I understand the impulse towards showing your best self at the start of any relationship. I do and have done it as well. You want the other person to like you and you are terrified that if they find out how flawed you really are, that they won’t.
So you put on make-up and wear your hair down. Maybe you wear a skirt, or that itchy shirt that you look amazing in. You might show a little more interest in something than you otherwise would. You don’t lie, not at all; you just never realized how interesting this actually was.
It is human nature and it is fair to mock it. But then lists like this one come out that point out how the acceptance of “gross” things that mark a committed relationship. I look at that list and the first thing I think is: How nice it must be to be abled.
I am going to borrow the list and instead talk about the ways in which it is ableist as fuck. And So my wonderful readers:
11 ways ELITE DAILY used ableism to make a point about relationships.
((The following list is a direct quote from this linked article and does not belong to me. What does belong to me are the comments between the number.))
“There’s no demanding need to shave.”
Ok so mandatory feminist statement: There is NEVER a demanding need to shave. But let’s talk for now about some of us who enjoy smooth legs, I among them. My decision not to shave has nothing to do with a lack of caring, but rather a decision not to inflict pain on myself.
I have a permanently damaged hip. I cannot bend in a way that makes shaving comfortable. I literally cannot reach certain parts of the leg. This also created a much bigger risk of cutting myself. So I don’t shave except as an occasional treat for Alyssa or myself. This decision had nothing to do with the quality of our relationship. Actually the first time Alyssa and I hooked up, my legs were hairy with several days growth.
“You fart in front of each other.”
This presumes control of bodily function. This presumes that everyone gets to decide if and when they fart. This presumes so much, that many of us don’t get to decide.
“Poop is discussed in any capacity.”
I wish I got to decide, I didn’t. Having an accident in the middle of a midterm made that decision for me. What is worse, is that as early as that happened in our relationship, that wasn’t even the first time the subject came up. People with digestive issues, people with chronic diseases, people who have had bowel resections or live with colostomy bags, people who have had their lower bodies paralysed in such a way as to lower their ability to control their bowel movements, all of these people like me might not get to decide when we start discussing poop.
“You let him pee in the shower when you shower together.”
This presumes that he has control over his urine.
“Morning breath doesn’t gross you out.”
During crohn’s flare ups, I have to make the decision whether it is better to brush my teeth and throw up or whether I shouldn’t brush and as a result not spend my morning throwing up bile. Morning breath is the least of my concerns.
“Sicknesses don’t make kissing off-limits.”
I am immunosuppressed. My partner not kissing me when they are sick has nothing to do with how much I love them or how much they love me. That decision is based on the fact that a two day cold for them could be two weeks of misery for me. It could mean having to postpone my Crohn’s medicine and adding a flare up to things that are wrong with me. Just now I had the flu that lasted for two months. Near the end I couldn’t tell whether it was the virus causing me to throw up or my Crohn’s.
But let’s ignore contagious sickness for a minute, and focus on other definitions of sickness such as say vomiting. I can’t tell when I first threw up in public in front of Alyssa. I do remember the warmth of the hand massaging my back while the other held back my hair. I do remember that we hadn’t been dating that long that the kiss that followed was in any way required.
“Weight gain isn’t a big deal.”
Weight has been my cross to bear for as long as I can remember, and now more than ever it is intimately intertwined with my disabilities. My weight gain, my diet, my exercise are all things that keep me up at night. The implication that it should be a big deal or affect the intimacy of my relationship keeps me up even more. The social perception that fat people like me are not entitled to love is such a pervasive bit of fat shaming that it has formed our whole script surrounding relationships. If you don’t think so, I dare you to watch every episode where a man has to prove his love for his wife by realizing he loves her enough to find her sexy when she gains weight.
“Despite all of this, you actually still find your significant other sexy.”
This is the one that cinches it all. That underlines the problem. Everything on this list is considered gross and unsexy, and all of it can be related to disability. I haven’t listed everything here so as not to be redundant and not because there is one thing on this list that isn’t in some way ableist (and also possibly cissexist, transmisogynistic, sexist, classist, and so forth). These things are considered gross, as are the people who do them.
For many of us with disabilities, these things are a major part of our lives. In other words, according to this list, I am gross. I am unworthy of love. This is just yet another perpetuation of the social idea that people with disabilities are sexless and loveless. It is a lie, a damned lie, and damaging to many of us.
On the day that I received my diagnosis of arthritis, I cried. Nothing major had happened yet. It hadn’t really factored into my life at all yet except as an occasional twinge of pain which pills took care of. I had no idea what was coming. I had no idea that by that time the next year I would be in a wheelchair after several months of walking with a cane. For all intents and purposes, the diagnosis was a name for something that hasn’t really happened yet. It was nothing! And yet, I cried. Why? Because I was convinced that it was this news that would doom me to dying a virgin. That I would never marry, never find love, all because I had a diagnosis that others might find scary.
I wasn’t disabled yet and I already knew what the social script had in mind for me.
And lists like this don’t help. Because they just serve as a reminder to all of us, that us disabled folk better not get too uppity by thinking that we are entitled to being treated like human beings.
