Salon looks at the controversy surrounding The Undateables, a new British documentary series following the efforts of people with various disabilities to find romance. As you might expect, the show’s title doesn’t sit well with a lot of disability activists. It’s worth noting that in the trailer for the series, the “Un” is dropped from the rest of the word in a way that I guess is meant to be cutely subversive, but instead strikes me as pandering.
I haven’t seen the show (although I’ll try to track it down through the usual back channels), so I can’t comment on its treatment of the subject. But a quote in the Salon article from a British blogger with a disability struck me:
That said, Egan does take issue with the actual content of the series. “My problem with the show is its obsession with ‘confidence,’” she says. One of the issues with “the confidence rubbish” is that “there’s an element of victim blaming going on,” she explains. “If you’re disabled and you can’t get a shag it must be because you’re just not confident enough. ‘It’s nothing to do with our prejudices, oh no. It’s you. You must try harder.’”
I also received a lot of well-meaning advice about being confident as I coped with my own dating struggles. And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to be that confident guy without totally losing the self-awareness that has served me so well in other respects. After a while, I decided I was being too hard on myself. We all battle insecurities; some of those battles are just more visible than others.
Perhaps I will be part of that small segment of the population that remains unpartnered for the vast majority of their lives. It’s not the kind of life most people would idealize, but it’s certainly not the worst fate imaginable. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be devoid of sex (a topic to be addressed in my still-under-development companion blog: The 19th Floor After Dark). Or perhaps I’ll meet an amazing woman tomorrow who doesn’t mind that I come equipped with a couple additional orifices. However things turn out, the ride is sure to be interesting.
