My Body Has Always Been Deemed “Desirable.” Then I Started Using a Wheelchair

In my 31 years, ableism and fetishization have permeated a fair share of my relationships because of my intersecting identities as a queer Latina. My ethnicity has been deemed "spicy," a hot commodity everyone wants, while my bisexuality has always marked me as sexually available to all. These stereotypes are untrue, unkind, and dangerous, and yet they've still always made me feel desirable — even if for seriously problematic reasons. So nothing could prepare me for how this would drastically change when my disability started requiring me to use a power chair part time.

I grew up with a strong sense of confidence. It was hard not to when my Puerto Rican father repeatedly told me that as a Lausell, I could count on two things: good looks and the ability to befriend anyone. With a different set of parents, I may not have had such positive feelings about myself since childhood. I was born with spina bifida, a neural tube defect that affects the spinal cord and can cause at least partial paralyzation in the feet and legs; as a result, some people have issues walking, standing, and moving around. 

As I navigated my disability, my father drilled it into my head that, along with being a Lausell, spina bifida was a major part of me. We celebrated the story that my medical history told and the beauty of my scars, so much so that I never shied away from showing off my scar or using my mobility aid (a cane) when I went on dates or met with friends. I always knew that I was a wonderful disabled woman.

When I started dating and making friends, I understood my worth and approached these situations from a healthy place. Whether dating or making friends, I, for the most part, felt wanted. With dating, I felt desired by others, though they would sometimes fetishize me because of my cultural identity and queerness and ignore my disability as though it was a separate entity from me. They would label me a “spicy Latina” or think I was “easy” for liking all genders, and, perhaps to keep their fantasy of me, they didn’t even bother to categorize my disability in the same way. 

Or the opposite happened and they would overly focus on my disability, saying it was too much; just like that, nothing else about me mattered. They’d see me as defective. 

I experienced this in both the queer and Latine dating scenes. Both of these communities still fail to accept disabilities and rarely take the time to understand us. It doesn’t help that queer and/or Latine folks are sometimes in community in spaces that are physically inaccessible to us, effectively leaving us out. 

Friendships were often just as tricky. Some people had a savior complex and befriended me to make themselves feel good about being friends with a disabled person. But when it came time to be a friend to a disabled person and see first-hand some of the issues we’d deal with — for example, being denied access to a building or opportunity or the random hospital trips — the friendships came to an end. 

Though I faced disappointment with both romantic and platonic relationships, it was not all negative. I have dated and befriended people who respected me and all my intersecting identities, but it didn’t happen as often as I deserved. Still, this was my reality at the time, and I knew how to navigate the dating and friendship scenes. Then my power chair came into the picture. Everything I knew changed.

Oddly enough, when I started to use my power chair, I became more invisible. My disabled friends who were full-time chair users warned me this could happen. They explained that while a power chair would give me freedom, I would also feel isolated and drained because of the way others treated me. Going from a part-time cane user who sometimes didn’t use any aids to a part-time chair user would be a huge adjustment, they said. And sure enough, they were right. 

People stopped speaking to me in public. If I was with friends, people would speak to them about me. When I would say “excuse me” to get around those who blocked my way, they ignored me. And it wasn’t much better when they did speak to me. Some would come up to me to tell me I was “so brave” for being in public. Unprompted, they would follow up their disparaging comment by telling me they could never date someone like me because of my chair. And while being told I was undateable because of my disability was not new to me, the sting was still enough to cause pain. Nothing changed for me except I now sat down to get around. I was the same wonderful Andrea, just with a set of new wheels.

While I tried my best to prepare for these changes, I didn’t expect it would change me mentally. The isolation I felt from the friendship and dating scenes and my queer and Latine communities was overwhelming. I had no sense of belonging. I viewed my self-worth, my desirability, and how I connected with my identities as a whole as too much. I began to be hyper-critical of my looks. I fixated on how to speak to people to make them comfortable around me. I found myself hating my disability because it made others uninterested in me. Instead of taking the time to celebrate my power chair for the freedom it provided, I hated it for changing my life so drastically. I was miserable because of how others treated me. For the first time, I didn’t feel as though I could easily befriend others. All of a sudden, the two Lausell guarantees had slipped away.

It’s been almost a year of using a power chair. Some aspects of my life have since improved: I’ve dated and made new friends who taught me that I am not too much with or without my chair. There have been lots of late-night crying sessions with others and even just with myself. I’ve actively worked to treat myself kinder and desire myself even if others won’t. I’ve worked hard to regain my confidence. 

What I have experienced with my dynamic disability and new mobility aid isn’t an isolated experience exclusive to me. It is something that happens to many in the disabled community,  especially those of us who are also Latine.

As time goes on, I hope non-disabled people learn from us and challenge themselves on why they are uncomfortable with disability and our community as a whole. When non-disabled people do the work to break down their biases, it helps disabled people as a whole be in community with others without worrying if they are worthy. At the end of the day, those of us who are disabled as well as queer, Black, Indigenous, or POC deserve to feel desired and included. We and our mobility aids should be celebrated. We have a right to be loudly and proudly disabled. Yes, using my power chair has changed my desirability as a queer Disabled Latina, and yes, it has been a rough and difficult change. But it also has changed how I now interact with others and how I view myself, making it possible for me to make even better connections. And I’m thankful my chair gave me that along with the freedom to be in the world.