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

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.)