Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today, we're returning
to a topic that I've touched on a number of times, but it's been
a while since we did a full episode on it. And after Lady ahab
Ak Maiden ah Ahab, person of many different names, but the awesome content
creator and writer who joined me to talk about Moby Dick. One of the
things we got into in that conversation was Moby Dick and disability, and this
I thought was a great time really to talk about. We've been talking for
a while about wanting to do a full episode on how disability is treated in
science fiction and fantasy and the kind of stories that geeks love, and I've
had some stuff going on, They've had some stuff going on, and we
thought this is just a great time to really dive into it. So let
me just first say hello, welcome, to introduce yourself. Those who haven't
heard you before, Hi, thank you. My name is Aka or Ahab.
I go buy both and internet spaces. I am a recently graduated college
student. I have a degree in philosophy with a rhetoric emphasis and you know
what emphasis on distability studies as well. And now I'm doing marketing and communications
for a liberal arts college in the West. So awesome, awesome. Well,
you know, I've always enjoyed your posting, really enjoyed having you on
for AHAB, and just thought this would a great thing to bring it back
for. Thanks. Yeah, I'm super happy to be here. Let me
start with what's going to be kind of a broad question, but I think
can kind of help set the tone for a lot of what we're talking about.
I think we, most of my listeners probably at this point, degree
that representation matters across the board. But I'd love to hear from you.
Why do you think it's particularly important that we discuss representation and when it's done
right and also when it's done really wrong in science fiction, superhero fantasy,
like the kind of stories that we gee extend to love. I think it
starts with just a question of like basic human representation and meaning to see people
who look like us in various forms of media. I think sci fi is
a particular media type where we're looking towards the future and worlds that we want
and things that we're imagining and hoping to bring into being, and excluding disabled
bodies and voices from that particular act of imagining is really harmful, and so
evaluating when disability does show up and making sure that it's showing up regularly and
in positive ways is really important because sci fi specifically is like imagining a world
that we're trying to bring into the present. Yeah. I think that's a
really good way to put it. One of the things that I think,
the kind of thing that I first started to really notice the way disability is
treated in science fiction is that so much of it science fiction and also superhero
media and things like that, so much of it is about the body.
It's about either superpowers or technology or maybe in more of a fantasy setting,
magic, but it's about making the body be able to be a super soldier
or able to do this physical thing or that physical thing and you know,
or or that's allowing you to be this like incredibly powerful night or wizard or
witch or whatever it is. And so often in those stories there's this idea
of that part of what you're able to do is reach this idea of physical
perfection. And I get the idea of it, but I think there can
be a really dangerous kind of you know, subtext there of like, you
know, because anything it's broken or bad with the body is you know,
playing into some of the worst kind of ideas of disability, and you know
that like going back to things where like people thought disability was a sign of
a curse from God, or that you know, you were unworthy, or
that more recently that you were you know, like bad genetics and so should
be like written out of the gene code and you know all this kind of
horrible stuff. Yeah, I mean I think that it's definitely I think that
a lot of sci fi is is incredibly medicalized, and so that you know,
what you're saying about the body all makes sense that the trajectory is then
what is the ideal that we're striving for a human level, Like what is
the kind of perfectly imagined future for the human body and how can we push
the limits of that and what is it? And then you know, the
moral message that gets roped in there is like how do you be the best
person you can morally? And then really tightly interconnect to that with like these
physical capabilities that are fantastical and beyond discope of normalcy. And I think it
to me whole that whole thing explodes in a really particularly interesting way that on
the one hand, who races a lot of disabilities that do exist now and
maybe also creates disabilities that don't exist now in these fantasy spaces and doesn't handle
either particularly well historically. But we're starting to see it get handled better as
people are becoming more conscious of these things, for sure. For sure,
Like if you watch The Boys, I love a lot of parts of that
show, especially the idea that it's not like there's four or five superheroes.
It's like there's this entire group of humanity that is and I think X one
also deals with this a little bit, but I could easily understand, and
I think some of the superpowered people go to this route of basically feeling like
not having a superpower is a disability that now that is the definition of physical
health, you know, yeah, I mean in discussions of social model of
disability, the idea has always been in a world where everyone can fly,
there are no stairs, which makes anyone who can't fly unable to reach the
second floor, which is like an analogy that gets used a lot for wheelchair
users, which you know, I myself am. I know you use a
roetual sometimes and I think that analogy transfers into sci fi a lot of the
time in particular ways, and then there's just kind of no address of it.
Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up. That's kind of the
other point I was going to work towards, you know, and just to
you have more of an academic background on this than I do, So let
me kind of spell this out. And I think this fits into the sea
you're talking about, or maybe it's just its own thing. But one of
the ideas that I've really hopped on most in terms of disability theory is the
idea that you know, if you have a color blind person, or you
know a person who has visual disabilities and they're having trouble reading something, the
question is like do we fix their eyes or do we fix the type font
and the type print? That if a wheelchair using person can't get into a
building, do you fix the person or do you fix the building? Yeah,
you know, and that this is I tend to hate the phrase differently
able because I think it's often used in a very patronizing way, But I
like one of the core ideas of it, which is that instead of saying
there is an ideal of like human bodily health that instead it's recognizing like,
no, there's differences, you know, I mean, go ahead of no.
I was just going to say, like, I absolutely agree. I
think one of the big shifts that had to happen for me, both in
an intellectual academic space and in a kind of more personal space when when coming
to terms of what it meant to be disabled, was that disability, like
the disks of disability, means not able, but the reasoning for not being
able is not necessarily located in like me, it's not a personal responsibility.
It's a like an immediate flaw with my body. It's a flaw with the
construction of the world around me. And obviously there are elements of my body
that like, yeah, it definitely sucks to have chronic pain and like those
kinds of things. But at the end of the day, everybody has tools.
And if you took away the tools that a regular person has and you
left them just by themselves in any environment, they would struggle. Because we're
in a society where everybody relies on a socially constructed framework that gives them the
ability to do things like you know, walk out in public and not frees
to death and eat and write and speak and type and access you know,
all these other things, and there's nobody out there who's not using these tools.
Yeah, I think that's such a good point, and especially if you
put it because we're not just talking about like high technology. We're talking about
like you know, coats or you know, knives and forks, or just
the ability to like preserve food or that's assaulting it or you know, freezing
it or whatever. And I think one of the things that can happen with
science fiction a lot is that either a the world is presented as though there's
just no one with disabilities anymore, which is, you know, it's very
it's the medical model as opposed to the social model. And as you're talking
about it, I think it's it's like it makes a lot of sense,
I think, especially to non disabled people, but it's very much a racer,
especially to you know, because like I do wish I still had my
leg. But I know many other people for whom you know, they experience
the world in a different way than other people, particularly I think because I
lost mine halfay through my life. I think for a lot of people who
are born certain differences, they're like no, this is better. I'm happy
that I'm different. You know, I just wish that, as you said,
the world wasn't built for other people, which to give an analogy that
maybe a lot of other people can relate to a lot of you may be
young to remember this, a lot of my listeners may well be. But
I went to school at a time when all of the desks were right handed,
because it was just that's what was aptly assumed. I remember, like
I got to was my second year of high school when they started changing that.
We started having left handed desks and things like that. But it was
a real shift because till then, the world wasn't built for me. And
there's still a lot of ways in which you know, I love playing guitar,
but I could learn to play guitar left handed. But then, like
any time a friend like hands me a guitar I camp fire, I probably
can't play it, or I could flip down, or you know, teach
my hands do something weird. And I don't think left handed is is considered
a disability today. One hundred years ago, it probably definitely was, and
it was, you know, something that like we trained out of people,
And so I think that's problematic. I also think the and I've talked about
Daredevil as an example of this, but there's many others situations where people either
use science fiction or magic or some other power that they present a disabled character,
but then basically like the magic or the superpower makes the disability go away.
Yeah, I think that's that's like one of the things that I I
don't like to see in media when the when the technology or the magic just
makes it go away. I think, you know, using like a what
I what I tend to do is use a combination, which is a medical
social model. Right, so there are medical conditions that mean certain people are
going to experience like higher levels of pain, which is going only to higher
levels of fatigue, which just means less time in your day. And that's
like not something society can resolve. But one of the like big examples in
something like Daredevil or even something like you know in Star Wars media, when
people lose limbs. The idea that you could replace it with technology and then
it's not a disability anymore is not completely unrealistic. It's just not being handled
critically because we don't consider people who require glasses to be disabled in you know,
most of modern society, or at least in you know America, Like
when when you go to check the disability box, when you know, filling
out paperwork for an application for something, if you have glasses, that's not
something you're considering, even though by all means, you know, it's vision
impairment and that is, you know, considered a disability when it goes past
a certain extent. Just that we've we've got the technology to basically mean that
it's not impacting your daily life. And that's something about the definition of disability
that's really wishy washy. I think the problem for me in in sci fi
context is when oh, all the disabilities we know of are erased and none
of the new ones are being considered, and none of the small, nitty,
degreety details are being considered. You know, if you can have a
limb replace to your technology, that doesn't mean you're not going to have different
like sensory motor in like experiences. It doesn't mean you're not gonna have to
clean upkeep, but doesn't mean it's not going to cost more. In the
same way that people with glasses have to be more aware of, like not
scratching them cleaning them, paying for them to get replaced, those kinds of
things. It just doesn't necessarily make for like interesting storytelling unless you're paying a
lot of attention to it. Yeah, it's funny. When you brought up
that point about Star Wars and limb replacement, I realized, like, you
know, part is maybe because I saw, like I originally watched Star Wars
when I was very young, and for those who don't know, I lost
my leg when I was twenty one, so like much later. But even
when I rewatched and rewatched, I never saw those characters and thought, oh,
that person is an amputee, Like, yeah, yep, because you're
right, because for me, I have a prosthetic leg and when things are
working well, I can often wear it, and a lot of people tell
me like, oh, you pass like I would have never known, which
is not the compliment people think it is, but more to the point that
idea that I think so often gets wrapped up in that like, but I
think more to the point is just that yeah, every day I have to
clean it. Every day, I have to be careful about it. I
have gained some weight recently, not a huge amount like another like ten pounds
or so, but now my leg has trouble fitting the way it used to.
When the weather gets hot or the weather gets too cold, and just
skin like you know, contracts or expands, it can change the way my
prosthetic leg fits. And it's why I am And again we're talking about some
of the struck media because I think it's okay to reference things because we're not
doing a show specificly on any of these things. We're bouncing around a lot.
But I'll say I don't think Hawkeye was my favorite MCU show. I
don't think it's many people's favorite MCU show, but I think it introduced some
great characters, and for me, Echo was so powerful because and I think
this is I mean, my understanding is that they didn't write her as a
disabled as well. Actually they've been back up there. They wrote her as
a Native deaf character, and it turned out that the Native deaf actress they
found also was an amputee, and so they were like, oh, great,
we'll do both. But all the stuff about her being an amputee was
kind of added by the actress herself, because there are moments where she like
struggles for a second to get her prosthetic leg on or as a child,
she kind of hides the prosthetic. She doesn't want people to see it.
And in combat she even uses it once to kind of block because it's like
a metal rod. Yeah, and it just to me that was really beautiful
that in this world of superpowers, and and you know, we don't know
much about her yet, but still she has she has the hearing loss definitely,
and she also has the disability with her with her legs. Yeah.
I think for me, one of the big things about sci fi and like,
you know, oh, we're depicting disabilities as like quote unquote resolvable through
technology, like resolving things for your limb replacement or like, is the question
of is it is the disabled person there for able bodied people or is the
disabled person there for disabled people? Because like, disabled people want to see
other people like them, who are struggling, who have like issues in our
complex and it's not just that they can get it fixed, because not only
is that like reductionary of what disability is, but it's not. Then they're
no longer relatable in the same way, whereas able bodied people fear being disabled,
and so that they want to see a world where if some tragedy happens
to them, they can be quote unquote fixed because they fear disability and they
want they take comfort and seeing these characters become disabled. But it doesn't really
matter whereas disabled. People want to see people become disabled and take out on
as an identity, right, And I think that's why, particularly with things
like you know, Daredevil, perhaps, although I think this is so much
who about Daredevil, although I'm not visually impaired, so I don't eve the
best person to comment on that, but I've certainly seen others who have.
But for me, like the sort of most recent worst defender and this is
Avatar, where it's this idea of the soldier who's lost the use of his
legs through combat. I think it's a comment I'm even something else, but
that the Avatar program basically allows him to walk again, and it's this real
like it's an you know, they use all the kind of horrible language of
it's a new lease on life and things like that, and that really like
I feel like so much what I love what you say about the fear of
disability, because I think that's what so much of it comes down to,
is this idea of I am so afraid of that, and so I want
to see stories about people who can fix that, or I want to the
same reason why people go crazy every time there's a medical story about Oh look
there's this you know, new breakthrough that for this million dollar technology that I'm
never gonna be a little forward. This person can do something cool with artificial
limb. Yeah. I think Avatar is one that I've definitely spent quite a
lot of time thinking about, because I think I've seen Avatar before. Becoming
like a wheelchair user and then rewatching it was like really interested in the moment
where he gets his new body and he's like he's running and he's overjoyed,
And there was definitely a moment where like that did resonate with me as a
disabled person who had lost the ability to run and used to be an athlete.
And at the same time, it wouldn't have been hard for them to
work in some amount of the struggle of that disability transferring into his new context,
and I was left to wonder, like, oh, this person's ability
to adapt to this new culture in my brain, like this person is able
to take up this entire new world in a radically different way than all of
these other people, and to me that was unseparatable from his disability and like
what it means to become disabled and then have to approach the world in a
whole new way and have to rely on other people and trust other people,
and like that was a story that on surface level, I agree, because
I think the ables are taking the completely wrong message from it. And also
as a disabled person, I feel like I now have a really complex relationship
with and my sister, who's also disabled, has a really complex relationship with
because she's very young and she's always liked magical and fantasy worlds because they've always
been like a form of escape for her, and like not even wants that
specifically show disability, but she is obsessed with Avatar and like the world of
Avatar as magical, and I don't know if she's thinking about the disability aspects,
but like, again, part of me is wondering, like is part
of what resonates here that this person who is disabled is like exploring a whole
new world in a particular way, And why is that not like addressed more
clearly, why is it that only disabled people are thinking about that and able
bodied people are not. It's a great question. I think it's a couple
of reasons that come to mind for me. I mean, like I do
think, and the film kind of briefly touches on this, but not to
the extent that we would want. There is an extent to which disability only
the disability like a place of not being privileged, but there are ways in
which it can take away from other privilege, probably a little bit from whiteness,
but not really, but certainly like and granted I'm not someone who identifies
as male, I'm non binary, but it's slightly mask presenting, and I
I did identify as a man for most of the time I've been disabled.
I came out quite recently to myself, and I definitely found that the male
privilege that I was aware of decreased significantly if I was in the wheelchair.
And that's a whole other topic we could unpack with superheroes and like you know,
all of the body imagery and stuff like that. But I think there's
a way to which I think there is an extent to which I think any
person who is experiences a lack of privilege in one part of their life,
that that can lead to some empathy and some understanding for others, and I
think that there's some real value there, and that's where a lot of intersectionality
happens, but especially where it's recognizing like, oh, I still have privilege
in this area, but I don't in this other. So maybe like the
person who doesn't have privilege either one should be the one speaking for me even
in these kind of things, you know, And again that's a much larger
topic. I'm speaking in generalities, but my point with this is here,
I think you're kind of right that there there's a little bit of an idea
to which Jake, having lost some of his privilege, can maybe understand a
little bit more the Native peoples he's dealing with. But in order to but
in order for the film to acknowledge that, the film would have to acknowledge
that it's one a white savior narrative, which is incredibly racist, I think,
probably problematic towards Native people. Yeah, I fully agree, And I
think to me, like I wasn't even necessarily thinking about the loss of privileges
correlating to the increase of like empathy or something like that. To me,
it was like a on a very physical level, like learning what it is
to navigate the world in a wheelchair, what it means to go through doors,
what it means to interact with people, what it means to have to
absolutely place your trust in life in somebody else's hands, right, like just
knocks you down some pegs. And being able to be confident in a world
that's knocking you down those pigs was like where I saw reflected. But the
privilege element, I think, you know, almost swings in the other direction
in that movie to me, which is that he then regains this privilege as
as soon as he enters an able body, and like does exploit it in
some questionable ways. And like I just I wish, I wish if movies
were paying more attention disability, I think they would be so much more interesting
because it would be such a unique like locus point for these other conversations because
frankly, like issues of gender and race and like queerness all end up relating
to the physical body as well, because men say that women aren't as able
because their body functions X, or people of color aren't is able because like
their immediately identified features are X and their bodies function eggs, and like that
whole conversation just gets skipped over because what disability is used for instead of all
those things, is oh, this is why this person's here, This is
why they're useless before this moment, which is so yeah, just shallow.
It's that or often, especially in stories involving physical violence, disability is the
way to show that there are consequences to violence without removing the character entirely.
So, for example, in Civil War, Roady becomes disabled, you know,
or in other things like the some of the clones become like, you
know, amputee is they're ones who are less likely to appear on screen now,
but like it's very rarely about that person's story. It's generally about the
story of the others who are like, oh god, we feel so sorry
for them, and that's reminding us that all war is terrible and that kind
of thing. And so it's the disabled person is an object lesson instead of
an actual, fully formed character. Yeah, I think that that's absolutely true.
And I think, you know, disability as a as a cliche is
like one of my biggest pet pees is like it's just it's just represented so
one dimentially it's either oh, like this is a consequence, this is a
punishment, this is you know, the product of evil manifesting itself in some
sort of way, or you know, this is a plot tool, This
is a plot device. This is an angle we're going to put so that
we can get this character to go. And it's not it's not like an
actual part of the characters. It's like an add on, right. Yeah,
well, especially because like you know, I know you were talking about
being an athlete. Both you and I lived a part of our lives as
able bodied and then something changed, either gradually or or much more quickly in
my case. But that we're not the overwhelming majority, but I means I
don't know. My sense is that actually we are the minority. But either
way, it's pretty close. Of people who are just born with disabilities,
you know, who are born with only one leg, are born with you
know, spine problems or whatever. It is. Another thing that I think
is a part of this is that and this is true about kind of all
media, but I think especially in these stories where we could have so much
more, is that you know, I had Caged Bishop Cosplay on a couple
of episodes ago who talked about being a black nerd and what that meant to
him, and he talked about how important it was to him, you know,
he wanted to see stories about superheroes who were dealing with their blackness while
being you know, and dealing with the racism that comes with it, not
like dealing with their blackness, but just you know, experiencing their their blackness
and their black community in a superhero narrative. But also they wanted to see
people who just like they were superheroes and they were black and like it didn't
matter, you know, and like to me that, yeah, I do
want to see uh. Like, in some ways, Echo is kind of
both because so much of her stories about her hearing loss, but her amputation,
her prosthetic leg or like barely a part of it. And you know,
I there are definitely some good examples, but I think it's it's it's
hard to see both. Yeah. I think the you know, the devils
and the details, which is like I've heard a lot of people of are
complaining about the trope of you know, people are remaking live action movies and
just putting a black character in a previously white characters place and saying that that's
representation and being like, well, you like, you change the skin color,
but you didn't change the story. And it doesn't reflect like like the
experience of black people for brown people. And more than that, like the
details aren't right because the story was written for a white person. And I
think the same is true of disability, which is like I do want to
see people who are just disabled and like it's just a part of their story,
and they don't. We don't need to see them part. Like a
story doesn't need to revolve around them struggling with it or confronting it. But
the details have to be right for that to work. You can't just slap
a disability on someone and call it representation. Yeah. No, I think
it's really true. I think it's really good. I see yet and I
want to start getting into more specific examples. But I wanted to tell a
quick story because it literally happened to me last night, and this is part
of what got me thinking about being like, Okay, we need to make
this episode happened asaph yesterday I was flying home from Las Vegas and we've been
from a magic event, and as I normally do, I rolled my wheelchair
all the way down to the end of the gate, you know, just
in that kind of a little round area right before you board the plane,
and I folded my wheelchair up. I made sure that the pink tag is
on it, that that tags it to let the baggage handlers know, like
it goes back to me. And got on the plane and went to my
seat as I always have, and then got off the plane, and you
know, I was waiting for a while and said, where's my wheelchair?
Finally when someone from the baggage and they're like, oh, we didn't see
a wheelchair, and I just said that walked off, and then I said
to a flight attendant, like where I think they left my wheelchair behind?
And they went, oh, okay, why don't we get you. We'll
get you another wheelchair so we can just get you up to the gate.
We can figure out what happened. And throughout the whole process, these folks
were all treating it though as though I had lost a bag, you know,
as though this was an inconvenience, but it wasn't really a big deal,
and they were even willing to, you know, eventually after some coasting
like because off I do ever press the back leg they can sometimes use,
but I'm never gonna be able to walk like all the way from the gate
to you know, the end of an airport, but especially that day,
I you know, I'd had some issues going on and I couldn't get my
leg to fit that night, so I couldn't use the leg, and I
had a kind of slave with them, like look, this isn't you know,
just a oh, it's a little bit inconvenient, like I don't have
a way to get anywhere, and you know, they were like, oh,
no, don't worry. We have a wheelchair you can use. And
again there it was like, well, a, I have a motorized wheelchair
like sort of a I have a specially made like hybrid of electric manual.
But also I'm a large person. I've gained some weight. But even when
I was in like great shape, I was a bear. I the normal
weird chair is too narrow for me. I have especially made a wheelchair.
And I finally got some people to understand and and get them to realize that
like getting it back to me a week later instead of you know, was
not acceptable. And they did get it back to me this morning. But
I realized that like no one there was a malfeasance. No one was mad
at me, no one thought I'm cursed by God. They just didn't understand
why this was such a big deal. And I think that, you know,
I think there's lots of reasons for it. And I'm not, you
know, tipp or Gore trying to like blame everything on the media by a
means, but I do think the fact that we get these stories again and
again that don't really help people understand. Like I know lots of people who
have named their wheelchairs or decorated their wheelchairs and like kind of the way people
do with their cars, and they have a real sort of like a personality
to their because it's it's a fundamental part of who you are. Yeah,
I mean, people definitely treat it like it's a more of a tool than
a full integration into a disabled person's body and life, Like wheel chairs are
an extension of disabled people's bodies and should be treated as such and just are
nod. Yeah, And I think that's true for wheelchairs, but also true
for walkers. It's true for hearing aids, it's true for true for glasses.
You know it can be. So So with that, let's talk about
more specific examples. What are some places where you think and I s let's
do some of the positive first, because you know, we've talked him about
a lot of the negatives. Let's let's talk about some of the positives.
What are stories where you see disability really being done? Well, yeah,
it's not quite sci fi, but it is definitely fantasy. I think one
of my all time favorites is Tough from Avatar The Last Airbender. It's not
perfectly done, but it's very well done. I think they're for those who
don't know that characters. Can you talk about a little about what the disability
is, how it's expressed. Tough is blind. She is also a bender,
so she has magical abilities that allow her to someone on her own accommodate
for her blindness. But it's not a perfect system. So when she's on
structures that are unstable, like things like sand, she can't feel the vibrations
in the way that she might be able to elsewhere, and so she does
have to rely more on others or other tools. And throughout the show we
see her both like using her like working with her disability and alongside her disability,
and we see it impact her life in the way you would expect disability
impact her life, and it is very much like a part of her character
that she owns and is aware of and is comfortable in, and that's just
really refreshing to me. Yeah, I really love those stories and to me,
like one of my favorite scenes with her that really kind of again reminded
us like, no, she is still disabled. There there's a series of
episodes where they're fighting on sand and she talked because it's part of it.
She has this sort of mystical connection to the ground, and so that's how
she sees things is by hearing the vibrations of feeling the vibrations to her feet
of how people walk, and so for example, when she's up on their
sky buffalo flying it's terrifying to her, or when she's on sand where she
can't feel those vibrations she's blind, you know, And I just thought it
was such a brilliant way of being Like, like you said, yeah,
the power compensate. It's too large extent, but it's not perfect. Yeah,
yeah, I think it's definitely like she has come up with a system
to navigate the world and it works for her, and she is fortunate enough
to be able to have skills that allow her to have that system. But
at the end of the day, she's still disabled. Person. There's there's
one I want to hear more of your examples, but there's one of their
beautiful moment I want to mention, which is where they find a sign like
I think the lists like some important information on one of their quests, and
she asks what it's about, and one of them holds it in front of
her and she has to be like, guys, I'm blind. Yeah,
because the whole thing is that, like they often can forget, but it's
like, no, it still means he can't do those things. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm definitely like struggling to think of other like sci fi examples right
now for some reason. So I'll say that. In the Stormline Archives by
Brandon Sanderson, which are books that I know many many people love, I
really wrestled with them because the magic system is so dense. Every third word
is a word he invented, and I just it's one of those like you
know your literal language by total immersion, and this one there's no point of
view character who's new to the world like you're supposed to as the reader learned
by total immersion. Many people love that. I have the most respect for
it. I cannot do it, so I couldn't. I didn't finish any
of the other books, but I did. There's a short story book that
I wish I could remember the name of, but it's about a woman who
is disabled and she gets some of the kind of like magic power. A
lot of the magic power that they have is through these kind of like artifacts
that have magic power in them, and she gets kind of this like magical
wheelchair that she can use, which is really great, but it still has
problems and sometimes it doesn't fit, and sometimes like Sam gets in the gears
and stuff like that, And it was just another It was this beautiful example
to me of like this person gets that technology doesn't instantly make it fit,
you know. Yeah, it's just such a big difference. Yeah. I've
never read the storm Light Archives, but I have heard good things about it.
Yeah, I think one of the other characters that I was just I
was trying to like jove my brain about characters in sci fi. I do
really enjoy X Men. I think that I a lot of people have read
X Men as like an analogy for queerness, and I think I always read
it as an analogy for disability. Disability was present in my life, like
in family members and I was like chronically ill from birth, and I did
always read X men as analogy for disability, but more specifically, there are
like X men who are disabled like Professor X, and I think that's a
space where representation is done very diversely across a broad group of people, and
like disability is done very diversely across a broad group of people, for sure,
And the story isn't told perfectly, but one thing I do really appreciate
in the X Men. I think it's in Days of Future Past where this
is brought up. But basically there's a point in time where he's able to
take drugs that allow him to walk again, but they also suppress his mutant
abilities, and that at some point in time he chooses willingly to go back
to being unable to use his legs in order to also have the mental power.
And it's not really touched on, but it's a powerful lesson of like
being in a wheelchair is not the end of the world, yea, and
sometimes like it could be, because I think that is off again. It's
the like, well, anything is better than being in a wheelchair, like
and if her press jacts is like, no, that's not true. Yeah,
I think the other story that definitely like stuck with me quite a bit
was, you know, not all the mutants have abilities that are considered favorable.
And I do not remember her name now for some ridiculous reason, but
like the girl who touches yeah road and the storyline where it's like, oh,
we have the ability to cure mutants, and you know, she's interested
in that and gets in line, and there are other mutants who are like,
what are you doing? Why would you do? That seems resonant of
discussions that happen in disabled communities all the time, because like, there are
deaf people who think co clears are like, you know, destroying the community,
and then there are deaf people who are like cochlears are allowing people to
hear. Again, this is amazing, and it's so much more complicated than
than a fixed all solution that is a lot of time presented in media.
I think that's so true. And I think with definis especially, I know
many, not all, but many deaf people don't even consider that to be
a disability. They consider it to be a difference, and so it's always
a little tricky talking about it. But I think you're right it's a very
good in many ways. That plant line, which I know is told both
in comics and in the animated show and in the movies, is a great
analogy for that in the deaf community, but also in a lot of other
communities, you know, I think there's there's definitely like I am happy being
on asthetic leg quite a lot. Excuse me, I am happy being in
my prosthetic leg quite a lot. I know imputs who just don't ever want
it. I know other people who have, you know, like nerve damage
their legs or something like that, and they could learn to walk with crutches
or something like that, but they've chosen very consciously not to. And I
think that that's these are all viable options. Yeah, I think you know,
my the genetication I have as eilor stands, and it's like incredibly complex
and incredibly painful, and for me, it manifests mostly as just extreme amounts
of pain and an inability to walk or stand. And people often ask me,
like, would if you could press a button, like would to make
it go away? Would you? And I'm honestly surprised that I think ninety
nine percent of the time my answer is actually know that. I do think
being a disabled person is, like it a way of life that has just
changed me so drastically in positive and neutral ways that I now value that like
I wouldn't I wouldn't undo it, and I wouldn't go back and like say
it had never happened. But then there are definitely the days where I'm like,
I'm just in so much pain that I like, I would do anything
to make this stop. And it's that that's what I like about, you
know, things going on in particularly the X Men universes that it does go
back and forth and it does fluctuate, and the superhero bilities are seen at
the same time, both like new types of disabilities and new types of like
superhero powers, which is I think something that's maybe going to become a discussion
in The Boys at some point or in that universe at some point. So
I'm interested to see where that goes me too, Me too for sure.
And it's funny you were talking about those reasons. Perhaps this is a little
more self focused, but I was thinking, well, if I get my
legs back, I don't get to cut the line all the time. I
want to like fly or things like that. Yeah, my now spouse said
that she was like, you know, she made a joke of like we
should get married some day. The first time we flew to Japan and just
there's just like two hour customs line and we just like cut right through it.
Ye. But yeah, but also all that, you know, as
I said before, like I don't think I would have my understanding of toxic
masculinity, and like I either, though I'm not mail, I was very
and this is such a sticky topic, would be very clear. I'm only
speaking for myself. There are many trans people who were never enculturated into the
gender that they were assigned at birth as I was. I absolutely was raised
and had a lot of mail, you know, toxic toxic masculinity and mail
the attendant male privilege ingrained in me. And I've had a long journey of
unpacking it and breaking it down, and a journey that isn't over and we're
all you continue most of my life. But my disability has been a really
big part of that. Yeah, way, it is super important. I
mean I was, I was assigned female at birth, identify mostly as female
now, and I had a lot of toxic masculinity that needed unpacking by nature
of just like the area I grew up in, And I do think disability
contributed to that unpacking and contributed to like understanding even what people of color are
talking about or immigrants are talking about when like they talk about being hyper visible.
It's like, Oh, I was in a wheelchair and suddenly embody was
staring at me, and like, oh, this is what people need,
and like you shouldn't. We shouldn't have to have disabled experiences to be able
to understand those things, and like it's an unfortunate thing that like I had
to become disabled to understand that, and there's no guarantee I wouldn't have kind
of understood at some point anyway, but I was young, and I do
think that like the way that disability hit me did just create like it tore
down my world, which meant that I had to refigure out everything, which
means I had to go back to point zero and I had to say,
Okay, what does the world actually look like? And that's like an invaluable
experience. Yeah, I think that's very true. And I think there's so
much there that you talk about because it's not easy. It's not one side
of the other, Like I think one thing that can be very dangerous,
to be honest, and I have seen this with disability, but I've also
seen it, like I've seen this in a number of situations where people who
are used to having a great deal of privilege, so they have one part
in their life that they don't have privilege, and it's that there can be
this idea of also therefore to races all your other privilege, you know,
and like, yes, I'm disabled, and like you know that you put
a person and who like a black trans woman in ninety percent of the situations,
is going to be a lot he's going to there's gonna be a lot
more struggles that person deals within the world than I will. But that person
can walk up a five stairs but I can't. And you know, and
but that the same thing is to be like for them. And this is
what I think I see all the time is when it then becomes, oh,
well, because I'm disabled, I understand all your struggles entirely, and
we're just the same. And I think that's one where you know, there
are a lot of ways that one kind of struggle can help inform you about
other kind of struggles. And sometimes it's just purely you know, a understanding
across things. In some it's because it's similar. I've one of the most
important events that I've ever attended was a conference though specifically on trans and disability
and looking in all the ways that they're linked, and you know, from
everything from like the question of passing to the question of you know, the
medicalization of both situations and all the questions people can ask you. And it
was great, but it wasn't the same, and I think that that needs
a mistake for people to make. Yeah, I think for me, what
like the spot I was able to get to was it became so clear that
nobody who wasn't disabled understood disability, and then I became so much easier to
understand, Okay, I'm not trands, I'm not black, I'm not an
immigrant, I'm never going to understand these things, and like, I have
to just stop at a certain point trying to intellectualize and understand and imagine myself
in scenarios and just listen to people who are saying things because like, no
one's ever gonna like I know that these able bodied people are never going to
get disability, and so that needs to be turned around as well. But
I think you're right, because you know, one of the things I think
that you hear so often in any representation discussion is that a lot of times
there's all you know, all the microaggressions, all the little things that happen.
That's why even aggressions, but just little things that your life is different,
that are I can genuinely generally understand some ideas of racism, but there's
levels of which that I'm never going to understand. And in the same way
with disability, and I think that's part of why having these stories told,
as you said, they get it wrong. Like with Echo's story, there
were so many of these just little moments that I saw and I know we're
getting her own show, it might be her own movie, and like who
knows what's happening now in the strike, and I don't want anything done until
the strike's over. Hopefully it's happening soon, but exactly. But like for
me, I know as a disabled person, one of the things that I
have to do that most people, like most you would think like, oh,
they lost people wheelchair, that's bad. There's a flight of stairs you
didn't know the stairs, that's bad. I don't think most people, my
friends understand that, Like I will often ask them for a lot of details
about plans that other people are arranging, or I'll want to arrange the plans.
And part of it's because I have to very carefully plan out how am
I going to approach the world, you know. You know, I might
think, oh, friends of mine wanted to go out and we're just going
to go to this one restaurant and then seeing some karaoke there and then come
back, and I'll think cool, I could just take my prosthetic leg,
But then I find out, oh, and yeah, they want to just
you know, then take a ten block walk to this great dessert place.
I can't do that right Or the flip side, I bring my wheelchair,
you know. I mean often if I bring me a wheelchair, I'm going
to wear shorts so that I can take my leg on or off. But
if we're going out somewhere fancy, then maybe I should bring pants, or
maybe I should bring a change of clothes or all this kind of stuff,
And I want to be careful. This podcast hasn't just becoming you're in my
issues that they're worth talking about, but it's just more to say, like
this is why that kind of representation matters so much, you know that I
want to see something good. I was just gonna say, I think,
like, I think the reason that like we keep turning back to personal experiences
it is just because their experiences that are not depicted in media. It would
be so easy to just add like this small detail of like watching a character
change the pants because they went out to a nicer place, or you know,
watching someone who's in a wheelchair go, oh, actually, like we
need to go this way because like I can't go that way. Like those
are such tiny moments you can write into a story without adding time, without
adding additional sets, without really changing anything, and just paying attention to those
details, which I think, you know it goes to you need to disabled
people in the story writing process and directing process on set. But like,
just having those details and showing those experiences is so important to teaching other people
who have no idea that these are the considerations we go through every day when
we go out into the world. And the reason they have no idea is
because these experiences are only something that I talked about. When too disabled people
get into the same room, we talk about them. Well, I think
that's so true. And the more I think about it, also wonder,
you know, if I, as a white person watch a story of racism,
I want to empathize, I want to sympathize, but there's some part
of me that's always going to know that not only am I not black,
I'm never going to be black, I'm never going to be indigenous. And
I think for a lot of people that it makes it almost safe to watch
that because it's never going to be you. The medical reality is, I
don't know, there's some statistics are so that's at one hundred percent. I
don't think that's true. But a huge amount of people will become disabled at
some point in their life, either temporary, like you know, and it
might just be like you badly break your ankle and so you're in a wheelchair
for a year or six months or even just a month, or it could
be you know, you know, just that one doctor's visit where all of
a sudden they tell you, yeah, your eyes are really starting to fail,
or something in your brain is changing, or you know, just you
fall down a flight of stairs and your knees never quite the same again.
And so I do wonder if maybe that's also a part of it is that
because like what you said about the fear, I wonder if this is part
of that fear, is that it's because most people at some level, no,
they always could anyone could become disabled at any time in a way it's
not true for a lot of the other kind of areas of privilege. Yeah,
I think that's definitely one of the hesitations of putting disabled people on screen
and seeing them have any sort of complication. I also do just think it
comes down to, like the people treat disabled people like their aliens and like
and the presence have disabled people in sci fi like shows that like they literally
just have no idea where to even start, because your average person has no
idea that like, I pay attention to which doors are slightly wider in building
so that I have a lower probability of bumping into a door when I go
in out of it just because it's awkward, and like, yeah, you
just you're literally seeing the world in a different way that people are just absolutely
not thinking about because they're not No one's thinking about the nitty gritty detail of
like, oh, what does it mean to have this character without an arm
put on a shirt and would they put it on differently, you know,
they'd say there's a trope I think in a lot of science fiction or fantasy,
and like the Jedi Temple is definitely like this where you see characters sort
of like walking up this long fight of stairs, and it's a way to
show like not even not a flight of stairs, but like outdoor stairs,
and it's a way to show like the majesty of this building. I've always
wondered, where's the wheelchair entrance to the Jedi Temple, you know, like
I hope there is one, but we're something never going to see it,
always see is you know. I was actually thinking about that exact thing.
Oh day, because oh my goodness, I cannot remember his name. There's
another disabled TikTok creator, and I will try and get their name to you
after this because I'll want to look it up and find it. And they
make videos they're like would it be accessible or not? Or like would they
be an ally or not? And one of the things that came up was
like the Death Star is like almost absolutely accessible, and I was like,
oh yeah, we never put stairs. Like with the exception of like gothic
kind of aesthetics, a lot of times in sci Fi, the places without
stairs are really clean and sterile and evil looking and like where the scientists are
and the bad guys are because they lack detail and sophistication and so there's no
stairs, and it's like, oh, oh, that's so interesting. I
don't It was just something that I was thinking about because in Stars specifically,
all the bad guy places are super like clean and like almost hospitally and really
accessible looking, and all the good guy places, I mean partially by nature
of the fact that like any rebellion on the run, but they're all way
less accessible looking because they're grittier and you know in these old ancient areas that
are like super leveled and sprawling. Yeah, no, yeah, it's very
true. Like and it's one thing I was thinking about recently because you know,
I was trying to think where I was. I was in this convention
center hotel over the week when I was in Vegas, and for some reason,
I just kept noticing the you know, fire safety signs, and when
then they all said, is you know, in case of fire used stairs?
Yeah, which is just and I get that, Like, I like,
it's not that I like, of all the ways that I want buildings
to be disability, you know, made more accessible, making the elevator's fireproof.
It's pretty low down on my list, but it's just one more of
those things. I'm glad we brought up that because I do want to talk
about as kind of the last topic, because I kind of think he's gonna
tie everything together because I know you and I are both such huge Star Wars
fans. We've joked a lot about this, and we talked a little bit
about with the ampts and things like that, But overall, how do you
feel like Star Wars handles disability? I think that in a lot of ways.
Okay, I think the original trilogy is super, super problematic, mostly
because of the fact that Luke's losing his hand is then portrayed as his like
similarity with Vader, and Vader is portrayed as monstrous because of the fact that
he is largely made of robotic components, and like that whole analogy going on
there. Don't like it. I think in more recent years Star Wars has
gotten much better. I think the prequels did a much better job. I
think we see Anakin, you know, losing his hand, and I dealing
with that a little bit more I think we see you know, we see
it just health portrayed a little bit more in the prequels, and then I
think by the time we've gotten to Disney owning Star Wars, I know there
are several novelizations that really intricately and well like in a well done way handle
disability. I think there are a couple episodes of the Clone Wars where we
see disabled people a little bit more favorite favorably. I think things like Rogue
one and Sacarrera was a good like this person's crew disabled. I have no
idea how, I don't know the specifics at all, but they're just here
and they're just being disabled and it's not a part of the story at all.
But that was just refreshing to see. I know Sacarrera is people have
his portrayal is not necessarily entirely positive, but like for me, that was
just I was just like, Oh, cool disabled person. And I think
they're getting better at it, and I think that it's a it's a complex
bag of beans because Star Wars is so all over the place when it comes
to representation of all forms and its developments since the seventies. Yeah, it's
a story, it's been told over more than forty five years. And it's
so interesting though, because some of the examples you brought up, like Saw,
I had a wildly different interpretation of because you know, he clearly well
he walks with a limp, and actually he has a prosthetic leg, which
is you know, I think, uh, you know, awesome, that
that was cool to see. But the way his body's mechanicized, especially like
the way he sort of uses a breathing mask to me, is very reminiscent
of Darth Vader, and I thought that was supposed to to represent you know
that, you know that because you know how Anakin fell is by you know,
wanting to go to extreme methods to do what he thought was right and
then of course also protecting padme, And that's kind of saw His problem here
is that he's also willing to like torture people to find out if they are
spies or they're here to help him in that kind of thing. Yeah,
But but I think it's here's the thing. It's because we have so few
characters, right that it's like, oh, yeah, well that's one of
the three. Yeah. A lot of times for me, I'm just like,
oh, I'm so refreshed to see a disabled character, and I'm not
even thinking about, like, oh, how are the able it's going to
read this in terms of like, yeah, this is supposed to be a
negative Oh okay, Yeah, no, I get that. And I definitely
agree with you on the original trilogy, although I would say, and granted,
I perhaps I'm overly critical of the prequels, and that's that's a very
fair comment to make. I think the most like ablest moment in All Star
Wars comes in the prequels, because to me, I think some of the
best disability representation in the original trilogy is Yoda, because Yoda is kind of
stumped older. He walks with a cane, which you know is a kind
of disability, and he still has this incredible power to lift this X wing
out from a swamp let alone, to like you know, read the future,
and to help train Luke and all these things. We again see him
as this like, you know, disabled person using a cane. He can't
really even stand upright all the time. And then it becomes time for the
lightsaber battle. Yeah, and he just throws his cane away and becomes this
acrobatic little ground ball bouncing around the lightsaber and everyone else thought this was so
cool and I was so angry. Yeah, I think I you know,
I started to think about Yoda as you were talking, and I thought about
him in the contest of the original trilogy, and positive I didn't even think
about the prequel implication. I think, Ah, I go so far back
and forth because like my initial reaction to that, I think was like,
oh, why is he doing? Like it just felt out of place.
But I am also an ampulatory military user who and I'm not sure if I
could do this now, but I think a year and a half ago,
like in the in the recent past, while I was using a wheelchair full
time, was training two three times a week over the summer in tae Kwonto
and got my third degree black belt because I would just use my wheelchair all
day long, and the very little energy that I had all went into this
project, and it was very limited. I had maybe an hour or two
where I could perform at that level and then it fell apart and I was
in excruciating pain the next day. But like, this was something that I
wanted to work towards and to me in that initial fight with Doogu and later
in the fight with Palpatine. You know, Yoda is pretty exhausted by the
end, and I think they do it a little letter in the fight with
Doogu, and they do in the fight with Palpatine, and it definitely feels
out of place in a lot of ways. But I'm not and I don't.
And the other thing is, I also know there's no way the writers
of the show was thinking about it in that way or and it could have
been treated in a much more nilance and interesting way that would have depicted ambulatory
or dynamic disability. But I think, to me, there something kind of
relieving about, oh, these this disabled character can tap into the forest for
these moments of energy where they really need to perform in a love but they
otherwise cannot. And as a particularly as a martial artist, that was that
was interesting to me, even though obviously there are it's beyond the pale.
I think, I think I can definitely understand that, and that makes a
lot of sense, And I like, I like you am also ambulatory,
And then I use my prosthetic leg a lot. I'm using it less these
days. But and again that's the kind of planning for me often is the
way you were kind of like planning your day around this. You know,
if I'm going on a four day trip and I know this night we're gonna
go out dancing. Although okay, so I will absolutely not use my leg
except for that because it's you know, it's it's most saving energy. But
it's also like I started to get scabbed. I mean, there's this whole
let of thing. And I think it comes back to her saying before.
It's not that I would say like, no, Yoda has to use the
cane always and forever. It's that I just want that one line of dialogue.
Yep, you know it's that you know, you know, uh,
bail organa coming him in the ship and mean like are you okay? And
he say, I had to draw deeply on the force so that I could
use my body to fight, and now I really have to rest. You
know, some acknowledgement that he is fighting was radically different than he's using the
cane, and that there's a cost to him of using all of that you
know, energy or spoons or whatever the heck or force or whatever you want
to call it. Yeah, I absolutely agree, And I think you know
that goes back to like it's there's so many different ways to portray disability,
it's kind of hard to like get it so unbelievably wrong. The question is
what's the message, what's the story, what's the reasoning? And is this
a is this an add on or is this a part of the character.
And if it's a part of the character, why are there not these little
details that they're absolutely could and should be to send a clear message to your
audience, like this person is disabled and that's okay, And we're not using
this as a metaphor allegory or a negative or a drawback or a weird add
on to create some sort of effect. M. Yeah, No, I
think you're right, and I think that's it's as I said before, it's
very clear there wasn't a disabled person in that writing room. Yeah. I
don't think it's written in a writing room, and I think the writing of
you know, never mind. But like you know, I think and I
don't think they were trying to tell a story about how Yoda is a person
of variable ability, you know, and a fluid ability. I think they
just thought watching a little green ball of ford bounced around with the lightsaberworth a
really cool so let's do it and didn't think about what the ilocations were.
I agree. I agree. Well, this has been such a good discussion.
I'm really glad we've got to have it. I know we just barely
scratched the service, but I hope we give a listeners kind of a good
introduction, isn't it the last points that you want to bring up? And
I will say for our members, we're going to talk a little bit more
about AHAB and disability in the members only section, but just in general,
kind of any of the last promit's points you wanted to make. Yeah,
I don't think so. I think you know, at the end of the
day, for me, sci fi representation and any representation of disability just comes
down to, like, have you interacted with disabled people and are you considering
disabled people as disabled people and not just like people with a disability slapped onto
them. Yeah, And I think the phrase people there is so important because
you know, like you said, like you and I have a particular you
and I are share a lot of similar opinions, but also probably see some
things differently, and so like you know, you might go to one disabled
person who I know, there are you know, some visually impaired people who
you know, understand the story of data novel. I think it's absolutely amazing,
and some who think it's incredibly you know, offensive, and and a
lot of people who are like, yeah, it's just not it's a fun
story, but it's not the best. I don't feel represented in it,
and and yeah, so it seems like with any community it's important not just
have like you know, your one disabled friend, but all the rest of
it. Well, thank you as always so much. For people who want
to find more of the cool content you're putting out, where can they find
you? Yeah, I am on Instagram, I do art at Iron Kingdom
Adventures, and then I'm on TikTok at a King Maiden. Yeah, definitely
worth checking out. Really glad to level all your content. Love following it,
definitely encourage other people to do so, and of course you should follow
our content. We're active on TikTok on Twitter. I may be doing more
stuff on Facebook again. I kind of dropped out for a little while,
but I maybe doing with that again. But also you can certainly email us.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, love to hear comments if you're disabled,
Like, who are characters that have really felt did represent you or didn't
were like points the conversation we missed out if you're able bodied or just you
know, it's not two firm boxes. There's lots of middle ground. But
wherever you sit, what do you think about this discussion? What'd you agree
with? What'd you disagree with? What did you wish we touched on?
Or I think we should have approached a different way right in, we'd love
to hear us. And of course, also if you just go to the
Ethical Panda, you'll get there. But also if you just follow the links
in the show notes there especially you can find out how to become a member.
It's only five dollars a month, and membership gets you add free content,
bonus content, and she's a great way to support the show. So
okay, thank you again so much. Uh for everyone else we have spoken