[culture] Social invisibility and mobility

[jaylake]

I've written about social invisibility before, here and here at a minimum. Being at Comic-con while using an electric scooter for 99% of my mobility needs has introduced me personally to another long-standing form of social invisibility: visible disability

Comments

[msconduct]

Yes, yes, yes and yes, other than one small point: my visually impaired business partner has a violent allergy to the "try the disability for a day" model, since in her experience it frequently leads to people who try it assuming that they now know exactly what it's like to have that disability. Oh no they don't, and their assumption of expertise can be teeth-grindingly annoying.

[swan_tower]

I've never been in a scooter, but I do indeed notice the cluelessness (at least some of the time -- there's probably a percentage that flies under my radar anyway). It drives me up the wall, and I try not to engage in such behaviors myself. Especially the one that involves looking in one direction while walking in another.

[klwilliams]

I experienced this at a comic book convention in San Francisco when I was on crutches. I wasn't invisible, but the cluelessness made walking dangerous. Plus, I was so slow I didn't get to the next panel until after all the non-crutch people got there, so they'd given away the reserved handicapped seating, because no handicapped people were there. Um, duh. No more comic book conventions for me.

Now that I'm using a walker, at least I'm standing up but the invisibleness is starting to encroach. People who see me are very nice, but I'm starting to get militant about the handicapped stall in restrooms.

[skellington1]

Ohhh, the danger of crutches. I was on them for about a year (sometimes both, sometimes just one) when I was in middle school, and then for a few months at a time in several other instances, and it's far to easy for someone to kick a crutch out from under you in a crowd. And people get irritated because your crutches take up space/are awkward -- I remember arguing with teachers and other students who wanted to take them away from me and lean them somewhere 'out of the way' -- i.e., where I couldn't get to them. Drove me nuts!

[klwilliams]

People are constantly trying to move my walker away to "get it out of the way", too. I won't let them. These are my legs, damnit!

[skellington1]

Exactly!

If/when I'm back in need of mobility assists again, I'll be much firmer about it -- at the time, I was dealing with being 13 as well, at the age where you already feel you stick out like a sore thumb and everyone just thinks you're a pain, and I sometimes let people do it... and then just tried to suck up how helpless it made me feel. In retrospect I get a little pissed on behalf of thirteen-year-old me!

[mmegaera]

Heck, I'm able-bodied and I've had people walk into me because they weren't paying attention to where they're going. The idea of having this be the default must be frustrating beyond belief.

[martianmooncrab]

you should put little stickers on the scooter denoting your "kills" as you run over or bump into stupid/oblivous people. You were probably an Ace in about 15 minutes.