The Perfect Cripple: A User Guide to Being Palatable

Pluto Rennie

There is a correct way to be disabled. No one tells you outright. There’s no handbook, no neat list of expectations. But people recognize it instinctively—and, more importantly, they recognize when you fall short. 

Consistency helps. You should look the same every day. Your body should tell a clear, continuous story. Fluctuation confuses people. It invites interpretation, and interpretation invites suspicion. 

Last year, a friend of a friend—someone I’ve never actually spoken to—started telling people I was faking my disability. I assume she saw me on a good day, one where I could walk around the library without my cane. I assume she thought she’d caught me out. It’s a strange accusation, but not an unusual one. It rests on a quiet certainty: that disability should be obvious, stable, and easy to verify. That it should present itself clearly to others, like evidence. Anything less becomes suspect. 

When I was a young teenager, I tried to set a boundary. My medical history was being shared publicly to raise money for a hospital that had, at times, failed me. I said I found this strange. I was told, by a previously understanding family member, that I was being ridiculous—I could “find a problem with anything.” In hindsight, that feels like a misunderstanding. I wasn’t inventing problems; I was just refusing to make them consumable. 

Because pain, as it turns out, is more acceptable when it is useful—when it can be turned into funding, into narrative, into something that circulates cleanly. What matters is not just that you suffer, but that your suffering can be told in a way that reassures people: about institutions, about care, about themselves. To object to that is to disrupt the story; and disruption is read as ingratitude. 

In hospital, I learned there is also a correct way to feel pain. Too much, and you are dramatic. Too little, and you are not credible. Somewhere in between is the right amount: enough to justify your presence, not enough to make anyone uncomfortable. 

I remember the irritation more than anything else. Not overt cruelty—just a subtle tension, like I had exceeded something. A limit I couldn't see but was expected to know. You start to adjust yourself accordingly. Lower the volume. Contain it. Translate what you feel into something more manageable for other people, because seeing you go through that is oh so hard. 

Michel Foucault, a French historian and philosopher, writes about how power doesn’t just repress; it produces norms, behaviors, and self-regulation. You don’t need to be told explicitly how to act—you learn by being corrected, dismissed, or quietly disbelieved. Over time, you internalise the standard. You begin to monitor yourself. Is this too much? Is this not enough? Am I believable right now?

Disability, then, is not just something you experience. It’s something you are expected to perform correctly. To present in a way that is legible, coherent, and above all, non-disruptive. 

The problem is that bodies are not coherent. They change. They contradict themselves. They have good days that undermine bad ones, and bad days that refuse to be hidden. They do not move in clean, linear narratives. They are inconsistent in ways that make other people uneasy. And so you are asked, quietly but persistently, to smooth that inconsistency out. To become easier to read. Easier to accommodate. Easier, ultimately, to ignore. 

Care sits awkwardly inside this—not because it is wrong, but because of how it is structured. It takes time, energy, patience—things that are treated as scarce, privately owned. So when you need more than your share, it doesn’t feel like a shared responsibility. It feels like an overstep, like you are asking for too much. I learned, slowly, to shrink around that feeling. To apologise not just for the inconvenience, but for the need itself. 

I could write a whole piece on liberal capitalism here, but I’ll be a good little commie and keep it brief. Under capitalism, need gets audited: What do you produce? What do you give back? How little do you cost? How efficiently can you prove you’re worth keeping? The self-made, working man has no time to care for us bottom-dwellers, and why should we expect him to? 

Lately, I’ve stepped back from disability groups and activism. Not because I care less, but because I am tired. Because my workload is heavy and my body is heavier. Because sometimes the most responsible thing I can do is reduce the number of things that are hurting me at once. I feel guilty about it—like I’ve failed some quieter expectation, not just to exist as disabled, but to do it productively. To contribute, to advocate, to turn experience into something useful. 

But usefulness has always been part of the problem. 

I am inconsistent. I am sometimes in pain and sometimes not. I am critical, ungrateful, emotional, tired. I have, at various points, been inconvenient. I do not make this easy. And I’m starting to think that refusing to be easy, to be coherent, palatable, and reassuring—might be the closest thing to doing it truthfully. 

And if that makes me suspect, so be it.

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