WARNING!
Have you ever heard of freak shows? Those exhibitions or circus fairs where people with physical deformities and disabilities were put up on display for “normal” folk to look at and be disgusted, fascinated, repulsed by. Thankfully freak shows have been left in the past, at least for the most part. But even after their prime time, we have continued on to treat disabled and chronically ill people with the same kind of disrespect as that of freak shows. And while the exhibitionists during the 1800’s were often paid for their labor as a “freak of nature”, now in the 21st century, we don’t get those kinds of privileges. So, to some extend, things have gotten worse instead of progressing. But isn’t that the nature of things nowadays in general?
During the freak show boom, disabled people had many kinds of discriminatory laws placed upon them. For example, in the United States, it was common to have disabled people be forever confined in their homes and not allowing them to step outside in the public, because they were considered “an eye sore” for the “normal” people who were just trying to live their normal lives. The freak shows were the only opportunity for some of these confined disabled people to actually go outside and have people look at them – people who weren’t their family members and the like. So what if that included people attacking and assaulting them, or disrespecting their bodies in some other way? At least they were finally seen.
fair.
I identify myself as a disabled individual. Along with my neurodivergency that has always existed, no matter if it was noticed back then or not, I’m also now disabled in the physical sense. My trauma has caused me to develop four separate illnesses, out of which one (DDOS) affects my cognition so greatly that my psychiatrist told me it would be impossible for me to ever have a regular 9-to-5 job, and another one (fibromyalgia) weakening my body to the point of unexpected collapses and a need for a mobility aid. But these are not the only ways you can see that I am not healthy, that I have some kind of health problems.
On a hot summer day, you can see them. I know I don’t have to say anything else than that and you’re thinking about them right now. You look at my limbs, my bare limbs because I cannot keep a long-sleeved shirt on in this heat, and you see them. What are they? No, like, what are they, REALLY?
Scar tissue. They are scarred skin tissue. That’s it.
My skin is scarred because of the battles I have gone through, and still continue to go through, with my health and safety. They are a physical signifier that something has happened to me, something has changed me as a person during my lifetime, to the point that even today, you can still see it on my body.
You know who else have scarred skin tissue as a reminder of their battles? Burn victims. Amputees. Cancer survivors. Veterans. Traffic accident survivors. People who have had surgeries. People with cystic acne. And so on.
I once got this comment on one of my posts, where the commenter was basically telling me to put a trigger warning over my body every time I post videos of myself with even some of my scars visible. It reminded me of the old laws that disabled people had to abide by; the eye sore laws. That just because some people out there do not like the way your body looks due to things you had no control over, you should be kept away and hidden from the world. And while I do understand the sentiment behind the comment, I still think it is entirely unreasonable to tell me, a complete stranger, what I have to hide about myself for the comfort of others.
The reason my body is scarred and disabled is no different to anybody else’s. Things have happened to me, things that shouldn’t have happened, things that I didn’t choose. So why am I the one who’s assigned a spot at the modern-time freak show?
In hiding,
ichigonya
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