On travelling with a disability

Recently, I broke my ankle, went to the ER, got put in a boot and handed crutches (which I haven’t used since I was a kid), and was told DO NOT PUT ANY WEIGHT ON YOUR FOOT.

The next day, I got up and went to the airport for a long-planned trip to see our son. My husband had called ahead and arranged for a wheelchair at every point. We left from Austin, and had to change planes in Philadelphia. It was awful. Humiliating, exhausting, frustrating, and literally painful.

Most people were kind, a lot were just self-absorbed to the point of hurtful (who walks right in front of someone on crutches?), several were rude, and no one was deliberately trying to cause me pain. Even those who did cause me pain didn’t do so because they wanted to cause me pain. They were over-worked, understaffed, underpaid, trying to get their job done in circumstances less than propitious.

The worst experience was TSA in Austin. The wheelchair person asked if I could stand, and I said no. She asked if I could take the boot off, and I said no (as I’d been told). She told that to security. We happened to arrive at security within half an hour of a shift change. If you can’t go through the scanner, then you have to get groped. Seriously groped. It’s a pain for the TSA agent, none of whom had any interest in groping a pudgy 60-year-old woman like me. It isn’t fun to be groped like that, and I’m sure they get a lot of grief from the gropee when they have to do it.

After much waiting, and the wheelchair person approaching various female TSA agents and getting turned away (they were clearly hoping to kick the can down the road to the next shift), there was what appeared to be a shift change, and then more of the wheelchair person approaching female agents, a very young female TSA came up. Let’s call her Chester. The wheelchair person told her that I couldn’t stand, and couldn’t take off the boot. Chester then turned to me and said, “Can you stand?” I said “On one foot, but not very well.” She said, “Can you take the boot off?” I said no. She made no attempt to hide how irritated she was about the situation, and that irritation was getting directed at me.

Perhaps because I was raised by dogs, when I’m dealing with someone who has a shitty job and they’re irritated, my impulse is to be as nice as I possibly can. So I was doing my best to be thankful and helpful. She remained irritated; she continued to direct that irritation at me.

We go through the initial complicated procedures necessary when someone can’t go through the scanner, she takes me through and to the grope place, says, “Can you stand?” I said, “On one foot, but not very well.” She points me to a table I can touch, and she is very grumpy about exactly how much I can touch it. She is grumpy about the whole process—I need to lift my pants leg so she can get to the boot, but not before she tells me to. I can’t touch my wheelchair. If I touch things before the right moment, she has to do things over. And she is not happy when that happens.

We get through most of the groping, and she says, “Can you take off your boot?” I say, “No.” She says, really irritated now, “You told me you could take off your boot.” I hadn’t. I had told her I couldn’t.

I took off the boot. It hurt to do so. She checked out the boot and my purple and swollen foot, and gave me the boot back. It hurt to put it back on. I hated being lied to; I hated being accused of lying. Also, my ankle now hurt enough that I was working hard not to cry.  

There were other glitches in our travels—not being able to get on a tram because the wheelchair person was on break, my husband commandeering an apparently unused wheelchair, American Airlines agents commandeering wheelchairs because there weren’t enough people on the wheelchair staff, and just so many delays waiting for wheelchair assistance that sometimes never arrived. There were also kind people.

Nothing bad or inconvenient that happened to me was because someone hated people with disabilities and therefore intentionally harmed me. Nobody got up in the morning hoping to oppress people with disabilities. Chester had no personal hostility to me, although a lot to her job. And I don’t really blame her. All of the people who were rude or hurtful, by things done or undone, will (if they live long enough) someday be on crutches or in a wheelchair; they probably already have. They know and love people with disabilities. Some of their best friends are in wheelchairs or on crutches. Everyone reading this will be on crutches or in a wheelchair if they live long enough; everyone reading this loves someone who is or will be on crutches or in a wheelchair. This isn’t about individual intention.

I wasn’t treated badly because individuals wanted to hurt me personally or because of any individual’s desire to hurt people with disabilities; I was treated badly because airports weren’t built for post-9/11 security needs, and so security is shoved into whatever places happened to be available (in one airport, we had to go upstairs for security and then downstair for the flight), Chester was probably legitimately grumpy about why she always ended up doing the groping of Olds simply because she’s the newest employee, and all the other women had enough seniority to dodge that part of their job. Other people were grumpy or failed to show up because airports don’t pay wheelchair people enough, any kind of accommodation for people with disabilities is duct tape and bailing wire on existing airports and TSA screening processes, people cut me off because they were distracted, planes aren’t built for people with disabilities, and so on. It isn’t about individuals. It’s about institutions, systems, and decisions made fifty years ago.

So, how do we solve this problem?

Should people without disabilities be filled with shame? No. That does no one any good.

Is it a question of individual agency? Could I have willed myself to a better experience? No. It’s a systemic issue about how things, even the physical environment, were designed.

Could Chester have willed herself to a better experience? She could have been nicer to me, sure. But that wouldn’t have necessarily reduced her justifiable irritation about the situations. The system requires that a female grope women like me, many of whom are grumpy about being groped. A better system would have included people with disabilities in the design plans from the beginning, instead of suddenly discovering they exist. Could she have been nicer to me? Yes. But should she? Her job sucks, and it sucks because the way TSA handles people with disabilities sucks. It isn’t her, and it isn’t her boss. It might not even be TSA. It might be the laws, regulations, and policies TSA is required to follow. She had to grope me because the system makes her grope me. It sucked less if I could take off the boot, so she lied to make her job slightly less sucky.

She isn’t the problem. Her feelings aren’t the problem. Her intentions aren’t the problem. The people who wrote the laws, regulations, and policies didn’t necessarily, as individuals, have any intention to discriminate against people with disabilities. It wasn’t their intention to harm that causes the harm. It was their failure to think about inclusion.

My experience was a brief summer shower of what it’s like to try to fly when you have a mild and temporary disability, and has little or nothing to do with what it’s like for people to try to fly who have a more serious or long-term disability. I’m not talking about my experience because it exemplifies what travelling with a disability is like.

My point is that travelling even with a minor and temporary disability shows that we have a system that discriminates against a group of people, regardless of the feelings or intentions of the individuals who happen to be the momentary agent in that system, or even the intentions of people enforcing the rules. There can be discrimination and harm not because of individual intentional hatred, let alone a desire to “oppress,” but as a consequence of systemic thoughtlessness.

Discrimination isn’t about the intentions of individuals, good or bad. Oppression doesn’t actually require oppressors. It’s about systems that were put in place a long time ago but that still constrain what we do; it’s about policies and processes that are thoughtless and convenient; it’s about how saving money or time by relying on stereotypes about what’s normal does harm; it’s about certain kinds of discrimination, such as discrimination against a person who needs crutches, is baked into our buildings.

If we can admit that discrimination against people with disabilities is not about individuals, or shame, or hostility, but a systemic problem, then we can think about other kinds of discrimination as systemic. It shouldn’t be that hard.