Monsters, disability and us :)
I've written about this before but I simply cannot stress the intimate and deeply significant that monster hood has to disability (and many other persecuted peoples).
Alienation, assumptions of morality, personhood and the hostility of a world not made for you are key parallels between disability and monsters.
Personally I love the superhero genre and new takes on fantasy creatures and curses. But disability is critical to these understandings and the questions they raise. Take X-men for example, lets say you have acid for skin. First thing, cover your skin! Most of your problems are solved! Vampirism? Just ask! Maybe get blood donations! Werewolves? Making a safe place is a viable solution!
In the above examples Alienation is a strong theme and we can see traces of it, intentional or not in many other works. Even Superman has this as despite being a 100% all american kind kansas beef boy, Kent can only truly connect and be fully himself with those in the know about his powers.
But all that, even minimal, thought is tossed out the window once the person or creature is sufficiently inhuman looking. This point isn’t to make people feel bad or shameful or guilty about doing this! In fact it is entirely natural that people do do this! Instead just pause to think about it.
What, exactly, makes a monster, a monster?
We like to think we judge people by whats on the ‘inside’ but that’s just straight up not true. Most people’s first instinct if they find a church with a bunch of corpses and a slime monster would be to attack the monster or bring reinforcements to attack it. We see the dead, see the monster and in our minds the obvious conclusion is that the deaths are the fault of the monster attacking.
In a world not built to accommodate even most humans many good monster stories serve as a reminder of person hood and acceptance. Accommodation in place of persecution makes people out of monsters. Monsters give us cause to question many human centrist ideas and thought patterns.
