Disabled. Female. Asian-American: A Take on Living in NYC
One day this July, I was picking up my little sister from volleyball camp on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It was the end of the first day of camp, and to enter the building, you needed to pass the security check outside.
I tried to explain to the security guards that I was here to pick up my sister. They had a difficult time understanding me because of my speech impediment. Like many people do, the guards equated my physical disability to a mental disability. Also, because of my slanted eyes and being clearly Asian, they were probably thinking that I may not speak English properly.
Three other people who came behind me were able to pass security without having any questions asked. They just had to state the name of the program that the child they were picking up, was in. Meanwhile, the guards were calling to see if my sister was actually in the volleyball camp, or if I was just making up a story. Granted, I was one of the youngest-looking people picking up a child from the camp. I was also the only one in a wheelchair.
At this point, I’m furious. Why would they assume bad intentions from me? I began to call them out on their behavior. But of course, they ignored me. As I was starting to lose patience, a woman whom I met that morning when I was dropping off my sister, came. She was coming to pick up her daughter from the same camp my sister was in. She saw that I was upset.
“Is something wrong, officers?” she asked the guards.
“Oh, we’re just making sure this woman is at the right place,” they replied. Why in the world would I be at the wrong place?
“I saw her this morning! She can walk in with me!”
“Oh, really? Then, here you go, you two can go in now.” They gave us both guest passes. Just like that, they finally believed me because a white woman vouched for me.
What would’ve happened if that woman didn’t come to my “rescue”?
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I’ve been living in New York City for five years now, and there has been only one day when I was treated like an actual human being among thousands of New Yorkers. Granted, most women feel violated when walking on the streets of this city: we get catcalls from all directions. However, being of color and living with a visible disability adds significantly to the every-day aggression.
The only day that I’ve experience no aggression or any -isms was the day of my graduation from Columbia Journalism School, when I commuted from my Brooklyn apartment to the ceremony on the Upper West Side Manhattan. From the moment I stepped outside, it felt weird because people looked at me with respect and politely moved out of my way when I was getting up and down the sidewalk curves. Even the MTA subway operator was nice to me; she helped me navigate through the crowd on the platform and made sure I safely got on the train.
Do I have to put a sign on my wheelchair that reads, “Columbia University grad, fully competent” to be treated like an actual human being more frequently?
On most days, I’m treated like I am a part of a carnival spectator whenever I roll down the busy streets of Manhattan in my wheelchair. Little children have no shame in staring at me as they walk past me. Tourists react as if they’ve never seen a differently abled person out and about in public. And I’m careful when I say the phrase, “take the picture, it lasts longer,” because some tourists really do take unsolicited pictures of me. Even though pedestrians see me coming from ten feet ahead, they act as if my chair and I appeared from nowhere as we cross paths. I constantly feel like I’m walking on a tightrope underneath a circus tent, everyone anticipating the moment I’d fall.
I was born with cerebral palsy (CP), a condition in which the brain does not send correct signals to the muscles. This is caused by the brain not receiving enough oxygen either during birth or in an accident. Each person with CP is affected differently by it. For me, it affects my walking, motor skills, and speech. And since my speech patterns are very different from the norm, most strangers think I have a cognitive disability as well. Many times, they’d talk about me right in front of me, as if I am unable to comprehend what they’re saying.
Race also adds a layer to the numerous microaggressions I receive. On Election Day of last year, a volunteer was helping me out in the voting booth (help that I didn’t ask for, but I wasn’t in the mood to make a fuss about it). I wheeled up to the computerized ballot, and the first screen was where you could pick your desired language. There were English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Bangladesh to choose from. I’ve been born and raised in the United States, and never got the chance to properly learn my family’s mother language, Korean. The volunteer proceeded to ask me which language I wanted the ballot in, and when I said “English,” she asked again, “are you sure? We have it in YOUR language.” (By “YOUR language,” she probably meant Chinese, because to most non-Asians, we’re all Chinese.)
The volunteer was very surprised that I was able to successfully finished voting. Was that because I could read and understand English or because I was intellectually capable to vote? A little bit of both? That still remains a mystery.
Throughout my sex education in grade school, teachers implicitly indicated that I didn’t have to worry about “this stuff” because I probably wasn’t going to have sex for awhile. To the contrary, at this very time, my body was being violated by multiple people. As disabled women, we are seen as asexual beings, unable to have sex and undesirable. Yet, women with disabilities are three times more likely to experience domestic violence than are their nondisabled counterparts.
Many people think that we, women with disabilities, are not subjected to sexual abuse and harassment, and as a result, we usually are not included in conversations like #MeToo and #TimesUp.
A few years ago, I was on the city bus, and a man exposed himself to me and started jerking off. No one did anything about it. I got off at the next stop although it was far from my destination.
If I got a dollar every time a man shouts, “baby, give me a ride on that thang” when I drive my chair on the streets, I’d be pretty rich by now.
“But you’re too sexy to be in a wheelchair,” an older man said to me while I was on the checkout line at a grocery store.
Frequently, people help me even though I never asked for help. Most of the time, they have good intentions, however annoying it might be. But there are times when they don’t have good intentions at all. On top of being disabled, I am pretty petite. I have a very small frame but busty breasts. Just like any other woman in her 20s, I like to catch up with friends at a bar. But what I really don’t appreciate when guys “help” me get on a barstool, without even asking me if I want help, and they end up cupping my breasts and feeling me up. I don’t think “undignified” fully describes the essence of how I feel when this happens.
I don’t know how we as a society can fix how women with disabilities, especially those of color, are treated in daily life. But I hope that more women will speak up about their experiences, and this will raise greater awareness.
