The Social Stigma of Staring

As happens at least three times a week, I was at the pool the other day and when it’s a weekend day, there are a lot of kids. And on the pool deck I walk around on crutches and the kids stare. I never like it but I have had to get used to it. It’s worse in the locker room because then it starts to feel like an invasion of privacy especially when they walk up and are looking “down there” and never even make eye contact. In Who Says I Can’t (which will be out around Thanksgiving) I wrote a bit about some experiences and insights I gained about staring. Here’s one:

Disability has many negatives in society. For people disabled due to a missing body part, a prosthesis removes the obvious physical differences on which people focus. People cannot see that you are physically different, so you can interact with them more normally. It’s as if the elephant has left the room. Getting stared at is never comfortable; it is a constant reminder you are different and don’t fit in. For those who have a deformity, who are in a wheelchair, or who have some undisguisable condition, there is no relief from the staring. Children can be pretty harsh and cruel to anyone who looks different. When I was sixteen and had just had an amputation, because they found out it was from cancer, my friends headed for the hills. I was completely shunned. In 1973, some people even thought you could catch cancer. But today many kids still shun peers with almost any disease because it makes that person different and because anything hinting at death is too scary to face. Today, little kids seem to think if you are missing a leg or have some other physically striking difference, the disability must affect your hearing. Walking on the pool deck, I constantly hear little kids yelling to their friends or their parents, “What happened to that man’s leg?” They think I am deaf, as well as walking on crutches. Individuals turn that on themselves when they feel inadequate. Jane Smith writes in Trying to be Normal, “The most difficult part of being disabled is coming to terms with the negative values I have internalized. I am disabled and I am trying to work through my prejudices about my own disability and others. My gut reaction was to deny that I had these feelings, but denial does not allow me to come to terms with my devaluing prejudices.”

But I eventually learned that the best defense against sympathy, or worse pity, which is what the person staring is assumed to be feeling, is prowess. Prowess at anything counteracts the pity and in that case, magically the emotion behind the stares is not pity its admiration. That’s is so much better. Here’s another excerpt from the book about how getting good at skiing was just such a defense early on for me:

The way I felt when first seen in public without my prosthesis was a stark contrast to how I felt on the ski slope. That was the one place where I did not care if anyone stared. I relished the jaw-drop change in perception that occurred as they saw me first as an amputee with outriggers, and then as a double black diamond skier launching down the steepest chute on the mountain, cruising over the bumps under the lift or floating through an untracked powder field. For me, the psychological benefits of the athletic activities were enormously beneficial. The intellectual prowess of someone who is disadvantaged can be equally beneficial. The bottom line is that we all need ways to excel and stand out from the norm without being judged by our physical appearance or circumstances.

What slowly happened was that through continued hard work — this time on biking — I was able to see a way not to blast past people as a young hot shot but to join them in a common purpose. The purpose of working hard together on an important cause like the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge raising money for cancer research. And here because everyone had had to work hard to be able to ride 192-miles themselves they really respected the fact that with one leg and one lung I too was doing it too. This was the moment I became an Accidental Inspiration and without meaning to, not only was I not getting stared at out of pity but people found what I was doing motivating to them and they were excited enough about that to shout it out to me. Here is one final excerpt of the first moment that happened:

My message to parents and to their children about staring is simple: don’t slip into feelings of pity for that person for you know not what they can and cannot do. Go talk to them and ask if you are curious about what happened to them. And find out what they like to do and you will find out how that person has adapted to their disability and perhaps, as is frequently the case, has turned that disability into a super-ability to excel at something they love and focus on.