Obvious disabilities in people and reactions to it

Post Reply New Topic

Let me tell you a scene that I have witnessed, because it keeps my mind occupied since 8 o'clock in the morning for many reasons.

On my way to school this morning the bus was extraordinary empty which allowed me a full view of the people who entered the bus in the front. Every morning, a couple of clearly disabled people get in the bus. The children (age 6 to 20) point at them, whisper and show clear uneasiness. When they got into the bus today, one said down just in the seat opposite to my teacher who also took the bus. And the one thing my teacher did was flinching and rearranging himself in his seat to get further away from said person as if the person was something really disgusting.

Some of these people actually sat on the free seats next to me once and they were really nice and they joked with me too. There is nothing disgusting about them!

In school, this teacher from the bus isn't loved, but compared to others well tolerated. He's assumed to be an 'okay person'. YEAH, obviously he's a very okay person because he looks down on people with differences! (It's sarcasm, I think it's good sarcasm.)

Nobody that I talked to about this today was interested in the fact that a teacher of all people reacted disgusted by being confronted with a disability. The fact that disabled people were on the bus was of much more interest to all of them.

I have no experience with anything other than my autism and nobody I know has a disability, but I never felt a moment uneasy around the people from the bus. The NT girl from the same bus who talks to me admitted she feels terribly uneasy around them and would wish they'd just not take the bus! But why?

And I ought to mention that I'm in one of the teacher's classes and I'm about to explain at school that I'm autistic. I can take all his possible discrimination, because I'm okay with being autistic. I assume this isn't going to be fun. I guess I'm going to tell on here how it went when I did it.
But I just think it's wrong that people are allowed to display this attitude so clearly that even I can recognise it. And teachers of all people! Teachers who teach you about the world!

I just don't get why people react like this. The last time a person made me uneasy was when I was six and met an African person for the very first time. But then I was so curious that I deliberately shook hands with him and tried introducing myself (which was a big deal for everybody else, because nobody expected me to 'wake up from the autism dream world').
Come to think of it. When I was twelve a father took me by my collar and threatened to beat me bloody and dead, because I didn't make way for his 8-10 year old son. I admit, it made me very scared of all parents for several years.

Now, the point why I actually started talking about this on here, besides the fact that nobody seems interested in discrimination against clearly disabled people in my personal everyday life, is because I really want to know how the community of WP thinks about this. Mainly because autism itself is an invisible disability if you don't count odd behaviour in public.
Thoughts on the teacher, thoughts on how you feel about the 'uneasiness' and of course thoughts on reactions you got for a disability that were much like the teacher's reaction (witnesses are also welcome to share what they have witnessed).


Edit: And please tell me why people feel uneasy. I don't believe it's a fear of the unknown. I also fear the unknown and unstructured, but it doesn't make me any more uneasy about disabilities than it does of anything else. And sitting next to a person certainly isn't about confrontation with the unknown either I think. At least I think it isn't.

I think the teacher is maybe immature or very closed minded. Unfortunately, I think quite a few people are like that. I find that my HFA has opened my mind to differences in others more so than NT's ever have to. It's made me more compassionate. I have two autistic nephews that are also severely developmentally disabled. So, I've witnessed their affect on others most my life. It's like some people think it's contagious. We gravitate towards people who are more like ourselves. Some people just automatically think people that aren't like them are weird. Some people also just think of someone with a disability as less of a person - less intelligent, more dependent.

You never even said HOW they were so obviously disabled.

As for your teacher's reaction to you? I bet he will be shocked, and say you're WRONG!

This reminds me of something comedian/transvestite Eddie Izzard once said about people's reaction to seeing him:

I would only reveal your autism on a need-to-know basis. People don't understand, it's just not gonna do any good for anyone. Do you want people to act uncomfortable around you? I've heard of out-of-the-closet aspies getting harassed.
As for the teacher, teachers are people too, and a lot of people are messed up. It's not necessarily his fault if he's prejudiced, his reaction is likely unconscious.

It's not so much fear of the unknown I think as just in general not wanting to get involved with someone with disabilities. Some people with disabilities can be pretty high maintenance.

I think people are uncomfortable in general because they don't know what to do. They have this kind of thinking:

"What do you talk about? They aren't normal, so you can't have a normal conversation about normal things."

"And what if they do something weird? Then you'll be embarrassed for knowing them for acting so weird."

"What if they talk to you in public outside the venue of the bus. Then what do you do?"

People, especially NT's are so worried about the way that things look on the surface that they forget to think about how it looks inside their hearts. Like God is going to judge them more favourably because they have Prada shoes, a Gucci bag, and a Rolex watch.

Reactons vs Proactions topic

I say proactions because I want to be proactive and not react or shoot from the hip when I am surprised or not expecting an event. I prefer the rational approach to viewing that which is different, and not to prejudge to the best of my ability. Lord knows I am certainly not mainstream.

Having said as much, I would study the situation and choose the best response, and in this case to make a note of it and contact the appropriate department to discuss the injustice. No one should be subjected to harrassment because of difference of any sort. Perceived injustices are to be addressed. If you are wrong then this is an error on the side of caution.

Addressing perceived injustices in order to correct them is a more humane approach.

There is a WP poster named Anbuend who has written some very thoughtful and complex ideas on understanding and assisting marginalized people living the Mental Differences Spectrum. I have found her posts and website links to be very informative, and invite readers who are not familiar with her and her posts to investigate on this matter.

I've had different experiences with this topic. Where I grew up, it was largely a matter of perceived mental disability. For instance, people would quickly strike up a conversation with a blind person, a person in a wheelchair, any number of other obvious physical disabilities, as long as they appeared mentally normal. As soon as a mental difference was introduced, whether or not there was a physical disability present, the discomfort started. It was almost a spectrum, actually. Physically handicapped/mentally NT was the high end, and could be treated just like everybody else with proper modification. Next was physically AND mentally handicapped, who pretty much were treated like very small children regardless of situation, and often if there was an aid accompanying them only the aid would participate in conversations etc. At the bottom end were the completely invisible disabilities, like autism, where the person looked completely normal but was acting in an unexpected manner.

What I got out of this is that the NTs weren't reacting to the disability, they were reacting to the appearance of the person. They formed certain opinions of how someone should act based on their appearance, and in the case of the invisible disabilities, when this opinion was turned upside down, they lost the ability to adjust and deal with the situation, and then became extremely uncomfortable/rude. I never really understood this; I always just started talking to people, and reacted to them based on what they responded with. It always shocked me when NTs around me would make fun of a person I knew, who I had had many interesting conversations with, assuming they were an idiot because they were 'different'.

I like that Eddie Izzard quote; I think that is exactly what happens. The NT brains just shuts down, and starts receiving a "no previous data... cannot compute..." signal when dealing with something outside of their behavioural paradigms. I don't know if there's a solution to this, other than to continue to try to make people aware of the astonishing range and diversity of mental and physical abilities found in Homo sapiens sapiens.