I am human. I inhabit a human body. You are also human (unless you’ve just arrived from Omicron Persei VIII, in which case: Welcome, alien overlords!). Our bodies are human bodies, and they are infinitely variable and changeable. Western culture doesn’t like to accept that there are different kinds of bodies, however. There is a very narrow standard of attractiveness (thin, young, white, able-bodied) and bodies that don’t fit into that standard are considered “lesser.” Or “broken.” Or “deficient.”
I reject that standard. We are all deserving of respect and care and love and esteem, no matter what our bodies look like or how they perform. Fat people are human beings. Disabled people are human beings. We are all human beings. That’s why feminism (which, when you get right down to it, is simply the belief that women are human beings) is so important to me, and why I do my best to be an ally wherever and whenever I can. I don’t accept the common, insidious cultural standards that label disabled/fat/trans/etc. people as Other. Rejecting the othering of oppressed groups is a paramount concern of mine, and it’s a huge part of the social justice movement. We ALL deserve to exist, without muttered comments or outright hostility about our wheelchairs or our canes or our bellies or our hairdos or our skin color or our companions or our tattoos.
My body doesn’t always do what I want it to. This is irksome, and takes some getting used to, but it doesn’t mean that I no longer exist. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. I exist, and so do you. We are all human beings.
In no way do I disagree that we have cultural standards that seem to label people not only as Other, or as Lesser, but there are some stupid things that other humans do that make me wonder whether it’s a cultural thing, or (instead/in addition to) something that’s innate to a certain percentage of humans to be inconsiderate and judgmental and sometimes dangerous.
Here’s an example: my husband is an avid cyclist, and he has many, many stories that involve drivers yelling at cyclists to “get off the road,” and said drivers swerving to drive a cyclist off a road or simply to make him shit in his own cycling pants. Why on The Inexistent God’s Green Earth would someone care if there’s a cyclist, or a bunch of cyclists, sharing their road with them? Why would someone care if someone they consider to be overweight is eating [insert food here that many attribute to obesity]? Why should anyone care if someone in a wheelchair is going slower than the people walking around them?
It makes me wonder if this assholishness is simply innate to some people, and if we, as a culture, perpetuate it simply by not being strong enough or by being too confrontationally-averse to consistently call that bullshit out for what it is. Perhaps I’m experiencing a disconnect between the way my life is lived and my appreciation of what it was like in yonder days when speaking out against violence or threatened violence put you in the path of the powerful and thus made you the threatened, but I can’t help but wonder if the herd mentality – or sheep mentality, specifically – is at the crux of this war on Others, down to judging the tiniest unimportant detail.
This is why the term “humanism” appeals to me so thoroughly.
And I reserve the right to judge those people who don’t put their shopping carts away in the parking lot or people who discard items on the shelves at the checkout line instead of not being lazy and putting the items where they belong. Fuckers.