Wheelchairs and Shotguns: Handicapped Other in Supernatural Fandom

[chasingtides]

So there have been some posts hanging about in metafandom about the Other, specifically the Other of colour and fantasy/science fiction. I have not participated because I inevitably get bogged down in the "the writer just can't win" aspect of it all. (Note: This doesn't just apply to characters of colour. I often feel the same way about most discussions of Other characters, including the Other categories into which I fall: women, queers, the handicapped.)

That being said, this meta is actually about another type of Other (I tie myself up in knots) and fandom, specifically Supernatural. Now, I've been knocking about fandom for most of my life at this point - and god, what a strange thing to think of, really - and I haven't been in a fandom that loves to beat on its characters like Supernatural fans do. (I'm sure they exist, but I haven't been in them.)

Now, as a disabled person, I face a conundrum. (Do I have to have a spiel on how this is the view of one person with a neurological condition and how I don't represent everyone everywhere who has any imaginable disability? I really hope I don't.)

On one hand, this means that disabilities are getting more face time than in anything else I've really experienced. I grew up without having any media role models - other than Professor Xavier - who had a disability that I can remember. (Oracle - from Batman - was paralysed by the Joker back in '88, but I didn't do Bat comics when I was a kid. Also, why only comic heroes?) Currently on television, I've got House and... somebody on ER (a show I don't watch)? In World War Z, there's a guy in a wheelchair who fights zombies - and I think I text messaged my whole contact list when I got to that part of the book. So, seeing a fandom that wants to grapple with disabilities should be really, really cool.

On the other hand, there are sometimes where I feel like reading The Secret Garden would make me feel better about being disabled than reading stuff coming from this fandom.

Before I get to fanfiction, there was a Supernatural episode this season that I saw as dealing with both disability and disability discrimination. I talked about it with a friend and was so happy. In Yellow Fever (4.06), the ghost was, in life, a man named Luther Garland. He was viewed by his coworkers and community as monstrous and different and ended up being road-hauled for it. As far as I could tell from context, he appeared to be mentally disabled in life. He was killed for it. It was brutal and painful and extreme, but I could relate to it, on some levels.

The discussions I saw online talked about it as a racial issue. While I can see that, Luther was persecuted and killed because he was different, because he was monstrous, because he had difficulty communicating in the same way as other people, because he looked different (and not the color of his skin which was the same as his brother's), because he acted different. I discussed the ability issue privately with a few friends, but I haven't brought it up until now. I felt - and still feel - that it is an unwelcome thing to say.

(I'm also not going touch panic as a disability and fearful hallucinations... yes. Not touching.)

Why do I feel this way?

Perhaps it is what I see in the fanfiction and discussions of the fanfiction. This is probably going to be an immensely unpopular thing to say, but it bothers me.

I am going to paraphrase (to protect both the perpetrators, but also myself from looking them up):

"I love it when Sam's a cripple so Dean has to take care of him."

Okay, I used "cripple" for a reason that I'll deal with immediately and then move on to the meat of the issue. I've seen this kind of thing a couple of times and I generally try to point out that these are Not Okay Thing to Say. I'm not playing Other Olympics here, but would you say, "I love it when Sam's a faggot" to express your love of gay!Sam? No? Then why would you use language like this? I call myself a cripple, yes, but I also call myself a half-dyke and dyke and a bitch and a cunt. This doesn't mean that I'd be okay with a stranger on the street calling me a crippled half-dyke cunt. Words mean things and they can be deeply insulting. Think before you type.

Second, let's say that this hypothetical statement was written in a review for a fic where Sam, I don't know, is in a wheelchair. What on earth makes you think that Dean would have to take care of him? People with disabilities have a wide range of caring needs and I won't make light of that, but if Sam's been paralysed and has proper therapy and time to heal and learn his body, he won't need Dean to take care of him. This applies to a lot of disabilities. (Fandom, why on earth would they need carers for most of the things you do - they're primarily injury related and if you did a little research, you would learn a lot.)

This attitude - coupled with the type of language used - is insulting. Disability is suddenly not just another way of living, but - I don't even know, something that makes people need coddling. That's infuriating.

I'm speaking as a person who once hit someone with her pocketbook when he tried to push my wheelchair (a stranger, without telling me). I've hit people with my cane when they try to grab my arm (I'd rather be in trouble for smacking them lightly than to end up falling on top of a stranger). I've been told that I can't do things because I'm too disabled - too fragile, too prone to breaking, too incapable of handling my own life. (Yes, I shop for my own groceries, drive my own car, take my own classes, work my own job.)

So, yes, my life experience is colouring how I react to people acting this way about disability. But this pervading attitude grates at me, bother me, makes me angry.

Somehow disability - whether temporary or permanent - makes our characters more cuddly. Now, I'm all for understanding that characters aren't perfect and are mere mortals, but in my opinion, the show does this (Hell, damnation, and death tend to clinch that for me). But there is this feeling that - there's a fierce joy at giving them disabilities - of doing things that the authors don't understand or research, things that affect real people. While I like disabled characters, the enthusiasm combined with a lack of understanding or any apparent desire to understand shakes me to my core. The authors and the readers don't bother to try to understand what it means to have a disability - to need to choose between exercising or going grocery shopping today, to choose between pain meds and watching the news, to wait for interminable hours in doctors' offices, but to also live lives and work jobs and have families and hobbies and interests.

I could go into detail on not understanding mental disabilities, but I'm going to shut up before my head explodes.

It's wounding. We're people, too.

(And someday, I will write a meta on sexism and the Supernatural fandom and then the part of fandom that hasn't ostracised me after this will lynch me.)

Comments

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Wow. Wow.

Since I come at this from the other direction, I want to grump about the subject. I get my literary rocks off on some stuff that intersects with this (forced helplessness type stuff) and seeing it brought to the level of "I love when Sam's a cripple so Dean can take care of him" makes me spit in rage. I can see the "I love breaking characters and having them in the care of another," I can, but it's not a disability issue and... just... ngyaaaaah. Being in a wheelchair isn't broken. Disabled characters fall far outside the extreme hurt/comfort kink since they're not really hurt and in need of comforting. Or even the forced d/s stuff. (Oddly, I do like fic about disabilities, but it's more learning to cope than the hurt/comfort people seem to go for. But that's neither here nor there.)

The whole "makes them more cuddly" thing is weird, since the actual interest (at least for me) comes from the power dynamic and the person in the forced helplessness position doesn't generally become cuddly. If someone really did become helpless after being paralyzed from the waist down (as these people seem to be suggesting) I can't imagine them feeling anything but resentment. Which is the interesting part! And come on, it's freaking Supernatural. There are better ways to hobble a character, ones that don't even require any amount of research.

Gah people can't even do fucking kinks right.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I think these people just don't comprehend disability very well. (I love - in the sense that I stare in bafflement at - the fics where the love interest is the one pushing them through physical therapy - if they get it - or is the one who caused the accident that hurt them - gun shot wounds, car accidents, etc - and there's no resentment. I didn't know my physical therapists as a kid and I fucking hated them - and my parents and doctors and everyone when they were having me do things that hurt. When I was learning to walk again in high school after surgery on my foot, I was the pissiest person. From anecdotal experience, this is normal - you are angry, resentful, hurt, and unhappy when things start and then, sometimes after you are used to it.)

I think part of the cuddly bit is that Sam and Dean are not cuddly at all in canon. They are prickly, angry, carry guns, and Dean's got amazing levels of macho, while Sam's got equally amazing levels of resentment in early seasons and secrets in later ones. These are men who do not cuddle. Somehow, making one of them helpless necessitates physical contact that does not normally occur. Then that progresses to cuddles. It is a strange form of hurt/comfort.

[theladyscribe]

Thank you for this post. I'm currently working on a lengthy J2 AU where the boys are baseball players, and Jensen is forced to retire due to a knee injury. Though a knee injury is hardly an extreme handicap, eight years after the fact it still gives him trouble. I'm taking this as a reminder that he still has to deal with the consequences - and that I need to pay attention to what those consequences might actually be.

Your example of the "when Sam is a cripple" comment is interesting. I think that many times, readers (and writers) get caught up in the hurt/comfort aspect of debilitating injuries and forget that these are real disabilities that happen to real people. It doesn't excuse anyone from researching what they write (or from being sensitive to the fact that their readers may suffer from the very disabilities they write about), but I do think that it is a trope that is used to magnify the caregiving part of the boys' relationship.

That said, there is absolutely no excuse for shoddy research or blatant ignorance of disabilities in the real world.

[maccaj.livejournal.com]

for what it's worth, as a gimp, a writer of hurt/comfort fic, and a reader of it - I *completely* agree with this post.

Hurt/comfort can be fun and emotional and very well done, and disability is one of the more obvious routes to take when writing a hurt/comfort fic... but writing it *well*, or hell, even *discussing* it intelligently, means undeerstanding that gimps are not helpless, less-than, or always-and-forever in need of ablebodied folks. That's the core issue that I think a lot of able-bodied h/c writer and h/c lovers miss, because culturally, we *are* (largely) represented as helpless, less-than, or at best, bitter, emotionally broken, and stubborn - (e.g. House. And I do adore House... but it also troubles me that House is pretty much the most *positive* disabled character portrayed on television.

I won't even get started on the whole ABs playing crips when plenty of very talented crip actors would kill for a job thing, or the fact that we'll see a well-adjusted, congenitally disabled regular when hell freezes over (although Joey Lucas on The West Wing was very well done while it lasted).

I think we'll know when we're actually headed toward cultural equality when well-adjusted disabled characters start showing up on our tv screens - similar to how Bill Cosby et al opened the door for black actors to be a cultural norm.

[maccaj.livejournal.com]

quoting myself, cause as usual I can't get it right the first time:

I think we'll know when we're actually headed toward cultural equality when well-adjusted disabled characters start showing up on our tv screens - similar to how Bill Cosby et al opened the door for black actors to be a cultural norm.

What I meant by this is "when disabled actors (congenitally or otherwise, but genuinely disabled) play a regular role that incorporates said disability without being the focus of the role."... in contrast to House, whom, while fairly realistic, is also utterly misanthropic and emotionally broken, and is also played by the fantastic, but very much ablebodied, Hugh Laurie.

The only *regular* role I've seen that approximates a truly realistic disabled character, played by a disabled actor, without focusing on disability, is Joey Lucas (played utterly brilliantly by Marlee Matlin). We need more of *that* for the cultural views of our society to truly change, because like it or not, television is both a mirror of and one of the largest influences on our culture.

[samidha.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. This is a meta I wanted to write, but didn't have the energy to (thank you, depression). I am going to link it later.

*hugs you*

[a_starfish]

RE: the paraphrase
I like to read about the character's being broken in any way possible and how it affects them and how they get through it and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that. I know things happen to real people, I have first and second hand experience of it but as long as it's written using logic/research/knowledge/sensitivity I'm fine with that. I don't read the fics that have the 'breaking them so someone can take care of them for the rest of lives', that's too much for me, never seen a well written one. Because whatever ability they have they'd damn well fight to use it and not need to be taken care of. The characters still need to be the characters whatever happens, you stick them in Antartica they'll still be Winchesters they'll just also happen to be really effing cold. It's when people don't do that it gets Weird and perpetuates myths and ignorance.

I'm curious to know, have you read any of roque_clasique's Drive 'verse?

[static-pixie.livejournal.com]

I mean, the reason I think a lot of people saw Luther's death as being more a parallel to racism was because of the James Byrd, jr. dragging death. Like, I dunno, it could be because I am who I am (like you are who you are) but I was watching the episode with a black friend and we both kind of gasped when we heard how he was killed and my blood just froze because that's all I could think of. Plus like you said, a lot of it was his appearance and having people fear you because of what you look like is something I think pretty much every black man who has any kind of stature faces. Or even doesn't have stature. So I think it was those two things combined and the fact that they really emphasized the looks thing rather than his being mentally handicapped, though I can totally see how my perspective, like yours, is probably tainted a lot by my own experiences.

That said, I admit that fandom perspective on disability isn't something I've ever really thought about, but I think it is telling that in nearly all of the fics I've read where one of the boys ends up having a physical disability, it is Sam, the one who is generally taken care of anyway. But you're right, actually; thinking about all of the fics I've read where Sam has ended up with a physical disability, even the ones where the author is pretty good (I think, though I can't be sure) about having him go through physical therapy and maintain his independence afterward, it's always mellowed him out so much as a character. In general I read for Dean, so I think that's part of why I never picked up on it, but it's true, people don't think to write about the every day complications Sam may go through or any of the frustrations that Sam may feel or anything despite the fact that it does make him really OOC. He just accepts everything with this perfect grace, if it's not just used as a way to stop the boys from hunting. Thank you for pointing this out, actually, because I was about to comment and say that I'd read a lot of fics that handled it well but then realized that wasn't really true given what you were saying. I think. Unless I've totally misread you...

[inalasahl]

Currently on television, I've got House and... somebody on ER (a show I don't watch)?
the coroner on CSI (Doc Robbins), too

[yourlibrarian]

This attitude - coupled with the type of language used - is insulting.

Yes, it is. Although it's also ironic that the example of the disabled individual came from the episode it did given its unpleasant title, which smacks of treating minorities as socially disabled.

and then the part of fandom that hasn't ostracised me after this will lynch me.

Hopefully not! They're good issues to raise.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

See when I first saw the title Yellow Fever, I'd been hoping that it would actually be about yellow fever, a very real and very serious disease. I always figured that the title was in reference to how debilitating and deadly the ghost sickness was, much like yellow fever, a potentially deadly disease for which there is no cure.

IDK. It might be because I'm a huge history buff and am big on learning about the huge health crises of yesteryear (plagues and cholera and yellow fever and malaria and influenza intrigue me like nothing else). Among these, yellow fever was an incredibly important and deadly serious disease and still is. The last major US outbreak was in 1905, but there are still outbreaks in other countries (it's a primarily tropical disease) and according to the CDC, "Case-fatality rates from severe disease range from 15% to more than 50%."

[doro-chan.livejournal.com]

You summed up very well why I generally don't feel comfortable with reading fics about disabled characters. Or, well, most illnesses, really. I'm suffering from depression and anxiety attacks myself, and am the only non-diabetic in my family. I also used to be friends with a girl who was slowly going blind. So I actually do know a bit about coping with these kinds of disabilities.

And what I can say from personal experience is this: It doesn't make you more cuddly, and if anything it makes you more determined than before to live your life on your own, relying on others only if you absolutely have to. It might turn you into a cynic (well, it did with my brother and me), it might make you hate the world (where the real problem lies, in my experience), but it doesn't have to either. My friend who will by now be blind was one of the most positive persons I knew back then.

Fics generally ignore this. They approach the problem from the point of view of an author who just doesn't understand that being disabled in some way is not the end of the world and who also disregards the very human ability to adapt to situations like these. "Healthy" people only seem to view a disability as some kind of lack, while the disabled people I came into contact with viewed it more like a simple difference in abilities, like, say, the ability to understand math (or not), just on a different scale.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Yes. I don't know if I'm more cynical now than I would be if I wasn't disabled - I've been disabled most of my life and for almost all that I can remember. However, I like to think that it's a positive cynicism: muttering, "Yeah, just hit the crip trying to cross the street," when I'm on the crosswalk and can't go fast enough to get out of the way for the green light.

But yes - I think you've hit the nail on the head. The disabled or ill people in fic never go on to live their lives. They never learn to adapt and learn to live around their disability. (For example, I know I don't have the greatest endurance, so I don't work the whole day, go to the gym, and then go grocery shopping. I manage because something like grocery shopping is a big deal. That kind of thing is never covered.)

[sophie-448.livejournal.com]

Hi, I don't know you, but you're kind of my hero right now. I do not understand the sort of fetishised fascination that some of our fandom seems to have for disabled characters. Thank you so much for putting this out there.

[lembeau.livejournal.com]

What on earth makes you think that Dean would have to take care of him? People with disabilities have a wide range of caring needs and I won't make light of that, but if Sam's been paralysed and has proper therapy and time to heal and learn his body, he won't need Dean to take care of him. This applies to a lot of disabilities. (Fandom, why on earth would they need carers for most of the things you do - they're primarily injury related and if you did a little research, you would learn a lot.)

This attitude - coupled with the type of language used - is insulting. Disability is suddenly not just another way of living, but - I don't even know, something that makes people need coddling. That's infuriating.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. Thank you for this. You've put into words some of the problems I've had with fandom.

I hurt my back, badly, 2 years ago, which resulted in my spine curving, my left leg going numb at all times, lots of pain and a limp. I couldn't lift anything, I couldn't stand or walk for more than 3 mins at a time. I couldn't do what I used to be able to before, go out with friends, or sit through a movie, play with my baby nephew. And yet through all of that, I went on, by myself. I worked and went to school. I found ways to grocery shop. It meant having to wait until a friend could carry the heavy things, or going 3 times a week. I allotted myself a bunch of extra time to get (limp then rest, repeat) from point A to point B. I laughed and called myself a cripple, but despite all of that I wasn't crippled by my injury, even when the pain was at its worst because I coped and I lived through it and with it. At times I may have wished I had someone taking care of me. But I didn't and still don't. Chances are I probably would've bitten their heads off.

As a POC, I only "got" the racial context in Yellow Fever from the way he was killed, but other than that, it was because he appeared to be mentally disabled. And I was a little unhappy that fandom was equating it to race (when there are many other examples of that) and not seeing it as the discrimination it was. Actually I was pissed off at humanity for a while because discrimination and deaths like that happened, by people who claimed they were humans.

Please do a sexism meta! Just because I love my show and fandom it doesn't mean I turn a blind eye to the issues in it.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't have trouble seeing violence as a reaction to disability, which is part of the reason I didn't make the race jump. I was bullied - physically and verbally - on the playground for being "the cripple" so it wasn't a hard jump for me to go from there to Yellow Fever, especially given that a) it's Supernatural and b) they gave a proper background for Frank. (I learned coping techniques for dealing with being beat up on the playground that were generally a combination of learning to fight really dirty and making friends with larger boys who were willing to beat the ever living shit out of the people who beat me up.)

Obviously this is not the case with everyone, but I didn't have a lot of trouble with the idea that the "dickish" and violent Frank, when confronted with a missing wife and a mentally disabled coworker of his wife who clearly had a crush on her, would turn to violence. The road-hauling, yes, is reminisce of many race crimes, but I can also see it as a "logical" step for Frank. (As I said in my original, my position as a pale disabled queer woman obviously colors my perception of the world, just as everyone's life experience colors theirs.)

[erda-3.livejournal.com]

Very interesting post. There have been a couple of times when I thought that, finally a show was going to give me the kind of disabled character I want to see. That was the main attraction to me of Dark Angel, but then I guess the character got popular so they magically got him out of his wheelchair. So disappointing.

Recently Sarah Connor Chronicles had Cameron meeting a librarian who seemed to just, by the way, be in a wheelchair, and I was thinking this wheelchair thing appeared to have no relevance to the story line at all, but then, yeah, they fucked it up.

I'm assuming both these characters were played by AB actors.

If shows can't get it right, why isn't fandom stepping in with a fix it? Isn't that what we do? I think the problem is that we would basically have to do it through OCs because the source is giving us nothing to work with. At least with race and gender issues, some shows have a few characters for us to fix up. With the handicapped, we really have nothing.

Why is this so hard?

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure why they had to "fix" the Dark Angel character - I really liked him in his chair. (And hey, a disabled post-apocalyptic character who is still kicking ass? What's not awesome about that?) So when he magically could walk, I was pretty disappointed, too. He was an AB actor, to my knowledge. (Of course, there's probably an actor or two - or more - out there with an invisible disease or two who just doesn't talk about it, but most of these actors *appear* to be AB.)

I would have no problem with writers perhaps writing an AU where one of the characters had a congenital disability or had an injury-related disability or developed a disability along the way, if they were handled well and not as some bizarre cuddling fetish. I would love to see them encounter a disabled character on the show (although Luther's brother was in a wheelchair in Yellow Fever) - maybe an older hunter who uses a mobility aid (or a young hunter for that matter) or a witness who is deaf or blind? Why can't we write deaf or blind or mobility impaired OCs in our fics?

[pinkphoenix1985.livejournal.com]

excellent meta! and I totally agree with you on all points!

It's wounding. We're people, too. *nods* you're so right!

[estuansinterius.livejournal.com]

You know, this is the type of thing that makes me avoid fandoms in general. There are the few win needles in the haystack of fail, but I would really rather not dig around in that much fail to find the win.

Also, on a more related note, I know that being the kid everyone picked on doesn't hold a candle to being disabled in terms of the social implications. However, I have a feeling that the burning-chest-of-rage feeling I get when people pick on fat kids or poor kids is a variant of how you feel when this type of bullshit happens.

You make an excellent point, and it applies not only on the stupidity of some people in fandoms, but on the attitude of our society in general. We are taught from an early age to ostracize the different and patronize the disabled when most people don't even realize that all we (different people) want is to live our lives like everyone else, and I can only imagine that feeling is the same, if not more powerful, for disabled folks.

Sadly, cultural change on a society-wide scale is a very daunting task, especially in the area involving disabilities, given that we have all the subliminal pity-and-patronize hints everywhere (like handicapped parking spots, bathroom stalls, ramps, etc etc). All necessary, but also all a reminder that handicapped people, while trying to live normal lives in the face of nature's fail, are less able than healthy people in some aspect. And much like being a parent, being queer, having a friend commit suicide, being obese, or any other of life's non-mundane experiences, you have to experience it to understand it. We will never have a society full of disabled individuals, and therefore the masses will never understand what it's like.

So obviously the solution is to shatter everyone's kneecaps. You go get the baseball bats, I'll go get the tequila. We have a long week ahead of us. =P

from metafandom bookmarks

[ingrid-m.livejournal.com]

Very interesting post.

It's funny because the character I follow in fandom is canonically handicapped - below-knee amputation - and while there's hurt/comfort fic, it's usually not based on the handicap. (The show is basically a dark show of utter darkness, so there's plenty of other stuff to comfort.)

In fic, he's threatening people, having threesomes, fomenting mutiny and more likely to shove a cane up someone's nose than cry and wait for his blankie to be tucked in.

I wonder if the fact that it's canon makes it different. We get to see his determination and strength on-screen versus using an cliched fanfic trope for creating emotionalism in a non-handicapped character.

When dealing with canonically disabled characters I guess we are faced with going way OOC in our fics if we infantilize them instead of creating little more than a badly-researched, unrealistic AU, so we choose not to go that route? Hmmm.

Rambling thoughts are rambley. Anyway, thanks for the thinky post.

Re: from metafandom bookmarks

[novin-ha.livejournal.com]

You mean the ~evil gay cripple~?

I'm waiting for the show to get him a Siamese cat he could ominously stroke.

(Why yes, I'm not all happy about the recent direction the show has taken. It's logical, but it also means one thing for the Character in Question.)

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

On the whole: I found "Yellow Fever" distasteful. My sister has Down's syndrome so on the whole I take violence against the disabled very personally and often can't watch it, but this thing they did on the show was awful, because at the end it was still all about the pain of the HERO, the ablebodied MASCULINE white male, and the way in which the last conversation made light of the issue of perpetrating disgusting violence against a victim of such violence?

It made me sick.

It's not okay to use minor/secondary characters as means to an end in this way and not think twice about what it means to the ideological level of the show, yet somehow SPN does it time and again.

I don't know, maybe I should just stop my pain and not watch it anymore.

[cofax7]

This is a great post. It's given me a lot to think about. Thank you for making it.

(Also, anyone willing to talk about misogyny in SPN and SPN fandom is okay by me. *g*)

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, someone tried to push your wheelchair? /o\

And, YES, on all of the above. I don't speak as someone who's handicapped- I have a friend who's in a wheelchair, and she sure as hell doesn't need babying (not that that stops her from making me push her everywhere. :p). So, yeah.

And now you've got me thinking about writing about handicapped characters because, you know, there's not much literature or anything out there that lets handicapped people be heroic (that I've seen, anyways). Hmmmm.

[inlovewithnight.livejournal.com]

Another example of a disabled character in mainstream media is Jason Street on Friday Night Lights (paralyzed in a football accident in the pilot episode). The show handled Jason's storyline fairly well and respectfully (aside from some timeline contortions), but fic dealing with him is much more hit-or-miss, and also simply much harder to find.

(This post might be the kick in the ass I need to dig up my Jason WiP and work on it. Hm.)

[blackchaps.livejournal.com]

This was an awesome post. I don't watch Supernatural, but I recently wrote a fic where the main character ends up in a wheelchair and I kept dancing around certain topics, unsure what to do and now I feel vindicated that I let my character smack people who trespassed on his wheelchair. You rock. Keep on the posts, and yes, write that sexism thing.

P.S Oz had a disabled character, Augustus Hill, the narrator and a central figure, played by Harold Perrineau.

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom, and I don't watch Supernatural, but I love what you have to say. Thanks for posting this.

[sniggs.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom. That was a very thought-provoking post, thank you. I work with people who are disabled due to neurological injury or disease and, especially with the younger guys, there is a great sense of frustration that disabled people don't really exist on T.V unless its as part of an obvious and gloomy 'isn't being disabled like the worst thing ever' crappy plot.

"Somehow disability - whether temporary or permanent - makes our characters more cuddly."

Very true. It makes me uncomfortable too. It's like some writers have a need to take AB characters and hurt them in order to make them more desirable. Perhaps it is because they are threatened in some way by the AB characters maleness and maturity and so seek to weaken and infantalise them.

I'm saying maleness and assuming that the writer is female because I've not seen anything where the opposite is true.

Via metafandom...

[anjak-j.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. Even though I don't follow SPN or the fandom, I've wanted to write meta on this subject for a long time, especially since 'Ableism' doesn't get anywhere near enough airtime in fandom...

[poisontaster]

I think it was...easier/simpler (?) for people to cast that part of Yellow Fever as a racial issues because a) there is historical context for that happening to people of color that's been in the mainstream media, making it part of our collective consciousness much more and b) people are much more comfortable (and I use that a little tongue-in-cheek) at seeing things in terms of race than in terms of ability/disability. We look for the things we know. When I read texts or watch media, I am very conscious of race. Far more than I am of cis-privilege, for example or ablist-privilege. I'm not used to looking at things in those terms and thus I am not prone to see them in those terms. It's a reason, but not an excuse.

I also think...hmm. I'm trying to think of how to phrase this, but in MY mind, fandom as a whole is not really KNOWN for it's ability to think through the consequences of what they write, whether it's about disability, race, gender or anything else. That's not to say there AREN'T people thinking about those things and writing very cogently and sensitively about them, but they are FAR from the majority. The majority are primarily interested in writing id-fic, that satisfies a desire for hurt/comfort or fetishistic porn or Deep, Deep Angst. Whatever. So, while there are some truly stunning gems (in a good way) of thoughtfulness and craft and CONSEQUENCE out there, by and large, there's a lot of really bad, thoughtless, unthoughtful, unmindful id-fic out there. Which...again,is a reason but not an excuse.

Which is a long-winded way of saying, yes, I agree with you. There is a dearth of people truly thinking through what it means to write through what they're writing through.

[nilchance.livejournal.com]

I LOVE this. Do you mind if I include you in tomorrow's linkspam? I found this a really intelligent discussion of the Othering of disability in SPN fandom and in fandom in GENERAL, what with "waking up disabled" tropes and such. Awesome.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Feel free to link this wherever.

Via metafandom

[girlguidejones.livejournal.com]

This is a really thoughtful and interesting post, and, as an able-bodied person who's written a fic about a permanently-maimed Winchester, it has given me a great deal to think about.

One point I haven't seen mentioned is the default, ground zero starting position for nearly ALL SPN fic: that being that nearly ALL of it exists to get Sam and Dean to cuddle/hug/comfort/show emotion. Whether one writes Gen or Wincest or Het, writers feel the pain stemming from having a show-runner who deliberately?skillfully?accurately?sadistically? [take your pick] portrays two brothers who love each other more than life but rarely show it, much less say it.

Canonically, one of them has to be literally dying or in terrible agony/danger before they hold each other or say meaningful things. Even then (as the last few episodes where Dean confesses horrors and Sam sits silently by and drinks his beer) we may get nothing. To say "Why do SPN writers use disability to get them to cuddle?" is a statement slightly unfinished in scope: SPN writers use everything to get them to cuddle. In short, SPN writers don't have some weird fixation on treating disability as a cuddle-inducing device; they treat everything as a cuddle-inducing device. The irony is that they treat disability just like they do anything else. And therein lies the problem.

I recognize and completely agree that disability is often -possibly always- written poorly and with insensitivity, and unlike when someone writes bad sex (no, using toothpaste as lube really won't work), poorly writing a Winchester with a disability carries with it the potential to cause pain to your readers, as opposed to simply making them roll their eyes. A greater responsibility should go with that authorial choice, and it too often doesn't.

I don't know that most people stop to think about that part of it, which is where posts like yours come in, and need to be written, and linked, like, everywhere. I know I certainly didn't think about such things at the time, and I'll put myself in front of the bus and say that I didn't do one minute of research for my story, either, and yeah, that makes me feel ashamed today. Would I do it differently today? Yes, I like to think so; I've certainly matured as a writer and have moved out of my SPN=pretty=glee stage and into a [I hope] more thoughtful stage...with more room to improve, I'm certain.

In the end, I think I'm left with the question that I have whenever someone who's Other tries to write about someone who Is: can we really get it right, ever? Maybe. But only with a lot of research, and actively seeking a beta who is in the Is category (both things I failed to do), can we do that. The associated question is whether or not we should, and to that I say a cautious "yes". [And I want to say that I know you weren't saying the abled shouldn't write about the disabled, but simply want it to be done with authenticity.]

No matter the group under discussion, its members and their concerns will get more recognition and awareness--and perhaps most importantly, accurate portrayal--if people who are not members of the group are talking about it as well, and not just those within it. We just need to do it...we must do it...with thought and intent, and not assume all plot elements have the same care and handling requirements just because we're trying to get to the same place with them.

I've been writing this reply for most of the day, repeatedly editing and so on, worried that it will come across as "look at me, how enlightened I am, a true Friend to the Disabled! Pat me on the back now, please!" and man, that is so not what I am going for. Frankly, it's meant to be a "dude, I get what you mean because I have totally fucked this up before and feel like shit about it and I hope it helps to know that there are people who do this and realize it and really want to not ever do it again" post.

I hope that comes through.

Thanks for a thoughtful and much-needed essay.

Re: Via metafandom

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason I wrote this is to speak up - ableism can be simply privilege - the AB don't always realised that they're being ablist until someone points it out. Part of privilege is having the privilege not to notice.

As I wrote in the beginning of the meta - one of my issues with writing about the Other is that I sometimes feel that the writer, even when they are part of the Is, can't win - no matter what they do, they're writing into a stereotype somehow. And the only thing that hurts is writers and keeps them from doing what they do best. It's a difficulty, but I think it's one that we can overcome - and one rarely addressed in terms of the disabled Other.

As for an able-bodied person writing a disabled character, I think that research and a disabled beta would be the best that one could ask for. (When I first started writing gay male characters, I got a gay male beta. When I write British characters, I got a Brit-pick beta. I consider this to be well in the same vein.)