Last year, I went to a con in Chicago. On Saturday morning, I took the elevator from my room (fourth floor) to the con suite (second floor). Also on that elevator: a dude taking it to the first floor. As soon as I pressed the button, he said chidingly, “Two floors! Should’ve walked it.” And then he literally, actually tutted at me. “Tut tut tut” went the arbiter of everyone else’s body and abilities. Just so I’d know for sure that I’d been bad and been judged for it.
Now. There were a couple of conversations we could have had at this point. I could have told elevator dude the truth: that I have lupus (please please don’t make the House joke; you have no idea how many times I’ve heard the House joke, and I promise you that sometimes it is in fact lupus), so I keep an eye on my energy and pain levels and try to save some of whatever ability I have for later. That I’m especially careful to do that when I’m at an event or traveling, because I don’t want to be in my room exhausted or in pain when a thing I really wanted to do is happening two floors away, and I really don’t want to be in pain and out of energy while traveling in modern American airports (apparent motto: “If you can’t stand for four hours and run two miles full-tilt while carrying two weeks’ supplies, lol no go fuck yourself”). So I’m careful. I don’t push it. In the mornings, I might take the elevator, which the hotel did, after all, install for people to use.
I could also have told elevator dude to go fuck himself, which is the other honest conversation we could have had at that point. It is seriously none of his business whether I use the stairs, or the elevator, or rappel down the outside of the building, or maybe just dissolve into primordial ooze and drip down the walls.
But, you know, confrontation is another energy burner. I wanted to save my energy for having fun with my friends, the people I came to see. So I said something non-committal. Elevator dude wasn’t done, though. “You should always find the stairs, first thing when you check into a hotel,” this dude who was maybe ten years older than me and in no way my father said. “Did you know you’re not allowed to use the elevator during a fire? Whenever you check into a hotel, you should think: what if there’s a fire?”
Indeed, elevator dude. What if? What if, in my second decade of staying alone in hotels, you had not come along to tell me how to do it? I might have done it wrong, and then I would surely have burned to death in a fiery inferno, just as I have at least once a year throughout my adulthood, despite my mother giving me pretty much exactly those instructions back when I was seven and actually needed them.
Fortunately, at that point, we arrived at the second floor. I headed to the con suite and settled in. Some minutes later, I mentioned the mansplainer in the elevator and his profound concern for my well-being in case of fire. I didn’t complain about the “should’ve walked” comment, largely because I didn’t expect any support for it; I know an apparently able-bodied (and fat!) woman taking the elevator is cause for judgment in this world. (In some places, going by the general response, it’s borderline actionable.) And most people at that particular table didn’t know the details of my medical status, since in general, when given the choice between talking with my friends about lupus or talking with them about people banging, or being unicorn space eagles, or both, I tend to choose the pointy space birds and their sexytimes.
“Why would anyone say that to you?” one of the women at the table asked, in that mystified dudes-why-are-you? tone. “How does that even come up?”
So I explained about how we got on the topic of elevators. As soon as I said, “He said I should’ve taken the stairs,” ten women around the table looked up and angry cat hissed in unison. It was like they’d rehearsed it for weeks after months of watching angry cats and studying their motivations. Truly a beautiful moment.
From this experience I learned some things:
- Support matters. Those women and their instinctive and audible anger didn’t just make me feel better; they actually changed the way I remember the event. They became what was important about it rather than elevator dude. His judgment has become small and insignificant to me, and in fact I smile when I think about him, because he’s inextricably linked to that moment ten people became Team Angry Cat for me.
- A lot of times, I don’t reach for support because I don’t expect it. I don’t talk about the random elevator dude type aggravations of life, because I assume there’s a good chance most people will side with the elevator dudes of the world. It’s worth it to find the places where that isn’t true. And it’s worth it to reach for support when I can.
- I need to look for more chances to be on other people’s Team Angry Cat. I don’t need to know about that person’s life or judge their worthiness; if they’ve experienced harassment or microaggressions, I’m gonna try to support them.
- I’d pay significant money for a YouTube series that was just ten women angry cat hissing at ability enforcers and mansplainers and dudes shouting “smile, baby!” at random ladies and so on.
Oh, yeah, and to the ten members of that particular Team Angry Cat: thank you. You’re the best, and I will hiss for you anytime.
