From "The Fearless Benjamin Lay: Activist, Abolitionist, Dwarf Person" by Eugene Grant in Disability Visibility, 2020
I didnât learn of Benjamin Lay until I was thirty-one years old. This is important, because I myself have dwarfism.
There is a shameful absence of books documenting the lives of important historical figures with dwarfism. Just as Game of Thrones and Tyrion Lannister alone cannot compensateâas many people of average height seem to think he doesâfor centuries of ridicule and abuse, so Marcus Rediker and The Fearless Benjamin Lay cannot make up for this dearth of representation, but the book is a significant step forward.
Who was Benjamin Lay? Born in England in 1682, Lay was one of the first white radical abolitionists. An autodidact, he was a sailor, glove maker, bookseller, and author. He wrote one of the worldâs first abolitionist texts, All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates.
A devout Quaker, Lay loudly called for the church to cast out slave owners. He boycotted slave-produced commodities.
His time at sea, and particularly his experiences in Barbados, fueled his hatred of slavery, and he later became notorious for theatrical protests at Quaker meetings. In one spectacular demonstration, in 1738 at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, he hid a bladder filled with red juice inside a book, then ran his sword through the text, spattering âbloodâ on the stunned slave owners present.
At the time, many Quakers resisted Layâs abolitionist views. Just as Lay had called for slave keepers to be cast out of the church, they cast him out of his. They disowned him. They denounced his book. They stopped him speaking at meetingsâoften physically removing him from the premises. They even withheld his marriage certificate to his wife, Sarah.
While talking and tweeting about Layâs life, I encountered those whoâin good will, Iâm sureâthought it best to celebrate Layâs achievements without mentioning his dwarfism. Such views take shape in a world where so many are taught that dwarfism is at best undesirable and at worst to be feared or loathed. To erase Layâs dwarfism would be, some might think, to âmake him normal.â
But life in a dwarf body shaped Layâs beliefs. At times he struggled to be considered equalâa battle many dwarf people still face today.
In one incident, Rediker records how a man of average height tried to humiliate Lay by approaching him and announcing: âI am your servant.â With razor-sharp repartee, Lay stuck out his foot and replied, âThen clean my shoe,â embarrassing the bully.
To erase his dwarfism would limit our view of his life. It would sever a connection between Lay and his wife, Sarah, herself a dwarf person. And it was life in a dwarf body that led some historians, Rediker notes, to dismiss Lay as âa little hunchback,â sustaining his obscurity.
There is another vital reason why we must keep Layâs dwarfism at the heart of discussions about him: because pernicious stereotypes dominate representations of dwarf people. A film about Layâs life is yet to be made, but movies like Austin Powers and Wolf of Wall Streetâwhich sustain the spectacle of dwarf bodies and condone violence toward them (violence then reenacted in real life)âgross hundreds of millions of dollars. Growing up as a dwarf person myself, by ten I had heard of the Seven Dwarfs, by thirteen the vile Mini-Me character had hit our screens, and three decades went by before I learned of Benjamin Lay.
One of the defining features of Redikerâs book is how he addresses Layâs dwarfism. Other authors of historical biographies of defiant, gentle, and inspiring dwarf people have claimed to celebrate their subjectsâ lives while simultaneously insulting their bodies and diminishing their extraordinary strugglesâwithout reviewers noticing or caring.
Rediker does no such thing, seeking advice from the excellent Little People of America organization and explicitly acknowledging the âdiscrimination based on size and an often tyrannical normative image of the human bodyâ our community experiences on a daily basis. As a proud and conscious dwarf person, as I finished reading that passage, I felt like a corset had been removed and oxygen filled my lungs.
Lay is not just a role model; he is a dwarf role model. When I have childrenâwho are likely to have dwarfism, tooâI will tell them bedtime stories of Layâs life and deeds. And on our bookshelves, a copy of Redikerâs book, The Fearless Benjamin Lay, a celebratory and evidenced record of this great man, will await them.
