Episode 178: Er, My Bad

I know it's hard to believe, but even I can be wrong sometimes. This week, I investigate ways in which my beliefs have changed over the last couple of decades.

Transcript

Male VO 0:04

This is Bad Attitudes.

Laura 0:20

Hello friends and strangers. Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes, an uninspiring podcast about disability. I'm your host, Laura.

Laura 0:31

This week's supporter shout-out goes to Bea Huff Hunter. Thank you for your support, Bea.

Laura 0:37

If you'd like to hear your name on a future episode, consider supporting the podcast on Ko-Fi. Visit ko-fi.com slash badattitudes pod for more information.

Laura 0:50

You can also support the pod by visiting our merch store at badattitudeshop.etsy.com, where you'll find podcast merch and satisfyingly sarcastic designs, especially for the disabled and chronically ill communities.

Laura 1:07

For questions, comments, or ideas, visit the website at badattitudespod.com, email badattitudespod at gmail.com, or reach out on social media. Follow at BadAttitudes Pod on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and Blue Sky.

Laura 1:26

As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community, but I am not the only voice.

Laura 1:43

There's something you should know about me. I'm not great at admitting when I'm wrong. To be fair, it doesn't happen often. I'm kidding. Mostly. I don't enjoy being wrong, and I take great pains to avoid the feeling. So this is a pretty big deal. I'm almost positive I've told this story before on the podcast, and I know I told it in my TED talk, which I'm not sure you'll ever see again, by the by. It's in some weird copyright limbo and may have vanished from the face of the earth. I should have had someone bootleg it. Point is, I'm not going into minute detail for this story, but hopefully you'll get the gist.

Laura 2:28

I majored in English in college, and in one of my classes we read an essay called On Being a Cripple by Nancy Mairs, a writer with MS. Being the only obviously disabled student in class, I was put on the spot. After a lot of back and forth, some covert ableism and some not so covert ableism, we got on the subject of the TV show ER. You know, The Pitt before The Pitt? Specifically the character of Carrie Weaver, played by Laura Innes. Weaver was a doctor in the titular ER, but she was also a disabled woman. She used a cane and walked with a pronounced limp. I believe the story was that Weaver had polio as a child, but I'm not 100% on that. Interestingly, so many years of affecting Weaver's limp was causing damage to Innes' spine, leading showrunners to have Weaver undergo surgery to eliminate her limp.

Laura 3:29

Someone in the class brought up Weaver as an example of disability representation. And you know, fair point. She was a prime example of disability representation in a major network TV show. I suppose I didn't think of her at the time because her character didn't particularly resonate with me. It's like that trope of saying that people of the same race all look alike. To a non-disabled person, any disabled person is a reasonable stand-in for all disabled people. And if that had been my objection, fine. But my objection to Carrie Weaver was that a singular character should not shoulder so many stereotypes.

Laura 4:12

he was a woman in a male-dominated field. She was disabled. At one point, she dated a black man played by Jesse L. Martin. After that, she came out as a lesbian. My objection, basically, was that she belonged to too many marginalized groups.

Laura 4:31

Be kind, I was just a baby.

Laura 4:34

The concept of intersectionality had never crossed my mind. Even the concept of disability as being an identity was something I was only just starting to comprehend. I wasn't new to being disabled, but I was very new to the study and intellectual understanding of disability. At the time, I didn't know any openly queer people. Keep in mind this was the very early 2000s. I didn't even know anyone in an interracial relationship. I'm realizing that while I thought my circle was always diverse, it was actually pretty homogeneous.

Laura 5:15

Of course, I was way off base about the character of Carrie Weaver. It is incredibly realistic for her to be a disabled queer woman in an interracial relationship, along with a thousand and one other identities. There's not actually a limit on the ways we can identify. I think what I really objected to, but didn't know how to express, was this feeling that Carrie Weaver was being made to carry the mantle for multiple marginalized communities rather than spreading the representation around to multiple characters.

Laura 5:51

While it was totally realistic for Weaver to have these multiple identities, it wasn't realistic that she would be the only multiply marginalized character in this large ensemble. Maybe I'm misremembering some characters. I know there were multiple POCs, but none stand out in my mind the way Weaver does as multiply marginalized. She was shouldering a lot of the burden of representation on her own. And this isn't a practice that has stopped.

Laura 6:23

It feels common that a single character would be given multiple marginalized qualities or characteristics, and the characters around them might have one such characteristic. One character is given the burden of representing multiple populations, but those populations should be represented by multiple multidimensional characters.

Laura 6:48

Most marginalized people don't have a single marginalized identity. Most marginalized people are multiply marginalized. I didn't recognize it at the time, but Carrie Weaver accurately reflected that reality. If I can learn and expand my understanding of identities and identity politics, anyone can learn and expand their understanding of anything. If they're willing.

Laura 7:16

The idea for this episode came to me as I was completing the last episode on Bad Bunny's halftime show. Much of the resistance to Bad Bunny's performance came from a place of willful ignorance. People unwilling to educate themselves on the history of the US and the history of Puerto Rico. People unwilling to expand their understanding of what it means to truly be American. It's so much easier to be open minded. The amount of effort and mental gymnastics it takes to keep yourself closed off to learning is astronomical. Just relax and let the knowledge in.

Laura 7:58

Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you in the next one.