Episode 181: No Jumping Zone

Audiences jumped to a (seemingly logical) conclusion at the end of season 2, episode 9 of The Pitt. It was actually an ableist conclusion.

Transcript

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Laura 0:00

Jumping to conclusions should be an Olympic sport.

Male VO 0:04

This is Bad Attitudes.

Laura 0:21

Hello, friends and strangers. Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes, an uninspiring podcast about disability. I'm your host, Laura.

Laura 0:32

This week's supporter shout-out goes to Amanda Good. Thank you for your support, Amanda.

Laura 0:38

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Laura 0:51

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Laura 1:08

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Laura 1:28

As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community, but I am not the only voice.

Laura 1:45

If you are not watching The Pitt, what are you doing with your life? It is quite possibly the best show on television right now. Everyone I know enjoys the show. The only time I've heard anyone say something negative about it is when they say it's too political, which is just code for please don't show me any verifiable information about what's happening in the real world because I like to pretend my actions don't have consequences. No one who voted for Kamala Harris is complaining that The Pitt is too political, is all I'm saying.

Laura 2:20

One thing about The Pitt is that its disability representation is top-notch. From physical disability to neurodiversity to deaf representation, we've seen it all across the first season and a half. One such character that has been a presence since episode one is Becca King, the autistic sister of Dr. Mel King, one of The Pitt's residents. Not for nothing, Mel is also strongly autistic coded, although I don't believe we've ever heard her given a diagnosis. And the neurodivergent community is loving Taylor Dearden's portrayal. What we know about Becca is that she is Mel's twin sister, she's autistic, and she lives in a care facility. Their parents are not around, so Mel is Becca's caretaker. In every episode, we see how central caring for Becca is to Mel's life. Her sister is her number one priority.

Laura 3:17

In season two, episode nine, Becca, played by Tal Anderson, comes into the ER with belly pain. Mel brings her sister back into the exam area, but is almost immediately called upon for a deposition. She can't stay with Becca, so she turns her care over to Dr. Langdon, played by Patrick Ball, a fellow doctor who quickly became Mel's person in season one. We spend only a few minutes with Langdon and Becca at the end of the episode, but her diagnosis is clear. UTI.

Laura 3:50

If you're not familiar with The Pitt, it's important to know that each season follows just one day in the ER. Each episode represents roughly an hour. It is as close to a real-time show as you can get without actually living it. Although we only had a few minutes with Becca, we will return to her in future episodes. It's also important for me to say that I purposely wrote and recorded this episode before knowing the full outcome of Becca's storyline. At this point, all we know for certain is that she likely has a UTI. The diagnosis itself isn't even official, just most likely. By the time this episode drops, we'll at least have more information, if not the complete outcome of the storyline.

Laura 4:38

The reason it was important for me to make this episode without knowing the outcome is because of what I was seeing on social media after The Pitt's episode dropped. Every person who has ever had a UTI instantly made the connection when Becca and Langdon were discussing her symptoms. And the next seemingly logical conclusion to draw was that Becca was sexually assaulted.

Laura 5:01

I'm not innocent. I made the jump too. After all, Becca is a disabled woman with evidently high support needs who has presented with symptoms of a UTI. Although there are many reasons a woman might get a UTI, it is well known that UTIs are associated with sexual activity. I've seen that Law and Order episode. Actually, I've seen several of those Law and Order episodes. But I clocked it. I realized that was an ableist assumption. It is just as likely that Becca got a UTI from consensual sexual activity, and I have, in fact, seen all of those Law and Order episodes as well. It is a common storyline that a disabled woman turns up pregnant, despite everyone around her assuming she is sexually innocent and lacking the capacity to enter a sexual relationship. Sometimes the story is that she was abused, but sometimes the story is that she has a boyfriend no one knows about.

Laura 6:02

I'm betting The Pitt has something better in store than the typical abused disabled woman's storyline, although I'm sure that will be the conclusion the characters initially jumped to. I'm also sure that the writers knew that was exactly the conclusion the audience would jump to, too. Given Becca's disability, her manner of speaking, and what the audience thinks it knows about her, that assumption makes perfect sense. It is commonplace for society to desexualize disabled people. Not in the sense that people, especially women, aren't sex objects, but in the sense that they believe disabled people don't have the capacity or desire to enter into romantic relationships. This is especially true for people they perceive to be intellectually disabled, but extends to anyone with a disability.

Laura 6:52

When you were a teenager, what was one of the most common questions you were asked by adults? I'm betting it was some variation of, do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend? I clearly remember every single time I was asked this question, because it happened exactly once. Once in my entire adolescence. An adult thought it was perfectly normal that I would have a boyfriend. They probably thought I was bonkers for how excitedly I said no. I wasn't excited to not have a boyfriend, but I was excited that someone thought to ask me.

Laura 7:25

Physical and sexual abuse against disabled women is undoubtedly a problem. According to Human Rights Watch, disabled women are three times more likely to be abused or assaulted as non-disabled women. And the University of Michigan reports that as many as 40% of women with disabilities experience sexual assault or physical abuse in their lifetime.

Laura 7:48

Even so, when we encounter a disabled person in real life or in the media, we must assume competency. We must assume autonomy. If Becca King was a non-disabled woman showing signs of a UTI, no one in the audience would jump to sexual assault without other evidence. By the end of episode 9, there is no other evidence that should lead us to believe she was abused. It is simply her existence as a disabled person that leads us to that conclusion.

Laura 8:20

Like I said, I made that leap too. We are all victims of ingrained biases, even if those biases are against ourselves. Ingrained ableism, racism, homophobia. It happens to all of us. It's not your fault. Society has a way of building these ideas into our psyche as we grow up. But just because it's not your fault, that doesn't mean it's not your responsibility to change. We must make the effort to eliminate those biases and stop ourselves from jumping to those damaging conclusions. At the very least, we must be able to identify them and shut them down when they happen. If we know better, we can do better. And when we do better, we can be better.

Laura 9:04

Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you in the next one.