10:05pm July 28, 2013

➸ Making Room for Other Roots: "Why Do You Have That Thing?"

neurowonderful:

Why Do You Have That Thing?, or, How people react when they come in contact with a young disabled woman and her ~~thing~~ ~~stick~~ cane

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Wow.

I’m trying to remember…

I used a cane back before I got my wheelchair, in my early twenties.

And…

What I remember from cane days was mostly weird stuff.

Like walking through a bookstore, and hearing some guy right next to me yell “LADY WITH A CANE!”

Most of my harassment about needing a mobility aid was when I used a foot powered wheelchair. People saw me pushing it with my feet and yelled “WHY DON’T YOU JUST GET UP AND WALK!” If I was able, I tended to chase them down and chew them out.

Unfortunately that didn’t always have the desired effect. One time I tried to explain to some jerk, and his friend just stared at me and went “DUUUUUDE, this guy is chewing you out using machine…. wow!”

(And yeah I got called lady or guy depending on whether someone was looking at my breasts, or my chin hair. If they saw both, they sometimes got really aggressive with the in my face “ARE YOU A GUY OR A GIRL” thing. I mean I had it screamed two inches from my face in a threatening way while bystanders did nothing.)

But the ones who thought I was lazy didn’t realize something. Foot propelling a wheelchair is much harder than walking. It takes muscles in the opposite end of the leg. I took weeks to build up the strength to go anywhere. If these jerks sat down in my chair, they probably wouldn’t have gotten a block. Lazy my ass.

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