The trope that I call the “Tiny Tim” is the creation by an author of a disabled character whose exclusive role is to be an object of pity and in need of charity. I have used the name of the best known of these figures from Dickens—”Tiny Tim.” Tiny Tim doesn’t have a life outside … Continue reading
I recently finished watching Season 2 of Dirk Gently and have been reflecting on the huge number of problematic disability tropes in the show, particularly around the invented disability “Pararibulitis,” but for this post, I want to focus on one particular trope that frequently appears in representations of disability, what I call the Karmically Disabled Trope. In … Continue reading
For many transgender people, stories about transgender people written by cisgender authors are a source of anxiety. The same holds true when people with disabilities read the works of authors who don’t have disabilities but choose to write about specific disabilities. All too often it becomes clear from the writing that the authors and their … Continue reading
I am a disabled author, editor, and academic. I grew up wanting to see people like myself in my fiction—people with disabilities. All I ever encountered were tropes about disabled people. We could be the wise mentor who dies, the inspirational hero who is rewarded with a magical cure, about the person who triumphs over … Continue reading
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