“Well, if X accommodation is so important to disabled people then how did they manage years ago?”
They didn’t Karen, they died.
Or more prosaically, just didn’t do whatever the accomodation was for. Which, yes, frequently included “leaving the home at all, ever.” There used to be an entire class of people who literally lived next to the hearth in a multigenerational home.
Tag: ableism
The Illiberalism of Prenatal Selection
CN eugenics
“It is impossible to understand disability without taking into account social, cultural, and technological factors that may impede or enhance well-being.”
Please don’t suddenly push someone’s wheelchair without their permission. It’s extremely rude and most of us hate it.
Someone in a wheelchair pushing themselves up a slope? Want to be of assistance? Ask if they would like help. Don’t just run up and start pushing. It’s the equivalent of you seeing someone limping up a hill and deciding to suddenly carry them to get them to the top.
Someone in a wheelchair blocking your path? Need to get by? Ask them to move. Do not reach out and push the chair aside. It’s the equivalent of you shoving someone out of the way instead of just saying “excuse me”.
We understand that you have good intentions and just want to help. But having a wheelchair suddenly moved, pushed, grabbed, or touched can feel violating, very uncomfortable, and even frightening. It can also feel like you’re ripping our control away, as there is very little we can do to stop you from pushing us. Unless we pull the hand brakes, which may potentially send us flying out of the chair.
Even for those few who are okay with being randomly moved, you pushing the chair without warning while they’re wheeling themselves can cause their fingers to get caught or crushed in the wheels. It can be pretty painful, trust me.
Unless it is a life or death situation, or you have prior consent to always push that person, please ask for permission before touching or pushing someone’s wheelchair. You wouldn’t like being grabbed or picked up without permission by a total stranger, either.
reading a paper on quality of life among 45-to-70-year-olds with Down syndrome:
“Individuals expressed a desire to be allowed to go to bed when they wanted to.”
😦
Imagine.
I lived in a room and board that failed the burrito test. (”If you’re not allowed to get up in the middle of the night to microwave a burrito, you live in an institution.”) No one stopped me from going to bed, but they did tell me I had to have my lights out by 10, and that I had to be out of the house by 10 the next morning. When I complained to my outpatient program that I needed more help than I was getting, they threatened me with board and care, where my cell phone would be taken away and I would lose contact with the outside world. My case manager sounded so damn smug, like he had caught me out, when he said, “if you’re really as helpless as you say, then you need to be in a board and care.” Like my only options were struggling to do things I couldn’t do, or surrendering my life to an institution.
When I tried to talk about these things with other people, they always rationalized it away. (I told my dad once that my caseworker was reading my e-mails as I wrote them, demonstrating extreme disrespect for my privacy, and he said, “Well, she’s probably making sure you don’t use the internet to goof off.” I was 22 years old.)
People tend to mock the idea that telling an adult when to go to bed, when to eat, etc., is a human rights violation, even though they would find it outrageous and absurd if anyone came into their lives to do the same thing to them.
And this is what people seem to think when they tell disabled activists we’re just not disabled enough to understand that some people really do need to be locked up and deprived of all autonomy.
tumblr user 1: i have issues identifying my gender and orientation due to borderline personality disorder
tumblr user 2: fair enough
tumbr user 1: which is why i am BORDERLINEGENDER and BORDERLINESEXUAL because my gender and sexuality can change and are determined by a mental illness
tumblr user 2: wait no that’s not how it works
tumblr user 2: that belief is actually very harmful to the lgbtaq community and also delegitimises the struggle of living with bpd
tumblr user 1: Y DO U HATE NEURODIVERGENT TRANS PPL
So it seems clear from context that OP is against neurogenders, but this post doesn’t actually make me any more sympathetic to User 2. User 1 never implied that all lgbtaq orientations and genders are caused/influenced by mental illness, they just said their own were. And how are they “delegitimizing” THEIR OWN illness?
Yeah. Like… I haven’t heard this with BPD, but I do hear it fairly often from autistic people. And it seems there actually are a lot of autistic trans people. So if someone wants to say “I think my self-conception of my gender is influenced by the way my neurology works,” okay. “Autismgender” seems like a usable abbreviation, even.
If you want me to use neopronouns, I’ll probably ask if they/them is acceptable to you, but aside from that I’m not sure why that would be objectionable?
I mean, the old-school “we think this is what the science says but we’re not totally sure” understanding was that prenatal hormones can influence (but not wholly dictate) gender identity and sexual orientation, and if that’s possible/likely, why couldn’t neurological differences do so too?
Yeah, I don’t ID as either borderlinegender or borderlinesexual but I do have BPD and I completely understand why other people with BPD would ID with these terms just from my own experience in questioning my sexuality, because my BPD absolutely impacts that to a significant degree.
I don’t think being borderline on its own has directly caused me to be queer, it’s not the only factor involved, but it definitely influences my sexuality and my ability to feel sexual and romantic attraction and the degree/frequency to which I feel them to the point that it has made it pretty damn difficult for me to figure out just what terms apply to my orientation.
A major reason I primarily ID as queer is because of this, even, because if not for ‘queer’ I’d be spending all my time explaining “well I’m technically bi but also kinda grey-aro/grey-ace because my mental illness makes the way I experience attraction fluctuate from one day/hour/minute to another and for every stretch of time I’m sure I’m attracted equally to people of all genders, I’m totally devoid of attraction for another stretch of time and….” — and yeah, I’m not doing that. I’m tired just typing it out.
So I get 100% why someone with BPD would need a specific term to describe that their BPD is a major influence on how they experience either their gender or orientation or both. It’s a valid way to feel and it’s not an uncommon experience, either (there are people in various bpd tags who post about questioning because their bpd makes things so confusing pretty much every week), and I don’t think it delegitimizes the LGBTQiA+ community or other people with BPD at all.
I think it is mostly a problem where people think you shouldn’t even count as anything but cishet because you might have been cishet if you were neurotypical. It basically results in a subtle “you are not allowed to choose your identity because your perceptions are off”.
And this is extra miserable because idk about other disabled people but I CANNOT PASS as my damn asab because I cannot “preform” femininity correctly. So basically you get outgrouped by you assigned gender then try and find spaces for whatever gender you are and then get told you are failing at THAT for being disabled.
If disabled people ID as trans because they are disabled then that to some people, seems to imply that all transpeople are broken and should be forced to go to conversion therapy…. but I have literally been advised to have conversion therapy by lgbtq people because THEY are fine and normal but I AM broken i guess. Like I have read articles about transgender autistics killing themselves because they were told by gender clinics they couldn’t transition until their autism was CURED. In other words NEVER.
And this doesn’t even get into the fact this also applies to sexuality. Having any sort of baggage is often considered abusive. People will frequently tell people they aren’t allowed to date until they “recover” and I bought into that as a kid but 10 years later and I am now WORSE because of isolation. It doesn’t matter what your sexuality is either. You’d think that you would at least be allowed to be asexual but nope, being anything but straight when disabled is endorsing the “broken” narrative. Every other group will try and force you into the ace box but the ace community also hates you so even if you ARE ace you have no support.
But you know it’s not ableism or anything you’re just trying to sneek into spaces to ruin things for the REAL LGBTQ people.
Some tag commentary I ended up adding on the last reblog:
#people do get impatient and actively shitty with me #a lot #stupid foreigner bonus #since i moved here #i just don’t do voice calls if there’s literally any other choice
Some of that is down to significant further hearing loss (which also gives less info for the screwy auditory processing to work with!)–but not all of it.
I also refuse to call the anxiety component “phone phobia”, precisely because it is a secondary thing. The anxiety has gotten worse in direct response to actual shitty behavior trying to deal with people on the phone. Not every time, of course, but people do turn just plain rude and insulting frequently enough that it really is a problem.
Another thing where it’s often kinda hard to sort out the ableism from the xenophobia, tbqh. I mean, I did already run into the “stupid hillbilly” reactions before. If anything, that makes me more frustrated just trying to go about my business. Not much win possible.
i hate when businesses post little “only use this if you absolutely have to” signs above the buttons that open doors or on elevators
i understand wanting to save electricity but the result is that many people are going to make decisions like “i guess i can push this door open or use the stairs, even if it will contribute to my pain flare-up” and feel really shitty about pushing the button or using the elevator even if they do absolutely need it.
i hate the idea of “only use the elevator / mobility aid / medication if you absolutely must.” use the thing if it improves your quality of life. you don’t need to prove that you deserve it by needlessly suffering.
I doubt its about conserving electricity. The amount of power used by an elevator or electric door seems inconsequential and probably isn’t going to be enough to hurt your business.
It’s almost always about some able-bodied know-it-all thinking that anybody who isn’t in a wheelchair or otherwise visibly disabled doesn’t need the thing and is just being lazy.
I mean, it’s both.
One as excuse for the other, but any penny they don’t have to spend they won’t. A lot of building owners and business owners begrudge having to “spend more money than they have to”. It’s less about cutting down on electricity to be green and more cutting electricity and required maintenance to help their bottom line as much as possible.
They are saying “if we didn’t have to have this, by law, we wouldn’t.”
It is an active disregard for disabled folks as well as a shame tactic for everyone to “enjoy” because building owners are stingy and ableist.
there’s an elevator at mit marked “for people with disabilities only, do NOT use this to transport Heavy Items on carts”, and i use it a lot (not always on bad knee days) and felt pretty bad about it until the first time i saw someone use it to transport a Heavy Item on a cart.
because, like, this elevator is at a choke point connecting the main group buildings to half the other buildings on campus, and any other elevator by which one could transport a cart is so far out of the way it might double your total walking distance.
and mit is not poor! they can definitely afford to take down this sign, they can definitely afford to let everyone take this elevator if they think it might be convenient, they just…….. presumably had some kind of reason but the net effect is that they’re pointlessly being dicks.
i hate when businesses post little “only use this if you absolutely have to” signs above the buttons that open doors or on elevators
i understand wanting to save electricity but the result is that many people are going to make decisions like “i guess i can push this door open or use the stairs, even if it will contribute to my pain flare-up” and feel really shitty about pushing the button or using the elevator even if they do absolutely need it.
i hate the idea of “only use the elevator / mobility aid / medication if you absolutely must.” use the thing if it improves your quality of life. you don’t need to prove that you deserve it by needlessly suffering.
I doubt its about conserving electricity. The amount of power used by an elevator or electric door seems inconsequential and probably isn’t going to be enough to hurt your business.
It’s almost always about some able-bodied know-it-all thinking that anybody who isn’t in a wheelchair or otherwise visibly disabled doesn’t need the thing and is just being lazy.
I mean, it’s both.
One as excuse for the other, but any penny they don’t have to spend they won’t. A lot of building owners and business owners begrudge having to “spend more money than they have to”. It’s less about cutting down on electricity to be green and more cutting electricity and required maintenance to help their bottom line as much as possible.
They are saying “if we didn’t have to have this, by law, we wouldn’t.”
It is an active disregard for disabled folks as well as a shame tactic for everyone to “enjoy” because building owners are stingy and ableist.
WATCH: Video Shows Chicago Cop Shooting Autistic Teen Ricky Hayes
i hate when businesses post little “only use this if you absolutely have to” signs above the buttons that open doors or on elevators
i understand wanting to save electricity but the result is that many people are going to make decisions like “i guess i can push this door open or use the stairs, even if it will contribute to my pain flare-up” and feel really shitty about pushing the button or using the elevator even if they do absolutely need it.
i hate the idea of “only use the elevator / mobility aid / medication if you absolutely must.” use the thing if it improves your quality of life. you don’t need to prove that you deserve it by needlessly suffering.
I doubt its about conserving electricity. The amount of power used by an elevator or electric door seems inconsequential and probably isn’t going to be enough to hurt your business.
It’s almost always about some able-bodied know-it-all thinking that anybody who isn’t in a wheelchair or otherwise visibly disabled doesn’t need the thing and is just being lazy.
The local library has a ‘please don’t use’ sign in winter blaming heating costs.
Including a copy visible where you can get shamed for using the button because you can’t open the door and balance because Armload Of Books.
I get that it takes slightly longer to close when powered, but the entryway is designed to preserve the heat of the building (two sets of doors) and it’s not a high-traffic entrance.
And yes, it does manage to shame me into not using the button because of my visible age even when I absolutely shouldn’t be hauling around a door that heavy myself.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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