Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Have We Become Too Sensitive?


Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons
Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Sometimes you need to take a long look at yourself. Sometimes…you need to think like the other guy, from the perspective of someone else, and lately I’ve thought it was finally a good time to propose the idea the we as a whole – people with disabilities – can be overly-sensitive.

It’s a touchy subject. Even broaching it here makes me kinda nervous, but I’m doing it anyways. The world is rather judgmental. Not that it should matter, but…I used to be able-bodied, and I know how AB people can think. For many of them, our sensitivity makes us a matter they’d rather not deal with. They avoid us instead.

And this in my eyes can be quite problematic. It can skew the way we’re perceived, ruining it for the disabled person who just wants to have a brewski and shoot the you-know-what like everyone else. Take one of my favorite comedians with a disability for example, Alley Bruener, aka “I Laughed at the Crippled Girl.” She likes to make fun of herself, and even got in trouble with the Cincinnati, OH police for doing so

The point is that we’re getting a bad rap. I know that I for one am known as being too sensitive. I’m okay with this mainly because I need to stick to my guns on my beliefs even if it makes me a party-pooper; oh well, but at the same time I don’t want to be the Queen of the Wicked West. It’s not easy to satisfy both sides.

How do you balance, for example, off-handed condescending “wheely” remarks at a bar when you don’t want to seem like the “overly-sensitive wheelchair person?” Can you? There’s a lot of ignoring and fake-acting, that’s for sure. Or maybe you can get hypnotized into not caring? Who would even do this??

At the end of the day, I think the argument boils down to this – fitting in and being liked by the masses or using your life “more sharply,” as a weapon if you will to spur change when it comes to the rights of people with disabilities. One requires the overly-sensitive badge, the other requires a lot of compromising.

In my world, 20 years into the life as a woman with a disability, the answer is clear – I can’t compromise, even if it gives me the “B” title from here to Mississippi. I just wasn’t born with that bone. But for others, they’re totally different. And that’s alright too.

Have we become too sensitive? Is there a way to balance convictions with social mores?

Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons


Support New Mobility

Wait! Before you wander off to other parts of the internet, please consider supporting New Mobility. For more than three decades, New Mobility has published groundbreaking content for active wheelchair users. We share practical advice from wheelchair users across the country, review life-changing technology and demand equity in healthcare, travel and all facets of life. But none of this is cheap, easy or profitable. Your support helps us give wheelchair users the resources to build a fulfilling life.

donate today

Comments are closed.