IT JUST SO HAPPENS

Here's a thing that I hate: someone (usually a journalist or a reviewer or something) is describing someone else. It is a man, or a woman, and they have a job, and sometimes they have an age or a location or something. And then, they also "just happen" to have a disability.

This happens SO OFTEN, and it makes me scream/groan every time because how do you not see what a low-key insulting patronizing othering BULLSHIT way to refer to people this is?*

You know where just so happens belongs? In a fairy tale. Or a whimsical anecdote of some sort. Or the Bible.

Not everyone liked the king of Persia. In fact, two of his servants decided they would kill him. Now it just so happened that Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, heard these two servants discussing their evil plan. He told Esther, who told the king for him, and the murder was prevented. Grateful, the king just so happened to write what Mordecai had done for him in his record book. And then, it just so happened that, for the time being, the king forgot all about it.

And you know what it means? It means that the narrator is introducing an unexpected coincidence of some sort. For example, The prince just happens to be riding through the forest when he hears Rapunzel singing and falls in love. MacGyver just happens to have exactly the necessary tools and knowledge to escape whichever trap he's in. Russia just happened to hack the US election system the same year Donald Trump was running.

Do you know what is not an unexpected coincidence? When a person has an interesting job or has created some interesting product or has said or done something interesting, and also the person has a disability. Swap in another characteristic to see how ludicrous and shitty this sounds. "Cecily is a cranky, sporadic blogger who also happens to live in Montana!" "Angela Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany who just so happens to be a woman." "Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States and he also just happens to be black!"

It's weird, dudes. Cut it out. I know it's some well-intentioned but misguided attempt to act like "hey, I'm cool, disability is no big deal and I'm TOTALLY NOT FOCUSING ON IT it's just, like, a coincidence, man!"  But this phrasing actually has the opposite effect. You're drawing attention to it and labeling it as unexpected and unusual. Lots of people have disabilities. All of them do things and say things and generally exist as members of society. There is no surprising coincidence.

You don't need to dance around disability in your description- just say it (if it's relevent) like you say all the other descriptive facts you're including. No coy Biblical/fairy-tale highlighting needed.


*I know this also happens for other "unexpected" characteristics, where it is equally shitty and irritating. She's a successful business executive who JUST SO HAPPENS to also be a loving mother! What a plot twist!

I also know some people with disabilities use this phrasing when talking about themselves. Obviously everyone is allowed to describe themselves the way they want, and if you want more space between yourself and whatever characteristic you just so happen to have, so be it. My complaint is with the sappy journalism overuse, which I think displays discomfort and internalized ableism rather than informed and conscious distancing.

Out in the wild

One time, teaching an upper-level college class, I assigned a paper: “Compare and contrast the American Deaf community with another minority group in the United States." Among other results, I obtained this sentence:

It is much easier to spot an African-American person than it is to spot a Deaf person.

That class was full of glittering gems. (Also some very nice insightful discussions and lots of lovely students.)

Anyway. Tricky though it may be, if you do spot a Deaf person, and you are in a restaurant when it happens, I have written up some advice about how to behave.