Staring is Caring

What if we were allowed to stare? What if it was not only allowed but encouraged, celebrated even? What if rather than being told "don't stare" or "it's rude to stare" we allowed that curiosity as a moment for learning and for teaching-- as a moment for inclusion. We cannot allow our stare to supersede the narrative of the individual, or for our stare to make a spectacle out of them. But rather than avoiding the difference a disabled individual has from an able-body, offer a compassionate gaze. Notice.

Our inability to acknowledge the disabled persons in the world around us perpetuates othering and undervaluing of these individuals. We simply need to notice.

Is there room in our society for disabled individuals? I think the majority of us would not think twice before saying yes. But I also think in order to make this room, to really include this portion of the population in our social and physical environment, we have to see them. We have to acknowledge them. And after these two steps we can finally be compassionate toward them.

Seeing

How many of us have told or have been told not to stare? My guess is almost everyone. Now I understand that obsessive staring can make us feel uncomfortable, but I want to explore wider social implications staring, or the lack thereof, can have on individuals with disabilities. For example, children's curiosity results in the tendency to stare. When a guardian attempts to break a child's stare, to distract them, or otherwise avoid their curiosity, it sends the message that something is wrong. For children who are at such a critical stage of life for learning how to interact socially, this instills in them that it is bad to pay those individuals attention-- that different is something to avoid. As simple as it sounds, these moments have a larger impact on us than we would think. 

Allowing a child to stare is the first step toward interaction. Sure, as mentioned before, a stare can turn creepy or uncomfortable, but it could also serve as an opening for social inclusion. The social signal is what shows the individual they are viewed as more than an object or a spectacle. So, notice. Show the individual you see them for what they are-- a human before a disability.

Another reason we do not see disabled people in the world around us is because of the actual physical separation they face due to the built environment. Access has to do with what and who are privileged. In the case of ableism, those with the body norm are more valuable, aka privileged, because they are more capable. I see this as a vicious cycle. Hear me out. Able bodied individuals are more privileged to access the built environment because they are capable enough to maneuver it. But the environment is only built that way because of who is privileged. And they are only privileged because they are capable. Therefore, if we simply built the environment to be accessible to a wider variety of mobility, disabled individuals would be capable and then therefore equally as privileged.

Having more physically accessible areas allow for socially accessible scenarios for disabled people. In a study (2013) interested in this topic of seeing disability around us, researcher Lisa Aziz-Zadeh and her colleagues concluded that,"Exposure to people with disabilities is actually quite important because the more you become exposed and see people with disabilities the more you start to process them the same as you do other people who don’t have disabilities."

Once we see we can interact. And interaction in turn requires acknowledgement.

Acknowledging

Robert Macfarlane once said, "We do not care for what we do not know, and on the whole we do not know what we cannot name." In order to show value toward a person, place, or thing we must first show it outward acknowledgment. How can we care for something we do not know about?

Similarly to how Sunaura Taylor in her book Beasts of Burden draws parallels between the structures that oppress disabled people and animals in our society today (while making clear they are not the same just parallel), I would like to draw conclusions between wild animal advocacy and/or zoos and the acknowledgement of disabled individuals.

Regardless of the various debates I hear on wild animal advocacy or zoos, I see their underlying value for education. They are a tactic to educate individuals on a life different from theirs. It is not our fault that we are not always exposed to all of the different life on Earth, but in order to care about those different from us, we must be shown them. We must acknowledge their shared value and recognize their presence among us. Similar to how we see, acknowledge, and in turn care for animals, the same could be applied to addressing the people around us-- disabled or not, they are there and worthy of our recognition.

Compassion

Accepting that able bodied persons will not understand disabled lives but that seeing, acknowledging, and showing care toward each other as coexisting humans can still occur is a necessary step to stop the undervaluing of disabled persons in our world.

Not everyone can understand everything, and that is ok, but everyone can show compassion and be present in each other's lives. This creates a more accepting and accessible social and physical environment.

And how beautifully simple is it that it could all start with a stare?

References

Southern California Public Radio. 2013. Study: Is it impolite to stare? Or just human nature? Retrieved from https://www.scpr.org/news/2013/01/25/35747/hey-its-not-polite-stare-or-perhaps-it-study-sugge/.

Poetry Archives. 2019. Retrieved from http://www.minervareads.com/category/poetry/.