Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body

by Rebekah Taussig

I believed everything I did—the way I moved my body, the way I looked, the roundabout paths I took—was right. I’d figured out how to do all the things I wanted, and I didn’t see my methods as strange or sad.

Unlike all the other kids, being with me required alternate routes and problem-solving.

My body looked so different from the bodies we’d all been taught to admire

I consumed and digested the

culture around me and slowly learned, with certainty, that I was not among those who would be needed, admired, wanted, loved, dated, or married.

This is the shame that attaches so easily to a body that doesn’t fit, the shame that buds, blossoms, and consumes when you believe that your existence is a burden, a blemish on the well-oiled machine of Society.

He seemed wholly unaware that as we grew up, I had come to see my body as a glaring problem, a weight on the world, a failed prototype.

ableism is the process of favoring, fetishizing, and building the world around a mostly imagined, idealized body while discriminating against those bodies perceived to move, see, hear, process, operate, look, or need differently from that vision.

Ableism recommends I put myself through pain and expend extra energy to make sure those strangers walking out of 7-Eleven with a Slurpee don’t stare at me, pity me, mock me for the way I move my body.

there’s a gaping, fundamental disparity between the choices granted to disabled and nondisabled folks.

This is the wild emancipation I wish for all of us—a world where we are all free to be, to move, to exist in our bodies without shame; a world that isn’t interested in making all of its humans operate in the exact same way; a world that instead strives to invite more, include more, imagine more. That world sees the humans existing on the margins and says, You have what we want! What barriers can we remove so we can have you around? What do you need? How can we make that happen?

If we’ve never seen it, is it even possible?

Instead of disability as the limitation, what if a lack of imagination was the actual barrier?

I learned that the best I had to offer society was to inspire the Real Citizens of Life by smiling on the sidelines, being joyful despite my wheelchair.

was a tool for keeping them grateful and motivated to seize their days. I was here to teach them the loftier nuggets of wisdom, like how to live life to the fullest—to provide an opportunity to prove that they were really a good character. I wasn’t here to fall in love, become a parent, broker the deal, crack the case, offer sex appeal, save the damsel, or be president.

already been assigned my role as the Weak Girl, here to affirm to the Real Citizens of Life that they were a thoughtful pair offering a friendly hand.

Here’s a question: What’s more exhausting—being disabled or trying to shake off the roles that other people constantly expect you to fill? (I’m too tired to answer.)

We are the recipients of help, in need of assistance, holding out a tin can for charity, here to inspire.

Jenner’s image depicts disability as purely passive, as if her wheelchair is her cage, when in real life, wheelchairs are empowering, liberating tools for so many people.

And of course, navigating through a world that doesn’t operate with your disabled body in mind is simply exhausting.

I found it difficult to picture myself in the future. I couldn’t imagine life beyond being my parents’ child with any clarity or practicality.

Hours + Production + Wages = Value.

Those of us who don’t work as many hours, who don’t “produce” as much (whatever that means), whose wages are lower, or (gasp!) rely on others to survive—we are categorized as a drain, a burden.

Do we lose something when we worship independence and villainize dependence? I get why freedom is everything, but do we miss out on interdependence when we cling so tightly to autonomy? I wonder, what could disabled women add to our conversations about the possibility of being an empowered independent/dependent woman?

All I see when I look at you is a beautiful woman. I don’t even notice your wheelchair! I don’t think of you as disabled. It’s meant as a kindness, but it feels like erasure. These words handpicked to soothe the wounds of disability are weapons themselves, reinforcing the deep-seated belief that beauty and value can’t coexist with the deviations we all know I embody.

We try to extract the disability from the person, because we think disability is ugly, and the rules tell us that this separation is nice.

“We’re just not thinking about you at all”—a sentiment that intends no harm even as it dismisses an entire population.

Inaccessibility over time tells me that I do not matter, am not wanted, do not belong. This land wasn’t made for me.