Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body

by Rebekah Taussig

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.

Your preconceived notions are not our reality.