Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I want to talk about a U.S. Paralympic swimmer. She's called Becca Meyers, she's deafblind, and she hasn't been competing in Tokyo. And I haven't heard anything about her except from one other disabled person.

I've seen a Facebook post from Rebecca Solnit (shared, annoyingly, as text on Facebook so I've just had to go hunt it down) that says

Simone Biles, who stepped out of competition, the German gymnastics team who chose to compete in tights rather than leotards, the Norwegian handball players who refused to play in ass-baring bikinis (Pink offered to pay their fines), tennis champ Naomi Osaka's refusal to do a press conference immediately after a match and testimony about what a toll those conferences take: these young women are modeling for girls and young women and everyone else how to set boundaries, stand up for yourself, not let others dictate what is right and reasonable, and claim their right to dignity and self-determination and well-being. Women who said no. Women who valued themselves and trusted their judgment.

That impressive list is missing at least one name, and that name is Becca Meyers.

She is not competing in Tokyo, not because she isn't good enough to qualify, but because she had to set a boundary, trust her judgment and say no in order to claim her right to dignity and self-determination and well-being. Not going to Tokyo took all that hard work because going to Tokyo would've been even harder: the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee denied Becca -- and dozens of other disabled athletes -- the personal assistants they need.

This Washington Post article says "Meyers’s needs have collided with the drastic restrictions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic," but this is just the USOPC's line, which is disproven a few paragraphs later: “We contacted the Maryland secretary of state. We had somebody contact the Japanese government, the ambassador — they all say it’s not the government [and] it’s not the organizing committee. It’s the USOPC that’s blocking this,” Becca's dad said. And it's not a problem that can be blamed on covid limitations, since Meyers had the same problem in the 2016 Paralympics:

Five years ago, Becca Meyers was on the floor of her room in the Olympic Village at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics, balled up and sobbing, frustrated and terrified. She had stopped eating because she couldn’t find the athletes’ dining area.

There was no provision for Paralympic athletes to get food. And in this Olympics? The claims that personal assistants aren't "essential personnel" is not only insulting on the face of it -- again, we're talking about athletes being able to eat food here -- but all the more so once you know that the category of what counts as essential personnel has "been extended to include golfers’ caddies and the grooms who attend to horses in equestrian events during the Olympics." Horses are being treated better than people here. Golf clubs are being treated better than people here. The golf clubs have someone to look after them; disabled people do not.

My heart breaks for Becca: I've been curled up in a ball terrified of the thought of going to and having to get around a new place on my own. But at least her terror is over if she gives up on this dream! My thoughts, as hers, are with her friends and all the disabled people having to compete for the USA without the support they need.

“They all need support,” Becca Meyers said of the teammates who will go on to Tokyo without her. “The other athletes need a dedicated PCA as well, but now they’re sort of fending for themselves. They’re trying to figure out how they’re going to get around. I’ve talked to some of them, and they’re afraid.”

Becca's trying not just to save herself from this plight, but end it.

“It’s been really hard,” she said. “But I know I have to step up and say enough is enough. I need to protect the younger kids. I have to do something to force change.”

It'll take some work too: when this story came out, the USOPC just doubled down on its insistence that one PCA is enough for thirty-four blind swimmers and they had to reduce numbers because of the pandemic. I'm angry but I'm not surprised.

Still, the success or lack thereof is no reflection on Becca Meyers and I'd love to her her name more in the lists with the Norwegian team that wouldn't "play in their panties," Naomi Osaka, and Simone Biles (about whom I said the other day "I wonder what it might have meant to me to see this as a kid -- someone who didn't know what depression and anxiety really were then even though I had the anxiety at least already -- to see this kind of thing, to see that you could be the greatest of all time and still have these things in your mind. I hope it gets that message across to people watching it now"). She had to set a boundary, trust her judgment and say no in order to claim her right to dignity and self-determination and well-being.

If this is the Olympics of women who do that, it better also be recognized as the Paralympics where women do that too while being disabled by society.