Of course, I also get aggravated at how not being able to do much with your appearance will too often get you treated. Especially when you’re read as a woman.
Would be hard enough sometimes without that extra layer of social garbage, though.
“You walk at home? Do you even need your wheelchair?”
Yes, because walking in my own house is different than walking class to class at school. I don’t carry a heavy backpack at home. I’m not on a tight schedule at home. I can sit on the ground at home. I can ask my parents or siblings to help me at home. I can crawl on my hands and knees at home. I can lie in the middle of the hallway at home. I can sit on counters and tables at home. I can bear a lot of pain at home. I can show that pain at home. I can collapse in the middle of crawling up the staircase at home.
Don’t tell me or anyone else where or when they need to use their mobility device
Last week, United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement announced it would deport Yancarlos Mendez. Mendez is an auto mechanic with no criminal record other than driving without a license. He overstayed permission to be in the country under the Visa Waiver Program, and after his arrest (for lacking a license), ICE decided to deport him. So far, this is a pretty typical story of ICE deporting good people who were otherwise full contributors to American society.
Mendez is also the sole financial provider and caregiver to a six-year-old boy with paraplegia. The child, Ricky Solis, was paralyzed in February of 2017 when a driver crossed lanes and struck the car in which he was riding with his mother, Sandra Mendoza. As he recovered, Mendoza and Mendez were both trained in how to care for him, a key step in Ricky’s being released from the hospital. Now Mendez is in custody, ICE has denied an appeal, Mendoza had to quit her job to care for her son around the clock, and Ricky is experiencing internal bleeding. Amid tears and new surgeries, ICE is preparing to “repatriate” Mendez to the Dominican Republic.
If you are concerned about disability rights in 2018, you also need to be concerned about immigration rights. This has, of course, always been true. It’s axiomatic that campaigns for justice overlap. Cases like the deportation of Yancarlos Mendez, however, make it impossible to deny the necessity of working across categories in order to build a better world.
As ICE has intensified operations under the regime of President Donald Trump, disability-related cases and causes have routinely gotten public attention. In part, this has to do with the way that disability commands sympathy and can sometimes generate generous media coverage. It’s easier for immigrant rights groups to command national attention when there’s a disabled six-year-old at risk. But it’s also because ICE has turned rapacious, sweeping aside long traditions protecting medical facilities such as hospitals from enforcement actions.
We saw this pattern last fall, when the American Civil Liberties Union took on the case of Rosa Maria Hernandez. Hernandez is a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy whose ambulance was stopped at a checkpoint while she was being taken to a hospital for gallbladder surgery. Immigration authorities kept her under surveillance throughout the procedure, then took her to a detention center. Only widespread national outrage prompted her eventual release. The Department of Homeland Security told NPR at the time that they had no choice but to the detain the child. “By law we have to do exactly what we did,” said Gabriel Acosta, assistant chief patrol agent in Laredo.
As disabled members of the lgbt community we should be celebrating marriage equality, right? but unfortunately us disabled people who rely on government support to survive risk losing everything and becoming totally financially reliant on our partners if we marry or even move in together.
I would add that it’s not really inconsequential on a practical level, even if marrying someone with a decent income.
Everyone is up the creek if they should lose that income without another one to fall back on. Or if something should happen to the partner bringing in the money. Beyond the same basic problem of making the disabled partner totally financially dependent, and making them way more vulnerable to abuse with huge hurdles to getting out of a bad relationship.
Official waiting periods and unofficial delays aside, it’s not easy or assured that we will be able to access benefits at all if something happens to our partner or we need to leave.
Nobody should be put in a situation like that, much less by government policy. Nobody should have to feel lucky that they’re not having to put up with a bad home situation in order to survive. Seems like more of a feature than a bug, though.
To me that’s no better than capitalist profit-centric thinking. It’s disgusting to ever think that we should allow certain people to suffer and die just because designing systems they need is “wasteful of resources” or otherwise “inconvenient”.
Social systems exist for the benefit of people, not the other way around. In communism social systems exist for the benefit of ALL people, NOT JUST A PRIVILEGED FEW.
yesterday I was told to shut up about the purging of vulnerable people from society via the “benefits” system in the UK because it “made me sound like I had an axe to grind” against the tory govt, and like.
how can you be so blinkered as to see things like this
and this
and this
and get the takeaway of “well this bitch clearly has an axe to grind” and move on with your life? how can you look anybody in the eye, let alone a blood relation, when you’ve heard the story of state murder and sociopathy, and go “yeah well maybe (the deceased) was the one in the wrong, maybe they too had an axe to grind, maybe fuckin maybe-”?
perhaps it’s easier to think of them as one off cases. as sponging bastards who didn’t cooperate, but they’re not. they’re people close to you, they’re mothers who are so destitute that they die cold and alone, never to see their kids again. even if they didn’t “cooperate”, they don’t deserve death, especially when the system is gamed against them to such an extent that any fury they express can be wielded against them.
the whole fucking point of a benefit system is to be a safety net, yet I’ve grown used to seeing this, of deaths and apathy to the deaths.
i’ve grown used to the crippling panic attacks i’d have about being 3 minutes late to my appointment because of traffic, knowing that it could mean my only means of survival gets cut off.
I risked my life once. I’ve never told anyone about it, but one time when my bus didn’t turn up, I burst into tears in the street. I couldn’t move. It wasn’t within walking distance and I had no money for a cab. a kind man stopped and gave me a lift, but I’d no idea who he was really. I’m well aware that murderers and kidnappers prey on the vulnerable, but in that moment it was a better option than having my bland and insultingly well off “work programme advisor” tell me that he’s very “sorry”, but he can’t register my attendance because I was 30 minutes late and he’s a very busy man.
that’s the scariest thing, what you’re pushed to for what amounts to less than minimum wage.
DPAC and other disabled activists, including Black Triangle co-founder John McArdle, were also furious that the government leaked the UN report to a right-wing tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, and attempted to rubbish its conclusions before it was published the following day.
The report’s findings were rejected by the current government, with little sign of major reform in response that would bolster support for people with disabilities…
[T]he report found that “the threshold of grave or systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities has been met in the State party”...
The report found that disabled people’s hardship as a result of the policies resulted in “arrears, debts, evictions” and cuts to essentials such as “housing and food”.
The report also called attention to the scape-goating of people with disabilities who rely on government support, who are regularly portrayed as “lazy”, “committing fraud as benefit claimants” and “putting a burden on taxpayers who are paying ‘money for nothing’”.
“Persons with disabilities continue to experience increasing hostility, aggressive behaviour and sometimes attacks to their personal integrity,” the report said. “The reforms have resulted in people experiencing increasing reliance on family and kinship carers, reduction in their social interaction, increased isolation and, in certain cases, institutionalization.”
Just need to add that the focus of that particular investigation was fairly narrow, confined to changes to the benefits system. The targeted disproportionate effects of ongoing cuts to other public services (including health and social care) weren’t part of the scope there.
I mean, I suppose it’s possible that UN human rights investigators are just hell-bent on demonizing the Tories too. That’s certainly one explanation, however unlikely.
please stop using the terms hyperfixation and special interest interchangeably. they do not mean the same thing. both are used to describe symptoms of learning disabilities, but they are not for the same conditions nor do they mean the same thing.
hyperfixation is a term to describe a (you guessed it) fixation on a topic that isn’t consistent, but does have a very powerful positive feeling associated with it. it comes in waves, but isn’t something you’d be 100% obsessed with over a long period of time. it usually impares your ability to focus on anything else. it’s a symptom of adhd.
special interest is a term used to describe a consistent, long-term fascination and interest with something. you may be able to focus on other things, but the underlying excitement is always there. it’s a symptom of autism.
if you, like myself, have both autism and adhd, it can be SUPER hard to tell them apart, and you probably will never need to.
i’ve been made fun of for having both hyperfixations and for having special interests, but i need people to understand that they are two different experiences.
Before I start, I want to apologize if I get testy; I have an important medical appointment tomorrow afternoon and I’m starting to get really anxious about it. But I had to comment on this because I do every time something like this comes across my dash.
Hi there! It’s great to see that you care about the language people use. Unfortunately, your opinion here is not based in fact. And yes, I have links and information for you on this.
Post about some of my history with the online autism community and more specifically about the history of the word “neurotypical.”
Post about more of my history with the online autism community and more specifically about how it was originally incredibly accepting and open to people who weren’t autistic, and we all used each other’s words.
Post about more of my history with the online autism community and more specifically about the changing language surrounding what are now called “special interests.”
Post about the history of the term “hyperfixation” that includes links to studies where it was used in relation to autism as well as to the discussion in 2015 when it was proposed on Tumblr (which I was a part of).
Long reblog chain including lots of information about these terms and how and why people use them, mostly correcting autistic people who are gatekeeping the use of the term “special interest.”
I mean, based on your definition of “special interest,” my DECADE of reading everything about autism that I could get my hands on, to the point where it was one of the few topics I could actually talk about coherently, was a special interest. Except also by your definition, it wasn’t, because I’m not autistic. So which is it?
Sorrynotsorry, I’m going to continue using the words that fit my experiences, and I’m going to continue encouraging other people to do the same thing. Because I know the history. I was there for the history.
And I am so OVER people thinking they own experiences and words.
Over-adherence to diagnostic labels and medicalized language does not serve the interests of neuro-atypical people. I personally don’t really get the distinction drawn here between “special interests” and “hyperfixations,” and I resent having them referred to as symptoms. My experiences are my experiences. They don’t always fit into a neat box described by someone else, even if that person and I happen to share a diagnostic label.
We need to be more welcoming of other people with similar experiences instead of trying to erect barriers around words and concepts. Whom does that really serve?
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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