It’s rude not to stare…at the Paralympians, right now — Aiden Tsen
Originally published at https://aidentsen.com on August 24, 2021. If you enjoy reading my writing, please consider following my website!
Introduction
Something that I’ve been having a lot of conversations about recently is UK Channel 4’s slogan for the Paralympics of, ‘It’s rude not to stare.’ I’ve been having them in real life, on WhatsApp, on Instagram and on Twitter.
So I figured with the Paralympics literally starting today (and also taking over the @WeAreDisabled Twitter for the week, which wasn’t intentional), that I’d write about my thoughts and the results of those conversations. Even though I don’t actually like sport, hating some of them as a result of living close to a football stadium, if it taps into timeliness and self-promotion opportunities, I’ll do it.
Since I will be tweeting this on that account, which has a different readership base, an additional disclaimer is needed: I’m saying this as a London-based Autistic person with long-COVID and a history of chronic pain even before that. At times, I’m invisibly disabled. At others, I’m visibly so, having used a walking cane in the past and sometimes not being able to mask my autism when getting close to meltdown especially. Hopefully, that explains my context a bit better.
I’ll start with the fact that I appreciate that…
It’s a nice idea
I get it. It subverts the classic line of “It’s rude to stare”. It’s snappy.
It’s also true in this context: it isn’t rude to stare. With three caveats:
- At the Paralympians
- While they’re at the Paralympics
- On stage or a press event
The problem, however, is that…
The general public isn’t going to see it that way
This isn’t even solely a disability thing. If you don’t provide people with the context, they’ll either apply it to one specific context or generalise it to everything.
However, especially in the context of activism and historically excluded groups, you have to be so, so careful. There are additional barriers in place to us as Disabled people especially being able to thrive. Ableism is part and parcel of so many other forms of discrimination, such as when Black children in the UK made up a disproportionate number of students at schools for the ‘educationally subnormal.’
Speaking as a non-binary person who doesn’t care about what gendered terms people use for me, any problems I personally have due to that disappear if people just stop making a big deal of it. That’s not true of any of my long-COVID, pre-existing chronic pain or my autism.
So now I’ll tell you…
What staring does
From the perspective of someone who volunteers with disabled children and young people, I know that staring and trying to get involved as an outsider usually makes things far worse.
I understand why because of my additional perspective of an Autistic person who finds eye contact painful. Being stared at when you feel and look visibly ‘off’ is excruciating.
To illustrate that, let’s go into my most recent near-meltdown.
Let’s imagine…
You have to get back to the house on your own. Although it would take less energy in total to take the bus, the activation energy is too high-you make the hour-long return walk.
Throughout, you can already feel your mouth twitch and your hands shake. Your brain races, your mind floating around a foot above where your head really is. It becomes impossible to block out the sensory input you can normally filter out. Usually, you can stop the colours from leaching into your vision. Now, large purple blotches from the sound of your footsteps fill half of your world, being written over again and again with each new step forward.
You feel like you’re going to be sick. Maybe it would be easier if you were.
And then, you notice the stares. Their eyes drill holes into what remains of you.
You also notice people crossing the road to avoid you, and then crossing back over once they’re clear. Superb peripheral vision is yet another one of the gifts of getting closer to meltdown. You feel like a freak. Even though your brain is working so differently from how it does normally, you will remember those thoughts. You will have to live with those feelings.
And yet, you’re grateful: no one tries to actually approach you, to help. You’re jumpy-if someone approaches you unexpectedly at the best of times, you have to fight the impulse to clock them. Most self-control is gone when you’re in this state. Although there are good reasons you should be on edge, the courts don’t care about that.
Somehow, somehow, you get home. You’re allowed to collapse now. It’s okay. No one else will stare.
Conclusion
Ultimately, it all comes back down to context.
When I’m giving a public talk, I want eyes to be on me-it’s often a good indicator that the audience is listening. When I’m not (most times), I’m very happy for no one to give me a second glance.
I imagine that it’s similar for a number of Paralympians. That separation between work and normal life isn’t clear in this slogan.
More importantly though, when you apply that idea that ‘it’s rude not to stare’ beyond Paralympians to Disabled people generally without that specific context, the amount of damage it could cause is huge. That can be the difference between a near-meltdown and a meltdown proper. It can be the difference between being imprisoned or not.
Especially in the United States, I can imagine it leading to deaths. A quick Google search yields the example of 16-year-old Eric Parsa, who was killed in January 2020 by a deputy who handcuffed him and sat on him for more than nine minutes. The odds can only be higher when race comes into play.
It frustrates me that Channel 4’s done this. If an organisation like this that has the resources to do their research won’t pay their due diligence, what kind of example does that set for other large organisations? What kind of example does it set for organisations with fewer resources at their disposal?
Most of all, what does it do to the work Disabled people have been doing for the past several years? When we already have to work harder to get anywhere, how much does that increase our burden? What will the effects of that be on us?
You know what the worst thing is? I think I already know the answer.
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