But they’re also manipulative assholes who are giving disabled people money. And that’s a complicated situation. A really complicated situation. There’s all kinds of power things going on beneath the surface that I can’t even name. Things that make me loathe them yet also be aware people need them but also loathe them and loathe the entire damn situation that makes all this happen.

That’s why I’m nervous about saying any of my feelings, because saying some without saying the others isn’t acknowledging how complicated this all is. But I can’t say all of them because I don’t have words. There’s so much bad and good and neither bad not good interwoven throughout this that I wish people were having reactions other than the ones I keep reading. Because so many of the reactions make disabled people sound helpless yet also conniving and manipulative depending on which part of the reaction. And those are two big stories people have about disabled people. We are helpless and being exploited, we are also conniving and manipulative and out to get all the perks we can and use our disabilities to get special treatment.

And nowhere in this is the actual people?

I’m still judging the nondisabled rich people. But it’s a different sort of judging, for different reasons. Woven into it so much are the horrible conflicted feelings I’ve had when getting something I badly needed, from someone who was very powerful and using me, yet also giving me what I needed, and… the mess of emotions makes me want to throw up. But that’s also me. That may not be how any individual disabled person involved in all this feels. But I bet no matter what it feels complicated. It’s probably a different story for every person. I can imagine feeling carefree, “If those dumb rich people want to pay me to go on rides with them, bring it on.” Or I can imagine feeling squicky and awful about bring around these people with their entitled attitudes using me as a prop for their luxury vacation, and yeah I’ll take the money, but feel icky while doing it. And a lot of other ways to feel about it.

And that’s why I’d want to hear from the disabled people. Hear what they had to say with honesty. Before I’d have a full opinion on anything. I’d never like the whole situation, and I’d probably always feel squicky about the rich people, but … It’s not a simple situation.

What IS simple to me is that finding ways to pay to cut lines while other people have to wait, is gross. I’m bothered by that even with the other ways rich people have to cut lines. Like they’re above what other people have to do. But that’s sort of divorced from the disability angle in my head. Because I don’t have the common disability perk stories running through my head, so my emotions don’t run high over things that I know aren’t real. Or aren’t real the way most people think they’re real.

And I’m also grossed out by the fact that rich people are living off of all of our backs, and they pay essentially a pittance to people who are most likely pretty poor (disability is heavily associated with poverty), in order to get even more advantages over people. Because they just can’t stand to be like the rest of us, they’ve put too much effort into harming and exploiting everyone poorer than them in the first place. So they’re part of the reason that disabled people live in poverty and then they sit around and pay a teeny bit back, but only in order to get ahead even more. Even if the getting ahead is just a line at an amusement park, it still just… Yuck.

I can’t say why everyone else is disgusted, but I’ve seen a lot of the disgust as being more about the stories in people’s heads about disability, rather than…. All the rest of this and more.

Oh and also my personal experiences with amusement parks, just to throw it in.

After I started needing to use canes, walkers, and wheelchairs, I did go to the Boardwalk occasionally. And what I hated was there was no way onto the log ride, and they saw no reason they had to do it because it was built before such and such a date and there was supposedly no way to get a ramp or an elevator in there. And that was my favorite ride. So no advantages on my favorite ride.

And I think on other rides I was allowed to come to the front of the line sometimes. But I didn’t always like that. Because I wasn’t intending to cut the line. I was just trying to get in the only entrance to the line my wheelchair would fit into. At that point I didn’t always need to cut the line. And I remember feeling comfortable that they put me at the front of the line by default.

I’ve never been to any Disney park since becoming a chair user. I probably never will. It’s not high on my list of places to go. But if I did I would definitely need to cut the line. I have so little stamina, even on pyridostigmine, that I’d need to be able to get in and out as fast as I could. But I’m not even sure it would be safe for me to ride anything anymore so it’s probably a moot point. Given that I’m kind of in bed all day.

But gah. I don’t even feel like this post contains everything I think about this. Not by a long shot. It’s just the parts I could say. And I’m not sure if it being incomplete will give an inaccurate picture of how I feel, what I think about it. Because I have so many different feelings and thoughts and I don’t even know how to say them. So just because I didn’t say a thing doesn’t mean I didn’t think it.

Oh also interesting point. Someone disabled who’s been to Disney said you don’t get to skip lines. You just go to the front of the line to get in, but then you have to wait for your family to catch up.

This blog post by Leslie Kinzel makes a good case that this story has been outrageously misrepresented.

I don’t know why someone would need or even want a Disney tour guide. The whole thing is obviously a service used only by the outrageously privileged.  BUT, given that the market for such services exist, why shouldn’t disabled people work as tour guides also?  It just seems like one of those situations were disabled people just can’t win.  I’m not surprised that the woman in question hasn’t been eager to speak with the media.  She’s just trying to earn a living and is being villainized for it.  Because it’s apparently just so easy and wonderful to be disabled.  Or, well, not.

Definitely go read the post by Leslie Kinzel. I thought something sounded off.