CN: spoilers, ableism, violence, fatmisia
I wanted to organize and expand on my recent Twitter threads on The Witcher and Kristin Lavransdatter in an informal blog post.
I’m a little disappointed The Witcher was renewed. I only watched the first few episodes because it was so ableist–as other disabled writers have pointed out. People who finished the season and can describe it better didn’t find it any less ableist. For example:
http://www.handyuncappedpen.com/2021/04/the-witcher-netflix-and-ableism.html
I’m always baffled at attempts to excuse ableism in The Witcher or rape scenes in Game of Thrones with “people were different back then.” This isn’t really true, even with historical fiction. But fantasy?! Back when? It’s loosely inspired by medieval Europe, but was written now…Especially The Witcher, which is so silly in places. It gets compared to Monty Python, Galavant, Renaissance faires, Medieval Times restaurant—a cheesy tone I usually love.
Laila Manack wrote in the Wear Your Voice article I linked earlier: “Upon discussion, someone told me they were surprised when Yennefer first introduced herself because ‘Yennefer in the games was hot.’” The show repeatedly equates beauty and worth with being non-disabled and disability as ugly and monstrous. In other words, disabled and hot are mutually exclusive in the world of The Witcher. Kayla Whaley also had a great Twitter thread on the ableism when Season 1 first came out.
Some of my own observations while I watched it:
Tissaia is AWFUL TO Yennefer. I mean, she literally buys her. Then she always calls her “piglet.” She only calls her Yennefer once she recognizes Yennefer’s powers as a sorceress. What a message about disabled people having to prove their worth and humanity by being exceptional and special.
Yennefer chooses to be “cured” of her disability in a violent surgery that also removes her uterus. She tells the surgeon to keep “these and these” (her eyes and her breasts), apparently her only physical attributes she likes. “I never want to be her again,” she says.
Quotes from the healer/surgeon “fixing” Yennefer’s disability: she is currently the “first draft of what nature intended,” but he is “the final artist.” But “how challenging the clay” (that is, her disabled body.)
She’s constantly called a monster, for example: “an overgrown abortion.” She’s only considered beautiful once she’s “cured.” She makes an entrance into the ballroom, cured; others are stunned. She immediately dances with the king. Yennefer is portrayed as so desperate for love, attention, attraction, and sex–all because of her disability. And after she’s “cured,” people gasp, barely recognizing her. Like she’s HOT now.
Yennefer’s violent surgery is intercut/juxtaposed with the Striga, a monster—implying that she’s also a monster until “cured.” And she loses her fertility to become non-disabled. There are implicit assumptions here that 1) of course disabled people are inferior but also 2) God forbid she reproduce and pass on her disability genetically. Other people have said a lot more about it than I. I just wanted to mention some things I noticed that maybe weren’t said already. And then of course Yennefer and Geralt have sex after she’s cured.
I’m disabled but have different disabilities than Yennefer. Even some disabled writers have used language they probably didn’t know was offensive, like deformed, to describe this character.
Some people ID as disfigured; some prefer facial or limb difference. Mikaela (guysmiley22 on Twitter) coined the term disfiguremisia, a form of ableism against people with disfigurements or facial or limb conditions. I also recommend Ariel Henley’s work on the topic of ableism and facial differences.
Kristin Lavransdatter
I’m reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset and could find nothing online on the ableism or fatmisia in it, so I wanted to mention it here and on Twitter. It’s an amazing book from the 1920s loved by my mom, Vavo (grandma), and many others. It was originally published in Norwegian almost 100 years ago.
This translation by Tiina Nunally is so readable. A previous English translation added archaic language. Translating and editing Norwegian to make it artificially sound like Old English is ahistorical and doesn’t make sense. It seems like the earlier translation tried to conform to English-speaking readers’ expectations of anything about the European Middle Ages.
I’m reading the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with great end notes. BUT the introduction (from 2005) said the author, Sigrid Undset, had a tragic, very difficult life, and uses her “severely r-word” child and Unset’s early death to explain this. I really hope this introduction has been updated since! This still looks like most popular edition in online bookstores.
This book is almost 100 years old and set in medieval Norway. It’s fascinating and a classic for a reason. However, the ableism and fatmisia are constant. Unlike with gender roles, where the narrative is pointing out sexist double standards, the fatmisia is embedded in the narrative. In this book, fat people are constantly described as ugly and repulsive–or at best, good-looking in spite of being fat. Simon, Kristin’s first fiancé, fits this description. Every fat character is described with some form of judgment and disgust.
This is how Kristin thinks of her roommate when staying in a convent. (The narrative is close third-person but following her POV). “Ingebjrg took Kristin’s hand at once and began to talk. She was not very tall and much too fat, especially in her face; her eyes were tiny because her cheeks were so fat (105).” Kristin feels repulsed to share a bed with Ingebjrg because she sweats and is fat. The hatred and antagonism towards fat people is repetitive and constant. A lot of old books characterize people by their appearances, especially fat people.
Kristin lives in an ableist, medieval society, where it is common to send disabled, “infirm, ugly” children to the monastery because they’re considered impossible to marry. A monk explains: “To God they give the daughters who are lame or purblind or ugly or blemished (41).” Had she survived, Kristin’s little sister Ulvhild would have entered the convent.
There’s also constant fear of disability and the ableism and disfiguremisia therein. Kristin and her medieval, Catholic society believe disability is a punishment for sin. She fears that she might accidentally kill or disable her child because she and Erlend had sex before marriage or from looking at her church when it burns to the ground.
“And there floated through her mind
all she had heard of children that were born crippled, with sinews
stiff as stone, of births that had come to the light without limbs —
with scarce a semblance of human shape. Before her tight-shut eyes
would pass pictures of little infants, dreadfully misshapen; one shape
of horror melting into another still worse. Southward in the dale
at home, at Lidstad, the folks had a child — nay, it must be grown
up now. Her father had seen it, but would never speak of it; she
had marked that he grew ill at ease if anyone but named aught of
it. What did it look like? — Oh, no! Holy Saint Olav, pray for
me!” (305)
(I quoted an earlier translation here because I couldn’t find my book quoted online or retype the whole passage. Still, the passage on p. 305 of my copy remains just as ableist in the translation I’m reading, with a disabled child called an “it” and disability as an unspeakable horror. Earlier, when Ulvhild first becomes disabled, a monk alludes to this same child “in the south of the valley,” asking their father, Lavrans: “Would you rather she were like that?”
I still find it worth reading, but be warned!
Grace Lapointe 
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