DAMn. #MeToo

In 2003. At a little people convention in Boston, I was drugged.

I had recently gotten some disturbing news about a friend of mine, and with another dear friend walked to the bar and proceeded in doing two tequila shots. After the shots, I had to go to the restroom. Upon entering the stall I collapsed. I remember little else until waking up the next morning on the floor of my mom’s hotel room. The details of that evening or sketchy, but, I know my friend went and asked another friend to help come and get me out of the restroom because she couldn’t move me. The first friend refused. Then, thankfully, she ran into part of my chosen family who didn’t hesitate to help me, and also went and got my mom. The paramedics were called and quickly confirmed to my mom that I had been drugged. While I made it through the incident unassaulted, I was most certainly traumatized.

The next several days I heard numerous rumors about what had actually happened, none of which were true.(I am eternally grateful that this was pre-Social media.) The thing is, I had navigated the space I was in my entire life, it was a little people convention, these were 1000 of my closest friends and relations, people who my family had known for generations. My mother was a senior member of leadership in the organization and because of that we were staples at both our local, regional, and national events. While I had gotten into typical teenage antics over the years, I have never gotten into “big trouble.” I drank at parties in my teenage years, threw numerous parties of my own, knew how to target which bartender would be the least likely to card me when I was clearly under age and which of my older friends would be sure to snag me a drink when they went to the bar.

The reason I’m sharing this is because October is Dwarfism Awareness Month, and while I think we spent a lot of time thinking about how we educate people outside the little person community to treat us with a modicum of respect, I also think we need to have a real critical conversation about and within our community as it relates to our own #MeToo moments. Our community is a small one, pardon the pun, and very insular. My perspective is likely informed by the fact that both of my parents were also little people, they joined LPA as teenagers. (80% of Little People are the only folks like them in their families.) From an early age my mom would point out the much older dudes hanging around that much younger women, and while I may have thought it was weird, it wasn’t until I got older that I realized what “grooming” meant. I remember the first time I hear someone say that they couldn’t wait until one of my friends turned 18 and how it made me feel queasy but I don’t think I really thought about it more than that.

Now that I’m a parent, it no longer makes me queasy. It makes me angry. Angry at a community that is supposed to support folks. Angry at a community that doesn’t teach it’s boys about consent, about responsibility, about respectful treatment of women.

This not a condemnation of LPA but rather a discussion of how we raise our children with disabilities. Are we allowing internalized ableism to give us a sense of false security that these are not conversations we need to be having?

For so many of our kids they’re isolated when they get to high school. They may not be invited to parties, they may feel uncomfortable asking someone from their school who is average height to a dance, and may rather either a not go or be ask a little person from a neighboring town. On more than one occasion I have heard average height parents say how much easier it was raising an LP teen than an average height one because they didn’t exhibit the typical teenage rebellious streak. (Incidentally if this describes your kid or how you talk about them you may want to check your kid for depression because a lot of us deal with it in our teenage years, but that’s a subject for a future blog.)

We cannot ignore “the world,” nor can we afford to not teach our children the lessons that all children should have. Because of my experience in Boston, and the world we live in, in my family we regularly talk to our children about consent. And it goes both ways. Whether it’s my daughter picking on my son, or vice versa. “No” always means no. “I don’t like it” means no. “Get off me” means no. “Don’t touch me” means no. Anything that isn’t affirmatively “Yes”=”No!”

For our time in LPA centered spaces, we get to be, “just like everyone else.” At home I was the responsible one, the part time caregiver for my grandparents, the one working a full time job and going to school full time, pulling in grades never lower than a 3.2. Little People conventions were the time I had to let loose. The times that I would stay up all night at the dance, meet new friends, meet boys, connect with mentors. I remember the year that LPs came from out of the U.S., got a girl drunk,and videotaped her assault, and checked out of the hotel hours later, never to be seen again. I remember watching a guy friend drown his sorrows in a drink about the fact that a mutual friend wasn’t into him, and watch that sorrow turn to rage when the girl later walked by with another guy, and he punched a hole in the wall. I remember an acquaintance sitting outside the front door of the hotel bragging to his crew of Crabbe and Goyles about the number of drunk girls whose virginity he had taken that week. Several of those girls were my friends. I remember all of these things decades later.

Now that I’m a mom I think back on those days a lot. My son turns eight this week, and the prospect of raising a tween is absolutely terrifying. We know that children are being exposed to higher levels of pressure now than ever before. And while he feel safe in the little person community, a community that loves and supports him, I want to ensure that safe that sense of safety combined with his male privilege never outweighs the responsibility to be vigilant. I don’t want him to be just another guy, I want him to be a good person. His father and I are not going to be policing his sister about her clothing and then turning around and ignoring his potentially sexist remarks. We frequently talk to him about the choices he makes, whether with groups of his friends who are equally charismatic and hilarious, or individually. Whether in school or at LPA. We talk about the consequences of those decisions. We talk about what was in his mind as he was making them. We talk about how those decisions make people feel.

I sincerely hope this is a broader conversation in our organization and in our community. And like I said, this isn’t a condemnation of our community, or the organization we love so much. But an opportunity to make it what we like to tell ourselves it is. It is a place of fellowship, of support, of access to the best medical professionals in the world, a place where kids get exposed to POSITIVE adults with dwarfism and where average height families can get the tools, and resources they need to feel supported in raising a child with dwarfism. We all talk about it being a safe place, but ignoring this critical conversation ensures it will never be that.