I get called ma’am on a regular basis. Most people are polite, almost gentle with me on the phone, but they seem largely incapable of correctly guessing my gender. This is really not their fault. I have an unusual tone. Were a wizard to give a Boston Terrier the ability talk, that would be my voice. It is high pitched, dripping with enthusiasm, moving at a fast clip. My voice is markedly unusual, and without visual clues it can be difficult to guess the gender of its owner. Sometimes it bugs me, but it isn’t something I’m unfamiliar with. Gender identity can be a tricky for the able bodied, let alone someone with a disability. Gender has become such a rigid set of expectations, a preset assemblage of traits and obligations.
Growing up in high school, I was intensely jealous of my classmates. Overnight, they seemed to blossom into adults, their bodies shaping into perfect, fully realized sex machines. Adulthood for them wasn’t something earned, but a gift within their genetics just waiting to be triggered. They were freely and almost instantly given the tools to be men or women, all the opportunities in the world to fulfill the lofty expectations of gender identity. It was their inheritance, neither striven for nor long sought after. It really wasn’t fair. I never really had a chance.
Many people with disabilities are traditionally masculine (think the Paralympic rugby team), but many more are not. I fall into the latter category. I’m four foot, fat, lacking in all ways physical. I have the mobility of a hardboiled egg and half the athleticism. My form conveys neither a masculine ideal nor the image of a fully realized adult. I’m caught in a kind of arrested development, a weirdly realized purgatory of perpetual boyhood. Were I to hold myself to the traditional masculine standards that is where I would have stayed. But of course I’m not a boy. I’m a man, but a man living under the definitions of my own choosing. That is how I’ve had to do things. Every identifier becomes a kind of do it yourself project and so I’ve had to come to terms with my gender in unique ways.
The same could be said of my sexuality. Disability and sex don’t seem to mesh well in the popular consciousness. One isn’t about to see Tiny Tim on the cover of Teen Beat. Drainage shunts have never been, nor will they ever be sexy. We seem to remind people of their brevity, the fleeting nature of their lives, and all the things that can go wrong. Not exactly fodder for the bedroom. For many, disability isn’t sexy. To suggest as much would be almost perverse. No, it is far more comforting to assure themselves that the disabled are asexual sprites, lacking in any meaningful sexual identity. They are of course wrong.
My body is asymmetrical, a sedentary pear lacking in both grace and strength. But look at an x-ray of my back and you will see the incredible adaptive nature of the human body as my spine found its ultimate shape. My skeleton is a stone cold fox, a gorgeous example of organic, surrealist architecture. My body is amazing in its ability to heal itself. It has borne tremendous burdens, twisted itself into all manner of shapes and yet it has kept me going these many years. It is, in a word, incredible. I’ve come, after a fair bit of searching, to discover the unique beauty and infinite variation of the disabled form. Dare I say it; disability is fascinating, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes…sexy. And so, those of us in the disabled community often reject the oppressive restraints of traditional gender and sexual identity. Instead, we remake it into something new, something truly revealing.
Being an adult dwarf carries with it certain prerequisites. Kids love me; they look me in the eyes and see a kind of pseudo-child, the ultimate non-threatening adult. My peers are quick to be warm, accommodating to a fault, and yes, occasionally patronizing. They sometimes can’t help but see me as a kind of overgrown child prodigy, leading to gentler treatment but less respect. I’m the guy who broke my rib picking a dandelion. I fall so laughably short in all the qualifiers of manhood that I simply have had to choose my own.
I can’t drive a car, wrestle a bear, or engage in the meaningless displays of aggression that seem to populate one of the more useless definitions of male identity. I’m a man because I strive to be. I try to do good, be kind, and help those with whom it is in my power to do so. I’ve stuck by my family, tried to better myself, and treat others with dignity. These are the standards against which I judge my “manliness”, and I seem to meet them well enough. More than anything I try to be the man my father would have wanted me to be. I am a man because, not in spite, of my disability. My body is unique, and in that uniqueness comes a fascinating beauty, subtle and valuable. I have a sexy mind and a sexy spine. The definitions are my own. This Ma’am is one hell of a manly man, and I won’t hear any different.
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