The “R” Word

Last winter, when the snow was three feet deep, I seriously contemplated taking a crowbar to someone else’s car.

This winter, if it happens again, I’m going to–and the fact that I’ll be breaking the law in the middle of the church parking lot be damned.  As someone who’s been going to church on a regular basis my whole life, I have no illusions about the type of person who goes there.  As one of our leaders observed, years ago, the church is a hospital for sinners; not a museum for saints.  And I subscribe to that theory fully.  Or, as a different leader observed more recently, “God has only ever had imperfect people to work with, and that must be terribly frustrating for Him.”  Church, like Starbucks, is full of jackasses.

And, like the Starbucks parking lot, the church parking lot is sometimes the scene of battles.

One of my good friends has a son, who is in a wheelchair.  Everyone in the ward knows this.  There can be no argument that it’s “okay” to park in the handicapped spaces, because “nobody’s actually handicapped.”  Thus equating taking a handicapped space to me, say, using the little boy’s room at Starbucks.  “They’re single-occupancy rooms,” I reason; “what does it matter if I disobey the edict implied by the little triangle skirt?”  Except, of course, taking a handicapped space is not the same thing–which, for this crowd, is higher order reasoning.  They’re still stuck at, “I know someone really needs this, but I’m going to take it from them, because I’m in a hurry.”

“I couldn’t get my ass out of bed in time to get to church before all the spaces were taken” is not a reason to prevent someone else from attending at all.  And yet they do.  “There was snow,” they whine.  Or, “whoever plowed the parking lot this week took up five of the spaces”–in a 300 space parking lot–“with a snow pile.”

So my friend and her son are left struggling to find somewhere, anywhere, to park.  Or not to come at all, because there simply is no place to park.  And while they’re both perfectly decent about it, I’m not.  I’m angry.

This is why you can’t use the r-word.

As a writer, I generally subscribe to the theory that words only have what power you give them.  Treating words like “bitch” or “fuck” as unmentionables gives them power–is what gives them power.  Because, in that context, they’re talismans.  One word is as good as any other; the meaning behind the word is what counts.

But it’s also true that using certain words can reinforce, for us, the underlying assumptions behind those words–because, in this case, it’s not the word itself that has power but, rather, the concept that the use of the word expresses.  This might seem like a fine, or even specious distinction to some but it’s not.  Simply saying, for example, the word “bitch” doesn’t make you a woman-hating monster.  “Bitch” can be used in a positive, or even empowering context.  I don’t think, for example, that because my characters swear and do other “naughty” things that they’re automatically bad or that my stories aren’t, to coin a phrase, faith promoting.  Because, again, context is everything.  Contrast that, however, with the person who uses “bitch” to encapsulate his preexisting feelings of hatred.

But, you say, isn’t that the same?  Aren’t you really just proving your own point, that using the r-word doesn’t matter if you’re not using it negatively?  And that even calling it the “r-word” attaches a stigma to an otherwise acceptable word?  After all, retard is simply a verb; trim a bonsai’s roots to retard its growth.

The answer is no.

When people greet my friend, and not her son, I groan inside.  It’s a wheelchair, not an invisibility cloak.  And yet…

There’s no way to call someone a “retard” in a way that makes them visible.

This isn’t like drag queens calling each other “bitch,” or arguing that any book containing swear words is automatically bad to read.  This is people using a word in order to facilitate their continuing to see another human being as something less.  To facilitate their ignoring that person as invisible.  It’s the worst slap in the face there is: assuming that someone can’t hear you when you call them the r-word, or talk about them in a way that’s compatible with using the r-word.  Do you honestly think the r-word comes up in the context of respectful, inclusive discussion?

Do people take breaks in their catcalling to ask women (or, indeed, nontraditionally gendered persons) if they speak Spanish?  Enjoy the opera?  Dream of traveling to Prague?

The r-word is completely self-serving: it tells the user, it’s okay to take that parking spot; your anxiety over being a few minutes late trumps someone else’s right to attend at all.  And, even worse, it tells other people that those feelings are normal.  Just like silence in the face of someone calling a woman a “bitch” or a “cunt” signals that we, as a culture, accept violence against women or calling a person of color the n-word signals (among other things) our continuing acceptance of white male privilege, silence in the fact of the r-word signals that, they didn’t really need that parking space, anyway.

What needs?

They’re just a–

Once you’ve conditioned yourself to believe that another person doesn’t have feelings, taking their rights away is a pretty easy step.