fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton:

fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton:

I don’t get why people think they can catch you out on something like

“You said you couldn’t do X, but then you did Y!”

Like, one of the main things disabled people are trying to explain to the abled world is that our experiences are nuanced. We can do some things and not other things. We can do some things some of the time but not all of the time. Sometimes our abilities change over time. Sometimes we have the same diagnosis as someone else but not the same abilities and limitations. Sometimes we were misdiagnosed and we get correctly diagnosed later on in life. None of this is contradictory, none of this should be controversial to talk about.

Trying to call someone fake because they don’t fit a stereotype and don’t stay exactly the same their whole lives is antithetical to what disability activism is striving for, and it holds disabled people to a much higher standard than abled people to have our lives “make sense” to people who are biased and willfully uninformed.

Abled people are allowed to grow and change without it calling into question their entire life history.

Basically, being a disabled person speaking about disability in a public space means getting constantly subjected to “last year you said you were thirty, this year you said you were thirty-one, WHICH IS IT OBAMA?” type scrutiny. This is garden variety ableism, it’s not new, it’s not original, and it’s not any different when people think they’re harassing fakers for the good of “REAL” disabled people.

If people weren’t so suspicious of disabled people categorically they might actually learn something about disability.

All this does is make disabled people afraid to speak at all. After all, what if they see themselves in the latest victim of the faker hunt? Doesn’t that mean if they don’t talk about their disability very carefully- try very hard not to upset anyone’s preconceived notions of what their disability “should” look like- that they’ll be next? And when we have fewer voices in our community, less people sharing information about the nuances of disability, then we lose something important. There is nothing about trying to oust someone as a “faker” that isn’t toxic for disabled people as a community.

fierceawakening:

brazenautomaton:

expeditionhappiness:

audrey-bo-bodrey:

a-christmas-cruella:

fumblingcuriosities:

silenceofthecam:

xtremecaffeine:

swamp-spirit:

thatscorpionbitch:

Like, 90% of infomercial style products were designed by/for disabled people, but you wouldn’t know that, because there is no viable market for them. THey have to be marketted and sold to abled people just so that any money can be made of off them and so the people who actually need them will have access.

I think snuggies are the one example almost everyone knows. They were invented for wheelchair users (Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a coat on and off of someone in a wheelchair? Cause it’s PRETTY FUCKIN HARD.) But now everyone just acts like they’re some ~quirky, white people thing~ and not A PRODUCT DESIGNED TO MAKE PEOPLES DAY TO DAY LIVES 10000X EASIER.

But if at any point you were to take your head out of your own ass and go “Hey, who would a product like this benefit,” that would be really cool.

This makes informational make so much sense now.

Like… of course there’s no reason for that guy to knock over that bowl of chips. However, the person it was actually designed for has constant hand tremors that would make this pretty rad, but since we don’t want to show that in a commercial, here’s an able bodied guy who can’t remember how gravity works.

Shit. Those commercials suddenly get a lot less funny when you realize it’s pretty much just people ineptly trying to mimic disability.

Or like the thing for the eggs? Like, oh, it cracks eggs perfectly, you only need one hand?

IT WAS DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE WHO ONLY HAVE THE USE OF ONE HAND.

Or the juice bottle pourer? For people who’re TOO LAZY TO POUR THEIR OWN JUICE? Or FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIFFICULTY BEARING WEIGHT IN THE HANDS.

It’s amazing how with just a few words by a few people, my whole perspective on something can shift entirely. 

I feel so ignorant for never having realized this before.

Don’t feel bad. You’re not supposed to realize it, since the collective conscious isn’t supposed to realize disabled people are sentient and therefore can be advertised at.

This is why I hate those buzzfeed articles that have these products featured and the title is something like “for the laziest people ever” like For example, a device to pick up your sock and put it on your foot with minimal bending over ( http://youtu.be/9GFOqlAmJUc ) , it would take more effort than it’s worth for an able bodied person, but for someone who is disabled, it’s super helpful. These products are not even meant for able people to use, that’s why when they see them they think it’s ridiculous.

yeah it took me forever to realize this too. those buzzfeed articles feel especially weird now because i actually have some of those products – not because i’m lazy, but because it actually allowed me to do more within the constraints of my chronic illness 

it isn’t that “disabled people aren’t enough of a market”

because if they were not enough of a market, then why would infomercial people design and sell a product for them?

as I understand it, FDA regulations say you are not allowed to advertise your product for disabled people without doing a bunch of ruinously expensive tests, tests that manufacturers of infomercial products can’t afford to do. because if you say your product is for disabled people, it’s a “medical device” and falls under their purview

so they have to pretend it has nothing to do with disability, because actually advertising it to the people it’s for would require them to spend insane amounts of money on useless tests

Yup. And then you get people who actually don’t know what they are talking about noticing that the actors in these infomercials are white and doing this “wypipo who sit at home be SO LAZY” thing

no.

wypipo who sit at home all day be on disability benefits, probably