4:03pm September 17, 2014

I should repeat this, outside of the other post, because I think it’s important to remember.

The way I’m sometimes treated in medical settings isn’t ableism plus classism plus transphobia.

It’s ableism times classism times transphobia.

I can see it in the way people respond to me.  It’s not one thing.  It’s this cluster of things that all combine so that to them I’m an unperson.  And any one of the things taken on its own would not have the impact that all three has taken together.

I’m developmentally disabled, and at this point in my life I look developmentally disabled.  As in, I’m the sort of person who has random people scream retard at them on street corners.

I appear gender-ambiguous to a lot of people, to the point I’ve had hospital people openly question my assigned sex as written on my hospital bracelet.  (And it’s the appearance that matters.  They couldn’t care less why I look gender-ambiguous.  They don’t care that the explanation is, in my specific case, genderlessness.  They just care that I have the wrong combination of physical traits for their liking.)

And I’m poor, which is obvious the moment they look at my medical insurance, but I swear that it also shows in my appearance in some way that I don’t fully understand.

And so I become gender-ambiguous poor retard.  Which is a thing, not a person.  Specifically, an unperson, which is even worse than a thing, as far as I can tell.  And those things blend together in their head, and multiply upon each other, and amplify the level of unpersonhood in ways that are hard to explain.  But I can tell when I’m dealing with someone to whom I’m an it.  They can never hide it from me. 

But it’s… weird.  Like, to realize how they see me.  To see myself through their eyes.  To see how those things combine into a blob like that.  Until I’m just a blob, to them.  (And speaking of blobs, I’m certain that being fat is added into this in a more subtle way.  Or maybe not so subtle.)

And this is why I sometimes have to make compromises that other people wouldn’t make.  This is why being genderless is a big deal for me in a way that being genderless is not as big a deal if you’re not also developmentally disabled.  (I’m not saying it’s not a big deal if you’re not DD.  But it’s not as big a deal when it’s not combined with being DD.)  Because there’s something about gender ambiguity and developmental disability that really seriously combines to prejudice people in a way where either one alone wouldn’t do it nearly as much.  I wish I could articulate what it is about those two things that creates such a toxic mix of prejudices, but I can’t.  I just know it when I see it.  And being poor – and fat, now that I think of it – just adds to the whole mess.

TL;DR:  Being genderless, poor, and developmentally disabled in combination with each other, seems to make some people prejudiced against me in a way that any of the three taken on its own wouldn’t do.  I don’t understand why, but I know it when I see it, and I’ve seen it a lot.   Especially in medical settings for some reason.

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