(Mis-)Representation of disability in fiction
Something I’ve been noticing more and more: if a disabled character exists in books AND is shown to be a leader or a badass or both (rare, I know), THEN something like this happens (example taken from the book “Six of Crows”, paraphrasing):
“Since he had broken his foot when he was 11, walking hurt. He had gotten a cane and made it seem like an accessory more than a necessity. Stairs were the worst.”
The character is 17, prematurely aged by enduring severe loss and living in a dog-eat-dog world of homelessness, crime, and prostitution in a fictional setting. He leads a gang of criminals. They mention him being in pain a lot.
However, his “office” is on the 5th floor of a building. When they do a massive prison breakout for their mafia gang members, he runs all over that massive prison that has like 15 floors (and no elevators, obviously). At the end of it, he even climbs a 30-foot incinerator shaft and escapes over the rooftop with his dudes/gals/friendly humans. All this happens in a time span of 4 hours, no rest, no nothing.
My point being: even when a disability is present and is mentioned more than once on 400 pages (huzzah!), the ACTUAL CONCEPT of disability never exists. That person never simply CANNOT GO ON. There is nothing they simply cannot do (like scale a 30-foot-wall). They never are dependent on others, even if those others offer help.
This perpetuates the idea that is ubiquitous among able-bodied people already that it’s all about “the right attitude” and that if you REALLY WANT TO or REALLY NEED TO or the lives of your incarcerated buddies depend on it, you can do literally anything, or at least as much as your able-bodied friends.
THIS IS A FUCKING LIE. This is the worst thing you can tell people about disabled people, whether it is in fiction or in reality. It is so harmful, I can’t even find the words. A disability does not just conveniently disappear because you need it to. You can’t “power through” pain or limitations of movement because you will fucking INJURE YOURSELF. You will literally tear muscles affected by spasticity or tightness from misaligned joints or spines by straining and tendons shortened by badly-healed injuries. You will break stiff joints or the respective bones leading to a stiffened joint if you strain them beyond their capabilities. You will fall off that 30-foot-wall, and depending on how high up you made it, you will definitely hurt yourself to the point of being immobilized or fucking die, and/or the prison guards will catch you and you will be killed.
The author cannot even have ever spoken to a disabled person. I understand they want this person to be a hero, to be successful, but that is not how to do it.
I wish this notion wasn’t perpetuated in the very few books that feature ambitious, badass or otherwise not “burdens of society”-type characters. It does nothing for us in terms of representation.
You make a good point and some of this is addressed in Crooked Kingdom, but I have a disability and walk with a cane. My condition is degenerative and causes me pain pretty much every day. I clearly didn’t speak to your experience and I need to hear that, but please don’t assume you know me or can speak to my experience.
I’ve already sent an ask to Leigh, but maybe I should post this in public too.
This post in some way made me kind of angry. Although there are a lot of valid points, it’s also literally saying that the kind of person I am can not exist or shouldn’t exist in books. I have CRPS. Nothing in my body is damaged, I’m just in constant pain. And since pain is tiring I walk with a crutch and use a wheelchair on long and heavy days.
On the other hand I also have a membership at a gym, I want to start running in my free time because it’s healthy for me and I can very well fight and run and climb if I have to. And I won’t injure myself any more likely than anyone else, because my body is functional and totally strong and healthy, I just have chronic pain without any visible damage.
I know from experience that I can’t stand 10 minutes if I have to cook, but I can stand 2 hours if I’m at the stagedoor of a theatre. I do pay the price for it later on (and I can imagine that will go for Kaz too), but it doesn’t mean I can’t do it. I just need the proper motivation to do it. The same goes for walking around in fun parks. I can walk an entire day in fun parks, it just takes me weeks to recover from it. Stubborn me has done that for a long time, because the government told me that people like me shouldn’t get a wheelchair.
I understand that Kaz creates and represents some kind of image that not all people with a disability can live up to. I know there are a lot of people who can’t do what I can, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people there who can do it. Kaz does represent a certain group of people with a disabilty. The group that needs a crutch in normal situations, but can still run and fight when needed.
The problem is not that characters like Kaz exist. The problem is that the world thinks that he represents EVERY disabled person in the world. And that’s because there is a lack of diversity. Diversity within characters with a disability. They are so rare, that people think that the few characters they know represent ALL people with a disability. If there would be more characters with different disabilities and limitations this problem wouldn’t exist.
We need more characters with a disability, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t write characters like Kaz. Because people like Kaz do exist. I exist. Leigh exists.
While all of this is true and important, I think the problem OP was getting at is this is the ONLY image of disabled main characters we get. It’s important to see the disabilities of people who can “push through it” when the time comes, so to speak, but I cannot name a single disabled character I’ve seen in fiction who wasn’t able to with the right impetus, or whose disability at some point genuinely hindered them in a plot important moment.
I can think of ONE TIME, which was in Once Upon a Time when Rumplestiltskin was left with his broken foot and no magic and helpless once in the course of 5 seasons. For example, although Professor Xavier spends his days in a wheelchair, how often has it actually hindered him?
We use these gambits to get out of representing important parts of the disabled experience, and in doing so limit the relatability of disabled characters to one specific group of a very diverse group of people. This is another case where we can’t put the burden of representation on just one character because this is what happens. It wouldn’t be a bad representation if we had a plethora of them, and it’s important that this one exists, but we need more disabled characters who run the spectrum of those experiences.
Sharing again because there are some great points in all of these posts, including the OP.
We need more characters with disabilities (visible and invisible), we need more representation, and these conversations can help that happen.
