Flower Crown Magazine: Issue 2

Where Are All the Disabled Women?
By Katrina Vargas
Nobody can really applaud the representation of
women in mass media; if we are actually ever shown, it’s
usually as the supporting side character for an aloof, ill
qualified, generically attractive man who fumbles through
life under our care, as the public laughs along while we
roll our eyes and wonder just what we’re going to do with
this rascal. These women are almost always seen, and filed
under, the non-threatening “norm”: white, heterosexual,
cisgender, well-educated, upwardly mobile women whose
lives fill only the blank spaces that need a little noise; women
who don’t take up much room, don’t feel their bodies
failing them, don’t overlap into
spaces they’re supposed to be
hidden away from; these women
never feel lost in, or denied entrance
to, a society that makes
clear they’re not welcome. Oh,
and one thing I forgot to mention
about these women that
would otherwise throw a wrench
into the lives of all these characters?
None of them are disabled.
This sounds nearly
impossible. No disabled
characters? That can’t be. It’s
true, if you run through some
characters in your mind, you’ll
eventually land on a few pretty
significant characters who are disabled; Tyrion Lannister
from Game of Thrones, Walter White, Jr. from Breaking
Bad, Professor Xavier from X-Men - even Hiccup from
How to Train Your Dragon. Listen, I think these characters
are wonderful. I love that they’re all complex people who
are each shown to have their own lives, who aren’t simply
there for the consumption of abled viewers. I love it, I do.
But, these men all fall into the same illusory representation
that these women do, of an ideal reserved for only
so many people; an ideal that doesn’t represent the rich
diversity of the people they’re portraying, falling flat on
the issues surrounding disabled people - who are, by and
large, in poverty, and as such, are often women, people of
color, and members of the LGBTQIAP+ community
(and just forget representation at all if you fall into more
than one of these identities). In the media’s slapdash representation
of marginalized people, disabled characters are
simply a decorated copy of the normalization of people in
power.
Image by Ellen Havasy
So, what do we do with disabled women? How
do we treat them? How do we understand women who
take up space - or who don’t fall into the small corner of
normalized beauty and ability? It’s quite a daunting question.
Perhaps, then, we should start looking at it as “Why?”
rather than “How?”, then. Why are we not seeing disabled
women? Why do we hide disabled women away, rather
than celebrate them? Why do we refuse to tell disabled
women’s stories?
I, alone, of course, cannot answer that any more
than I could answer the silencing of so many other women.
I can only tell you that disabled
women - all disabled women -
deserve to see themselves and
have their stories told. I want to
see media bring attention to the
injustices disabled women face,
especially when their identities
intersect with different systems
of oppression. I want to see the
stories of autistic black girls, who
are often diagnosed years after
white children - or are misdiagnosed
entirely. I want to see the
stories of transgender women
in wheelchairs who struggle to
find housing due to lawful ability
to deny them a home because
of their gender, and absence of accessibility throughout
society.
I want to see the stories of older, deaf bisexual
women who only learn to sign later in life, because of oralism’s
prevalence in her adolescence, excitedly learning the
sign for ‘bisexual’ for the first time. I want to see the stories
of intellectually disabled indigenous girls who struggle
for their reproductive rights, as both an indigenous and
disabled person, and the ability to sterilize them against
their will, at as young as five years of age. I want disabled
women and girls to see themselves, to know themselves
and love who they are.
Write about us. Write about us as you would abled
women and girls. Write about us as our own people, good
and bad, not as a tale of inspiration, or a learning experience
for abled characters and the abled audience. Listen
to us. Think about us. It’s time we came out of your shadows.