Diversity and Disability

 

Calling for diverse disability representation

 

It is no secret that disability representation in media is incredibly rare, and I can’t help but wonder why that is, since diversity in literature and television is becoming more common. It’s absolutely amazing, and we should be proud of this positive change, because although it might be far from perfect, we’re still moving in the right direction.

However, it is sad that the current disability representation – when it occurs – is so one-dimensional and stereotypical.

Now, hear me out: I’m so happy that the amount of representation for people with disabilities has increased since I was a child. As I was growing up, I rarely encountered characters in books or TV shows that were like me, and those I did see, I couldn’t really relate to. Why? That’s because they were mostly adults living an unhappy life.

And I was a happy kid! A girl with an imagination that refused to be caged, so it roamed around constantly. The problem was that I never saw a character like that: a happy, young girl with a disability that didn’t define who she was. If you ask me, the unhappy portrayal is a little depressing, and it says a lot about how stereotypical disability representation in media often is.

In fact, people with disabilities make up around 10% of the world’s population, which makes it the largest minority in the world. It isn’t like the media has been limited creativity-wise in any way – there are so many different ways to shape a character with a disability. In fact, there are no limitations!

Allow me to break it down:

•     People of color as well as white people can have disabilities
•     People of every social class can have disabilities
•     LGBTQA+ people can have disabilities
•     People of every age can have disabilities
•     ….

And the list goes on, so why is it that characters with disabilities are – more often than not – rich, white men? (Looking at you, ‘Me Before You’). Why is it that characters with disabilities are almost always portrayed as lonely and depressed? And when they’re not, their struggles in life are completely erased from the narrative?

When I talk about this online, some people become mad at me, and I can do nothing but explain to them how sad it is to see representation for millions of people be the exact same every time. We all deserve to have our stories told. It annoys me that able-bodied writers who create characters with disabilities rarely take this into account. When I criticized author JoJo Moyes for writing an ableist story about a man with a permanent disability, who (SPOILER ALERT) commits suicide and leaves his able-bodied girlfriend a bunch of money, people jumped at my throat, trying to silence me on the subject forever.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m not going to accept the situation as it is now, and that’s because I keep imagining the kind of happiness it would bring to a child with a disability to see someone like them be portrayed in cartoons or books. I know what difference it would have made for me.

Allow me to gush about a character with a disability on television that I think has been written quite well, and that is Raven Reyes from The 100. For those of you who haven’t seen the show, I can tell you that Raven Reyes is a beautiful Latina woman who becomes disabled after being shot in the back. The narrative does not erase her struggles – in fact, she has plenty of them, but she’s (canonically) the strongest character on the show. Hearing some of her lines almost made me tear up, especially this one: “My shoulder is killing me and I can barely walk, but my brain is all kinds of awesome.” That, at least in my opinion, is disability representation done right! It notes the fact that she has her struggles, yet they are nothing compared to how much of a genius she is. They don’t define her.

I wish that there were more characters like her out there. That’s what I’d want for the future of disability rep: lovely, well-rounded, disabled characters that are diverse as opposed to reduced to some horrible stereotype that – most of the time – belongs in the trash.

There’s one last, crucial point I want to make, which is: People with disabilities deserve happy endings. They deserve to find romantic love (if that’s something they want), and they deserve to feel like they’re useful and wonderful, which they are. But characters with disabilities deserve those endings, too; otherwise no kid with a disability will be able to relate to them in a good way.

I don’t see why it’s so difficult to write happy endings for characters with disabilities. Maybe it’s because a lot of the able-bodied people who create characters with disabilities believe that disability is the end of a life. No, it’s not. I call tell you that. I’m eighteen years old, was born with Cerebral Palsy, am studying in high school and planning to study either psychology or law. Happiness is not exclusively for able-bodied people.

People with disabilities are the future of this world, too, and we deserve to have our stories accurately told for everyone to see, so that we can look at their shocked faces and smile. That’s when the ableist writers out there will know that they had us all wrong.

 

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Be the Light in Someone’s Darkness

It’s quite possible that the only thing that’s worse than going through a difficult time, is when you have to watch someone you care about do it. You want to take their pain away, but you don’t know how you would ever be able to, and you’re awfully stuck in a corner while you wonder what it takes to glue a smile onto someone’s face.

I believe that we have all been in that corner at some point in our lives. It doesn’t matter what the person is going through – if it hurts them, and we care about them, then we obviously want to help. You want to take their hand and walk with them down the dark path, or force the shadows away like a glorious sun. Sometimes, the only thing that makes us unable to is that we don’t know exactly how to handle it. Yes, I’ve been there: A few months after I’d met my current best friend on the Internet, her father passed away. And there I was, stuck in the corner. I knew that I cared about her and that I wanted to make her feel better, but I feared that I was going to make everything worse.

Therefore, I didn’t offer my condolences on the post that she’d written like a hundred of other people. Instead, I waited until she reached out to me, which brings me to my first point:

You can’t help someone if they don’t want you to. Until a person actually wants to speak to you about their pain, you can’t make them. I think it’s really important when helping someone through heartache to always make sure that it’s on their terms. Please don’t urge them into deep conversations about things that they aren’t ready to talk about.

Eleven months after my best friend’s father passed, her mother did. I remember going to school sobbing and feeling nauseous, because she lived so far away and I couldn’t be there for her. Anyway, the next time I saw her, I said that I could come to the funeral and asked her: “Do you want me there? Would it be easier if I was there?” And she said: “Yes, but…” I told her not to tell me what not to do, that it would be no burden for me to come. Finally, she gave in. I believe that it is extremely important that the people we care about are aware that they will never be burdens to us, that we would gladly take some weight off their shoulders if they let us. The minute they know that you don’t mind helping them as much as you can, they will have an easier time accepting that help.

It doesn’t really matter what type of pain they’re feeling as long as they know that you will always be there if they need someone. Maybe, there will be times where they don’t necessarily need your hugs or your reassurance, but the fact that they are able to count on you, will always matter.

Remember, killing darkness and healing takes a lot of time, depending on whom the person is. Some might be over it relatively quickly, and if they are, then please don’t reopen those scars and make the wounds bleed again by bringing up what happened. If they are just putting on a fake smile, chances are that you will know the first time it happens, since true happiness plants flowers in people’s hearts, and the garden that grows within it will show in their eyes, too.

In my case, I will say that my best friend is an extremely resilient person, yet while her strength alone can carry an entire mountain, her selflessness is what has turned her into Atlas. Often, she’d hide her own tears, so that her younger siblings would be able to cry rivers. And one evening I talked to her about this – how she deserved and needed to cry as much as they did. Afterwards, she tried to think of some memory that would make the tears spill, but nothing did. In the end, I realized this, and I just caressed the palm of her hand.

It hurt to watch her unable to let her feelings out, but I couldn’t change that, and neither could she. If you come to a point like this, it’s important to not give up…

However, something that is perhaps more crucial is that – when helping a loved one –  is that you need to understand that you’re not a therapist after all. Caring about a person while knowing the depths of their problems and pain can be very emotional. Of course, you need to listen to the person that you’re helping, but you also need to remember to take care of yourself. I’m not saying that you should ever choose to dismiss them if they need you, yet it’s certainly necessary that you look after yourself.

Find something that soothes you, and do it. For me, it’s writing. It could be anything from listening to music to taking a walk in the woods, as long as it makes you feel comfortable and at peace. Your mental health is as important as anyone else’s.

Although healing is a very slow process more often than not, it’s wonderful. When you reach a point where you can see that your presence in someone’s darkness has brightened everything, it’s most likely going to make you feel the happiest you’ve ever felt. And while you might have to realize that you can’t help everybody, it’s when you succeed that it matters. It strengthens relationships, which is something that my best friend and I have talked about often, because we doubt that we would have the amazing friendship that we have now, had I not insisted on helping her three years ago. We’ve stayed by each other’s sides since then.

Helping someone through the difficult times in their life is far from a walk on roses, and it takes a lot of persistence, but in the end, nothing could be more worth the struggle.

 

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You can find out more about Josefine on her author page.

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It’s Real, It’s Valid – And You Didn’t Deserve It

 

by Josefine

 

Most people experience being teased or bullied at some point in their lives. But while we all know that is a fact, it should never be normalized. We shouldn’t tell kids that “this is something that everybody has to go through” when they tell us that others are teasing them. We shouldn’t insist that people ignore the taunting remarks that are being thrown their way like knives. It is in no way okay to invalidate people who are traumatized by psychological bullying.

Let me just say it out loud: Bullying is not something that can be placed on a scale based on its severity. Because it doesn’t have to cross a certain line to be considered bad enough to stop. Honestly, it should be considered bad the minute that it has an impact on the victim.

If you have been bullied, please don’t ever allow yourself to think or say: I wasn’t physically hurt, so I was lucky. No matter what happened to you – no matter what others might have told you – your experience is the only real one. And the pain you might be feeling? It’s valid.

It hurts; words, betrayal and rumors, hurt. Don’t you ever think that just because the bullying you experienced was psychological as opposed to physical that it is all right for anyone to tell you to: “get over it and move on”. A lot of the time, people who have been, or are currently being bullied, feel stuck – as if the road that they’re on is an endless one, filled with bumps and cracks that will make them fall. How long it takes them to walk along that road is nobody else’s business.

Every possible kind of bullying can lead to trauma that you have to struggle with even once you think it’s finally over. You’re not really free once you escape the bullies, and that’s often what some people tend to forget when they urge you to trust people or be comfortable with acting like yourself. That’s because it’s difficult to understand, especially for people who haven’t been through anything similar.

So what do you do? Keep your trauma locked up inside your heart until it breaks? No. My answer will always be that people handle things differently, although I would advise anyone who is trying to heal from experiencing psychological bullying to talk to someone. But I don’t think it helps to talk to someone random – I don’t necessarily think you should talk to a friend either. Find someone you trust – someone who will listen.

And please remember that you can’t give up on yourself no matter how difficult (or impossible) getting better might seem. I’m not saying that you will ever fully move on because, as someone who is currently still trying to heal from years of betrayal and psychological bullying, I can’t promise that. However, what I can say with no doubt in my mind is that you need to try. Trust me, I know that it sucks to have to listen to something like that all the time, but at the end of the day, Darling, it’s true. What happened to you wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t fair, and it is more than okay to fall apart as long as you can find the strength to piece yourself back together.

It’s okay to feel.

And then, despite the pain when it’s all over, you’re still the hero of your own story. You cannot choose to be happy. You cannot choose to move on, but you can want it. I swear that if you see a chance of recovery, that hope of a happy ending will be all that you need.

 

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You can find out more about Josefine on her author page.

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Let us know what you’ve thought of this article in the comments section!

Me Before Ableism

by Josefine B.

 

You’ve probably heard of it; the successful movie that was adapted from a bestseller by the romance author JoJo Moyes. Since its release in May of this year, the movie ‘Me Before You’ has gained praise from the general population as well as film critics.

However, the masses cheering on this film have ignored something that certainly shouldn’t be overlooked. Disability rights activists have voiced their opinions on this movie (and the novel on which it is based), but for the most part, they have gone unheard.

If you’re one of the many people who have missed the critique of the film, allow me to fill you in. The movie, which is centered around the relationship between a man with quadriplegia and his able-bodied caretaker, Lou, has been called out for its ableist narrative.

Now, a lot of able-bodied people don’t actually know exactly what ableism is. Which doesn’t surprise me, (in fact, the dictionary on my laptop doesn’t even recognize the word) however, the word ableism is by definition: the discrimination against people with disabilities, often in favor of able-bodied people.

Even after that explanation, there might still be some people who cannot see how ‘Me Before You’ could be an example of ableism in media. Well, that is what this article is about, which also means that if you are not interested in hearing any spoilers from the film/novel, now is probably the time for you to stop reading.

On the other hand, if you’re more interested in learning more about the issue of ableism, then I strongly advise you to read on.

Read the rest on our new site!