!! I see you cited me in one article there, but I actually wrote something more specifically on this on my (kind of abandoned ;;) Dreamwidth account: [How Disability Gave Me Four Legs and Why It Kicks Ass]
I remember when I first started using a cane, I felt so .. visible. People started treating me differently. I would (and still do) get strangers asking invasive questions about it, giving me unsolicited advice on how to “get better,” pointing out literally every single time they see me without my canes like it’s a good thing and they never wanna see my canes again. I also love the “you’re too young to be using canes!”
I felt like a “three-legged monster” down to even writing poetry about it, and I meant it in the most reclaiming and positive way. My cane was another leg, another sense that let me feel out what was around me and in front of me. I could test the sturdiness of ground, the depth of snow. I had an extra foot in getting up or down hills. And when I started using two canes over one, I felt quadrupedal and euphoric! Here were the four legs I’d wanted for so long, and as of now I’m waiting to get fitted for the forearm crutches I’ve been wanting to replace my two canes for better mobility. Those will become even more an extension of my body when they’re fitted just for me.
But the feeling of being a monster isn’t always positive. Having my scoliosis, I get to be very aware of every “hunchback” monster, of every vengeful disabled person, of every creature defined as monstrous for having a “deformed” body. Most recently it was seeing the Pet Semetary remake and how horrifyingly they depicted a young woman with spinal meningitis as a literal monster, constantly in pain, with the cracking of her back and creaking of her joints being exaggerated grossly into something equivalent to the Jaws theme. You could hear how her “disfigurement” makes her monstrous without even seeing how horrible they make her look. It hurt. It hurt so badly and I hated every scene she was in. I saw myself in that monster.
I think very few people, even neurodivergent people who you’d think would ally with us most, actually understand how dehumanized physically disabled people are. [We’re literally freakshows]. We’re actual monsters in the eyes of other people. People don’t want us to exist, down to literally [trying to wipe us out] (TW: forced sterilization, eugenics) on the regular.
And while i don’t have a lot of defined and specific identity around feeling monstrous, good or bad, due to my disability, I’d absolutely say it plays a role in my alterhumanity and self-perception as non-human. Inhuman. Refusing to accept the label “human” at all.
My current goblin copinglink is also impacted by my disability? I purposefully chose an “ugly” creature and depict my goblinself as having the same scoliotic curve in its back that I do, so I have the room to love myself as I am.
Idk disability plays into my alterhuman stuff a lot and I’m so glad you brought up the topic because I think not having the room already opened to it makes it harder to think about on my own. I can’t pinpoint it to a single identity so much as it just pervades everything about me as a nonhuman. And really adds to that “physically nonhuman” feeling a lot and gives it new meaning, because I’m dehumanized specifically for how my body works and looks. I’m literally physically inhuman in the eyes of others. No amount of “but i know im REALLY human” will cover that up or make people treat me as such.
