I read a couple of articles today (here and here) about facial reconstructive surgeries. These are not the first stories of this kind I've read. These stories tend toward the maudlin, the saccharine. They are told with a cloying chicken-soup-for-the-soul mentality. They tend to take place after recovery (or the extent of recovery anyone with such massive injuries can achieve), when the one who's been disfigured can speak with an equanimity that would be impossible at the zenith of their suffering.

Even their pain and the pain of their families are filtered through the normate reporter's pen. It is portrayed in broad strokes, the grief of being rejected and ridiculed glossed over or spoken of casually, and it is usually only included to show the contrast between what their life was like then and what it's like now.

It makes me wonder. (Here comes the complaining now, you think; she's always complaining about something.)

Now, I'm not going to criticize these people's efforts to have a more "normal" face. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be missing parts of your face, to not be able to smell or eat solid food or even breathe on your own. Whatever stares and insensitive remarks I have received in my life must pale in comparison to the stupidity of norms these people have experienced. I don't fault them at all for their wish to be independent or to simply blend in.

What I do fault is the way in which these stories are told. I wish someone would have the bravery to explore this issue just a little more in-depth. That would also require the bravery to explore their own prejudices.

Particularly galling is the last page of the second article. Here, a sentence etched on a church door in Italy is quoted: "It is the divine right of man to look human." Why this should be etched on a church door is one question. What this is supposed to mean is another.

Yes, though the quotation may sound "cool" to someone who doesn't stop to think about it, it is in fact meaningless. What does "divine right" mean? What good is "divine right" when humans (and circumstance) get in there and muck everything up? We might say it is the divine right of every human to be free, but that doesn't mean very much to those in bondage. Sure, we might grant such people freedom, but then "divine right" really had little to do with it: freedom was taken away and bestowed by humans.

So what meaning does this sentence hold for a man whose "divine right" was taken away by a suicide bomber? How much less meaning does the phrase hold for someone who was born (some might say sculpted by divine hands) not looking human? What happened to their divine right? Is God joking with them?

Furthermore, who exactly decides what looks human? Sure, there is a mode (as in mean, median and mode) of humanity. Most people have two legs, two arms, a face with two eyes, a nose, a mouth. But soon things start to get tricky. Most people fall within a certain range of heights, but it's pretty arbitrary when you can say to someone, "Just one inch taller and you'd just be short, not a little person," or "Just one inch shorter and you'd just be tall, not a giant." Things can get really ridiculous. Most people have hair on their heads. Shall we then say that bald people don't look human? No, clearly that's just silly. Why, then, is it not silly to say a person with burn scars all over their face doesn't look human? Why is it that an amputee passes for human (if just barely), but someone with swollen or withered limbs does not? And why, why, why do norms assume that everyone feels the same way they do? The whole tone of this piece assumes a hierarchy of appearance. "Oh, the poor disfigured man," it says. "But yay! Now he's better. Phew! I don't know what we'd say if he weren't better." Even when it discusses the hard times he went through because of norms' stupidity, it takes the stance that, well, it's unfortunate that he had to suffer like that, but it's understandable, and plus, now he's fixed, so everything's better.

Okay. Things may be better for him, but what about the rest of us? What about those of us who can't be "fixed"? We still have to suffer the stares and the whispers, sometimes even, most hurtful of all, the looks of shock that seem to say, "What the eff is that?" We still have to suffer the stupid comments and the trepidation. And I'll go out on a limb here and say that for most of us, the biggest problem we have with our disabilities is not the things we can't do; it's the constant barrage of stupidity from norms.

Now, it's not entirely their fault. They probably don't get to see a lot freaks in their day-to-day lives, so they don't know how to respond when they do see one. The only solution is for us freaks to be more visible. If every norm knew one deformed person, they wouldn't be so thoughtless toward the deformed strangers they meet. But that would mean we would have to expose ourselves to the world, and that's hard to do when confronted with such stupidity. Ah, it's a vicious circle indeed.