I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am. There have been so many times when something goes wrong or weird and I just have to ask Ben to rescue me. I’m lucky that I’m small and light. And Ben is tall and in good shape. And he is willing. I get carried into bathrooms a lot. Usually women’s. This happens when no handicap bathrooms are in range. Or while biking. I am lucky that after my spinal cord injury I have regained the ability to pee — but this also means I have to be vigilant about timely bathroom breaks, because my body sometimes acts like it has just recently learned this whole bathroom thing. Which is true.
So, my situation has given me a good perspective on the recent controversy about who gets to enter which bathroom. The segregation makes no sense. It can separate caregiver and caretaker in so many key situation. People with disabilities are also targeted by these policies. Ben has to deal with the acute discomfort of helping me in a women’s restroom. I just have to laugh at the stares. But why do we have to put people in these situations? Let me assure you that no female has been harassed, humiliated, or violated by having an adult male in the same room where they use the restroom. My disability seems to disarm him as a threat. I think if we can change people’s perception in a single exception situation, we can change it always and make a new normal.
Ok, politics aside… I get carried by my friends and companions to kayaks and up stairs in San Francisco and into lakes for swimming. I have so much additional access thanks to a set of arbitrary circumstances. I do not want to take this for granted. So many other wheelchair users have those limits.