#oitnb suzanne

So if you've seen my oitnb posts before you probably know Suzanne is my favorite character. The second she first came on screen I was like 'my love' and I basically liked her more and more and more as the first season went on. She is optimistic, she's clever, she's beautiful, she's a dreamer, she's a poet, and she has a great sense of humor.

In short I want to kiss her face 24/7/365 (366 on leap years).

Something very very important about Suzanne is that she's a visibly neuroAtypical character. The way she moves, the way she speaks, the tics she displays makes her immediately distinct from the neurotypical characters. Though we've never gotten any specific diagnosis for Suzanne, it seems to me that she is coded as being on the schizophrenic and/or autistim spectrums. She is not just 'quirky,' she behaves in ways that neurotypical people see as being 'scary' (hitting herself, having meltdowns, changing mood quickly).

Many neuroAtypical people can attest to being seen as dangerous, violent, or 'unstable' because of their natural body language or speech patterns. I know from the testimony of black women, and from living in a racist society in general, that black women are stereotyped in similar ways. Suzanne, a black woman who is neuroAtypical, is therefore doubly stereotyped as being violent and dangerous.

In most prison shows I know of the visibly neuroAtypical person would be depicted as the most dangerous prisoner, the one that the 'sane' bad guys fear, unpredictable and unreasonable if not outright sadistic.That is why it was so important that Suzanne was not violent in the first season. She wasn't perfect, of course, she urinated on Piper and Miss. Claudette's floor and threw pie at someone, but considering that they were in a prison environment this was pretty normal.

Suzanne was not only a victimizer but a victim. She was sympathetic, she was vulnerable, she was a sweetheart. We saw her apologize for hurting other people, intentionally or not. We saw how hurt she was by ableism, how the nickname she had been given dehumanized her.

Suzanne is a character who would be so easy to stereotype as a violent threat, but instead she was a beautifully nuanced human being.

That is why I am very disappointed with how her relationship with Vee has been written this season. As a fan I am upset that she is being manipulated, I'm upset that she is so ostracized that one person treating her with humanity is enough to win her loyalty, but these are things that often happen to vulnerable people and I don't resent the writers for including them. What I do resent the writers for is giving Suzanne the job of beating Vee's enemies.

Why is Suzanne the character fit to be Vee's 'enforcer', the one who beats Poussey and threatens other with similar treatment? She isn't the strongest person in Vee's group, she isn't the biggest or the tallest. She does not have the most experience fighting or using weapons. The reason is that she is 'crazy.' She is visibly neuroAtypical, so she must be violent (nevermind that mentally ill people are far more likely to suffer violence than inflict it). She hits herself when upset, so she must hit others (nevermind how little sense it makes that someone who chooses to take their pain out on themselves would randomly flip to taking it out on others). In the mind of the writers and of neurotypicals (esp white neurotypicals) everywhere, Suzanne is just naturally predisposed to violence. Her place in the group is naturally the bully.

Suzanne could have been a cigarette maker, a planner, a lookout, a distraction. She could have witnessed the violence Vee was willing to inflict and begin to separate from her because of that. But instead she was used as a bully and a fighter. There was no explanation behind this for the simple reason that most people would never think one was needed. They would be happy to be proven 'right' about Suzanne, happy to tell themselves that being uneasy around her, disliking her, was not because of their prejudice but because of her nature.

The fact that Suzanne only acts under Vee's orders does not change this perception that Suzanne is dangerous. Suzanne is seen not as a person, but as a weapon that is always live and waiting to be pointed at someone. They think that If Vee hadn't been the one to use her, someone else would.

This is not just upsetting, it is terrifying. When people think neuroAtypical people are violent, they are more likely to act violently against them. When people think walking or talking or behaving in ways that seem strange to them indicates danger, they are more likely to put rules in place that take away the rights of people like Suzanne. Suzanne, and everyone like her, deserves better than this.