I know, I know, I still owe you guys the second half of the access/accomodation post, it’s just that this popped up and I wanted to talk about it…
I’m sure that every person with a disability has at some point encountered the pity effect. This is fresh on my mind right now because someone at reddit.com responded to my post about needing help to get a service dog by asking ‘Why should I pity you?’
I can speak with confidence to say that the vast majority of us do not want to be pitied. Sometimes we want help, sometimes we want sympathy, sometimes we just want someone to give a damn. But pity? No.
Self-help books and presentations everywhere speak to the uselessness of wallowing in self-pity. It’s a waste of energy, it doesn’t help, it really gets you stuck on your problem and doesn’t let you think of solutions, so on.
If self-pity is so bad, then why do we ever think that pitying others is good?
When someone is pitied, they stop being a human being to the person who is pitying them. Instead, they are a thing – an object. We become a disability, a problem, a sad story.
It sets us apart. When people pity, they feel guilty when they interact with that person, so it becomes ‘painful’ – and that ‘pain’ gets transferred to us, so that people who pity see US as painful! Nevermind that what’s painful is their reaction to us, and choosing to see us as a pitiful thing instead of a fellow human being.
Okay, so many of us need help.
Would you pity someone who asked you to grab something off the top shelf because they are too short to reach it?
Would you pity someone who asked you to help set up for a party because they don’t have the time to do everything?
Would you pity someone who needed help with a door because their hands were full of groceries?
Then why pity us when we need help?
~Kali
Kali, this post really hits the nail on the head. Do you mind if I link it at mine?
Please feel free to!
This is so true – I often think of the example of people getting things off a high shelf. It’s interesting to see where the line is for people: what specific things or situations trigger that “disabled pity” perception for them and which don’t? And why? And there’s times when I make a request that anyone might make, but because I “look disabled”, other people act strange.
The high shelf example is one that I’ve used for myself pretty much since I got sick. As I’m 5’2, it’s one that really worked for me because I have had to ask someone to reach for the top shelf relatively often.
It’s funny, I’ve noticed that my aids make a difference in the disabled pity analysis – when people can’t see my knee and ankle braces (which look pretty heavy duty industrial, I’m sure you’re familiar with that particular phenomenon), they don’t respond much to my forearm crutches, other than occasionally holding doors open. People still seem to think that if we’re walking towards each other, I should go around them rather than vice versa, and that I should be able to carry things for myself, and so on. I add the braces and suddenly people are a lot more conscious of what I can and can’t do. At events, I wear a wrist brace to avoid handshakes (which have a high potential for dislocating something), and everyone always asks, with wide eyes ‘What happened?!’ They respond to the knee and ankle braces in much the same way.
Oh do I ever hate the way that perfectly normal requests from a person with a disability get treated oddly! I so often hear clerks in supermarkets offer help to the car, but when I ask for it they look at me like it’s something strange to request. People seem to think it’s a big deal to hold doors, or hold elevators, or push elevator buttons for me, when non-disabled people ask for that stuff all the time.