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Oh, story time:
Fandom is great. I have been in fandom for a long, long time, and I have written fic for most of that time. I freely admit that a lot of my fic is wish-fulfillment/self-insert stuff with disabled characters who get to be loved/desired/the hero/whatever. It’s fun and passes the time, and some people enjoy it and write that they learned about disability or had disabled people humanized.
Most people who don’t like OCs just roll their eyes and move on, but I have gotten so much nastiness whenever the story strays into the romantic or sexual. It’s not realistic that Character X would desire disabled!OC because Reasons That Are Totally Not Ableist. But Character X would fuck the gelatinous space blob or the alien with no discernible sex organs or their brother or their mirror selves. But not disabled people. That’s just a stretch too far.
The worst rageout I ever got came when I paired John Kennex, an amputee cop from Almost Human, with an OFC with CP. Mind you, at this point they were just two disabled people who met in the hallway of his building. No fucking, no pining, no lust, just two disabled people keeping each other midnight company because they didn’t want to be alone. Oh, my Lord, what abomination had I wrought? Having John make friends and possibly admire the beauty of a disabled woman was just like someone boning their AA sponsor. It was horrible. It was a recipe for disaster.
When I took issue with the gross assumption that disabled people were too psychologically damaged to get into a relationship with each other and pointed out that even if they were, it was their right to do so, just like the numberless able couples in fic, how the wrath did flow. I was called an ableist piece of shit(ableist because I failed to see the similarities between John and a drug addict), scum, an asshole. The torrent of invective was so bad that I did what I have never done before or since and deleted the review, though I saved a copy to a locked blog post.
Few things have made me angrier. My silly fantasies were being held to a higher standard of verisimilitude than those of able people. I was being told that it was actively dangerous for a character to be interested or involved with people with my disability and discouraged from pursuing it because it made people uncomfortable. And when I protested, I was berated because I had not shown the proper deference to physically-able opinion on the love and fucking proclivities of two fictional physically-disabled people.
Able people are allowed to indulge in fantasies without boundaries, but disabled people have to stay within “realistic” parameters, which to the abled mind means nothing more than chaste pining and noble suffering.
Also story time:
A Tumblr acquaintance and I were talking about Karl Urban and his current nasty habit of canceling cons with very little notice. Earlier this week, he canceled a date at Fedcon in Germany…and promptly signed on for Wizard World Philly the same weekend. Fedcon fans were understandably hurt and angry, and the acquaintance was one of those disappointed. She’s been torqued since it happened, and I can’t blame her. I know how badly it sucks to look forward to a happy meeting, only to have it ripped away after weeks or months of imagining how it will go. He’s canceled three times on cons I planned to attend for him, and I sulked every time. It’s human, and disappointment rarely presents us at our best. So I can’t fault the pique.
But after days of her stewing and petty meme-posting calling him a dick and not a man for canceling on Fedcon because the studio called him in to begin filming in Philadelphia, I finally stuck my oar in the water and suggested that he had no choice but to cancel because work comes first, and that maybe he took the Philly con dates because a huge chunk of the LOTR cast was going to be there and he saw a chance to make dosh, meet fans, hang with friends and fulfill his professional commitments.
Nope. Somehow taking that con after professional obligations made him bail on Fedcon was an insult to the fans who had paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to see him. He should have nobly declined the opportunity presented by Wizard World Philly and the chance to see his friends and make some side bank in deference to those fans in Germany who wouldn’t have seen him anyway because work beckoned.
When I pointed out that he had to work, she claimed that was a lie. Was he shooting in Philadelphia at the time in question? Well, yes, but he was still a filthy, heartless liar because he’d told Fedcon he’d be shooting then. Did she not tell me herself as a film student that most films shot Monday through Friday, which meant that theoretically, he would be available Saturday and Sunday? Well, yes, but that only proved that he could’ve made Germany if he really wanted to. If he truly gave a fuck about his fans, he should’ve left immediately after shooting on Friday, taken a nine-hour flight to Germany, gone without sleep if need be because hey, that’s what actors do, spent a handful of hours at the con on Saturday, and then gone right back to Philadelphia.
While I boggled at the sheer selfishness of this crackpot scenario, I tried to tell her that such a schedule was predicated on nothing going wrong, and it was also incredibly cruel. Did she really want to meet someone who hadn’t slept? And then I uttered what I suspect were the fatal words. “He had to WORK. You’re acting like he went to Aruba just to piss on you.”
And then it came. This young woman, with whom I had been on cordial terms, and who had previously used my experience with Karl as part of her appreciation video, exploded. She told me that my fondness for him had clouded my judgment, and that furthermore, the experience I so cherished, that has cheered me on bad days, was a front. Karl was an actor. Was I really so naive to think he actually cared? Actors at cons don’t care. They just want the money. I could live in my Karl Urban fantasy world, but she was “done with me.” And that was that. Blocked.
The implication was, of course, that Karl had behaved as kindly as he had during our meeting and done the things he had, not because he was a good man who wanted me to have a good experience and make my day brighter, but because he pitied me, and I, in my starry-eyed, addled, pathetic crippledom, had construed it as something deeper.
For him, there was nothing deeper. It was a con encounter and photo op. The end. And that’s all it should be for him, really. But for me, it was something deeper and sweeter, because it was a rare moment of being treated with the same consideration as everybody else. I was a person to him, not a burden. I needed and cherished that, and hold it sacred.
But nope. It couldn’t be left to me. I had pissed this person off my disagreeing, so I had to pay. She had to make sure I didn’t dare matter to anyone. So she did her level best to sully what I held so dear. Because she could, and because that would teach me to know my place.
The best part? Even though she made sure to hammer home the fact that he was an actor who didn’t give a fuck, she’s still chasing him to cons in hopes of her own experience. Because it will be different with her, you see. He will actually mean what he does and says to her, because she actually matters.
She’s actually human.
So, yeah, able people get mad because they don’t see us as human, with the same hopes, needs, and dreams as them, but as some lesser being that they suffer to let live among them on their charitable forbearance, and if we transgress those boundaries in any way, then we are forgetting our place and need to be returned to it by whatever means necessary.
Fandom is great. I have been in fandom for a long, long time, and I have written fic for most of that time. I freely admit that a lot of my fic is wish-fulfillment/self-insert stuff with disabled characters who get to be loved/desired/the hero/whatever. It’s fun and passes the time, and some people enjoy it and write that they learned about disability or had disabled people humanized.
Most people who don’t like OCs just roll their eyes and move on, but I have gotten so much nastiness whenever the story strays into the romantic or sexual. It’s not realistic that Character X would desire disabled!OC because Reasons That Are Totally Not Ableist. But Character X would fuck the gelatinous space blob or the alien with no discernible sex organs or their brother or their mirror selves. But not disabled people. That’s just a stretch too far.
The worst rageout I ever got came when I paired John Kennex, an amputee cop from Almost Human, with an OFC with CP. Mind you, at this point they were just two disabled people who met in the hallway of his building. No fucking, no pining, no lust, just two disabled people keeping each other midnight company because they didn’t want to be alone. Oh, my Lord, what abomination had I wrought? Having John make friends and possibly admire the beauty of a disabled woman was just like someone boning their AA sponsor. It was horrible. It was a recipe for disaster.
When I took issue with the gross assumption that disabled people were too psychologically damaged to get into a relationship with each other and pointed out that even if they were, it was their right to do so, just like the numberless able couples in fic, how the wrath did flow. I was called an ableist piece of shit(ableist because I failed to see the similarities between John and a drug addict), scum, an asshole. The torrent of invective was so bad that I did what I have never done before or since and deleted the review, though I saved a copy to a locked blog post.
Few things have made me angrier. My silly fantasies were being held to a higher standard of verisimilitude than those of able people. I was being told that it was actively dangerous for a character to be interested or involved with people with my disability and discouraged from pursuing it because it made people uncomfortable. And when I protested, I was berated because I had not shown the proper deference to physically-able opinion on the love and fucking proclivities of two fictional physically-disabled people.
Able people are allowed to indulge in fantasies without boundaries, but disabled people have to stay within “realistic” parameters, which to the abled mind means nothing more than chaste pining and noble suffering.
Also story time:
A Tumblr acquaintance and I were talking about Karl Urban and his current nasty habit of canceling cons with very little notice. Earlier this week, he canceled a date at Fedcon in Germany…and promptly signed on for Wizard World Philly the same weekend. Fedcon fans were understandably hurt and angry, and the acquaintance was one of those disappointed. She’s been torqued since it happened, and I can’t blame her. I know how badly it sucks to look forward to a happy meeting, only to have it ripped away after weeks or months of imagining how it will go. He’s canceled three times on cons I planned to attend for him, and I sulked every time. It’s human, and disappointment rarely presents us at our best. So I can’t fault the pique.
But after days of her stewing and petty meme-posting calling him a dick and not a man for canceling on Fedcon because the studio called him in to begin filming in Philadelphia, I finally stuck my oar in the water and suggested that he had no choice but to cancel because work comes first, and that maybe he took the Philly con dates because a huge chunk of the LOTR cast was going to be there and he saw a chance to make dosh, meet fans, hang with friends and fulfill his professional commitments.
Nope. Somehow taking that con after professional obligations made him bail on Fedcon was an insult to the fans who had paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to see him. He should have nobly declined the opportunity presented by Wizard World Philly and the chance to see his friends and make some side bank in deference to those fans in Germany who wouldn’t have seen him anyway because work beckoned.
When I pointed out that he had to work, she claimed that was a lie. Was he shooting in Philadelphia at the time in question? Well, yes, but he was still a filthy, heartless liar because he’d told Fedcon he’d be shooting then. Did she not tell me herself as a film student that most films shot Monday through Friday, which meant that theoretically, he would be available Saturday and Sunday? Well, yes, but that only proved that he could’ve made Germany if he really wanted to. If he truly gave a fuck about his fans, he should’ve left immediately after shooting on Friday, taken a nine-hour flight to Germany, gone without sleep if need be because hey, that’s what actors do, spent a handful of hours at the con on Saturday, and then gone right back to Philadelphia.
While I boggled at the sheer selfishness of this crackpot scenario, I tried to tell her that such a schedule was predicated on nothing going wrong, and it was also incredibly cruel. Did she really want to meet someone who hadn’t slept? And then I uttered what I suspect were the fatal words. “He had to WORK. You’re acting like he went to Aruba just to piss on you.”
And then it came. This young woman, with whom I had been on cordial terms, and who had previously used my experience with Karl as part of her appreciation video, exploded. She told me that my fondness for him had clouded my judgment, and that furthermore, the experience I so cherished, that has cheered me on bad days, was a front. Karl was an actor. Was I really so naive to think he actually cared? Actors at cons don’t care. They just want the money. I could live in my Karl Urban fantasy world, but she was “done with me.” And that was that. Blocked.
The implication was, of course, that Karl had behaved as kindly as he had during our meeting and done the things he had, not because he was a good man who wanted me to have a good experience and make my day brighter, but because he pitied me, and I, in my starry-eyed, addled, pathetic crippledom, had construed it as something deeper.
For him, there was nothing deeper. It was a con encounter and photo op. The end. And that’s all it should be for him, really. But for me, it was something deeper and sweeter, because it was a rare moment of being treated with the same consideration as everybody else. I was a person to him, not a burden. I needed and cherished that, and hold it sacred.
But nope. It couldn’t be left to me. I had pissed this person off my disagreeing, so I had to pay. She had to make sure I didn’t dare matter to anyone. So she did her level best to sully what I held so dear. Because she could, and because that would teach me to know my place.
The best part? Even though she made sure to hammer home the fact that he was an actor who didn’t give a fuck, she’s still chasing him to cons in hopes of her own experience. Because it will be different with her, you see. He will actually mean what he does and says to her, because she actually matters.
She’s actually human.
So, yeah, able people get mad because they don’t see us as human, with the same hopes, needs, and dreams as them, but as some lesser being that they suffer to let live among them on their charitable forbearance, and if we transgress those boundaries in any way, then we are forgetting our place and need to be returned to it by whatever means necessary.
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