 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, talented, intelligent, and delightful internet friends. Welcome to Couch Chats with Jo. This is a new and probably one time only series on my channel where we sit on my couch with a full face of makeup, but PJs and messy hair because I ran out of the will to get ready after doing my face, and we chat about things. So let's get started. Today I wanted to talk about a personal experience I recently had with being underestimated as a person with a disability as an amputee. People with disabilities being underestimated is actually a really big problem. It's something that many of my friends have talked to me about. It's something that I've seen a lot of articles about, other videos about. This idea of people don't think I can do this thing so they try to do it for me or they try to stop me from doing it is a really painful point within my community. And it's not something that I've had to personally address before up until recently, which is the story I'm about to tell to you today. And the reason I wanted to share the story is not to be like, poor me, I felt like I was discriminated against because I don't even know if I actually was, which you'll understand throughout the story, but it was the feelings that it evoked and why I felt that way based on this person's words and actions that I think are important to talk about because I've never had to think through why. Why is underestimating someone so painful? Because in theory, it doesn't sound like that bad of a thing. Like, okay, someone doesn't think you can do something that's a bummer, but you can do it anyway, so who cares about them? But there's actually a lot more at play, which I came to realize. And so that is what we're gonna be sharing today. Before we dive in, I wanna give a huge thank you to all of my patrons over on Patreon who sponsor these videos. These videos are not possible without your support. Thank you. If you're interested in joining Patreon, there's a link on screen, also linked down below. And more about that at the end of this video, but without further ado, let's dive in. So here's the situation. As you know, I was able to go snowboarding for the first time a couple weeks ago, which was an absolute blast, but because I've never gone snowboarding before, I didn't have any of the gear, I needed to go rent it. So there's a place in town where you can go, make an appointment, rent some gear, walk out, you're good to go for a couple days, you return it once you're off the mountain. And I wanna just pause for a moment and say that anything that happens in the rest of this story, I don't actually know that it was because I was an amputee. I don't actually know that it's because they were underestimating me. That is what I felt. And so I'm gonna speak from that feeling, but because it was not like 100% overt, I wanna leave room for doubt that maybe I was misinterpreting what these people were saying or how they were looking at me. But again, this is just like the feeling that I received. So I walk into the store, prosthetic leg, very visible. I notice a guy right up front, he looked like the store manager, kind of looking me up and down, like looking at my leg and looking at me quizzically. And I ended up walking over to him and being like, hey, I'm here to rent some gear, I've never done this before, can you point me in the right direction? I feel like I generally have a pretty decent read of people. And as I was talking to him, he kept like glancing down at my foot, he seemed really uncomfortably in conversation. And when I said I wanted to rent gear, he was like, you're renting gear, like you're snowboarding gear, like for you? And I was like, yeah, yeah, like I came to pick it up and get fitted, where would I go for that? So eventually he pointed me in the right direction and left me feeling a little bit odd, a little bit uncomfortable because it was kind of weird that he wasn't making eye contact and staring at my leg and then questioned more than once if I was really renting gear. So I got to the back, started the process, got fitted, the guy back there was very kind. But the same guy from the front of the store kind of followed me to the back of the store and was hanging out in the background. And again, like kept staring at my leg. I saw him talk to a couple other people in the back. In my mind, all I was thinking was please for the love of God, don't tell me that I can't rent gear because of my leg, because I promise you I know what I'm doing. Even if you've not seen this before, I don't know that that's what he was saying, but like between the looks and just the atmosphere, it felt strange. I'll leave it at that. And then once the fitting was done, that guy had helped me. I went to check out. It happened to be the manager guy again. And he confirmed one more time that this was really renting for me. And I was like, yes, signed my name, paid for everything and left. Now, as I was leaving that store, I felt extraordinarily weird and uncomfortable and out of place because even though he had in no way overtly said, are you actually capable of this? It felt like his every look and other implications and words were hinting at that. And initially I was like, whatever, it's no big deal. I'm sure I'm misinterpreting this. Like things like this happen, but driving away, I felt like really sad and small for a few minutes there. And the whole idea of I'm pretty sure someone just saw me, saw my physical limitation and assumed there was no way I could do this activity just happen. And on top of that, I felt like there was hesitation to rent to me because I was disabled and it really brought me to contemplating like why this is something that is kind of painful and uncomfortable, why it's something that so many people with disabilities face. Because I mean, like how much do people's expectations if you really matter, if you can get it done anyways? The answer is actually quite a lot. What people expect us to be able to do or assume we are capable of makes a really big impact. And when people are consistently expecting less of you, I think it's easy to expect less of yourself to be like, well, screw it. I guess I just won't even try, which is quite a loss when someone is capable of doing something, but society is convinced them that they shouldn't even try. And what I noticed for me was just this overwhelming presence of otherness. Like I felt like I was seen as something that didn't belong. I felt like I was seen as someone who didn't understand themselves and like who needed to be protected from their own actions. Like you really shouldn't be renting this gear and also I shouldn't be renting you this gear because you're probably gonna damage it because you don't know yourself. It's really important that as humans, we belong like feeling of belonging, feeling of community, feeling of safety and society is really important. And when someone makes the assumption of you that you are incapable of doing something because of how you look or that you don't know yourself or your own limitations, it severs you from that like belonging from that community. It makes you feel lesser than and even if you know it's not true, like I knew that I would be capable of at least trying snowboarding. I knew I wasn't gonna like snap the gear just because I'm an amputee. At least I sure as heck hope not. Thankfully that didn't happen. But even just a little bit, it makes you question yourself and be like, am I really capable of this? If people think that I can't do it? Like am I, is this something I should be doing? Should I just stay home and play it cool and play it safe? This situation was by no means something that was traumatizing or severely upsetting to me. It was just kind of a blip where I was like, I think something happened. I could have misinterpreted it, but I really felt like I was under a lot of scrutiny and like they almost didn't let me rent that. And like I said, I'm very fortunate that I haven't had to experience that before, but I've never really felt or thought through why that underestimation of someone's abilities can be so painful. And I think at least for me, a large part comes back to being seen as something different or other. If you're dealing with a visible disability in particular, you're already seen as different. Like people already stare at you when you get used to it, but at least in my experience, it's never like 100% comfortable. And when you then have people reinforcing this idea, you're probably not capable. They're also questioning your own understanding of yourself, your disability, your body, your capabilities. And that can kind of be insulting because the idea that some random stranger knows more about what you're able to do than you yourself suggests that they think you aren't even responsible enough to know that, right? Like your kid that needs to be taken care of and not a grown ass adult who is able to make their own choices. And to state that the totally obvious, I think another part of it is that there's this inherent suggestion that you are not as worthy or you are not as much as other people. One way of looking at lower expectations is like, oh, okay, I have a lower bar to reach and I can surpass that and impress people. Okay, cool, but in reality, when someone doesn't think you can do something, they are suggesting that you're less than other people in some regard, right? And when people do that and yet have no way of actually knowing that, like they don't have a legitimate concern based on fact and understanding of your situation, but it's just some random stranger being like, you probably can't do this or this probably isn't safe for you or you should know better, I know better than you. It's kind of low key, high key, it's actually kind of high key insulting. So I thought I would take a moment to share a little bit of personal experience and what it made me feel. And if you've ever found yourself in the position of having concerns about someone who's dealing with some kind of limitation or disability or anything like that, I would encourage you and encourage myself to be mindful of how you approach people because chances are, if someone has been dealing with a difference or a disability for a while, they probably know a lot more about their condition and their limitations than you do. That's not to say that if you see a serious safety issue, not to raise concern, if this is something you know about, but the idea that oftentimes, just in general, everyday life, there's already this kind of socially programmed assumption that they aren't gonna do as much as you can do. I think it's important to examine that and to examine how that might come out in conversation, how that might come out in the way we interact with people, the comments we make, the looks we give. And I wanted to shed some light on some of the reasons why I think it can be painful because like I said, I've never had the reason to really think this through before and this is just my experience. Other people who have dealt with this kind of actual discrimination will have a different experience, but I wanted to take two seconds to share my little story of, I think that guy didn't think I could snowboard and guess what bro, I totally could. It was great. Yes, I fell down a lot, but I totally did kind of stay up on the snowboard for a little while, which is the important part I think. So that's my two cents and thinking back about the things I have said, I realize that a lot of this is very self-explanatory. I've just never actually had to think about it before, which I am very grateful for, but in case you also have never considered this, I guess you're some food for thought and thank you for listening. A big thank you again to all my patrons over on Patreon for supporting these videos, for enabling all of this to happen. I could not make all of these videos without your support on Patreon and also your support of everyone watching. So thank you. If you're interested in financially supporting this channel, there are a number of ways down below, but Patreon is one of the best ways to do that. It's a community where you get to connect with me and you get to connect with the community at large on Patreon and there are behind the scenes things and cute puppy videos and early access. So check out if you're interested, you can learn a little bit more about the perks at patreon.com slash Joe Beckwith or in the comment section. Nope, just kidding. It's the description in the description down below, but to you watching this video, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything else and you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.