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March 24, 2009

ThisAbility #21: Faking it

Posted by Aaron Broverman at 03:29 PM ET

I've often said that one of my concerns about dating a person with a disability is how limiting it could be, if it's not the right situation. You spend all your life figuring out exactly what your capability level is (how far you can walk, whether steps are an issue, how much you can carry or balance etc.) then, when another disability is introduced into the equation, suddenly you have to be mindful of that person's ability level on a more constant basis. The more time you spend together, the more you're passing up opportunities to hang out in various places in favor of more accessible options. Places you used to go by yourself are not really an option together, if she can't get in. If you use a scooter and she uses crutches, you have to go places that she can easily get to.

The issue comes down to finding someone of a similar ability level to your own. Although, there's another aspect to this that I never really considered until recently. At one time or another, every person with a disability has probably faked it.

Now, I'm not Elaine Benes, I'm not talking about faking orgasams here. I'm talking about faking ability, or a lack of ability, to get what you want from the able-bodied population. Everybody has had their moments of lying to get what they want. Pretending you can't get in somewhere to make a point about the inaccessibility of a location or get closer to the person who is helping you (you may want to use them for support just for the physical contact). It works the other way too, there are people who have feignned a level of capability they don't really have, in order to make themselves feel better about their circumstances so they can feel more equal to, or escape judgement from, their friends or lovers.

Even though there maybe momentary benefits to faking it, (hey, you got into that bar without any effort) it eventually all ends badly. It sucks to know that you've been possibly passing up various places to go because of your understanding of a person's ability level, when you really didn't have to in the first place. Or that the person you've been hanging out with has been suffering in discomfort just to keep up with you.

Faking it doesn't really help you in the long run. If someone helped you because they legitimately thought you needed it, and then they found out you didn't, they'd never help anyone with a disability again. At minimum, it's bad for the rest of us; it could come back to haunt you down the road. It's hard enough to get people to come forward and do the right thing on a good day; most are secretly afraid they'll get run over by a scooter anyway, so when you introduce this extra deceptive layer, you're just breeding cynicism in people. Honesty should still be the best policy. People need to be honest with themselves about what they can do and they need to be all about honest disclosure, or they're just shooting themselves in the foot and setting the rest of us back.

Aaron is a freelance journalist living in Toronto. His work has appeared in Financial Post Business, Investment Executive Newspaper, and TV Week Magazine, along with Askmen.com. He is a regular contributor to Abilities Magazine and is currently plotting a weekly web comic called GIMP, with artist Jon Duguay, about a handicap school bus driver who wakes up after a crash to find he's the last able-bodied person on earth — and he's being hunted.

More entries on: ThisAbility

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