intersectionality

Guest Post by Elise Johnston: Smart People, Silly Questions, and Knowing What We Cannot See

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Most blind people who have spent any time dealing with medical professionals have learned to expect some very bizarre questions. Experienced practitioners can sometimes seem disconcertingly ill-informed as soon as disability is involved. Trained as we are to place vision at the centre of the human experience, it’s not all that surprising that even the experts think blind people can’t, say, live a normal life, or experience romantic attraction, or independently express their own identity.

Elise Johnston, a prodigiously talented trans writer who has been blind from an early age, has graciously agreed to share her own experience with the “smart people, silly questions” phenomenon. I hope her story will make you laugh and, more importantly, get you thinking about how and why medical professionals–the ones authorized to make life-changing decisions for us–assume that people without sight are people without understanding.

“So,” the psychiatrist asks you, in a delicate, hushed voice, “as a blind person, how can you be transgender?”

Pause. Breathe. Collect thoughts. Ignore impulse to scream like tea kettle.

You know how you’re sitting on this couch, petting the psychiatrist’s snuffling Boston terrier and telling your heart, “No, it’s not a good idea to jump out of mouth. That won’t bode well for getting the letter of recommendation for gender affirmation surgery. That’s the reason for being here, remember?” You know about this, right?

And you know weird questions might be coming because this dude just gives off that vibe. Also, you’re blind, and blindness makes smart people say stupid things.

But compared to able-bodied cisgender dudes with the power to make or break the lives of desperate patients, what the hell do you really know, right? Right?

“Wait,” says Meagan, reading the first draft of this blog post, “I doubt all of my readers know this gender jargon.”

Fine. I’ll explain.

[Trigger warning: special rainbow snowflake words and concepts follow. Hang on to your pearls.]

Gender

First of all, take the equipment out of the picture. That’s biological sex, not gender.

Okay, so find some new parents and watch how they treat their baby. Blue balloons or pink? Barbies or trucks? Ballet or soccer practice? “She’ll break hearts” or “he’ll go places?” That’s gender. Sure, there are beautiful exceptions to the binary, but that’s the general pattern, the pattern of gender as we know it.

Lest there be lingering confusion, gender is not about who you’re attracted to (or not attracted to), and has no specific relationship to sexual orientation. So forget about sex. That’s what I’ve done most of my life. Which leads us nicely to…

Dysphoria

Imagine you step in a rain puddle and soak your socks. And you’re not allowed to change your socks for the rest of your life. And every time you go somewhere, you step in a new puddle and soak your socks again.

Now imagine that your sock is your body and the puddle is your family, friends, teachers, employers, neighbours, everybody. They’re always drenching you in cold wetness. They can do this by calling you a name that doesn’t fit or using a pronoun that doesn’t fit.

If you don’t have an imagination—let’s face it, so many of us don’t—ask everyone in your life to use the opposite pronouns when talking about you and call you a name that’s not traditionally associated with your gender. Feels weird, right?

This weirdness is called misgendering, and the feeling of constant intense discomfort is called dysphoria.

Transgender vs. Cisgender

Everybody is assigned a gender based on whether they have a penis or a vagina when they’re born. “Let’s just forget about the huge number of people who have neither or a mixture of both,” says the doctor.

If what the doctor says agrees with you on the fundamental existential level, then hurray! You’re cisgender. You can go about your life discovering other interesting challenges to occupy you until death, like deciding how best to troll Meagan’s blog.

If the doctor’s assignment feels entirely, devastatingly mismatched, if you live with permanent feelings of depression and wet-sock misery, then you might be transgender, and wish to pursue transitioning.

Transitioning

This is when a transgender person explores a gender other than the one they were arbitrarily assigned. They might try on their siblings’ clothes, prompting disgust and anger and plenty of parental panic. If they have facial hair, they might burn it off with lasers or electricity. They might pursue gender affirmation surgery to help with dysphoric feelings, and get to deal with gatekeepers like our fine psychiatrist friend.

They may also take estrogen or testosterone. These can cause breast development or lower the pitch of the voice, among other marvelous things. Think puberty.

Back to My Story…

I presented the psychiatrist and his dog with my favourite transformation metaphor, with much solemn throat-clearing:

“When I was a young caterpillar, I despaired of my fuzziness, especially when said fuzziness appeared on my face. I longed to grow breasts—I mean wings—and take to the sky as the butterfly I felt like on my rainbow insides. Life was a tipsy wheelbarrow, full of loneliness and despair, tossed about on a stormy sea, sailing downhill toward Suicide Lake.”

It’s the same story I’ve told my parents, my friends, my therapist, that other psychiatrist, the GP who prescribes my hormones.

Except, then came the curveball, the weird question to end all weird questions. Here it is again, just for effect:

“So, as a blind person, how can you be transgender?” he asked. “Like if you can’t see women, how can you possibly know that you want to be one?”

Oh dear, I thought, I have just boarded the elevator of wrongness, and this elevator music is a symphony of shit. Let’s break it down:

This PhD thinks blind people can’t grasp gender like a sighted person can.

This credentialed, respected, supposedly woke expert thinks one must see woman to know woman.

Anyway, because I have access to someone else’s blog, and words are free, here’s what I told the psychiatrist. Maybe you might identify with some of it, especially if, like me, you don’t tend to base your idea of gender on how people look, invalidating the lives of blind people everywhere.

Firstly, in my world at least, gender isn’t biological. It’s not a matter of body, it’s a matter of brain. Or maybe it’s my gut? Or my heart? My bones?

I’ve been convinced for as long as I can remember that I am a woman, making one of the assumed premises of the psychiatrist’s question invalid: I don’t want to be a woman; I am a woman. What I want is an exterior that matches my interior, and I don’t need sight to be sure of that.

Secondly, my experience of gender is one of relationships, how people treat and mistreat me. Whether I’m included or excluded in activities and spaces – am I invited to the stag or stagette? It’s about my assumed preferences on beverages (wine or beer?), books (YA romances or SF alien porn?), movies (action or chick flicks). It’s about whether I’m expected to feel one way or the other about comedy, music, personal hygiene, hobbies. It’s about the instrument I’m assigned in band class (baritone, because flutes are girly), the birthday presents I receive, the clothes I’m expected to wear. It’s not all about the clothes, though god, it really is all about the clothes.

I do, of course, have dysphoria about my body. Else I wouldn’t be sitting on this couch talking to this psychiatrist, hoping he can unlock the doors of his mind and accept the idea that people without sight are not people without experience.

I am indeed fortunate that my dysphoria isn’t triggered by seeing other women, but it is triggered by lots of other things, like hearing about periods, hugging them and feeling a chest that isn’t flat as a pancake, bumping into hips that aren’t cursed by narrowness, and knowing that those lucky bitches do not have to contend with the cursed crotch bulge.

So yes, on some level, my dysphoria is triggered by intellectual knowledge and not by visual reminders, but unlike certain cisgender dudes with doctorates, I actually use all of my senses around people, and even, on occasion, my brain. In fact, for me, one of the most dysphoric things in my life is my voice.

The Point of it All

The point, thanks for asking, is that whether we’re blind or sighted, our senses of self are bound up in our gender. I’m not sure about everyone else, but I don’t need functional eyeballs to tell me when there’s something out of whack with my sense of self.

But I’m just an anxious, blind transgender lady with two post-secondary degrees and a shit ton of lived experience.

What do I know?

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Guest Post: When Your Advocacy Looks More Like Erasure

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It’s challenging to communicate the seriousness of the unfair treatment service dog handlers encounter on a regular basis. I’m not a handler, but all I have to do is spend half an hour with one of my handler friends to get a sense of how frustrating it really is to exist in the world when you have a service dog. Watching service dog users interact with the disrespectful public sets my teeth on edge, and I have no idea how they put up with it as gracefully as they do.

It’s tempting, then, for handlers and for me, to use racial discrimination as a direct comparison. I’ve made such comparisons on this very blog, without examining the deeper implications of that choice. Today, a guest poster, who has chosen to remain nameless, challenges me, as well as her fellow service dog handlers, to take a closer look at these comparisons. Compelling as they are, she invites us to consider a more inclusive path forward. I, for one, will be doing a lot of rethinking.

From time to time, controversy rears its ugly head in my network of service dog handlers. A viral news story about a person of colour being mistreated sweeps social media, and inevitably, service dog handlers draw direct comparisons to their own lives. They equate discrimination they have faced due to the presence of their dogs to that faced by people of colour and other marginalized groups. It’s usually sparked by genuine frustration as handlers try to help the public understand why access refusals are problematic, but the resulting conversations usually lack nuance and meaningful intersectionality. Traditionally, I have remained silent. I have sat on the sidelines, scrolling through the comments, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. I’ve been unwilling to speak out, not wanting to risk backlash from those propagating this comparison. After the most recent surge of posts like this, I find I no longer want to be silent.

Before I go any further, I will admit I face discrimination because of my gender, my disability, and, yes, because of my service dog. However, I am white, and I have the privilege of never experiencing discrimination or oppression due to my race. Thus, I will be describing my experiences as a white handler, and I am calling out my peers, because without exception, the handlers I’ve seen conflating their experiences with those of people of colour are white.

As I said above, I am not a stranger to discrimination due to my dog. I have been refused access to stores and restaurants, been turned away from taxis, and even been denied employment opportunities. Is this humiliating? Yes. Does this harm me? Yes. Is this highly illegal, and should violators of the laws be punished? Yes. Does this mean my accessibility issues are on the same level as discrimination that’s racially-motivated?

No.

On the surface, you can definitely identify similarities. It’s easy to compare service dog discrimination with racial prejudice, especially if you want a familiar framework to help nondisabled people understand it. Denial of access to services and employment is par for the course for people of colour, LGBTQ folks, people with disabilities, etc. When you dig further down, however, you quickly encounter the pivotal difference which, at least in my mind, reveals a false equivalency. That essential difference is freedom of choice.

Using a service dog is a conscious choice one makes with the full awareness that discrimination probably will occur at some point. The service dog programs I’ve attended had info sessions about what to do if you are denied access to a public place or public transit. I was warned that I would be placed in situations where I would have to argue for my rights. I still went ahead with the decision to get multiple service dogs over the years, because I weighed the pros and cons, and still found that a dog was the right choice for me, even if I would occasionally argue with members of the public who are unaware of relevant laws. That is an informed decision I made, and continue to make, regardless of how I’m treated. In the case of PoC, the barriers they deal with are not based on choice, but on fundamental characteristics they did not ask for and cannot change. Make no mistake: I’m not in any way minimizing the importance of service dogs. Service dogs improve the lives of many, and are typically considered medical equipment. I would never choose to be without mine for any length of time, and no one should ask it of me. But that’s a far cry from having a skin colour that automatically sets me up for mistreatment.

Now, I’m not at all saying discrimination against service dog handlers should be ignored just because it is based on a choice we made, but there exists a difference between the two situations that cannot be overlooked. Discrimination based on race and discrimination based on the presence of a service dog are both reprehensible, but they should not be conflated. When a business owner denies me access because of my guide dog, it often involves fear of the dog, concern that my dog may make a mess and/or violate health codes, concern for allergies, and/or a lack of awareness of the laws that grant my service dog access to any public place. When PoC are denied access, it is due to a fundamental mistrust, disgust, hatred, and/or fear of them as people. I may be asked to leave because a business owner is afraid that my dog will shed on their merchandise, while  a PoC may be followed around the store by staff because they are afraid they will steal something. Put another way, I am mistreated because I am accompanied by an animal; PoC are mistreated because some people view them as animals.

Another telling difference is the response by authorities to the discriminatory act. If a business owner threatens to call the police because of my dog, I generally invite them to go ahead. Most likely, the police will be on my side. They will inform the business owner that I am legally permitted to have my dog with me, and if the business owner doesn’t comply, they risk a fine. In fact, I have my city’s police department’s phone number in my contacts, and when I meet a belligerent business owner, I actually offer to call the police for them. While there have been a couple of occasions where the police have also been unaware of the laws they have sworn to uphold and have told me that I must leave with my dog, that is the worst thing that can happen to me. I leave the business and promise myself that I will never patronize it again. Maybe, if I have the mental fortitude, I send a letter to the head office of the company, or to the media, to lodge a complaint, which may net me an official apology if I’m lucky.

This is not the story for many PoC. I am sure most of you have seen news stories regarding business owners calling the police on PoC who were quietly minding their own business in public. In many of these cases, a huge police presence arrives, the PoC is arrested, and physical harm can sometimes follow. Many PoC have spoken out saying that they fear and distrust the police, with good reason. As a white person, I can freely assume the police are my allies. PoC don’t have that vital privilege.

Those who conflate these two types of discrimination frequently justify it by claiming it’s the only way to call public and media attention to the plight of service dog handlers. I have seen several social media posts in which a white service dog user points to a news story where a PoC was ejected from a store or denied access to an Airbnb, urging their followers to replace the PoC in the story with a service dog handler. While it is true that discrimination against guide dog users rarely makes the news, it is also true that the overwhelming majority of discriminatory acts against PoC fails to reach the media, too. I do believe that society would benefit from a more robust media that fairly covers issues relevant to PoC and people with disabilities, but I do not believe that erasing the experiences of the PoC for the benefit of service dog users is the right way to achieve that aim. Both issues need to be in the spotlight, and even though people with disabilities often feel justifiably ignored, I don’t believe white handlers should be pushing other marginalized people aside to draw attention to our own issues.

What about empathy, you ask? What about common ground? Empathizing is important, and we are absolutely free to use our experiences as service dog handlers to show empathy for other marginalized groups. I have personally felt the humiliation of being ejected from a public place, and I know firsthand that it feels terrible. That being said, I wouldn’t use my ability to empathize as a method of erasure, especially when the discrimination caused by my dog has a much different origin, and far less harmful results. I can see the ways in which my experiences relate to what a PoC goes through, but I’d never state the two are interchangeable.

Fellow white handlers, we can and should do better. We should call out discrimination when we see it because we know it is wrong, and we know that it hurts. We should stand together and demand equal rights for everyone, not just the groups we are a part of. And we should work against the instinct to erase or distract from the voices of other groups to amplify our own. There is plenty of room out there for all our grievances without denying anyone else the attention theirs deserve.

Inclusion For All! (Unless You’re Disabled)

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Yesterday, I went through a fascinating but painful experience on Twitter. A very popular activist posted an important piece of information about the women’s march, saying she wanted it to reach as many people as possible and encouraging people to share far and wide. As it turns out, these were pretty words: while she did host a plain-text version of the information on her website, the tweet contained an inaccessible image with the text inside. This makes it impossible for screen readers to interpret the contents of the image, leaving out anyone with too little vision to read the message without sighted help. What is more, this woman placed a URL to the accessible version inside the inaccessible image, completely defeating the purpose of including it at all!
Wanting to make the information easier to access, another disability activist asked that the original poster tweet the URl on its own, and stressed the importance of accommodating screen readers, particularly since the tweet was meant to be available to everyone. If you want something shared widely, then including as many people as possible makes sense.
I joined the conversation (I’m a glutton for punishment), pointing out that Twitter has a handy alt text feature that makes it possible and easy to describe images. This feature would have been perfect for making sure the URL was readable for everyone, including blind screen reader users. I did not expect immediate action; I didn’t even expect a response at all. I just wanted to raise awareness about an option that is often overlooked and that would save people so much time and effort.
What did I get for my trouble? Well, nothing encouraging. Two of this activist’s followers jumped into my Twitter mentions to tell me the following.
• I had no right to “harass” someone who is doing her best.
• I was devaluing the tireless, exhausting work she was doing.
• I should go find something “real” to complain about.
• The only reason I was speaking up was that I was “bored with my life” and had nothing better to do. (Yes, because a full-time job, a social life, a relationship, and a budding freelance career mean I’m ever so bored and useless. I adore being judged based on nothing at all.)
• I should stop attacking people on Twitter.

Let’s break this down. A person (whose followers presumably agree with her) professes commitment to inclusiveness. Intersectionality, a buzzword many on the far left are fond of using, only applies to some groups. Disability is not included in that group, which is typical of a lot of feminist, left-wing activism; we’re often invisible to the loudest, proudest voices. Since I am disabled, I must be a bored, unproductive person. Asking for access is considered harassment by default, even when it’s a fairly polite, solitary tweet devoid of name-calling and anger. My concerns aren’t “real” or meaningful. Inclusion doesn’t include me, or other disabled people, and sharing far and wide means restricting your audience, even after you’re told how to remedy the issue. Finally, harassment doesn’t go both ways: tearing a stranger to pieces and continuing to tweet them after I’ve said I’m done with the conversation is acceptable, but sending one informational tweet is not.
I hate hypocrisy, and it’s inexpressibly devastating to come across it in the very communities that are supposed to support and include minorities. Why is disability so often absent from these people’s minds, and why, when it’s brought to their attention, is it so callously and vehemently dismissed? Why don’t we count?
I try to be patient with people. I try not to live a life of constant rage and victimhood. I realize that baby steps are par for the course and our rights and humanity won’t be fully recognized overnight. Education is vital and not every activist should be expected to have intimate knowledge of what we need right off the bat.
You would think, however, that once they’re enlightened, they’d act on what they have learned. Many of them do; later in the day, another Twitter user I approached apologized and was more than happy to make changes to her inaccessible tweets. Her warmth, sincerity, and complete lack of defensiveness were exactly what I needed after such a disappointing encounter.
I can put this down as one unfortunate incident and move on, and I intend to do just that. Before putting it behind me, though, I feel bound to tell people about my experience, and explain why that never should have been allowed to happen. Even among supposedly inclusive circles, I was treated like an annoyance who should just go away and stop complaining already. These people have “real” work to do. Can’t I leave them to do it?
This is not okay. You cannot and should not be allowed to get away with cherry-picking which minorities to support. You should not get to decide who is worthy and who is not. We’re not perfect, and sometimes we are guilty of cutting people down for honest mistakes. Despite this, I will continue to hold inclusive communities accountable for their refusal to acknowledge and stand with us. (Predictably enough, the activist I tweeted did not back me up or tell her followers to stop.)
In the meantime, I’m going to appreciate and uplift those who are willing to listen and act. The world isn’t all bad, and I can’t let myself drown in a sea of rage-fuel that really isn’t personal. I know I’m not useless. I know that my access requests are legitimate. I know I’m worthy of respect. I’ll just have to wait patiently for everyone to clue in, I suppose.
Now, excuse me while I get back to my productive, useful life.