Disability Visibility: Part 4

There is a shameful absence of books documenting the lives of important historical figures with dwarfism. Just as Game of Thrones and Tyrion Lannister alone cannot compensate—as many people of average height seem to think he does—for centuries of ridicule and abuse, so Marcus Rediker and The Fearless Benjamin Lay cannot make up for this dearth of representation, but the book is a significant step forward.

Born in England in 1682, Lay was one of the first white radical abolitionists.

An autodidact, he was a sailor, glove maker, bookseller, and author.

He wrote one of the world’s first abolitionist texts, All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates.

A devout Quaker, Lay loudly called for the church to cast out slave owners.

They denounced his book. They stopped him speaking at meetings—often physically removing him from the premises.

In one incident, Rediker records how a man of average height tried to humiliate Lay by approaching him and announcing: “I am your servant.” With razor-sharp repartee, Lay stuck out his foot and replied, “Then clean my shoe,” embarrassing the bully.

And it was life in a dwarf body that led some historians, Rediker notes, to dismiss Lay as “a little hunchback,” sustaining his obscurity.

There is another vital reason why we must keep Lay’s dwarfism at the heart of discussions about him: because pernicious stereotypes dominate representations of dwarf people.

A film about Lay’s life is yet to be made, but movies like Austin Powers and Wolf of Wall Street—which sustain the spectacle of dwarf bodies and condone violence toward them (violence then reenacted in real life)—gross hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rediker does no such thing, seeking advice from the excellent Little People of America organization and explicitly acknowledging the “discrimination based on size and an often tyrannical normative image of the human body” our community experiences on a daily basis.

Rediker does no such thing, seeking advice from the excellent Little People of America organization and explicitly acknowledging the “discrimination based on size and an often tyrannical normative image of the human body” our community experiences on a daily basis.

My lungs and larynx couldn’t create the air pressure and vibrations needed to say the words floating around my mind.

We met online, which is common, but otherwise our relationship has no precedent or guide.

Instead, she struggles with unrelenting nausea and has trouble digesting food.

These failed romances remind me of the baffling incompatibilities two people can have, but also how love can transcend even the most insurmountable obstacles when you find the right person.

These failed romances remind me of the baffling incompatibilities two people can have, but also how love can transcend even the most insurmountable obstacles when you find the right person.

We know what the other person is going through on bad days; we know how exasperating it is to explain invisible symptoms to doctors only to face skepticism.

She has never heard me berate a telemarketer or mumble to myself after making a typo.

Here is this lovely woman, devoid of judgment, who loves me for the words I type to her on my phone.

Somehow I had to convey, without typing, what I was feeling.

My text messages were inadequate, and I thought about using hand signals, but the heart-shaped hand gesture felt far too clichéd.

I loved these boot socks unabashedly and wore them every day until two years ago, when I slipped in the bathroom at work.

Her poetry describes experiences the majority of people can’t fathom and still resonates with people from all kinds of backgrounds.

Her poetry describes experiences the majority of people can’t fathom and still resonates with people from all kinds of backgrounds.

The boot socks arrived here in California two weeks later. I don’t understand why I was the lucky recipient, but I am honored to be in this lineage.

Ancestorship, like love, is expansive and breaks manmade boundaries cast upon it.

Canes dangle from seat backs, and a gilded prosthetic leg gleams under the safety lights.

Members of many marginalized groups have this shared experiential touchstone, this sense of unexpected and vivid belonging and an ardent desire to be able to pass this experience along.

Crip space is unique, a place where disability is celebrated and embraced—something radical and taboo in many parts of the world and sometimes even for people in those spaces.

The creation of spaces explicitly for marginalized people and not for others has been fraught with controversy.

Proponents insist they’re necessary for people to have intra-community conversations, and they create a safe environment for talking through complex issues.

It must have been an unsettling experience, to be invited into our space. To be on the other side of the access divide. To see disabled people spreading their wings and soaring. To see wheelchairs turned into powerful extensions of dancers’ bodies, enabling them to do things physically impossible for bipedal people.

They call these spaces divisive, and their organizers are told that they aren’t valuing the contributions of allies.

These bursts of petty outrage at stumbling upon one of the few places in the world that is not open to them inadvertently highlight exactly why such places are needed.

Yet, like any ground, it comes with soft spots and pitfalls, a reminder that the landscape is not uniform, can even become treacherous.

This can be the paradox of crip space: When do we exclude others in our zeal to embrace ourselves, with our refusal to consider the diversity of human experience?

This can be the paradox of crip space: When do we exclude others in our zeal to embrace ourselves, with our refusal to consider the diversity of human experience?

How can we cultivate spaces where everyone has that soaring sense of inclusion, where we can have difficult and meaningful conversations?

A child across the street points at the phalanx of wheelchair users and says, “Look, Mommy!”