Holly Clay-Buck and Sara N. Beam
Part 2 of 2
As we stated in
Part 1 a culture of accessibility is one that is informed about anger, fear and
sadness. Emotional literacy is crucial.
Below is a list of types of anger that we’ve experienced directly or heard
about from our colleagues.
- Screaming to be heard/fighting against the expectation of invisibility
- Loss of usefulness (strip mining) when usefulness = humanity
- Frustration of not being taken seriously or being minimized
- Annoyance at microaggressions suggesting your body is an inconvenience
- Rage at consistent lack of control or ability to resolve problems
- Disgust at ignorance and cruelty
- Fight, flight, or freeze: physical responses to anger — biology is undeniable
- Fight: use valuable spoons to tell off the ignorer/denier, to argue once more in your defense, to research research ADA law AGAIN to make a case AGAIN. Protest from within and without the institution. Build that network, gird your loins, once more into the fray.
- Flight: leave the room, leave the building, leave the conversation, leave the profession. Anything is better than doing this again. Escape the moment.
- Freeze: shield up, mask on, don’t move, play dead, shoot out your intestines like a sea cucumber so the predator will be satiated and move on. Brainlock.
The constant drone of the inconvenience and ignorance inherent to pain and
disability isn’t quantifiable, so it’s not allowed to exist among the
“elite.” Holly’s physical therapy ends at 10. The faculty meeting is at 12.
It’s only an hour’s drive. Logically, she thinks,
I can make it. Physically, I will go. Emotionally I resent it, even if
it’s a necessary evil. The minutiae of disability is easily overlooked and the constant
maintenance chronic illness requires is quickly forgotten when there is no
crisis occurring at the present moment.
There’s been a lot of buzz recently about chronic illness, spoons, and
mental fatigue (e.g. difficulty making decisions, paying attention,
understanding a process, etc.). The emotional and mental labor of chronic
illness and disability are heavy and almost completely invisible. And
invisible disabilities come with invisible consequences. There’s something
to note about women (e.g. cis women, nonbinary people, genderfluid people,
trans women and transfeminine women) being invisible in the first place. In
addition, even though they are invisible, their so-called absence of input,
attendance, patience, etc. is hypervisible. Essentially they are perceived
as a nuisance because they aren't seen to be doing the invisible labor that
is expected of them. Here we must also acknowledge Kimberlé Crenshaw’s
concept of intersectionality: oppression caused by sexism and racism compounds the oppression caused by
ableism. The stigma of invisible illness is therefore higher for people from
multiple marginalized groups, for example womxn and nonbinary people of
color.
You see it in every teacher movie: the truly committed, hopeful, usually
white teacher is willing to sacrifice their time, their happiness, the
family, and their health to dedicate every last ounce of their energy to
their classes. We read “feel good” news stories about people working three
jobs to get by, who spend 80 hours a week building businesses, and work
never-ending overtime for their companies. The result is that people are
expected to sacrifice their physical and mental health to the workplace.
If admins and colleagues were trained to have realistic expectations about
your boundaries and to take you at your word without judgment, then perhaps
things would improve. Academia likes to think it’s better than other jobs,
but it still relies on “human resources” (a term that makes our skin crawl).
It’s still part of an extraction economy, as Instagram philosophers like
Queer Appalachia point out to
readers, as they connect the dots between strip mining for coal and strip
mining bodies for labor until they wear out, sick with illness caused by the
nature of the work. You’re never supposed to be angry. When an institution
relies on exploitative labor practices, it’s just a matter of time until the
system collapses. When you’re expected to happily be exploited, anything
that gets in the way of not just doing your basic job but of being “strip
mined” ruins everything. It’s very angering that everyone working these jobs
and administering programs reliant on adjuncts can see how unsustainable it
is, and yet we can’t do anything about it. Workers feel futile and impotent,
like failures.
Frustration and irritability is caused by repeatedly having to “come out” as
having an invisible illness. In one incident, one of Holly’s colleagues, who
is familiar with her condition, cuffed her hard on the back of the neck
during a flare. She was in terrible pain because of it, and reacted with a
gasp, turning in physically, and shutting down emotionally. Her colleague
did not notice for over an hour, then asked her husband if she was
okay. So even when you take the risk of disclosing your condition, you are
often still not seen.
Disclosure is in fact a risk. In at-will states, it may be illegal to fire
you for being disabled but it is not illegal to fire you for too many
absences, not performing the emotional labor of social niceties well enough,
having the wrong color hair, or any other excuse they can think of to remove
the inconvenience of accommodating you. Therefore, every disclosure is an
enormous act of trust, and when you are misunderstood it’s not just
annoying, it’s hurtful and frightening. As Holly asks, if my colleague
doesn’t even understand how to not physically hurt me, how are they able to
protect my job? Just like a careless pat on the back can destroy my night
out, a careless word—or the accretion of a hundred separate careless
words—has the potential to destroy my career.
Room temperature, fluorescent lighting, stadium or lecture hall
seating—these are all environmental factors that can affect accessibility.
To be sighed at, consistently overlooked, or for someone to even “jokingly”
suggest that you’re a “princess” —these microaggressions suggest that our
bodies are inconvenient, our needs are mere preferences, and our
difficulties are faked.
Case in point: two local colleges that rely on adjunct labor for a large
majority of the teaching at the institution both had major problems
recruiting adjuncts this semester, Spring 2019. They didn’t have enough
teachers. They couldn’t get them. They assigned many more classes than
typically allowed to several adjuncts, some of whom were verging on
full-time status but did not see the benefits. People have figured out that
being an adjunct isn’t an “in” at an institution. It’s jumping on a
treadmill because they don’t want to “lose an adjunct.” And in no universe
is it acceptable to be that dependent on adjuncts.
When you think about it in this context, these hiring practices and
treatment of persons with disabilities of work are obviously unsustainable
because strip-mining eventually taps all of the resource. It’s very angering
that everyone working these jobs and everyone administering programs reliant
on adjuncts can see how unsustainable it is, and that we can’t do anything
about it. Workers feel futile and impotent, like failures. A culture of
accessibility is one that is informed about anger, fear and sadness.
Emotional literacy is crucial.
Most people we work with on a daily basis aren’t outright cruel, but
following every semester student evaluations arrive and we have no recourse
or ability to defend ourselves against the inevitable, anonymous
non-academic complaints from students. For example, a professor we know
shared a not uncommon anecdote about a student evaluation comment regarding
her pregnancy. Every female professor has a story about a student commenting
on her appearance. Professors with disabilities inevitably receive comments
calling them absent, lazy, disengaged, etc., no matter what arrangements
they make to avoid disrupting the flow of the class. Countless studies have
shown that student evaluations are notoriously biased and prejudiced, yet
administrators insist we keep them because appeasing students as ‘customers’
takes precedence over faculty mental health.
Even if you are uncomfortable or unsure in naming emotions, you can at the
very least pay attention to what is happening inside your body, physically,
in difficult situations. Let’s say your requests for accommodations have
been repeatedly ignored or denied, and it’s happened again. Which of the
following do you turn to?
You will probably recognize your own patterns in these descriptions. For me
(Sara), option C, freeze, has often been my go-to in times of conflict. I feel
anger, and I feel my negative reaction to being angry, and I don’t move. From
the outside, a viewer might assume I’m peaceful. In fact I’m frequently
praised by coworkers, family, and friends for being “even-tempered” and
preternaturally calm. In truth, I’m sometimes dissociating from the moment
because I’m stuck in a loop in my head and must write down what is happening
to stay in the present (“The Devil’s Race Track,”
as Samuel Clemens called it). In a culture that demands women be
accommodating, I have developed a defense mechanism of shutting down: it goes
something like this—this can’t be happening, this is happening, I hate this, I have no voice, I
have no choice, there’s nowhere to run, think of something clever, this
can’t be happening, this is happening. In response to this habit, I have learned to turn to my love of and habit
of writing, and, when I can’t respond, I record. This strategy helps me
comprehend what I’m hearing and feeling, creates a record of the interaction,
and gives others in the room a sense of accountability because their words and
actions are being documented. Writing gives me power.
While this list of seven kinds of anger makes no pretense of being
all-inclusive, we do hope that it can provide at least a form of vocabulary
for beginning the process of naming—and therefore normalizing—the anger we
feel (and battle, and ignore, and beat ourselves up over). Heavy should be the
head that wears the crown. Crowns imply power and therefore responsibility to
others. By naming our unpleasant and inconvenient needs, we can shift at least
some of the burden to those who can shoulder it.
About the Author
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A portrait photo of Holly Clay-Buck |
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| A portrait photo of Sara N. Beam |
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