The Little People Still Think You Don’t Understand Bullying
I’m only going to say this once.
There’s a reason you don’t see Dwarf/Little People parents (meaning, parents with dwarfism of kids with dwarfism) sharing videos of their kids sobbing and traumatized from being bullied. And it’s NOT that it doesn’t happen.
We know the truth……
It won’t change a damn thing..and will likely make it worse.
If abled-gaze informed ideas of “awareness” really worked, given all the damn attention the dwarfism community gets, don’t you think by NOW the averages would have changed their behavior?
We have whole networks dedicated to reality shows. We have Emmy/Golden Globe winners. We have heads of foundations, engineers, White House staffers, geneticists, teachers, lawyers, members of the Harlem Globetrotters.
None of that matters. Because these accomplishments have had minimal to no impact on how you treat us. Because a certain segment of averages treated us like freaks before, and now with all this media attention treat us like freaks that who are entitled to put the intimate moments of our lives on display. (Serious solidarity with Jim Sinclair’s work on feeling like a Self-Narrating Zoo Exhibit.) And as Little People, we are supposed to be good citizens of the lollipop guild and oblige any invasion of our personhood. But that doesn’t even matter because you still film us without our consent if we object.
What all of your hot takes on this issue is missing is what you can’t take from us. Our community’s history. Which is why so many of us are so upset at non-LPs, even other disabled folks, stepping all over this, when it’s clearly not your lane. Be an ally and listen.
The dwarfism community’s SPECIFIC history with the “entertainment” industry adds distinct nuance to this conversation which makes it different than kids with disabilities other than dwarfism. We have centuries of transactional power dynamics between us and the averages. We have vaudeville (including forced breeding). We have Oz. We have Santa. We have Oompa Loompas. We have Game of Thrones. We have TLC. We share a community where until recently our youth were more likely to identify by what year they “elved” for Radio City than where they went to college. Whereas most communities within the disability space are still struggling for basic representation in media, we have an issue where quantity does not equal quality, and you cannot divorce the voyeuristic tendencies of a dwarfism obsessed public with that child’s trauma.
[Edit: What the hot takes are ALSO missing, is a First Nations lens. Mr. Bayles and his family are part of Australia’s First Nations community, and this connection was largely erased by Western media. A third of Indigenous youth who report being bullied have reported impact on social engagement and acceptance at school due to bullying. I have been contacted and informed that the First Nations community have continued to engage with Mr. Bayles family, which is a critical support to this young man as he moves forward. As a community often erased, I sincerely hope the disability community globally do not contribute to the further erasure of the First Nations community in their communications, advocacy and outreach. Our own LPA has a ways to go in performing anti-racist work, and I think we, as a community, need to do a much better job.]
There is a societal pressure to commodify this kid’s experience and the effects of this will ripple like a pebble on a pond. It impacts all of us. Not a single LP mama I spoke to either shared the video, or felt comfortable with it being shared. That is our pain. The non LP world already takes so much from us but we will be damned if you get our child’s vulnerability. They don’t owe it to you. In fact, they owe you nothing. But, putting videos of your kids trauma out into the world simply feeds the desire of the averages to want more. And by watching this video, it really is compounded trauma for my community. I not only had to think about how to talk to my kids about this, but I also had to deal with my own feelings, having experienced bullying like most of the LP adults I know.
That video and Mr. Bayles pain will be searchable forever. First date. First job. I imagine him walking into a school library and encountering his classmates watching it. Because that will happen. And the impact will not localized to Australia. It affects ALL of his community. Yesterday I asked people on twitter NOT to tag me in that video, I had to block hundreds of folks who refused to respect my boundaries. For all you averages talk of consent, you don’t always apply it to disabled people.
I hope Mr. Bayles mama puts down the camera, hugs her son, as she no doubt loves him very much. But I also hope she surrounds him with strong role models in the LP community, so he can see what his future is defined by, which is not what level of entertainment or pity porn is commodified by the averages.
If you, the averages, really wanted to change things, you’d stop being asshats to people with disabilities and teach your kids to do the same. Cuz there are a lot of asshats out there, so your work is cut out for you.
Lastly, I hope the kid gets some therapy in addition to mouse ears. Because, shit, we all need it. And he needs coping skills and more than he needs a Mickeypop right now. I also hope he has some cousins like mine (cuz they would have beat those bullies asses before my mom would have had time to make a video, IJS).
