This is really, really important. Today I attended a rally on campus in solidarity with Emma Sulkowicz. I was the only person there using an aid to walk. All the people around me kept asking me to help them carry a mattress, and I wanted to say âare you kidding me? I canât even hold myself up.â My attendance was greeted with stares, and when I remarked that we were walking too fast for me to feasibly keep up, someone told me that, perhaps, I shouldnât have come.
As if being disabled closed me off from the activist community. As if I didnât have a right to be there.
When you are sick, you are excused from the daily act of living. You have an automatic pass at social events, a free seat on the bus, a place a the head of the line at amusement parks. They say that they are accommodating you, like it was a massive feat for them, like you should be grateful. They pride themselves for their rear-entry wheelchair ramps and single-stall bathrooms, while refusing to take into account the fact that, in spite of (or perhaps even because of) my disability, I want to participate without having to be accommodated.
As the original caption reads, almost 80% of disabled people are sexually assaulted on more than one occasion in their lives. We are at higher risk than almost any other group, merely because of our physical or mental states. And yet we are told, constantly, to leave the fight up to the people who are physically capable of fighting it on our behalf.
This is not how it should be. We still deal with the hurt and the shame and the guilt every day. We live with the same things that Emma lives with, but we cannot show it in the same way that she does. We carry the weight, but we donât have people cheering us on. If they did initially, family and friends and partners, we eventually lose it because people get tired of hearing about it.
Iâm certain it will feel like this for her too, waking up every morning to drag her mattress around in a grim reminder of everything that has been done to her. Iâm sure it will start to feel lonely, the weight of it.
I know that Emma did not intend for people to be excluded from the protest. I trust that it was not her intention to isolate a group of people who are already isolated. I believe that the problem is not hers. The problem is the system that has created this situation.
I am disappointed to be isolated from this movement because of my disability. I feel let down and even more alone than I did before, but I know that I was intended to feel this way. Solidarity means different things to different people.
This movement was not for me, but I can make one for people like me. We crawled up the stairs of the capital building. We demanded a place in public schools and accessible buildings. We can do this for ourselves. There is a place for disabled people in activism, and if there isnât, we will make one for ourselves.
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