The Whole Mess

Part 1 of 8

Now that I’ve moved into the maintenance stage of having had breast cancer, I’m finally feeling like I can put my attention and focus back into dating seriously. Unfortunately, there are very few readily available role models for dating while disabled. That’s why I was intrigued to break open Datable by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp.

It was a great read and brought up several issues that I had a felt sense of but had not yet put into words. As disabled people, we are too often saddled with assumptions and barriers. So much so that a significant number of nondisabled people readily admit to not being willing to date a disabled person. Other than continually work to change assumptions about who we are and what it means to be in relationship with us, there’s really not much else we can do. As Slice and Cupp put it, “we can demand legislation mandating that a building must have an elevator, but we can’t make laws about attraction, love, or self-confidence. (p. 31)” We end up, as Slice and Cupp put it, “crip-zoned” (p. 33).

Disabled people live in this strange paradox where we’re “both captivatingly interesting and utterly invisible… we can go from way too visible to utterly invisible in a hot minute” (p. 32). It can be challenging to find a healthy sense of self-esteem and vulnerability when we’re either “objectified or erased” (p. 33).

It’s an act of rebellion to like my body. —Sarah Todd Hammer

As anybody who doesn’t fit the cultural ideal of cisgender, heterosexual, white, with symmetrical facial features, and slender, knows, the farther away we get from this nearly impossible target, the less likely we’ll be considered desirable. Even if a person can hit all or most of these ideals, if they’re disabled, that’s an automatic mark against them.

Cupp shares a story where an older man paused to tell her that even though she’s disabled, she was “still pretty” (p. 38). I’ve received similar “compliments” from strangers (inevitably from cis men). I was once slowly hobbling down the sidewalk using a walker when out of nowhere I hear someone yell to me, “It’s okay, you’re still gorgeous, baby!” And like Cupp, I wasn’t quite sure how to react. On the one hand, fuck you, I’m disabled and gorgeous, but also, oh wow, someone still thinks I’m pretty even though I don’t fit a cultural ideal.

It’s important to remember that real beauty is “about seeing our bumps and scars, twists and turns, shrunken places and bulging joints not as liabilities to be hidden or apologized for but as part of the way we tell the stories of our lives” (p. 40). Simultaneously, it’s important to acknowledge that we can’t always be superhuman in our optimism and self-esteem. Doing so doesn’t “leave a lot of space for discontent, longing, or grief, for rough edges or not feeling #blessed. For hesitancy around being just who we are, right at this moment” (p. 43).

Recognizing beauty is about holding the entirety of our experiences, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s accepting our wholeness outside the bounds of mainstream beauty standards, and even our own expectations to only ever be strong in the face of other people’s bullshit. It is only through wholeness, the whole mess if you will, that we can come to a place of true acceptance.

Slice shares an especially powerful insight about dating apps in general, and how they impact disabled daters specifically with regard to desirability:

“Swiping right or left in a split second on an entire, complicated person is, at its core, degrading. But the insult of these platforms is heightened when a whole group of people is, in effect, excluded. Hardly anyone would argue that dating apps provide a humane system in which the beautiful nuances of people are celebrated. Every person is commodified into visual indicators of their superficial worth—conventional attractiveness, socioeconomic status, education. While scrolling, we fire off our most insecure and unexamined judgments in order to find a romantic connection. Sloppy. Dangerous” (p. 55).

She goes on to add that “if we insist on mentioning our disability, we are often ignored. When we aren’t ignored, we are objectified and disrespected” (p. 55). The book provides several examples of experiments people have conducted where they either show or hide their mobility devices on dating app profiles. The difference in number and quality of responses is staggering.

Dating while disabled is to hide our disabilities and being accused of “tricking” a nondisabled person into connecting with us, or showing our lived experience and risk being ignored altogether. It’s a lose-lose situation. Speaking from a purely anecdotal experience, I’ve found this to be less the case while dating as disabled and queer, but there is no doubt in my mind that my unabashedly sharing my disability status has an impact on who is willing to swipe right on my profile.

As Slice later warns, “Don’t join an app to find evidence of your worth” p. 59.