Push(back) at the Intersections

There's an patronising narrative that happens with a lot of disabled characters. They don't act out of free will, but because they are disabled. They aren't allowed independence, because they are disabled and clearly incapable of acting on their own. Other characters do things 'for their own good' and this is depicted in a neutral or even positive way. These 'small details' that barely register with nondisabled viewers make me cringe and make me approach something that other people love from a completely different perspective.

This has real-world impacts on how nondisabled people interact with us. If you are a wheelchair user or you are in a relationship with one, people will ask you 'How do you have sex?' If you are a person with mental illness, you are going to be continually questioned about whether you are choosing relationships out of free will or because you're sick. If you have a cognitive or developmental disability, there will be concern trolling about whether you are able of making independent choices.

It's impossible to escape the appropriative aspects of the Gaga persona, though. The feminist aspects of her work are deeply tangled with the anti-feminist parts. We probably wouldn't be seeing Gaga's work at all if she didn't meet certain beauty standards applied to pop stars, if her work wasn't appropriative—the crispy feminist interior is wrapped up in a shit sandwich. It isn't Lady Gaga's fault that appropriation and conventionally attractive women are popular in pop culture and that both of these things are pretty much necessary if you want to be a pop star. And I don't blame Germanotta for creating a character like Lady Gaga to break into the pop scene, because who doesn't want to be a star?