Episode 182: Who Tells Your Story

There's a reason marginalized groups constantly cry out for representation.

Transcript

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Laura 0:00

History is written by the oppressors.

Male VO 0:03

This is Bad Attitudes.

Laura 0:20

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

Laura 0:30

This week's supporter shout out goes to Joan KB. Thank you for your support, Joan.

Laura 0:36

If you'd like to hear your name on a future episode, consider becoming a member on Ko-Fi. Visit ko-fi.com slash badattitudes pod for more information.

Laura 0:48

You can also support the pod by visiting our merch store at badattitudeshop.etsy.com, where you'll find podcast merch and satisfyingly sarcastic designs, especially for the disabled and chronically ill communities.

Laura 1:04

For questions, comments, or ideas, visit the website at badattitudespod.com. Email badattitudespod at gmail.com or reach out on social media. Follow at Bad Attitudes Pod on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and Blue Sky.

Laura 1:24

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 1:41

I recently saw the touring production of "Suffs: The Musical," with my family, and in the car as we were leaving, my dad asked a question that rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn't a controversial question, but the answer seemed pretty obvious to me, so maybe that's why it bugged me.

Laura 1:59

"Suffs" chronicles the last seven years of the women's suffrage movement, focusing on Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party's radical tactics to challenge President Woodrow Wilson and the moderate suffragist establishment. Although this isn't a focus of the musical, Alice Paul is also the author of the Equal Rights Amendment. She authored the ERA in 1923, and more than 100 years later, it still has not yet been ratified by all 50 states. There are no male actors in "Suffs." There are only two primary male characters in the show, President Woodrow Wilson and his chief of staff, Dudley Malone. Dudley Fields Malone was a real person who served under President Wilson, although not as his chief of staff, and he left his position in response to President Wilson's treatment of suffragists silently picketing the White House. There are also a handful of minor male characters, a police officer, a doctor, but all the characters are played by women or non-binary performers. Men are a presence, such as angry men being aggressive towards the suffragist. However, these events are depicted primarily through the women's pantomime.

Laura 3:16

As we were leaving the show, my dad asks, Why didn't they have any men in the show? My immediate answer, and what seemed fairly obvious to me, was it's about women. There was a little back and forth, and my sister Googled the official stance on why there are no men in the show. It was, quote, "a deliberate artistic choice to center women's voices, strengths, and perspectives." So basically what I said, it's a show about women.

Laura 3:46

Now, my dad is fairly liberal. He has two loudly opinionated daughters, so maybe it's self-preservation as much as anything, but he's always leaned to the left. Even so, he's still a white man of a certain age, and that does come with unfortunate connotations. So when he said it wouldn't have bothered me if they were played by men, I thought, but did not say, Well yeah, you're a man. For what it's worth, if those couple of roles had been played by male actors, I think it would have changed the tone of the entire show. It would have felt different. The president especially says some pretty ridiculous things based on historical quotes, and had they been said by a man, they would have been given more credence. Said by a woman, the absurdity is thick. Said by a man, those lines may have been taken more seriously. For all it's on its last gasp, we still live in a patriarchy, and the presence of a man would change the vibe.

Laura 4:49

I could have left it at that, but I'm an overthinker, and I kept thinking about it over the following days. Saying it's about women just didn't feel like enough. Because it isn't just about women's stories and it isn't just about "Suffs." Eventually I landed on this:

Laura 5:07

The stories of the oppressed cannot be told truly by the oppressors.

Laura 5:13

Whenever we tell a story, we center ourselves and our perspectives. That's only natural. How can I tell a story from a perspective other than my own? And depending on the type of story, we also make ourselves look best and make everyone else look considerably worse. Everyone is a hero in their own story, but no one is a hero in every story.

Laura 5:36

When an oppressor tells a story, they center themselves and do their damnedest to make the oppressed look bad. Since my dad inspired this episode, let's consider something he loves, Old Westerns. For most of its existence, the Western genre portrayed indigenous Americans in a certain way, as savages. They were violent people who wanted nothing more than to visit unspeakable horrors on white people. In fact, many of those films went so far as not just to suggest, but outright say that indigenous people were not people.

Laura 6:10

Later in his career, John Ford, a prolific director of Westerns who often worked with John Wayne, created a film that he considered an apology to Native Americans for the way they were portrayed in earlier films. Of course, now we know that this idea of Native Americans as violent animals is generally false. But this image was perpetuated by white colonizers looking to justify their treatment of indigenous tribes when they rolled up on their land. They changed their narrative to fit their oppressive goals.

Laura 6:43

Let's take another example from "Suffs" itself. In the second act, there is a scene where Alice Paul and her cohorts are in prison, having been arrested for allegedly speaking negatively about the U.S.'s participation in World War I. During the scene, on one side of the stage is the prison doctor, giving President Wilson an update on how the prisoners are being treated. On the opposite side of the stage, Alice Paul's friends outside of prison are reading a letter that has been smuggled to them. In the center, Alice and her fellow prisoners enact their treatment and speak the contents of the letter.

Laura 7:21

The doctor tells the president that the women are fed three meals a day, high-quality food, and they're taking it well. It's important to know that Alice Paul had been leading a hunger strike to be released. What the women show the audience is that, in fact, they are tied down three times a day, tubes shove down their throats and force fed raw eggs. There is a line that specifically says, "don't let them say we're taking it well." The letters are eventually leaked to the press and the women are released.

Laura 7:51

We watch in semi-real time as the oppressor, in this case the doctor, twists reality to justify his treatment of the prisoners, but also to give the president plausible deniability as to their treatment. Of course, the president knows these women are not being treated well, but he isn't bothered by that fact and isn't interested in the truth, just what serves his purpose, primarily to get this young suffragist radical off his back.

Laura 8:19

For most of history, all we knew about slavery came from the perspective of white slave owners. Would "Roots" have been as impactful if it were written by a white man? Or would "12 Years A Slave" have the same impact if it were not the story of a real black man sold into and rescued from slavery? Probably not. It's why it's so important that marginalized communities aren't just represented on stage and screen, but also behind the camera and in the writers' rooms.

Laura 8:50

When non-disabled people tell disabled stories, we end up with stereotypes and tropes that are pretty far from reality. Why do you think we have so many stereotypes about the disabled person as perpetually happy and up beat? Because a non-disabled person declared it to be so. Why are disabled people so often assumed to be less intelligent or divorced from sexuality? Because that is the story that non-disabled society has told.

Laura 9:19

Disabled stories can never ring wholly true until they are told by disabled voices with disabled actors. A non-disabled actor can never give a wholly accurate performance as a disabled person. I know that in some cases there doesn't seem to be an option to use a disabled actor. For example, if during the course of the story a person becomes disabled. Even then, those stories never feel quite right.

Laura 9:46

We've known the basic history of the suffrage movement mostly from the perspective of male historians. Most everything we know about history has been from the perspective of male historians, white historians, or non-disabled historians. Or more accurately, white male non-disabled historians. I can acknowledge that "Suffs" leaves out a lot of the history, such as the fact that the 19th Amendment was really only a victory for white women. Technically, black men were granted the right to vote with the 15th Amendment, but disenfranchisement techniques such as literacy tests and poll taxes made it incredibly difficult for black men and women to exercise their rights until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even though I can acknowledge that, I recognize how powerful it is to hear the story of suffrage from the perspective of women who were there, who were instrumental in getting the amendment passed.

Laura 10:45

As a disabled woman, I also know how powerful it is to hear a disabled person's story from their perspective, portrayed by someone in a similar position, and also know how hard these stories can be to find.

Laura 11:00

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