Take Your Guilt and Shove It

Just when I was beginning to fret about what to post, flacks_my_man delivers. Remember this post wherein I explained why I wouldn't be writing Cripples for Dummies? Apparently, that was the post that made communications with us quits. Or something. Because it was OMG mean.

Except for one thing: she admits she never read the post. Just the title. And like Carnac, she could divine from those seven words the content.

God in frilly bloomers. Even better is her defiant cry that she won't feel guilty for not being disabled.

I speak only for myself in what follows, but I have to explain something to flacks_my_man and anybody else who's moved to take a hear, for that matter. I don't want abled people to feel guilty for not being like me; I want them to stop making me feel guilty that I am me.

I don't care that you walk. Sure, it rankles that you take your grace for granted and wail about the crushing onus of having to take ten stairs instead of one elevator car, but your ignorance of what could be isn't born of malice. It just comes from not knowing any better, any different. You've always walked and can't imagine a day when an elevator is no longer a convenience, but a necessity. You just don't get it, and that's okay, because there are a lot of things I'll never understand, like what it means to be a person of color. That's a road I'll never walk, and it's not something for which any sane person would indict another. You can't choose the body you're born into any more than you can choose your parents or your cultural history.

I don't want your guilt, o, mighty abled folks. Frankly, your guilt is useless to me, much as it might ease your mind about the type of soul you carry. It's nothing but a millstone to me and a stinging reassurance to you that you're not going to Hell for intolerance and selfishness and just plain shittery.

What I want, what I need is for you to stop reminding me how inconvenient my existence is for you. Stop rolling your eyes when I have the audacity to use public transport. Stop muttering under your breath about "uppity handicapped people" when I ask if you can please move your empty shopping cart out of the display-choked aisle. Stop bemoaning my patronage of your businesses as a curse rather than an asset.

Stop referring to me as "a wheelchair", as though I were a cumbersome bit of furniture and not a sentient human being who can hear and think. And feel. Oh, that I do most acutely. All the invisible people do. It's hard not to feel when you have no skin.

Stop patting yourselves on the back for offering me the trappings of change and progress when nine times out of ten, the accessible checkout counter at Borders is closed.

Stop ignoring me until you need someone to blame.

Take your guilt and cram it. Add your pity while you're at it. Stop acting like it's my responsibility to make you comfortable with the fact that I'm here and that we might rub shoulders. Stop telling yourself that you're so brave because you "don't mind" federally-mandated accommodations that make it marginally possible for me to leave the house. It doesn't impress me, and if you think about it, it shouldn't impress you, either.

It would be better for me if you could exchange your guilt for a useful emotion-mayhap a willingness to see me as more than a chair with a head, a two-dimensional poster shot designed to make you reach for your wallet.

I don't want your guilt, dammit. I just want my ticket to run in this crazy, wonderful human race.

ETA: When I stop reading articles like this one, my anger will die. Of special note is the second link, which features comments from people who think cripples should be schooled at home. After all, we have the Internet.

Just in Case You Missed the Addendum to my Last Post

ETA: When I stop reading articles like this one, my anger will die. Of special note is the second link, which features comments from people who think cripples should be schooled at home. After all, we have the Internet.