Standing Up

"Curing" disabilities one wedding and graduation at a time.

When many students make plans for the day of graduation, their list of concerns may include things like clothes, hair, family, afterparty plans, and so on, but for the last year there has been one thing at the top of my list of worries. The decision about whether or not to walk across the stage with my cane. For people who do not know what it is like to be an ambulatory cane/wheelchair user (disabled people who use mobility aids, but have the capacity to stand or walk without them depending on personal/situational circumstances), this may seem like an easy decision—if you can do it without the cane, you should. But the truth is that this decision contains a multitude of physical, emotional, and social factors that I have to consider.

There was a point when I had to rely on my wheelchair and cane to make every upright movement, but right now I just need to use my cane for long distances or unpredictable situations and I don’t need any mobility devices when I am around the house. Therefore, I know that I could go without my cane when I walk at graduation, so the decision is completely up to me. The main physical factor that I have to consider in this decision is that walking through all of graduation will likely cause me to be in a lot of pain after which could take a while to recover from. When I made this decision for my high school graduation, I decided that the pain was worth it. It wasn’t until the month of graduation that I was able to do any weight bearing, so the best I could do was to use crutches instead of my wheelchair. I was in extreme pain for most of graduation and the days/weeks after, but at the time, I was determined to be able to cross the stage.

My high school was not the best at following the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a law that requires all public and private institutions to be accessible to people with all types of disabilities. I was told that I could either crutch across the stage or I could bring my wheelchair up to the stairs at the end and they would pass me my diploma. After all of the pain I had faced to get that diploma, the last thing I wanted was for me to not even get the smallest recognition of my hard work, so I sucked it up and kept going through the pain.

Even if the school had been decent enough to install a ramp up to the stage, however, I don’t know if I would have made a different decision. In the months leading up to that day, the one comment I heard more than any other was “are you going to be able to walk by graduation?” Even at physical therapy, I was constantly reminded that the goal was to be able to walk across the stage. As that dream became less realistic, I was pushed to find a method of at least not needing the wheelchair. So I used crutches—specifically the type used in injuries that go under your armpits. That was what I was told would make me look the most “normal.” But my experience had been anything but normal, so the only people who were being convinced of this false charade were the able-bodied people who told me what was socially acceptable. To the audience, I just looked like someone who sprained their ankle in the days leading up to graduation rather than someone who had spent the last 9 months in a wheelchair after severely breaking both ankles and experiencing complications that made healing an incredibly slow process. I looked like one of them, but I didn’t have their experiences or privilege.

When everyone else was gathering in front of the building getting ready to walk in, I was inside sitting with just my sister to keep me company. It wasn’t until I later saw the pictures that I found out how they were all putting flowers in each other’s hair and making memories without me. This is a regular occurrence when you are in a wheelchair—I can’t even begin to list all of the social events I missed because I was not able to be with my peers due to the lack of accessibility. It is not my wheelchair that causes the barriers, it is the social biases and physical roadblocks that lead to exclusion.

Heartwarming Miracle Cures

In the media, there are hundreds of examples of miracle cures where people are able to stand up during weddings and graduations. Like many others, I used to take these “heartwarming” scenes at surface value, without even realizing the pain these scenes caused

physically disabled people. Even years after I too became physically disabled, I believed that I had to push myself to appear as able-bodied as possible. I had internalized everything I had been shown in movies about the quest for appearing “normal” and had therefore allowed myself to believe that I was only respected/valuable when standing.

In It’s Not Inspiring When Wheelchair Users Stand Up, Alaina Leary shares the story of a man who went viral after a video of him standing from his wheelchair to dance with his wife at his wedding was shared. In the video, each of the groom's legs get strapped together with the leg of a man on either side of him. He then has someone lift him into standing and the men help him sway while his wife sways in front of him. The whole thing only lasts a few seconds. The replies to the video fall in two distinct categories: 1) “I’m not crying...nope not at all 😭😭😭😭” or 2) “Am I missing something? Is this about this man is only loveable if he stands up? Is it about the support he gets? I’m a wheelchair user I won’t be standing up any time.” The one thing that seemed to separate these two types of comments was that people with physical disabilities tended to fall into the second category. As someone who also falls into the second category, I feel it is important to explain that we are not judging the man for standing up to dance with his wife, as that is a personal decision. What we are criticizing is the major response from the public about how there is something special about this. They did not see it as a man dancing with his wife, they saw it as a disabled man getting over his disability for a moment to dance with his wife. For many physically disabled people, the distinction is important. It is also worthwhile to note that this video did not include the longer clip where the couple had a beautifully choreographed dance with the groom in his wheelchair. Based on patterns in the media, the opinions that disabled people are constantly exposed to is that there is nothing more inspiring than seeing someone not have to use mobility aids.

Inspiration Porn

What this all comes back to is the idea of “inspiration porn,” a term coined in 2014 by Stella Young. Inspiration porn is hard to define but easy to see. It is when individual people or news outlets talk about the daily life events of disabled people as inspiration, when the same actions in non-disabled populations would be unremarkable. While there are normally good intentions to this, the additive effects of having these experiences every day can take a toll on disabled people. In my personal experience, people most often call me inspiring after I share details about the discrimination I have faced due to my disabilities. To me, that completely misses the point of why I am sharing them. The main people who should really be inspired by my stories of getting through discrimination are the people who are also facing those roadblocks. If a non-disabled person follows a description of my experiences by talking about how they find it inspirational, I find it both demeaning and completely off track. I don’t share my experiences for your benefit, I share them so that you can recognize your privilege and learn more about what I’ve gone through.

On the other hand, online displays of inspiration porn usually take a very different form. Common examples are pictures of disabled students being chosen and prom king/queen, videos of a group of people picking up a person in a wheelchair to get them up 1-3 stairs (you rarely see this with more stairs than that), and yes, standing from a wheelchair to walk across the stage at graduation. These are only a few of the many examples of inspiration porn on social media. However, there is always more to the story than just what is seen from a quick post.

I have been the person in a wheelchair having to get picked up by multiple people because a building wasn’t compliant with the ADA and I would have been mortified if someone took a video and shared it on the internet. Wheelchairs give many of us independence that we wouldn’t have without mobility aids, so when we are faced with a physical barrier, it is devastating to lose that independence. And yet, one of the times this happened to me, the people who picked me up were met with applause once we got in the door. Often, inspiration porn is more focused on the people who helped the poor disabled person than about the person themself. A video of me struggling to get through a heavy door without an automatic button would likely end up as a post mocking me for not being able to get through the door, but if someone came to assist, that would immediately be inspiring.

Ambulatory Mobility Aid Users

Another major problem with the image of the “miracle” where disabled people are able to stand and walk in weddings/graduations is that it gives society the incorrect notion that all people are either 1) in a wheelchair or 2) not in a wheelchair, when the reality is that there are many people who are ambulatory wheelchair users, meaning that they need the wheelchair occasionally, but not all of the time. When I transitioned from being in a wheelchair full time to walking a bit with my cane, I had countless people tell me to my face that I was faking my disability. I had non-disabled people come up to me while I was parking who told me that I was not disabled enough to use handicapped parking, even though I had a placard. I have been fortunate in that I only have ever gotten yelled at or passive aggressive comments, but many disabled people don’t get so lucky (if you can call this luck). There are numerous examples of people being physically or verbally attacked for either using the accessible parking or standing up to people who try to illegally park in the handicapped places.

However, this experience isn’t exclusive to the parking lot. One time I was in a grocery store with my friends, when an aggressive woman approached and told me that I needed to leave the carts with attached wheelchairs for actually disabled people. When I showed her my cane as proof of my disability (something that shouldn’t have been necessary), she said that I should get up and use the cane instead. She couldn’t fathom the idea of someone being able to walk sometimes but also needing a wheelchair for going around the store. These people also have one thing in common: the inability to mind their own business.

Perhaps my worst example of this was at my high school graduation. In the minutes before I was supposed to get up to cross the stage, I had the person next to me inform me that she knew I had been faking this whole time. She then asked me whether I was doing it to scam insurance or if it was just for attention. While other students were crying over their graduation, I was crying because this was my first case of being accused of faking it. While I am now much more used to it, it still has the same sting as it did that first time. For the first several months of being an ambulatory wheelchair user, I didn’t allow anyone to see me do more than a few steps with my cane and never any without it. Part of it was fear that I was no longer disabled enough to be a part of the community (something that I now realize is completely wrong), but my main fear was that I was scared of what people would accuse me of or do to me.

I still don’t know what I will do when May comes and I am forced to decide whether I will use a cane or not. No matter what I do, someone will have a complaint, so the best decision for me will be the one that makes me feel true to myself.

Sources:

Hale, Cressida. 2018. “We Need More Awareness of Ambulatory Wheelchair Users.” The Mighty (blog). November 25, 2018. https://themighty.com/2018/11/ambulatory-wheelchair-users-exist/.

Leary, Alaina. 2019. “It’s Not Inspiring When Wheelchair Users Stand Up.” Healthline (blog). September 3, 2019. https://www.healthline.com/health/wheelchair-users-standing-not-inspiring.

Sarsfield, Nicola. 2022. “Ambulatory Wheelchair Users; Who Are They?” Medium (blog). March 31, 2022. https://medium.com/@nicola.sarsfield/ambulatory-wheelchair-users-who-are-they-a78c2592c893.

Young, Stella. “I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much.” Filmed 2014. TED video, 9:16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K9Gg164Bsw