I Spent Years Accepting Mistreatment Because of My Disability – TeenVogue.com

In this op-ed, Sarah Kim explains how her boyfriend helped remind her that microagressions shouldn't be an acceptable part of life.

One day in July, I went to visit NYUs philosophy department with my boyfriend. Like on most campuses, you had to give your identification card to the security guard at the front desk and register yourself as a guest. After my boyfriend finished giving his information, the guard gave us the O.K. to enter a building.

But doesnt she have to sign in too? my boyfriend asked when I was about to give the guard my ID.

No, shes good, he replied. Then he looked at me and said in a high-pitched voice, Now you have a good day, sweetheart! My boyfriend seemed to want to say something back to the guard, but the condescending tone he'd used was something I'd grown used to.

As a young woman living with cerebral palsy, my life has been full of endless paradoxes and contradictions. Growing up, I saw myself neither in the movies and shows I watched nor the books I read. Whenever I heard the word disabilities being used, it was most often in a negative, discouraging context. Hearing and witnessing societys perceptions of disability undoubtedly made me fearful of my future in regard to the opportunities Id have access to. I constantly felt like I was taking leaps of faith, completely unsure of what was on the other side.

However, as I get older, Im realizing that my story is truly one of the kind in more ways than one. To start, Ive completed two Ivy League degrees in five years, and currently, I live independently in a studio apartment in downtown Brooklyn. Im making my name known in the world of journalism, and writing while being surrounded by the love and support of my friends. It wouldnt be too off to say that my life is a modern-day, more politically correct, and disability-inclusive version of Sex and the City. Although, hopefully, I wont find my picture pastured across the side of a city bus for an ad.

To add to what the general public might view as a wow-factor, I am currently in a long-term, committed relationship. Despite the widely recognized struggle of dating while disabled, Ive found the one. Sure, I had my fair share of awkward Tinder conversations and even more awkward first dates, especially when it came to the time to reveal my disability. A handful of the guys fetishized my disability, while others asked highly offensive questions like, can you have sex though? Or how are you still able to have a coherent conversation?

When I met my boyfriend, my disability was never the main focus of conversation in our friendship, and then eventually our romantic relationship. He was aware that my cerebral palsy was a part of my identity, but he gave it equal value as the other parts my gender and sexuality, my race and ethnicity as Korean-American, my aversion to religion, and at the time, my status as a student. I not merely one of these identities, but rather I am a product of the accumulation of each of them.

Of course, everyone has a multidimensional personhood. However, as a disabled woman walking through the world, especially in such a packed city like New York, my disability is often the only thing passerby see in me. The common misconception of physical disabilities that the general population hold is that it automatically equates to an intellectual disability. To these strangers, my level of education or successful career means nothing, since at the end of the day, I still have a disability.

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I Spent Years Accepting Mistreatment Because of My Disability - TeenVogue.com