#end ableism

While Marvel's Daredevil wants you to believe it's doing disability representation right. On the surface, it does seem that way. Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer, but a hero by night. The man is a brooding fighter who refuses to be defined by his disability. Although scratch beneath the surface, and you'll find something much more complicated. Daredevil walks a fine line between empowerment and erasure. A part of the show represents blindness and the struggles that come with it, but also fantasizes about it. By doing so, this show leans into the common ableist theme of the Supercrip.

What is a supercrip? A supercrip is a person who is disabled, but is depicted as having superhuman abilities as compensation for their disability. Matt Murdock is a brilliant example of this. He doesn't just avoid his blindness, nor does he let it stop him. Rather, he transcends his disability in ways that defy reality. The problem isn't that a blind man is a superhero; the issue is that his blindness is only acceptable because of his superhuman powers.

The show treats Matt's blindness less as a meaningful part of his identity but more as a visual concept. Throughout the show, there are scenes where Matt uses his cane or reads braille. However, the show invests most of its time in making the viewer forget he's blind. Take this, for example. We never really see how Matt practically navigates his daily life. I want to know what kind of accommodations he has in his office. I want to know how he cleans his apartment or even cooks! Yet the show doesn't unveil that. To the show's credit, though, there are scenes where Matt resists the pity that often follows his disability.

Charcoal Grey: Mourning for ableist violence, abuse victims, people who committed suicide and everyone who died due to the disability

Red Stripe: Physical disabilities

Gold Stripe: Neurodiversity

Blue Stripe: Emotional and psychiatric disabilities

Green Stripe: Sensory disabilities

White Stripe: Undiagnosed and invisible disabilities

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A charity to donate to: <3 https://fodac.org/

No. See none of us will be nice. They said themselves it was incredibly uncomfortable and humiliating.

The fact that the bare "minimum" people do for accessibility humiliates us, should speak VOLUMES for the state of ableism in society.

Me: <Watching Avatar: The Last Airbender>

Mom: “Jeez, anime is so whiny.”

Me: <Internal screaming of an animation nerd> “Um… I-it's technically not anime.”

Mom: “But it's imitating anime. I've noticed anime characters tend to whine a lot… The waterfall tears are just ridiculous-- and hearts popping out of them when they're in love!”

Me: “Cartoons do the heart thing, too…!”

Mom: “Yeah, now that they're copying anime. Anime just exaggerates emotions too much, it's annoying.”

Me: “As if everything including your clothes turning pure white when you're scared or literal steam coming out of your ears when you're mad like in the old Looney Tunes cartoons is realistic…??”

Mom: “That's completely different.”

Me: “Only in that they're different emotions!!”

Mom: “Exactly.”

Me: “…So, what, it's okay for a character to be angry or scared, but not for them to be sad or in love??”

Mom: “Yes.”

Me: <Dies laughing> <Makes mental note not to watch Fruits Basket around her> <Continues to mix cartoon & anime emotes in own art>

…

But seriously, to everyone who says animation is automatically and exclusively for children (my mom is not one-- nor is she anti-anime, despite the above conversation), and to enjoy it makes one childish:

“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” ~ C.S. Lewis

So there, haha. Enjoy whatever you enjoy. There are many animated movies/series that aren’t intended for children (e.g. Betty Boop, Princess Mononoke (1997), etc), but that doesn’t mean you have to watch them now that you’re older. You don’t see me hiding my Mickey Mouse and Pucca stuff, pft.

And, besides... the Basic Character Design principle of “The Rule of Silhouettes” (“if you can tell who a character is from NOTHING BUT THEIR SILHOUETTE, it’s a good character design”) is a big accessibility tool for prosopagnosics like myself who genuinely cannot recognize people by their faces (for that matter, so are exaggeratedly unique and recognizable voices like Mel Blanc was able to acheive). It seems like most live-action movies just pick a bunch of super similar-looking-and-sounding actors/actresses because they're popular and “attractive,” then I just end up sitting there like:

“…Which of the five thin, short-haired brunette characters is she…?” (・–・;)ゞ

But I can identify every single one of THESE characters in a heartbeat-- and three of the shows I don’t even watch:

Heck, that emotional exaggeration is also an accessibility tool-- for autistics like myself who struggle to read emotions (the general rule of thumb is literally “take what you think this emotion normally looks/sounds like… AND CRANK IT UP TO 💯 BECAUSE YOU NEED TO COMMUNICATE THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF THIS SCENARIO TO THE ENTIRE AUDIENCE”). That’s part of why I selected chibis and rubber-hose cartoons as the inspirations for my @neuromenagerie ​art style; I wanted to mix the two most expressive styles I could think of and make the characters as empathetic and lovable as possible, no matter their neurotypes.

Today is my 23rd birthday, and I spent my morning at the Women’s March on Memphis.  I can’t think of a better way to have spent my morning, it was 100% me.  I cried during the march because of the sheer beauty of what was happening.  An estimated 9,000+ people in my city came together to march to show support for each other’s rights.  It was a humbling and beautiful experience.  

So people have asked, “Why do you march? What difference do you think you will make?”  I marched with thousands of people in my city and thousands of people across this nation and world to send a message: We will not sit there silently as our rights (the women, the POC, the LGBTQIA community, the immigrants, the disabled, the elderly, the poor, the children, the Muslim people, the Native American people, and more) are systematically stripped away.  Yes, I know that this has to go past the march.  I, and the other marchers, must get involved and become engaged in my community.  I have to contact my political representatives.  I have to encourage every single person I can find to register to vote and to vote as if their lives depended on it because it does.  If you have the privilege of your life not depending on American people’s votes, you are lucky, but please consider whose life could be at stake.  Do your research and be informed on issues before you make decisions that affect others.  

I am a cis, hetero-normative, white, middle-class (as of recent) woman, and I am terrified for my reproductive rights, my job (I teach public school), my students (I teach exclusively African American and Hispanic children), my POC coworkers, my LGBTQIA friends, my family members and students who live below the poverty line, my immigrant friends, my grandparents, Native Americans, Muslim Americans, disabled Americans...  My pledge is that I will fight as hard as I can for the rights of the aforementioned people.  I will love you all, and I will fight for you.