Time and time again, disability scholars come across the word “violence” throughout their studies, as it were a synonym for “disability”. Society as a whole puts violence into a schema to represent disability due to the information it receives through social media, films, novels, and other creative literature. For hundreds of years, people with disabilities have always existed. Unfortunately, it was not until the 20th century where they began to be represented properly in mainstream media.
According to Paul K. Longmore in Why I Burned My Book, disability is described as a “deformity of the soul” (Longmore 133). Longmore also argues that physical handicaps are “emblems of evil” and represent a form of violence (Longmore 133). People with disabilities are viewed as envious of the “able-bodied” by typically being represented as villains in popular literature.
Another example of violence is displayed in Homer’s Odyssey. In this creative work of fiction, a pronounced soldier named Odysseus begins to observe a “cycloptic” figure along with his shipmates before approaching with extreme caution. While the stranger is away tending his own garden, Odysseus and his shipmates ransack their cabin, eating all of the food and thieving any resource of value. When the stranger comes back to his cabin, he becomes angry and insulted and, in turn, is labeled as a “monster cyclops” that is violent and irrational. This man Mason 2 now has no opportunity to redeem himself of these boundaries, even though his reaction to a home invasion was valid. Homer describes this man as “a grim loner, dead set in his lawless ways. Here was a piece of work, by god, a monster built like no mortal who ever supped on bread … a man-mountain rearing head and shoulders over the world.” (Homer 210). This makes the audience lack empathy and side with Odysseus, even when he is branded and left completely blind. Even in today’s society we see examples of a person with a disability is emulated as an “other being” who is dangerous and deserves to be violated (e.g: Deborah Danner in 2016 was an elderly woman with schizophrenia that was fatally shot by police during an episode. The officer was not charged and faced no legal consequences).
