Unfunnybusiness is Right. God, the Internet Hypocrisy Burns.

I really should learn not to read anything on the Internet that treats on disability issues and isn't written by a limper. It never ends well, and I find myself frustrated to the point of tears and seriously questioning why I don't just bow to the inevitable social will and die decently.

Like this story on Unfunnybusiness about a disabled woman being barred from a UK supermarket for being "a health and safety" hazard. Why was she thusly labeled? Because she got stuck in the disabled lavatory and pressed the emergency bell to summon help. Apparently, that bell is just for decoration, and if I disabled person gets into trouble, well, they're on their own, and serves them right for having the nerve to venture forth without a warden "chaperone".

M&S eventually conceded that barring the woman from the store was "excessive", but still requested that a 58-year-old woman with Cerebral Palsy bring a "chaperone" next time.

Jesus fucking Christ. Does anyone, anyone grasp how demeaning and demoralizing that is? Your only "crime" is to have a body that sometimes betrays you, and for that, you're told you don't have the right to shop or eat without someone else holding the leash, because clearly, the possibility that you might need to call upon another person's common sense and human decency is too troubling. Best to set impossible strictures on an already limited life and hope they go away.

Most of the folks at Unfunnybusiness are sympathetic, but the apologists have begun to trickle in, wringing their hands and pointing out that most store employees aren't trained in personal care. They also point out that wiping someone's shit-stained ass exceeds the scope of reasonable accommodation.

As far as I can tell, this woman wasn't expecting anyone to wipe her ass. She was stuck on the toilet and needed help to get unstuck. Later commenters said her pants had fallen, and she couldn't pull them up. Helping someone pull up their pants is not the same as wiping their ass, and if you've been operating on that assumption, you're doing it wrong.

I've been in that situation. I've been in the bathroom, gripping a bar and trying to pull up loose pants one-handed. Your arms hurt from supporting most of your weight, and you're swaying like a drunk, praying you don't fall, because if you do, the paramedics are going to see your pasty ass and realize you go commando under your clothes. And one of the paramedics will be smoking hot. You're tugging on the pants, but they just keep falling, so finally, you fall back onto the toilet and sit there burning with shame, because it's such a simple goddamn act, a simple goddamn act thousands do every day. Toddlers do it every day. But despite all your book smarts, all the tests that proclaim you smarter than ninety percent of the people who pity you, you can't pull up your pants, and you're going to have to beg a stranger to help you.

It's humiliating, and you don't want to face the stares, so you try again and again. It hurts so bad, and you're crying in shame and pain. Shame because you're 23 and can't pull up your pants, and pain because urgency has made your muscles lock.

Finally, you pull them up just enough and flop into your chair, and you sit there panting and crying, with snot on your nose, furious at the world, but more furious at yourself for being so broken. Your hair is fucked up, you've got exertion tremors, and your face and arms are a blotchy red. You just want to hide, but you have to go back out there with your pants crooked because you didn't have time for aesthetics when you were trying to cover basic decency laws. So you go out their with your red face and your disheveled hair and your crooked pants, and you die inside because you know you look every bit the dangerous, crazy cripple bogey everyone fears.

Most people don't look at you. Of those that do, some look with pity; most look with disgust. What are you doing here, out among us? they ask, and after that horrible, unending fifteen minutes, you honestly don't know. You just want to disappear.

What the apologists are saying, whether they know it or not, is that that disabled woman must bear the extra humiliation of being chaperoned like a child on top of the humiliation she surely endured in that stall. Because her hope that a human being would offer help in an emergency is unreasonable accommodation.

Memo to ABs: I know you're not going to believe this, because it's a fact that all cripples are fetishists who like making people wipe our asses, but personal care of any kind is more embarrassing for us than it is or ever can be for the other person, no matter who that person is. In fact, it's worse if it's a friend, because friends are people whose respect and good opinion you cherish, and how can they respect you once they've seen your ass? If it's a stranger, you can console yourself with the hope that you'll never see them again, but if it's a friend, you'll never be able to look at them again without wondering what they must think of you now.

A stranger who helps me will experience five minutes of awkwardness and come away with an embarrassing story for cocktail parties. They'll be able to trumpet their goodness because they deigned to help the cripple.

I will live forever with those minutes I spent standing there with my pants around my ankles beneath the disgusted, disapproving gaze of a stranger and trading my shattered dignity for a chance to leave the bathroom.

But I brought it on myself because I dared to do what everyone else does and didn't get someone else's permission first.

I deserved it because of who I am.