privilege

Make Yourself Uncomfortable. I Dare You.

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Let me start here, with a question I’ve had to ask myself many times recently: What is your personal comfort worth to you?

 

More specifically, what would you give up to avoid feeling unpleasant things like awkwardness and shame?

 

I invite you to be radically honest with yourself for this one: What are you willing to let someone else suffer so that you can feel comfortable in your skin? Is there a cost for comfort you consider too high, and if so, what is it?

 

Amid 2020’s many conversations on race, gender, queerness, class, and ability, I’ve been seeing the same theme cropping up over and over again: Discomfort. The people with the most privilege are made most uncomfortable by these topics, possibly because they believe they have the most to lose or, as race and gender columnist Shree Paradkar pointed out in this brilliant interview, because they worry that what the privileged have done will soon be done to them, in a kind of vicious, table-turning reckoning. The oppressors shall be oppressed. The straight, white, wealthy, highly educated male will somehow lose his right to be free, to marry, to own property, to vote, to have a voice, to run things, to be heard, to be respected, to hand out inflammatory hot takes on Twitter.

 

Perhaps nondisabled people have terrifying visions of a new world order where disabled people lock them into the institutions and low expectations that were once reserved for them.

 

Perhaps middle-class white writers like me are under the impression that if we let this “diversity thing” get out of hand, we will soon find ourselves crushed beneath the weight of all we have ignored.

 

(Perhaps marginalized groups aren’t actually calling for anything like this, and these fears say a lot more about the privileged than they do about those who call them out. Moving right along…)

 

I suspect that were it not for the visible disability that has defined and marginalized me from birth, I would be bleating just as loudly, defending my right to a comfortable life, free of hard questions, free of the obligation to make room at the table, free never to acknowledge that I’ve been playing my life on ‘easy’ mode, while so many have been stuck on ‘very hard.’

 

Yes, my whiteness has been a protective shield, one I liked to pretend wasn’t there at all so I could tell myself I merited everything I’ve been given. But the one thing I have never experienced for more than a moment here and there is comfort in my skin. My broken eyes and long white stick have seen to that. Fitting in is a foreign concept, and I know exactly what it has cost me to live at the service of other people’s comfort.

 

My entire life as a blind woman has, to one degree or another, revolved around other people’s need to feel comfortable with me. Different is automatically discomfiting, and it was my responsibility as the disabled person to mitigate this as much as I could. I must never put people on edge. I must never do anything too ‘blind.’ I must look and behave as much like a sighted person as possible, and I must face every rude question, every invasion and every aggression with saintly patience. I put people off, you see. People shouldn’t be held accountable for what they do and say when they’re uncomfortable, should they? People can’t progress beyond what they’re taught, can they?

 

As for my comfort? As for my desire not to feel unpleasant things like awkwardness and shame? That luxury isn’t mine to have.

 

If the person asking me why I bother to get a job makes me uncomfortable, well, them’s the breaks. People don’t know any better. Educate your little heart out, and move on, kiddo.

 

If powerful school officials and academics debating my right to an equal education makes me uncomfortable, well, I’d best work extra hard to prove them wrong. It’s on me to protect my rights and my dignity, to be a good example so the next disabled person won’t have it so hard. No pressure.

 

If the man dragging me by the waist because he insists I’m going the wrong way makes me uncomfortable, well, maybe I should get out of public life if I can’t handle the consequences. People are going to help in ways I don’t like, and I might want to try gratitude on for size. It’s not their job to be up on the latest how-to-help-disabled-people trends, come on.

 

If people congratulating my husband for “taking me on” makes me uncomfortable, maybe I ought to consider the fact that not everyone would be willing to “take care” of a blind partner. I’m really very lucky, you know. (My husband’s disability is invisible. The emotional labour I invest in supporting him through it goes uncongratulated, and so it should.)

 

I’m losing some of you, I know. You’ve heard all this before. It’s all very sad and whatever, but what can you do about it? You’re very sorry I had to go through this, that so many people had to go through this, but … shrug? You’re pretty sure you’re one of the good ones? Thoughts and prayers?

 

Stay with me just a moment longer, because I think I know where you’re coming from. If you’ve never walked into a new space and been physically blocked by people who thought that, just by the look of you, you shouldn’t be there, I can understand how you’d clutch your comfort close. If you’ve never had your hard-won qualifications dismissed because one glance convinced someone you were incompetent, I can see how you’d find all this a little mystifying. If you’ve never been asked, encouraged, even ordered to put up with abuse because your identity makes someone uncomfortable, then absolutely, I can imagine you’d be willing to give up an awful lot to make sure you never experience that.

 

I, privileged though I am, have lived with all of these realities, and I know the cost of someone else’s comfortable life. There are many levels of oppression I will never experience because I am a middle-class cisgender white lady with a pretty enough face who can usually get people to warm to her if they give her a minute or two to try. I’ve never been accused of committing a crime because I “looked” guilty, never been trained to fear the authorities the way Black and Indigenous people have. I’ve never been spat on or screamed at because I spread the “Chinese virus,” or because I belong to a religious minority, or because my gender presentation offended someone, or because someone assumed I must be a terrorist. And I will never get stuck behind the layered barriers faced by fellow disabled people who have racial, sexual, gender and other identities that put them at risk and push them even further to the margins.

 

Yet, I have lived in a visibly disabled person’s skin long enough to understand that each time we are made comfortable, each time our privilege is upheld, someone else suffers for it. Someone else is made uncomfortable. Someone else feels awkward. Someone else feels the shame and displacement we dare not shoulder.

 

This is what keeps me up at night, how attached I am to being comfortable, how in love I am with the security blanket of meritocracy and the bedtime-story mythology of ‘work hard and you shall be rewarded’ or ‘you get what you give.’ And if you’re white and disabled, if you’ve known one kind of oppression but have a hard time getting fired up about the kinds you don’t personally have to confront on a daily basis, I see you. I see you and I’ve been you and I think maybe you’re a little bit in love with that blue-sky meritocracy, too. You’ve hustled, haven’t you? You’ve worked hard and broken barriers? Why should anyone take that away from you? All this is making you a wee bit uncomfortable, isn’t it?

 

Yes, I see you there.

 

It’s time to sit with those sleepless nights. It’s time for me and, I hope, for even one person reading this, to move beyond conversations about discomfort. It’s time to stop giving each other credit for allowing ourselves to be uncomfortable, because that’s not an end. That’s the very beginning, the very first step. Much as we may resist it, Shree Paradkar was right when she asked that if the price of comfort is violence, oppression, murder, systemic marginalization, then what on earth is comfort really worth? Why are we celebrating our selfless willingness to experience discomfort when there is so much on the line? Why did I ever believe the lie that a little shame, a little awkwardness now and again would be enough?

 

So I’ll ask you again: What is your personal comfort worth to you? Is it worth violence directed at people you may never even meet? Is it worth the marginalization, abuse, and shaming of people who have never been allowed the luxury of being comfortable in their skin?

 

Think about it. Lose a little sleep. Watch how much you can grow when you stop being quite so comfortable. I dare you.

Enough With the Sick Day Humblebrags

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All my life, I’ve been surrounded—some might say afflicted—by troupers. You know the type: they can work through anything, raging fevers and hacking coughs be damned. Industriousness in the face of illness is a point of pride, and rest is for other, presumably weaker, people. Their insistence on being out and about when they’re contagious does cause some cringing from those around them, but discreet disapproval is nothing to a long-time trouper.

The trouper’s crowning achievement? They haven’t taken a sick day in ten, twenty, thirty years. Perhaps they did, once, but it was life or death, so that’s forgivable—just barely.

I’ve sat self-consciously among these trouper types, growing progressively guiltier as they list the ailments that didn’t stand between them and their work. Shifting restlessly, I’ve listened to them condemn people who choose to take sick days, trading anecdotes about rampant abusers of the system. I’ve begged the universe to disperse my atoms as they called for bonuses that would reward employees for refusing to use their allotted sick leave. No one stopped to consider what that might mean for people like me, even as I sat in their midst. Most irksome of all, no one stopped to admit that not needing sick days said less about their work ethic and more about the privilege of a healthy body—something many of them took for granted.

The idea that we shouldn’t come to work sick is gaining ground, though it’s cold comfort for people who don’t have the privilege of paid sick leave. Employees are encouraged not to expose their colleagues to contagious illnesses, and sick day guilt is finally being acknowledged as a mainstream issue. Doctors are calling for an end to sick notes, citing the valuable time wasted, the germs needlessly spread to vulnerable patients, and the hefty bills employees and students with common colds are left to pay. (A few months ago, my poor partner paid $40 for a sick note.) As a student whose migraines were not well-managed, I dragged myself to walk-in clinics and hospitals when I should have been at home, resting and suffering in peace. I, too, have paid pretty pennies for slips of paper that declared what I already knew: I had a migraine, and I needed bedrest. Hoops must be jumped through, and HR departments must be appeased, but that doesn’t make the system sensible.

Sick day guilt persists. Employees who should be resting will sometimes work remotely. They take calls when they should be sleeping, or answer emails from a doctor’s waiting room. People lucky enough to have access to paid sick time still have concerns about job security, workloads, and cover-offs. Despite cultural acceptance of self-care and work-life balance, feeling terrible about staying home is practically a cliché. Even when employers actively encourage time off, many employees–and I include myself among them–feel more comfortable toughing it out.

Aside from the usual bugs that strike everyone each winter, I deal with chronic pain in my neck, shoulders, and back. The pain typically manifests as nagging headaches, stiffness, and muscle aches. Occasionally, nausea, watering eyes, and disorientation will join in, making it difficult to focus. When the pain peaks, which isn’t often, thank goodness, I struggle to find words, concentrate, and even orient myself physically. Spurred by sick day guilt, I have insisted on working during those severe pain days, even when it meant bouncing off doorways or making silly errors. Anyone with sense could see I ought to be resting, not working, but growing up around all those proud troupers had left a powerful impression.

I hit my lowest point while working a summer job. A combination of emotional stressors and a new medication made my migraines spike, and I woke one morning with a leaden feeling of wrongness throughout my entire body. I got on the bus, limbs tingling, and realized I was getting yet another migraine. I crossed a busy intersection to access my office building, but was so dizzy I couldn’t identify which way was forward. When I tried to climb the steps into the reception area, my feet failed to make the appropriate motions, and I fell. Twice.

When I got to my office, I immediately began working, hoping I’d be able to make it through the day. By the time a colleague found me an hour later, I was draped over my desk, green and shaking. While a kind stranger drove me home, a bucket cradled in my lap, I understood that if I didn’t change, I’d be unable to work at all. An emergency hospital visit a few days later confirmed it: the guilt was unsustainable, and so was the trouper mentality.

Nowadays, I manage my pain much more consciously. I have several coping mechanisms I can use while at work, and I know how to ask coworkers for help and support. I take care of myself at home so I can function well at my job, and take the odd sick day without too much dithering about whether I deserve the time. This approach has meant I suffer less pain in the first place, and manage it more successfully when it does come along. My current work environment is a balanced one, and when I go several weeks without a severe pain episode, I feel lucky, not proud. I am not special for not needing sick days as often as some other coworkers do, and I know it.

Abandon the sick day humblebrags, and recognize that illness is not a moral failing. Avoid bringing that nasty flu into the workplace unless you’re positive your coworkers can’t get along without you. Stay home when you can, and strive for real, lasting recovery. If people take sick days around you, reserve judgment. Don’t treat your lack of need for sick leave like a badge of honour. If you have the option of taking paid sick time, coming to work when you’re unwell means you are either very stubborn or very dedicated. It doesn’t necessarily place you above your colleagues.

We’ll all have days when we feel as though taking a day of rest is not an option. We have too much to do. People are depending on us to be present, and we’re confident we can handle the discomfort. I’ve been there, and I’ll be there again. I’m not going to miss a file audit meeting or workshop because my pain is a bit worse than usual. It’s okay to be a trouper, at least some of the time.

But, as we overcome physical limitations to be present, let’s do so with the awareness that staying home is a valid choice, too. Let’s acknowledge there will always be those who abuse the system, without demanding that everyone lose out because of a few bad apples. Let’s stop expecting people to be impressed by a sparkling attendance record. Let’s shift our focus to performance and productivity.

Oh, and let’s take a crack at conquering that sick day guilt. Health is not a sign of strength, and illness is not a sign of weakness.