Episode 179: Hard No

No one is required to divulge personal information in order to be treated with basic respect.

Transcript

Laura 0:00

You owe no one your story.

Male VO 0:05

This is Bad Attitudes.

Laura 0:22

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

Laura 0:32

This week's supporter shout-out goes to Ruki Savedra. Thank you for your support, Ruki.

Laura 0:38

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 0:51

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

Laura 1:06

or 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 1:42

Although social media is generally a cesspit, by and large, my favorite platform right now is Threads. It's unfortunate as they are owned by Meta, which is an evil corporation with an evil billionaire owner, but the vibes are good. It's like Twitter in its heyday, but better. Multiple times a day, I'll randomly open the app and get sucked into one version of drama or another. I've also trained the algorithm pretty well to show me all the leftist book nerds and dog lovers who hate Trump as much as I do. Plus, Threads gives me a lot of inspiration for the podcast.

Laura 2:22

I was randomly scrolling through Threads when I was stopped by this post:

Laura 2:27

"My daughter had cancer and lost her eye. She's now dealing with bullies, and I had a meeting at the school. It was mentioned that maybe sending a letter home explaining her story would help. I'm all for advocating and raising awareness, but I will not let the world train her to believe she must shrink, defend, or overexplain herself just to be safe in it. Humanity does not require a backstory. My child or anyone else's doesn't owe the world a reason for why they look different. Thoughts?"

Laura 3:04

Hell yeah, I've got thoughts. First thought, this is a good mom. She's already aware that her daughter doesn't need to share her history to be treated with respect. She doesn't have to defend her place in the world. She deserves to exist and take up space simply because she is human.

Laura 3:25

Why are non-disabled people so obsessed with demanding the private medical histories of disabled people? That's mostly a rhetorical question because I already know the answer. Nosiness and morbid curiosity. We're all susceptible to it. We all want the tea. Even if you claim to hate drama, don't pretend your ears don't perk up when you hear some juicy gossip. Being susceptible to it doesn't mean we have a right to the information. Just because you encounter someone who has clearly seen some shit doesn't mean you've earned the right to know exactly what that shit is.

Laura 4:03

I have to wonder if the school's administration was just being nosy in this case. Surely some of them know the daughter situation, but not all of them. I wonder if some of the ones in the dark were like, oh, here's a good chance for me to learn all the dirt on the kid with the missing eye. Do you think the admin would be suggesting this path if the daughter had lost her eye in a more violent manner? What if she lost her eye because she was attacked and sexually assaulted? Would she be expected to share that information with her schoolmates? Going through cancer treatment is equally traumatic, albeit in a different way. Why does this child owe people an explanation of her trauma?

Laura 4:47

I've shared my story in a lot of different ways over the years, but it was my choice, mostly. For a while growing up, I did think I was obligated to answer anyone's questions in order to educate people. Once I learned that I could say no to those requests, it was liberating, and I felt better about choosing to share my story. But the operative word is choosing. And I would never have chosen to give my private history to my entire school.

Laura 5:19

We don't know how big the child's school is. There could potentially be thousands of other students. We don't know how old the daughter is, but based on the post, I'd guess late in elementary to middle school aged, that just seems like the prime time for bullying of this type. Also, how many people in your school did you actually know? Even if you're super popular, you can't know everyone in a large school. I definitely was not super popular, but a lot of kids knew who I was because you're pretty recognizable when you're the only visibly disabled kid in school. Even though they were mostly good people, there were few kids with whom I would have been willing to share my entire personal history. There is no guarantee that sharing all that information would have the desired outcome, stopping the bullying.

Laura 6:14

I'd hazard a guess that it could actually make things worse. Bullies aren't known for gaining empathy because you share your life story with them. Empathy is taught over the course of years. And while I don't think many parents are out here teaching their kids to bully kids with cancer, they might, directly or indirectly, teach their kids how to spot weakness and exploit it.

Laura 6:39

I am very lucky in that I was not bullied for my disability. I had some shitty experiences with so-called friends, but I was never actively bullied. But I saw it. I saw how another girl I went to school with was ostracized because her disabilities made her a little odd. She passed away when we were in middle school, and I vividly remember a guy in one of my classes loudly proclaiming, I'm glad she's dead. This guy was always nice to me, but she annoyed him. If you tell this girl's bullies that she had cancer, how long do you think it would take for them to turn it around into, I wish the cancer had killed you, not just your eye? Not long, I'm sure.

Laura 7:25

The school administration is basically advocating giving the bullies more ammunition. You can't wait until someone is a bully to teach them not to be a bully. I know that sometimes parents can do everything right, and they just end up with a so-called bad seed, but I think that's rare. If a kid is a bully, it's a learned behavior. That doesn't mean they've watched their parents bully people, but they might have heard them talk badly about someone, might have heard them mock someone for being different, might have heard them laugh at off-color jokes. Even if you're not explicitly teaching your child to be a bully, you're still teaching them that the behavior is acceptable.

Laura 8:10

Think back to that social media trend where parents would show their kids photos of people with visible facial differences and tell them that that was going to be their new teacher. Kids were terrified of these differences, and parents were laughing their asses off at their reactions, ignoring that the people whose images they were using were real people. This kind of behavior teaches kids not only that visible differences are something to be afraid of, but also that it's okay to make visibly different people the butt of our jokes. They learn that these people don't have humanity because their parents' behavior strips it from them. That's what I mean when I say you may not be directly telling your child to bully someone, but you are teaching them how to do it.

Laura 9:01

The daughter's bullies need to face consequences for their behavior. The school needs to have the daughter's back, not put the onus on the daughter to stop the bullying. It's not her responsibility to teach her classmates to be decent people. In most cases, I don't think schools take bullying behavior seriously enough. Schools are too willing to write off dangerous behaviors as normal kids stuff or just teasing. Frankly, some parents also foist their parental responsibility onto the schools. If you're going to have kids, you have to parent them. It's literally the whole job.

Laura 9:41

I hope this mom teaches her daughter to defend herself, mostly verbally but also physically. If this girl learns to wield her words correctly, there's a chance that the bullies will take it to a physical level, and she needs to be prepared for that. Because it's like really fun to verbally eviscerate someone. I also hope the mom verbally eviscerated the person who came up with the idea of airing the daughter's private information to the entire school. That is never an acceptable answer. Everyone, kids included, has a right to privacy, and as long as it's not putting her in danger, no one in that school needs to know the daughter's medical history.

Laura 10:25

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