Spinal Cord Injury and Paralysis Community

“Rucker is a gifted observer-humorist, unleashing a straight-arrow honesty and a vibrant, penetrating wit while probing the most intimate aspects of contemporary life and human behavior…” (Publisher Weekly) Mr. Rucker lectures widely on the subject of living with disability. He is also a contributing editor to “New Mobility” magazine and the chairman of the Writers With Disabilities Committee at the WGA. He lives in LA with wife, Ann. They have two sons.

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Looking To Be Insulted

Posted by The Myth of Walking
Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Comments (4)

In the September issue of New Mobility magazine, I wrote a long piece on a subject that's intrigued me for years – wheelchair pretenders. If you're not aware of this very active subculture, these are perfectly able-bodied people who love to roll around in wheelchairs, in private, and if bold enough, in public. (There are also wheelchairs wannabes and devotees, but that's another story.) In the course of my research, I spoke to one pretender at length (and anonymously) about her life. My main question, no doubt the same as yours, was simple: why in the world would anyone ever choose to be in a wheelchair?

Illustration by Doug Davis

Read my New Mobility magazine article: "Portrait of a Pretender."

After a very lucid explanation of her quirky life, her answer was pretty straightforward: it made her feel better. Now in her twenties, she is a full-time pretender, using an auto accident as a cover story, and no one at work or in her family questions her about it. "When I'm in my wheelchair," she writes, "I am more self-confident, more outgoing, more able to focus, and I feel much more attractive."

Don't ask me to explain the underlying psychology of feeling better by being in a chair, but I take this woman at her word. From all I can gather, she is not out to mock people like me and you, the real users, or exploit disabled parking spaces or SSDI programs. She's trying to make her own, strange adjustment to her own, strange psychic reality.

The on-line reaction to this story has been plentiful and intense. Clearly the subject, or the very existence of such disability poseurs, struck a very raw nerve with a lot of people. The story has be posted and re-posted, most prominently, Roger Ebert posted this on his facebook page and twittered this a few days ago:

"People who *wish* they were wheelchair users. Sigh." (@ebertchicago twittered on Sept. 6th.)

The commentary has been loud and at times downright hateful. Here's a sampling:

"I find this whole article demeaning to people who are actually "stuck" in their chairs without option...a sick joke..."

"As a real life paraplegic who...now relies on a wheelchair, I am sickened by this story."

"...These people insult and offend me with their pretense..."

"...Having people in my family and circle of friends that are disabled, this p*sses me off..."

"That's just retarded beyond belief. Whoever does that should die."

They should die? For playing pretend in a wheelchair? Should people die for playing pretend by cross-dressing? Should Ru Paul be given a death sentence? What about people who dress up as Darth Vader and go to Comic Con? Maybe they should just get jail time. There are not that many real Darth Vaders around to be outraged.

I'm a wheelchair user, and have been one for fifteen years, and I'm not the least bit offended by someone, for their own reasons, who wants to pretend to be in one. My reality and their fetish or eccentricity or even mental disorder have absolutely nothing to do with one another. I am much, much more offended by the patronizing soul who pats me on the head and tells me what "a super attitude" I have. Being disabled doesn't define me. It's something that happened to me, to which I must adjust and go on. And everyone else in a wheelchair, for real or for pretense, is not a comment on me, in the same way that not everyone with white skin from Oklahoma is a comment on me. Otherwise I'd have to spend half my life excusing their homophobia. And why are they homophobic? Because they think every gay person walking by is a comment on them, i.e., an attack and mockery of their heterosexuality.

Rudy Giuliani, not a person I go around quoting much, said a very wise thing once in regard to the hit mob show, "The Sopranos." A big fan of the show, he was asked why so many Italian-Americans found it demeaning and insulting to their ethnic pride. His answer, in essence, was that they were just a little too sensitive to every perceived slight. "Why would someone go around looking for ways to be insulted?"

As someone who is often judged, usually silently, as being sick, weak, helpless, pathetic, impotent, and in need of a good pat on the head, a person in a wheelchair should be the last soul to judge someone else's apparent difference, mental, physical, sexual, or otherwise. This is not a new idea. It's as old as the Bible.

Jama: I get a kick out of people who keep saying, "I am not defined by my disability." Really? OF COURSE YOU ARE! Who are you kidding? Do you think people refer to you as 'that great blogger' or something like that? No. You're 'the dude in the chair.' I don't know why people keep running away from that. The quicker you own that, the faster people get on to other qualities. I have absolutely no problem when friends refer to me as 'the one in the chair.' If not, you're creating a huge elephant in the room. Sure, I do all sorts of other stuff and I've got a rich social and cultural life. But I'm still the dude in the chair. It defines just about everything I do -> from working on the computer to playing guitar. It all still somehow revolves around being in a rig. Why not just own that concept and move on? It's kind of like talking to an ex-great athlete. Regardless of what Joe Montana is doing now - he's still Joe Freaking Montana. Regardless of whether I'm playing guitar in a club or sitting down at a neighborhood meeting. I'm still Tom the guy in the chair. The quicker I own up to that, the easier it is for me to get on to what I want and for others to get over it.
Ben s7k 3j7: I agree with Jama cause I do the exact same thing. I'm Ben the guy in the chair. Remember me? And everyone knows who I am. I'm 6'6 and that used too get their attention but now its this. Talk about it and move on. The posers might just have a mental problem and use the chair as a crutch. I don't care as long as they don't take my parking spot. I don't get defined by the chair but too others it seems thats who I am I guess. I don't care. I work on vehicles, just came in from doing body work on one and wish jama lived closer so I could come play guitar with him! I do know I wish I could just pose as a standing person and I wouldn't tell a soul. I promise!! And they can pat me on the head every day if they want....
The Myth of Walking: Well, you two have hit on a conundrum in my life. When I write/speak/advocate about disability, then of course I do so from the perspective of the dude in the chair. But since I didn't become paralyzed until 51, I had a whole if confused identity long before I became a chair user. And if you read my memoir, you'll know that I went through years of seeing the world through the spokes of my chair. Now the chair is but a small part of my self-definition. The difference between me and Joe Montana is that Joe did something to be stuck with the label "football great." I'm in a chair because of a biological blip. It's like having your house destroyed by a tornado 30 years ago. At the time, you were "tornado victim." If you're still that thirty years later, you have a serious problem.
wheeliebird: Hi, I found your writing really interesting and positive. I'm incomplete and due to damage I use a chair outside and walk in home when spasm dictates I can. I was shocked to enter sci to find quite a few (no-one here) who say I'm a chair faker pretending to be a complete injury. Sadly some completes think walking is similar to that before they got injured or is 'the great cure, I'm ungrateful'. I found it pointless to defend myself afterall, all I am doing is telling them a dream is not all its made up to be in some cases.Of course I'm going to be attacked by some. I'm not going to judge a healthy lady whom enjoys using a chair, when lots in society get in a car to drive to a shop around the corner, shes simply using wheels in similar way. Maybe she does not care for the exercise riding a bike.I feel that if she can share the positives of being in a chair then others maybe helped to overcome the basic issues of image, abuse and rejection this can cause. I would prefer to have others in a chair setting a good example to society than some actual chair users whom growl at people who smile at them, hold doors open etc and give the impression that no one ought to be kind to chair users for fear they will be growled at. Of course their are those whom abuse, intimidate,ignore us in chairs as tough we have easily trasferable diseses by the power of eye contact. Yet maybe this can be due to negative feedback they have experienced by some growling chair user who acted, as if being asked if they would like help was the equivalent of telling them they were the ugliest person in the world. Its not just sci who use chairs, its them with arthritis, MS, lung diseases.....sci dont own the rights to use a chair. If the lay had tried to damge herself to get sci on purpose then I think it wuld be time to call in the psychiatric team. If not, and its her way to get attention then I feel sad for her, not insulted or angry. I am now known as the lady in the chair, the crip. Thats ok. I dont think its any more shocking a title than someone who has been model to be called, 'Mary the one who used to be a model; but now weighs 25 stone'..no matter how much good she would have done for the commnity....its how the world operates. I love my wheels much more than acceptence from others. I am me, and in my body is a injury. Not Me the Injured one. I'm the one who has to live with my mind 24/7....as long as I know who I am, is the only thing I need to know. Anyone else who relises this, well they are just a bonus in our lives.
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