When You’re Autistic, Abuse Is Considered Love – The Establishment
Tag: ableism
Unbelievable Pain: 10 Years of Being Told I was Overreacting to Chronic Pain
Fast forward to late last year. I got a medical marijuana prescription for pain associated with my cerebral palsy. Suddenly the pain was gone. Not 100%, I knew it was there but it was mostly an irritation. I can ignore an irritation…
Suddenly, because I had figured out how to treat the pain, my doctor started taking it more seriously. I got a referral to a neurologist and three weeks ago tomorrow I was finally diagnosed with Atypical Facial Pain (sometimes referred to as Persistent Idiopathic Facial Pain).
The weird thing is that while I feel vindicated and deep down knew my pain was real. The doubt and gaslighting I experienced in over a decade of pain has had an impact. One of the unfortunate issues with the way Canada handles legal medical marijuana is that patients don’t always have consistent access to certain products. My supplier was out of CBD for months (yes for nonCanadians who might be used to CBD being considered legally separate from marijuana. In Canada, CBD is considered weed and you need a special kind of prescription to get it) and the came back. Yet some part of my brain had somehow convinced itself that maybe I had been making it all up. I’d been pain-free for weeks after all. So, I ended up experiencing a lot of denial when the pain came back even though I didn’t have access to the medication I was using to control it.
This is the price of people not believing your pain. You can’t even look at it objectively anymore. I will likely need to manage this pain for the rest of my life and I’ll probably have periods where I’m still convinced it’s all in my head for at least a long time to come despite the vast difference in quality of life that pain treatment gives me and the fact that I’ll also very likely have periodic reminders of just how real my pain is because I only have intermittent access to medication. CBD is out of stock at my supplier again, so I’m probably in for a reminder soon.
Unbelievable Pain: 10 Years of Being Told I was Overreacting to Chronic Pain
Look, if a person finds out they’re carrying a foetus who may or will be disabled, and they get pressured into aborting, that isn’t freedom of choice.
If that person is pushed towards information that ignores the lived experiences of people with those disabilities, that isn’t freedom of choice.
I am pro-choice. I believe that person should have the choice to abort. But I also believe their choice should be based on accurate, relevant information rather than the ableist bias of our society.
Stop acting like pro-choice ends at allowing abortions. Stop acting like eugenics are fine “because pro-choice.” If you’re pro-choice you need to remember that informed consent is a thing, and to acknowledge that the way abortion is pushed on parents of disabled foetuses is extremely problematic in its current incarnation.
Thank you.
As someone who is congenitally disabled (disabled from birth), I hate having my existence used as club by one side of the “debate” to beat up on the other side.
(I’m pro-choice, too, by the way).
The anti-choice people try to shame me out of my pro-choice position, by saying: If your mother had known ahead of time, and could have aborted, she would have! How do you feel about that?*
The pro-choice people (most of them – OP excepted), paint my existence as nothing but a punishment and a burden, that anti-choice people are forcing mothers to face.
Both “sides” of this argument are Ableist A.F. Both are hateful and bigoted.
*My answer to that question is two-fold:
a) if she had aborted me, I wouldn’t have any feelings at all, because I wouldn’t exist, but I’d rather not exist at all than to be born to a mother who didn’t want me – especially since disabled children are much more likely to suffer abuse and neglect, and
b) You never knew my mother – decades after her death, I learned she had had a passel of family in the neighborhood where I grew up, and I’d never even heard her mention their names. And looking back on her last encounters with the few cousins I did know about, and how ugly and sour that turned out, I can only conclude that they tried to pressure her into putting me in an institution (this was in the 1960s). And she wanted to protect me from their ableism.
My mother never saw me as a burden, and how dare you.
The single most toxic thing I was brought up believing is that being Adult and Responsible and Good starts with doing everything completely alone and without help
What it’s really about is learning where and when you need help, how much help you need, and knowing when to reach out and ask for the help you need to function at your ideal level
People were never meant to live alone
Parents drill this into their kids because they’re tired of helping them, and want their child to leave them alone. Toxicity at its finest.
I wanna talk about mobility aids
Mobility aids, you know em, you’ve seen em. Wheelchairs, crutches, canes, buggies ect. They are great inventions to help people get around with better mobility, hence mobility aids.
Thing I wanna talk about though, is this awful problem that non disabled people have, stemming from the press pushing articles about people faking disabilities to get benefits. This has to be the most toxic thing that disabled people have to deal with on the daily and I need to talk about this, cause its not ok.
So some people (myself included) have disabilities that occasionally require the use of a mobility aid, like crutches or a cane. Some people use mobility aids all the time but can go without them if needs be (an example of somebody using a wheelchair who can stand and walk, but only for very short times). These people get looked down on so badly by judgey non disabled people and its awful to be there and there is no need for it because of this misguided belief that they’re just faking it
I had a bit of a rough time around Christmas. I had a fall, and with some serious back luck, fell on by back and a bottle in my back was in the worst spot, so it jarred my nerves and put me in a lot of pain. I also ran out of my painkillers, so was without for a good few weeks. I have a cane I will use if I need the support, but I hate using it and honestly the idea of having to use it again really hit me so hard, Like I cried cause I was so worried about what people would think.
I was lucky. at uni everyone knows about my leg and they were all ok and supportive about it. It really helped a lot, but it really hit me that I shouldn’t feel this way. Cause my leg problems are intermittent, when I have my bad days I keep having the feeling of “I’m just not disabled enough” and that’s never ok. I don’t take any benefits at all, cause the government made it so i cant apply, but still, I gotta grapple with that awful thought of “Am I disabled enough to use this”. The answer should always be yes. My doctor says I should use crutches on bad days, and that should be good enough but Im always so worried about other people claiming that im “faking” it cause i’m pretty active when my leg isnt bad. It still hurts but I can deal with it.
Im rambling, but my point is that there are people who need to use mobility aids occasionally, but not all the time, and people shouldn’t look down on them, call them liars or fakers or make them have to “prove” their disability constantly. We really need a change on how people view disabled people, especially ones with Hidden Disabilities because i’m noticing a nasty shift where people need to police disabled people constantly to “catch them out”. That needs to stop, its not ok.
I dunno how much sense this made, but yeah. I don’t like the way that things are going, where disabled people are losing benefits constantly, and people want to police disabled people so they need to prove their disability constantly. We need a change, a governmnet who cares more about disabled people, and the press to fuck off with their hatred of anyone who is disabled.
Sorry for the long rant
TL;DR, Some people dont need mobility aids constantly, and that doesnt make them any less disabled. Treat them with as much respect as anyone else
It wasn’t even that I hadn’t been identified as disabled yet, btw.
That was also the school that automatically tried to throw me into segregated special ed and insisted that I couldn’t attend without Ritalin, pre-ADA–but, my mother offered to sue them. (Problem solved! 😩)
So, no other support was provided, and they preferred to go with the “defiant and aggressive” approach anyway. From the beginning.
The weird denial and lack of backup at home didn’t help that situation at all, of course. Not going off onto that again right now. But, I keep realizing more and more as an adult just how much harm that did.
But, while the details of what they can and can’t readily get away with under the ADA may have changed somewhat? (Though the predecessor to IDEA did go into effect the year I was born. There were regulations they were refusing to follow already.)
The general systemic attitude really, really hasn’t changed. At all. Institutions mostly just use some different words and excuses to keep discriminating. And that was before the current political mess.
This is getting on my fucking nerves, so I’m just going to say it here:
Adults who need high levels of support in daily living are not children.
“Mental age” is a concept rooted in eugenics, and it doesn’t actually exist.
No one should be robbed of agency or dignity because of their need for support.
Oh, also, while we’re at it (since disability rights activism that doesn’t tackle age-related oppression is bullshit), kids deserve to be treated with respect too. Shouldn’t be a controversial statement, but it is.
Most people neglect to mention this, but if “being treated like a child” equates to “being robbed of agency and dignity,” there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way we treat children.
Not sure if this is entirely related as a discussion but the fear that many elderly feel in regards to their deteriorating health is often not the fear of the body itself but the fear of being denied autonomy
The thing that gets me about most arguments against accessibility features in video games is that they’re not just grossly ableist, they’re also hypocritical as hell. Video games have always had accessibility features: we just documented them poorly and called them “cheat codes”. Indeed, having a robust library of difficulty-modifying cheats was considered a mark in a game’s favour! The only difference is that a cheat code is theoretically a secret, which allows it to be framed as elite knowledge, even though it’s functionally identical to having an “infinite lives” switch on the options screen.
Here’s a thesis for you: the Konami Code was the first well-publicised accessibility feature.
being bad at video games is a disability now?
I’m going to assume you’re not being disingenuous here and take this as a serious question. In brief, very few people are generically “bad at video games”; in most cases, difficulty engaging with interactive media stems from one or more of a wide range of physiological conditions, including:
- visual deficit (including colourbindness; colourblind individuals often have difficulty identifying threats in action games because they don’t stand out from the background for them)
- repetitive strain injury in the hands, wrists or forearms (common for anyone who performs manual labour for a living)
- arthritis and other degenerative joint conditions (both those due to age and those comorbid with many autoimmune disorders)
- dyslexia (a common symptom of even mild dyslexia is the inadvertent mirroring of sensory-motor responses under pressure, e.g., moving your hand left when you meant to move it right – which is a big problem for action games!)
- sensory processing disorders (delayed reaction to visual stimulus is a common symptom)
- spatial processing disorders (see above)
- chronic pain
- propensity for motion sickness
This is, of course, only a partial list. Many of these issues are individually rare, but taken together, we’re looking a huge chunk of the population – up to 40%, by some estimates – who have at least one condition that would impact their ability to play the shooters and action-platformers that are held up as the gold standard for hardcore gaming.
hot tip: if your disability makes you bad at a thing, maybe either put in the extra effort to get good at it or just don’t do it instead of demanding people make the thing easier?????
Here’s the a better question: why is it an issue for you? Accessibility features in video games are entirely transparent to those who choose not to use them. Your experience of play isn’t affected by their existence in any way whatsoever unless you deliberately turn them on. Complaining about the mere existence of such features is like claiming that your viewing experience of a movie is being ruined by the fact that the disc has a subtitle feature on it, even though you haven’t actually turned subtitles on.
(And no, don’t try to frame this as video game developers somehow being victimised by unreasonable demands. The vast majority of developers are more than happy to include accessibility features in their games – and quite sensibly, because, you know, they’re businesspeople, and they want to sell things to as wide an audience as possible. The popular backlash against accessibility features is entirely on the player side.)
honestly, yeah you have a point there, i will concede that. the only problem i have with them is if you still get the achievements and shit with all the disability accomodations on, like with that game Celeste that you were talking about earlier, which is basically tantamount to buying one of those hastily-assembled dodgy steam games that exist solely to give whoever buys them a million steam achievements the moment you boot them up. Like, play your own game however you want, but don’t claim you performing a feat in a significantly easier version of the game is worth the same achievement as performing said feat in the standard game.
Well, if we’re going to frame it as a question of fairness, we’ve got to ask: fair in what sense, and to whom? Let’s flip it around: is it fair for you to receive exactly the same credit for performing a particular in-game feat as a disabled player, though they faced greater obstacles in practice than you did? Should we demand that players who’ve lucked out in the genetic lottery and enjoy above-average coordination and reaction times be obliged play with special handicaps in order to keep things fair for the rest of us? Whose level of ability are we judging fairness against?
a pattern I have seen a few times
OP: It’s awful the direction income inequality has taken in recent decades. Productivity is up, the stock market is up, the money is there, but working-class wages haven’t risen to match. Our generation is poorer than our parents, and many of us will never be able to buy homes, help our children pay for college, or retire.
Commenters: Sounds like someone needs a Personal Finance Lesson!!!! Try putting away just a few dollars at a time and you’ll be amazed how it adds up, sweaty :))))
Also: it’s frustrating how often the Personal Finance Lesson comes out to “have you tried living desperately?”
It’s understandable, if someone is in a jam or saving up for a major expense, that they might have to spend a few years living in a cramped and/or far-flung place, eating cheaply, thrifting clothes, and so forth.
It is not okay if this is the lifelong condition of people who are working full-time.
I don’t blame the personal-finance-advice people, nothing they say is technically wrong, but it’s frustrating and exhausting that this is where our society is at. Where “tighten your belt and live without any luxuries” is advice not for students or people recovering from financial catastrophe, but for adult professionals.
Sure, if all you can afford is rice and beans, then it’s helpful to get some recipes for spicing up rice and beans. But it shouldn’t fool you into thinking that spicy beans is all you deserve, that there’s nothing wrong with a world where CEOs have scientific-notation amounts of money and the working class is scolding each other not to waste money on name-brand beans.
“Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty.
But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It
is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or
country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man
should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He
should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the
rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing.”
Oscar Wilde said that.Also, if you’re disabled no amount of saving will do you any good. The state has already decided how much you get, and that’s it. That’s the limit. You can never rise above poverty unless you miraculously get better, and they don’t want to give SSI to people who might get better to begin with.
Walking Shouldn’t be Considered Ideal
Being independent is ideal.
Not being in pain is ideal.
Spending time with friends is ideal.
Less planning is ideal.
More spontaneity is ideal.
Accomplishing the day-to-day things other people accomplish is ideal.
Living your life without depending on the assistance and kindness of other people is ideal
Walking is not the ideal.
If having an ideal life means moving about the world in an unconventional way, then fucking do it.
I am sick and tired of hearing about people battling with their doctors, parents, and themselves when it comes to the “wheelchair” issue.
And I am sick and tired of seeing people suffer, strain, and struggle to walk for the sake of “goals”, “health”, or “not giving up”.
Fuck. That. Shit.
Get your ass in a good chair. Save ya’ walkin’ bits for the shit that really matters like once-in-a-lifetime travel opportunities, emergency situations, or sudden sexy-times.
It makes me so fucking mad when I read about people who have friends or family members that discourage wheelchair use. Oh, you’re worried about their health? Cool story. Buy them a fucking gym membership with a pool or some shit and the wheelchair.
It’s all just a bunch of MOVE like me! LOOK like me! SELL YOUR LABOR LIKE I DO! bullshit.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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