Is it an aspect of Able-Bodied privilege to think that...

[capri0mni]

This feels like a question for an LJ or DW community, but I can't think which one.

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Is it an aspect of Able-Bodied Privilege to concede that life experience effects personality, but that personality (ergo, life experience) can exist independent of body type?

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Here is one of the "Optional Exercises" in Scott McCloud's book Making Comics (Harper: New York, London, Toronto, Sydney. 2006). The emphesis is mine:

[Character Life History]

(Quote) Try listing the five most important aspects of your own history, your family, place of birth, big events, etc.. Then create a new character that looks nothing like you, but has those same key experiences in his/her past. Consider what kind of person could have emerged from that history. (Unquote)
-- Page 127

Okay, I can think of three aspects of my life history that have nothing to do with my having grown up with cerebral palsy:

1. That I was an only child.
   
2. That my father was a captain for a major commercial airline.
   
3. That, from the ages of seven to thirty-three, I lived in a rural area with my nearest neighbor one quarter mile away.

But how could I possibly fill out that list to "five life-shaping experiences" and leave out every one of the following:

• That I had my first orthepedic surgery (requiring an extended hospital stay, and had me in a plaster body cast) at an age younger than most kids experience their first sleepover at a friend's house.
  
• That I had to leave school every Thursday afternoon in fourth grade so I could go to physical therapy sessions at the hospital.
  
• That, during that same period of elementary school, I had lunch in my classroom, with two chosen classmates for company, instead of going down to the cafeteria, because the cafeteria was not barrier-free.
  
• That I was kicked out of an arts and music summer camp, my second year attending, because the administration determined that my disability made me too great a burden on the staff and other campers.
  
• That I failed my first attempt at college (chosen, in part, on the advice of a doctor, because the campus was wheelchair accessible) because I failed to negoiate the Disabled Student Services system, and get an aide to help with daily living tasks.
  
• That all my life, I've had to learn to negoiate talking to people who talk to the person with me, instead of me directly -- or refered to me as "he" (even when I'm in a skirt) because they're skittish about looking at me too closely.
  
• That I developed my quirky sense of humor, and "laugh-in-the-face-of-stress" response, because I had to learn to divert people's panic if I ever fell in public.

???

(And I'm not even sure #3 counts, above, because the reason I lived at home until I was thirty-three was because I couldn't find accessible housing for someone with mobility impairments before that).

Now, that long list is long, but I still wouldn't go so far as to say my CP is the sole, or even the main, shaper of who I am. But neither can it be left out of who I am, either. And for any one of those things to have happened to any "new character" I create, that new character will have to use crutches or a wheelchair.

And if I draw a character uses crutches or a wheelchair, would a casual viewer say "She (or) looks nothing like you," if, when they look at both me and my character, they see the wheelchair first?

And does the phrasing of this exercise belie Scott McCloud's able-bodied privilege?

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Still, I like this exercise better for developing characters than the 44 Questions in Script Frenzy's "Cast Your Characters" worksheet (PDF). Coming up with 5 key life experiences for each cast member is a lot more manageable. And life experiences shape a story's conflicts a lot more clearly than favorite music or taste in footwear.