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Passing, Invisibility and Other Psychotic Stuff

Name: Carolyn Tyjewski
E-mail address: BlindDyke@aol.com
Date: 11 Jun 1998
Time: 01:57:45
Remote Name: ww-tm06.proxy.aol.com
Remote User:

My story

I am invisible. I can pass. Oh, it's not a trick of mirrors or lights. There is no strange chemical balancing act going on that makes my body, my being, translucent. It's definitely not about a closet. Like Ralph Waldo Ellison's protagonist, "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."

I imagine I experience invisibility like most Disabled people do. I have been talked around, over, under, through and rarely to. I have been stepped on in conversations -- "what she means is," passed by for promotions -- "your place is assured," and just plain left . . . dropped . . . dumped. However, my invisibility goes much deeper than some, maybe even most, because I am invisible on several levels.

I¹m Disabled. I¹m also a Dyke. I am, the dreaded, Disabled Dyke -- a mythical creature that is both sexual and disabled. Because I am "mythical," I don't exist. Except for a few rare occasions, my reality does not reveal itself in literature, film, art, or history. I am not "really" Gay to some, not "really" Disabled to others and some even insist I am neither. Billy Golfus calls this "disconfirmation," an invalidation. I become an invalid.

And still, there is a third level of invisibility. Like the majority of Disabled people in the United States, I can pass. I don't "look" like I am supposed to (whatever that happens to be at the time). Allow me to explain.

I am Blind and, like the majority, I have some usable vision. The usable vision I have is called travel vision which means I, 90% of the time, don't need to use a cane. Also like the majority of Blind people in the US, I can't read Braille. I am also Asthmatic. Like the majority, I'm not on oxygen or wheezing or sucking on inhalers twenty-four and seven. Nevertheless, I am Blind. I am Asthmatic. I am Disabled. And I'm invisible because I don't fit a stereotyped image of Blind or Asthmatic or, even, Disabled. I'm too many things, too few things, and society can¹t seem to do the equation.

At one time, accepting responsibility for this societal psychosis made sense. It made sense to accept responsibility for not fitting in, for not playing the game right. It made sense in the same way taking the comment, "I forgot you're blind," as a compliment seemed appropriate. I'd flinch or suddenly become queasy from the comment but shake it off as nothing, an apparition, my imagination. After all, there was no harm intended. . . . I don't accept responsibility for other people's psychosis anymore. W.E.B. DuBois once wrote, "Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. . . . How does it feel to be a problem?" Although I believe there is a problem, I cannot accept the conclusion that I am the problem.

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Re: In A Class By Myself

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