I am a part-time wheelchair user. I love it for the freedom to move through the world without crying in pain. I hate it for the way it changes my interactions with that world.
There is a selective incomprehension, almost an infantilization, from many able-bodied people, even those ostensibly positioned as helpers or allies, toward people using wheelchairs.
I'm at an airport right now (I so often am). Due to overexerting myself yesterday, I had to request a wheelchair to get to my gate.
(It's hard for me, emotionally, to request a chair. I hate feeling like a burden. I understand, intellectually, that sometimes it's the only thing to do. Emotions are complicated.)
When you request an airport wheelchair, it comes with an airport porter. This is someone whose entire job is pushing wheelchairs around airports.
It's a thankless, underpaid job. Porters are overworked, insufficiently tipped, and need to move a huge volume of people. I get all this.
But part of why I hate getting a wheelchair at the airport is that the porters are not always good at actually LISTENING to their charges.
I have TSA precheck, in large part because when my foot is made of wasps (as it is today), taking my left shoe off/putting it back on can be painful enough to cause vomiting.
My porter looked at my boarding pass, moved toward the general line. "I have precheck," I said.
"That line's too long," he said.
"That line's too long," he said.
"My bag is packed with the assumption of precheck, and I can't stand to unpack it," I said.
He ignored me.
He ignored me.
"I physically can't take my shoes off," I said.
He ignored me.
"Sir, I CAN'T REMOVE MY SHOES," I said.
He ignored me.
"Sir, I CAN'T REMOVE MY SHOES," I said.
At this point, one of the TSA agents noticed us. "Do you have precheck?" she asked.
"Yes; I can't remove my shoes, so I got precheck," I said.
She made him move me to the correct line.
"Yes; I can't remove my shoes, so I got precheck," I said.
She made him move me to the correct line.
While I waited, he took a phone call, sauntered, generally took as much time as possible, clearly because I Had Been Bad.
He got me to my gate! ...but didn't verify that someone would be back to get me onto the plane until I gave him a green smiley face review on his tablet.
Let's be clear, here: he did not threaten. He didn't need to. Disabled passengers who make trouble get "forgotten" all the time, and it's never something you can prove.
The correlation between "I somehow assert myself" and "I am somehow not provided with a porter for boarding" is almost 100%.
And this makes it very, very hard to assert myself. I don't want to be punished for being "a bad disabled."
When I'm in the chair, people don't see me. They don't hear me. And they often decide they know what I want/need, even when I say the opposite.
I wish people would do better. I wish people would remember that my humanity exists independent of my mobility. And I wish I had a solution.
That's all.
That's all.
