Content warning: descriptions of ableist, racist, and sexist behaviour, commentary on oppression
What is the Stare
Visibly disabled people are very familiar with the stare. It's a regular feature of our lives that comes often from children, but also sometimes from adults. Those of us who are assigned disabled at birth can often not remember a time before becoming aware of the stare. We were raised with it, and many of us cannot seriously imagine what life without it could be like.
It usually involves someone staring at our bodily differences, refusing to look away. It is sometimes accompanied by expressions of pity, disgust, or fear, or with pointed attempts to display us to the friends of the starer. It is also usually a precursor to invasive questions, bodily intrusions, and other forms of violation and humiliation. But for the ignorant and unaware, let me break down the composition and features of the stare.
Objectification
Every stare is built on the foundation of objectification. You know when something catches your eye? Whether because it's colourful, pretty, unusual, grim, or exciting, you may be curious about it and want to investigate it further. You might be tempted to move closer, or continue to visually inspect the thing, to find out more about it. If you come to realise that the "thing" that caught your eye is a person, you may relent. It's not that the curiosity subsides, it's just that you recognise that it's rude to stare at someone. Especially when they can perceive you staring at them. If you realise that the person is an authority figure (whether the authority is personal, institutional, or social), you might offer an apologetic expression on making eye contact, to try and explain that you weren't trying to cross them. For disabled people, this is rare: people will regularly continue staring at us even after noticing that we are human-shaped, and that we notice them staring at us. Forget being authority figures, we aren't seriously considered fully human. An object cannot object to being seen, because it cannot have feelings. Why would someone have to stop staring at, inspecting, or investigating an object? At the core of the ongoing stare is a refusal to recognise our humanity. We are not afforded the consideration, deference, or respect given to those considered human simply because our humanity is deemed deficient. The stare captures this, because it is inconceivable to the starer that the disabled person could object to being stared at. What possible reason could we give? Their curiosity is natural, a 'human' trait. Our bodies are inhuman curiosities.
Women and non-binary folks often have to face the horrors of sexual objectification. Street harassment, catcalling and other forms of sexual harassment are not "compliments" but reminders to us about our place in the social hierarchy. They are actions designed to make it clear to us that we do not deserve the respect afforded to men. Men exercise their entitlement to make women/non binary people feel the discomfort of their powerlessness by reminding us that we are not welcome in public spaces. The parallel problem that disabled people face is ableist objectification. Staring at us, accosting us, pointing and yelling at us, calling us freaks: these are not just "opinions" about our bodies, they are enactments of power and entitlement over our bodies and lives. They are reminders that we are not entitled to the respect afforded to others, They are designed to make us feel uncomfortable, make us want to hide our bodies away and feel shame in our very existence, because they tell us our bodies are not welcome in public. They are echoes of "freak shows", where disabled people are put on display for the sole purpose of being ogled at. Objectification, regardless of the form it takes, reinforces the idea that some people are less "human", and therefore less deserving of respect.
Devaluation
Consider the apologetic glance offered to the authority figure. If the stare caused anger, the authority can enact very real consequences on the person staring. Their comfort must be catered to, because their discomfort has the potential of motivating them to make others unhappy. Disabled people, however, are not extended the same courtesy. Even if recognised as human enough to have feelings, these feelings are irrelevant. The starer is assured of their own superiority over the disabled person in the hierarchy of the social order.
How does it matter if a disabled person is angry with them? Disabled people have no power, and the anger of a disabled person is easily dismissed. Disabled people's anger is readily attached to bitterness over what is believed to be our "natural inferiority". It's why we become villains, is it not? We're just angry at the world because we exist as we are. It cannot be that the world treats us really badly, because this bad treatment is what we deserve. We only exist because the world is kinder to us than it really ought to be. Many of us are taught at an early age that disabled people are to be pitied, because our bodies are less worthwhile than those of enabled people through no fault of our own. Some of us are taught that disabled people are in fact at fault: whether because we sinned in a previous life, or because we did not have enough faith in a vengeful divine being. All of us learn that the disabled body is devalued. Those who are enabled learn to be happy, grateful, or even proud of their status as body superiors. Those who are disabled learn that our right to exist in the world is precarious, we have to prove our worth to not be considered unsupportable burdens.
Body Shaming
Our bodies are deemed "defective", a blight on the world that should not exist. The starer wishes they did not have to be confronted by our unsightly selves. Often, the starer wonders if there are cures for "this kind of thing" - something that would make our bodies less "disgusting". If we do not wish to be stared at, we really ought to cover up: find ways to hide the ugliness away so we can "fit in", be like everyone else, and stop making other people uncomfortable. Nobody likes being reminded that we exist, why would anyone want to exist like us? Wouldn't it just be better for everyone if we were "cured"? The starer might believe that they would rather not exist than exist like we do. Our bodies are not our bodies, but representations of a misshapen world that must be willed into submission for "improvement".
Disabled people are not allowed to be happy with our bodies. Doing so would be an existential threat to the hierarchies that our societies are built on. From the belief that a person should only exist if they can work to earn their keep to the myth that individuals are capable of independent existence, our society is constructed on ableism. Our bodies cannot be simply allowed to be. We are required to strive to change our bodies: to mutilate, ravage, and vandalise our bodies until we look like something society can accept. Consider this: I adore my body. I enjoy every part of its existence, and cannot think of it as anything less than beautiful. Telling me that I need to wear a prosthetic (for example) is to tell me to mangle my beautiful body, to tell me that I ought to be ashamed of it, and to tell me that you think my body, as it exists, ought to be eviscerated. My own love for my body is dismissed as absurd, misguided, or perhaps a pitiable cognitive bias. The fact that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder is ignored when I say that I behold my body as beautiful. My body is not permitted the subjectivity of beauty due to the perceived objectivity of its inferiority.
Encouraging Ignorance
In Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde describes an incident in a supermarket with her two-year-old daughter, when a white girl calls out "Oh look, Mommy, a baby maid!". The mother shushes the child, but does not correct her. Relating this incident at a conference many years later, the audience laughs, finding the story funny. Lorde describes their laughter as terrifying.[^1] The girl in this story learns that calling out to strangers is unacceptable, but does not unlearn her racial stereotyping. Failing to correct her is to reinforce the idea that white people are deservedly not assumed to be in service roles, while all others are correctly below themselves in the hierarchy.[^2]
Failing to educate children about disability and ableism is to encourage them to be ableist.
Many people believe that encouraging children to ask disabled people about our bodies destigmatises disability. There is some truth to this, but it is not the whole story. Encouraging children to ask disabled people about our disabilities is to place the burden of destigmatisation on the stigmatised person. Encouraging children to ask us about our bodies is to teach them that disabled people can be asked invasive questions about our bodies, often without our consent. It teaches them that treating our bodies as curiosities is acceptable. It trains them into a belief that disabled people ought to bear the burden of explaining our bodies to anyone who asks. It robs us of the ability to opt-in to talking about our bodies when we are happy to do so and with people we are comfortable with. Children who are familiar with disabled people (whether through personal relationships/interactions, books, or media) would not treat disabled people as curiosities. Educating children about stigma, disability, and other forms of oppression is the responsibility of the adults generally responsible for educating the child; this includes disabled people as care-giving educators only where such a relationship of responsibility already exists with the child.
Footnotes
[^1]: Audre Lorde and Cheryl Clarke, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press, 2012) 126.
[^2]: Audrey Thompson, ‘Not for the Color Purple: Black Feminist Lessons for Educational Caring’, Cambridge, United States, Harvard Educational Review 68, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 522–54, 523-24.
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