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

It's been a tired grumpy day, a nothing-I-try-to-do-actually-got-done day, so I'm taking out my grumpiness on a stupid listicle I saw this morning. I'm certain I'm bringing not just a gun to a knife-fight but something like a flamethrower, but...as Terry Pratchett put it in a blog title that I think I chose in 2016 but haven't been able to change since because I still haven't found anything more relevant, sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

Anyway, here's the text of the ridiculously long complaint I just wrote.

Hi

I wanted to get in touch about something I saw this morning on your site.

You include, among the best Halloween costumes in Sheffield (https://thetab.com/uk/sheffield/2021/11/01/sheffields-best-dressed-halloween-2021-49105), two "blind mice."

I was surprised and dismayed to see my disability being used as a costume, and to see that costume shared and complimented by your publication. Sheffield uni itself had a campaign and a website (shef.ac/halloweencostumes) two years ago that encouraged "everyone to check and double-check their costume to avoid the exploitation and degradation of others. Don’t let Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia and Ableism be the real Horror this Halloween!" I've seen similar campaigns, across the UK and the U.S., in recent years sending the same message so it's disappointing to see this widespread problem not only ignored but condoned by its inclusion here.

Please don't misunderstand me: my issue here is not that I am offended, the problem is not that you "may have caused offence." The problem is that by praising an ableist costume, you contribute to ableist ideas about blind people that do tangible harm.

The wooden dowels these two people pretend are white canes are, for example, much more likely to injure themselves or others than real white canes (especially when accompanied by the drunkenness that can be expected of students on a big party night). White canes are precision tools that can provide a lot of information to their user about their surroundings, and part of doing that job is weighing little and being rather fragile. They're really unlikely to harm anybody even accidentally, and certainly not purposely because the cane would probably not be any use to its owner afterwards. Yet children who use white canes regularly have them taken off them in school, out of fears that they'll hurt someone. These fears are born out of fundamentally misunderstanding what white canes are designed for and what they mean to the people who rely on them. A white cane is more valuable to us as an information-gathering instrument than it is as a blunt-force weapon. I know when I had my cane stolen as I sat in my university library a couple of years ago, the time until I could get to a replacement was tiring and scary. No one would choose to sacrifice it just to hit somebody.

I do wonder about the cane that got stolen, by the way. I wonder if a student swiped it thinking it was a hilarious prop. I wonder if they treated it like a lightsabre or if they just "pretended to be blind" by waving it around and hitting things. I wonder who laughed at that. I wonder if anyone realized that's not what being blind is like at all. I doubt it. Images like this "costume" are part of why students are going to think stealing my white cane is hilarious. This is what I mean about this being worse than "one person is offended." The danger is poisoning a culture in ways you don't appreciate, with effects you'll never see and couldn't connect up. (Yes I do acknowledge the irony that I'm telling sighted people what they're not seeing.)

What really gets to me is the comment that not looking at the camera adds to the "aesthetic." Let me preface what I'm about to say with how torn I am about it. Disabled people are constantly being asked to disclose our personal medical history and some of our most traumatic experiences in order to educate non-disabled people who mostly have, at best, vague and incorrect ideas about what our lives are like. This disclosure is asked for by non-disabled people out of unthinking entitlement, but it is also sometimes offered freely by disabled people in an attempt to elicit empathy. The hope is that that empathy will lead to action -- whether that action looks like changed interpersonal behavior from abled people on an individual level, the writing and enforcing of robust policies at an institutional level, or voting for good legislation at the level of a region or a nation. I am wary of such disclosure, I'm unconvinced of the usefulness of empathy, but I also know that a good case study can stick with and sway more people than any amount of facts and figures. So here's my not-looking-at-cameras stories.

My eye condition means that my focus point is slightly off-centre. I don't look like I'm looking at what I'm looking at (most awkward sentence ever, right?). Which is great for making friends with neurodiverse people -- I don't look like I'm making eye contact even when I think I am! -- but terrible for photos.

I was born with this condition, so in practically every photo of me I cringe at how I look. I don't look like part of groups when I'm staring slightly off to the side while everyone else is grinning into the camera. I don't look like I care about where I am or who I am with or what I'm doing, even though I usually do care very much about those things. I look out of place and it reflects a childhood where I felt out of place a lot, so seeing evidence of that awkwardness does not feel good at all.

But by far my least favorite experience of not being able to look at a camera was when I had to get passport photos taken a few years ago. The current regulations were so strict that I couldn't get my face aligned precisely enough to satisfy them -- especially because I also had to take my glasses off for the damn photos, removing even the limited correction they offer. The photographer tried telling me where to look but when I still couldn't get it right, this stranger had to put his hands on my face. It was a surprising and uncomfortable intimacy of the kind disabled people regularly have to endure -- in some cases, things like washing and dressing and other things that abled people can expect to do privately on their own.

To see the "two blind mice" praised for not looking at the camera brought me right back to this memory of vulnerability and the free-floating rage and frustration I felt afterward. Terrible experiences like this are the result of what we call barriers to equal access, and the barriers are socially constructed and don't need to be there. Having constructed them, society could dismantle them too. And while I appreciate the UK's biometrics and passport regulations aren't the responsibility of this media outlet, everyone can play a part in dismantling societal barriers.

For example, you can commit to no longer sharing and approving of Halloween costumes that exploit and degrade anyone. You can share the good resources that exist to combat racist, homophobic, transphobic and ableist costumes -- like I say, these campaigns have been around for years so there's no need to reinvent that particular wheel. And while next Halloween is a long way away, sadly ableism and other bigotries are with us all year round so it's worth being attentive to other ways it's showing up and can be shut down, long before we have to worry about Halloween costumes again.