I hope I don't sound like one of those pissed-off handicapped people whom I gripe about. I think I handle things fine, and I do try to keep a sense of humor about things. Most wheelchair users really do interact with the world at large as average Joes or Janes, but do at times get fed up with certain negative aspects of being disabled. Case in point:

One interesting aspect of disability is what is, for all intents and purposes, a *really* bizarre fixation on bodily functions among some disabled persons. It's how I explain why it's possible for me to not be fazed by toilet humor but be offended when a disability discussion heads in the toilet humor direction. I'll explain.

It's all a matter of context. The humor on this site, while crude, is ultimately irreverent humor used to share common experiences or diffuse unpleasant situations -- e.g. you don't feel so bad about shit happening to you because it's happened to other people. But I can't stand a lot of what goes on with some chats about disability: serious discussions are overrun with pee, poop, or fart jokes -- not to be funny, nor help make one's situation seem less bad, but rather reflecting a strange obsession some people have with such things.

What I'm talking about is when one gets accused of being a "weirdo" and chased off a disability forum for seeking legitimate advice about something like incontinence management -- only to find the people shitting bricks (pun intended!) over *that* discussion are the same people who post endlessly about bodily functions and their impact on a disabled person's life purely to be obnoxious and disgusting. I mean, people who have no problem with someone posting ad nauseum about how they shit on the floor and how oh-so-funny it was that their family had to clean it up would turn around and be outraged and call another forum member a "sicko" for asking legitimate questions about adult diapers and incontinence management. So it's that serious topic that is forbidden -- but not the guy talking about how funny it was during a hospital stay that he had an accident and some poor attendant had to clean it up.

Even disability literature sometimes seems to have a similar focus. In more than one disability magazine, I've read an article about bowel and bladder problems that talked about how openly discussing one's problems is "too much information" -- and then, a few pages later, another article took the same issues and made a big scatological joke about it.

It goes beyond simply telling bad jokes. It reaches a point where any frank discussion in a medical context about any disability issue is prohibited, with some forums posters getting really upset if the discussion drifts away from pee and poop stories. I mean, on a site like this, sure, the talk can be crude, but there's a certain finesse with which people express things, and no one is trying simply to dominate everything. But on the disability forums, sometimes it's impossible to post anything serious without running afoul of the "all things fecal" crowd. Don't get me wrong -- being frank about bodily functions is fine, and indeed some levity does make an unpleasant situation not suck so much. What I'm talking about is when someone's crap-focused talk dominates the discussion, no matter how inappropriate it might be at the time. Or getting pissed off when someone "talks shop" about disabilities and tries to discuss everyday things like accessibility problems or dealing with being in a wheelchair.

I think I went through a period of being a real prude about toilet humor, before realizing that it wasn't the humor that bothered me, but rather me finding it very creepy and disturbing that some disabled persons have a total fixation on bodily functions, to the point of refusing to talk about anything else. I'd like to think that being discreet about one's condition is not the same as being shameful.

I've even met healthcare and rehab people who seem to only want to discuss pee and poop with a patient, to the point of forcing the discussion back on that track if the patient gets irritated and tries to change the subject. I know an RN who seems to only talk about her job in terms of poop-related details, regardless of how totally inappropriate it might be.

Sometimes I think the poop-fixated people actually are aggressively trying to silence those with disabilities who dare talk about real issues, as well as silencing the people who might actually get philosophical and introspective like I tend to do sometimes. I've found myself in situations in which I can't discuss disability issues because the poop-fixated people get upset. Not even in a medical context, I mean -- just talking about it all the time, and judging other people's disability experiences based on how much or how little their lives revolve around those bodily functions.

Of course, I've been made to feel like the weirdo for not seeming so obsessed about it.

So is this just me? Or are other people -- people who, like me, are not fazed by the material on this site -- offended when, in other contexts, someone might seem a bit too interested in toilet matters?

(Editor's note: though few of us have experience specifically from the disability perspective, I believe that the author has identified a universal issue. Have you ever met people accepting of poop humor but offended by serious discussion about poop?)