Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body

by Rebekah Taussig

And in case this isn’t clear, let me emphasize: more is at stake than hurt feelings, irritations, and misunderstandings. Stories written about marginalized people embed themselves in our culture and are used to justify our politics, to arrange our school systems, to determine a hospital’s budget. They enter our private homes, follow us into libraries, classrooms, airports, restaurants, courthouses, swimming pools, doctors’ offices, churches, bars—these skewed, melodramatic narratives shape our cities, our communities, our social interactions. They precede us, follow us, and are almost impossible to shake. When we arrive at job interviews, go to the grocery store, show up at a fertility clinic or adoption agency, create online dating profiles, get pulled over by police, entrust our bodies to medical professionals, pick up our kids from school, enter a place of worship, we are moving through a world where our image is shorthand for something incompetent or unreliable, helpless or dangerous, not worth living or inherently wrong, sinful or contagious, impotent or taboo, perverted or sexless. And these manifest into tangible results from neglect to hate crimes, condescending laughter to sexual assault, unwelcome prayers to exorcisms, pity to assisted suicides, infantilization to police violence, dismissal to invasive medical procedures, familial rejection to domestic violence, idolization to social isolation. I get it—movies are entertainment. But these stories connect to thous...