Debra Keenahan, 60, is a psychologist, artist, writer and academic with two PhDs, in psychology and visual arts. She also has achondroplasia – a hereditary condition that causes dwarfism. Here, she talks about the daily challenges she faces and her latest work, , which combines performance, visual arts and psychology to encourage audiences to see the world through her eyes.
My parents were ten-pound Poms – they moved from England to Australia in the 1950s. I’m the youngest of five children and the only girl, and the only one in my family to have dwarfism.
I can’t complain about my upbringing in Wollongong. Dad worked at the steelworks in Port Kembla, and Mum was a housewife. My four brothers were protective of me, but they didn’t coddle me. There was a lot they couldn’t shield me from. I came to an understanding that I was different, and that some people judged it to be a bad thing. That was hard to learn, especially as a child.
Why show so much disrespect and ill treatment when people are just living their lives?
My personal experience of discrimination informed my interest in psychology, but the real catalyst for studying it was going to a cricket match between Australia and the West Indies in the ’80s. The West Indies beat the pants off us in a wonderful example of athleticism. There was a family with two young boys sitting behind us. The boys became absolutely vicious, hurling racist abuse at the West Indies players. The father was cacking himself, laughing at them. He didn’t discourage or correct them or anything. I had a strong reaction to that, having experienced other people’s hatred and disgust. Why show so much disrespect and ill treatment when people are just living their lives?
For my psychology PhD, I looked at “dehumanisation” – the process that allows people to treat others as less than them, or something other than human. It’s fundamental to perpetrating abuses such as genocide.
In the past decade, I have primarily worked as an artist. My artworks capture everything from structural discriminations to the micro aggressions of social interactions, and have been shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (formerly the Powerhouse Museum). I like to think of audiences as participants rather than passive observers. Using performance, video and sound, I try to immerse them into the world of the “other”, so they can start to see the world from my point of view and hopefully gain new awareness.
Debra Keenahan in a scene from "Othering". Source: Supplied
In Othering, there’s a “Whispering Forest”: a soundscape of disembodied voices whispering and yelling. It immerses people into the experience I have of walking down the street and being bombarded by comments. Within the space of 150 metres, I’ll hear four or five things said about me, sometimes at a low level and sometimes very loud. There’s always an element of danger, of what’s to come.
I just want to be able to walk down the street in peace. It’s all I want. And yet, sometimes, it seems like a big ask.
I have been verbally and physically abused. A man once rubbed his groin on the back of my head when I was riding on a train. I went into fight-or-flight mode: all I could focus on was removing myself from the situation. But I do stand up for myself – I will confront people if it’s appropriate and safe to do so. But I have never given someone the finger. Two wrongs don’t make a right, it’s as simple as that.
One of the most threatening things for people of short stature are smartphones
One of the most threatening things for people of short stature are smartphones. I have a friend with dwarfism who discovered that her image had been used to create a meme on social media. That was her image, her privacy. It’s illegal to use someone’s image without their permission. Just a few weeks ago, I was walking my dog in the park, and a teenage boy in school uniform laughed at me and started taking photos on his phone. I shook my head and my hand at him quite strongly, but he continued to laugh and started mocking how I walk.
In a , the actor Peter Dinklage (of Game of Thrones fame) said, “Dwarves are still the butt of jokes. It’s one of the last bastions of acceptable prejudice”.
Is it socially acceptable to laugh at people in wheelchairs, or blind people? No. But for some reason it’s still accepted to laugh at people with dwarfism. When you laugh at somebody in this manner, you’re saying that they’re not equal to you. It’s part of the dehumanisation process.
People sometimes ask me: “What can I do to be an upstander and not a bystander in such situations?” The very least you could do is not laugh. People only make those jokes because they get laughs.
Debra Keenahan performs in at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre from 13–15 January, as part of Sydney Festival.
