I’m tired of people acting like if an employer discrimates against you as a disabled person or violates the ADA you can just take it to HR or get a lawyer and sue them. I took my complaints to HR and was told to shut up or leave. If I pursue it further I either lose my job or risk making my job even more miserable due to retribution from management. Neither of which are survivable for me as a disabled person. Yes there are laws in place but the system makes it impossible to enforce them in any way and punishes the people who try. I am totally powerless in my position and my employer has made it clear that I am disposable.
Tag: disability
Shortage of home health workers forces young Minnesotans with disabilities into institutions
“This is a civil rights issue,” said Barnett Rosenfield, supervising attorney for Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid’s Minnesota Disability Law Center. “We have too many people in our state stuck in nursing homes who don’t want to be there and have no easy way out.”
the other big problem here is a lack of accessible housing. i wouldn’t be stuck in a nursing home if the Twin Cities actually had enough apartments that can accommodate a power chair. instead, wait lists are years long.
i’d have gone straight home after my surgery if our current apartment was at all accessible, but it’s not and my medical team all agreed that i shouldn’t go back there. so now i’m a 26-year-old woman living in the land of octogenarians until an accessible apartment opens up. i could be here for five years.
this is no way to live.
Shortage of home health workers forces young Minnesotans with disabilities into institutions
Saying that a disabled child or adult “will never live independently” is such a slap in the face. I think it’s unacceptable and I think it’s lazy. No one will ever live independently! No one is living independent of medical care, emotional support, and goods/services provided by others. Humans are a deeply interdependent species. Disabled people are sometimes rendered ~dependent~ specifically on a state or family apparatus in a way that makes them vulnerable to abuse or exploitation, but this isn’t the only way to experience “”dependency.”“
Some people are just told that they are “independent” because their lives and needs are normalized to such an extent that the enormous amount of support they receive is invisible.
I feel the need to summarize two other commenters posts on this because, while well meaning, just glosses over things which is a problem.
When people say “will never live independently”, they aren’t talking about the medical system, emotional support, or goods/services. They’re talking about being able to count change. They’re talking about not scalding themselves while running hot water, […] being able to feed themselves, being able to protect themselves, and countless other things that most people take for granted.
We know most people still rely on one another, on their family, for help. But the fact is that disabled people face these “normalized” issues and then have more so on top. To imply that the level of help needed for both disabled and not disabled and that it’s really NBD is detrimental. It’s kind of like the whole “I don’t see race, we’re all human”. On the surface yes we are human, yes we still need help, but that ignores and glosses over their situations that makes them unique. Sure you need to ask your parents for financial help from time to time, but do you need direct help to do the most basic every day things? Do you need to be spoon fed, need help showering or going to the bathroom, need help talking, help walking from room to room? Do you need a nurse to come to your home?
Like. I see people talking about how moving out of your household is a western culture thing as if that’s what it means by living independently. Which honestly isn’t that true, families will still move out when it gets too crowded you’re just not expected to as a young adult. Back in my mother’s home country several generations live together and help each other with groceries or cooking and things. But you can’t kid yourself in comparing niceties to constant essential aid that is purely for living. You can teach an able bodied person to remember a number in a heartbeat. Doing so with someone who has short term memory loss due to severe brain trauma? Not so simple and I say that from experience.
My point is that disabled people need extra help and that’s okay!! It’s nothing to be ashamed of nor does it make you a burden. It’s a part of life and that extra help is one given lovingly and willingly. Saying you get more help than usual isn’t an attack on your abilities.
And also as a side note you WILL inevitably live without any help from family members or friends, just not as a young adult. It can happen when you’re 40 or even 50 although I knew a few who were forced to be completely independent at 19. I feel like we’re expected to be some self made, worldly, experienced business man making 6 figures right out of high school or college. But it’s just not true and parental wisdom will always be there for you.
[ID: tweet by @/graphickat: “When people say “they never use disability as an excuse” it makes me furious.
Stating my reality is not an excuse. My body has physical limitations that aren’t negotiable.
When I tell you I can’t do something, it’s not an excuse. It’s not a matter of positivity. It’s truth.“ End ID.
still true with variable abilities. a healthy person knows they can probably run further on some days than others, depending on things like sleep, nutrition, stress, general health, etc.
so why is it so implausible that sometimes i can walk far enough that i don’t need an electric wheelchair, and sometimes i need it?
being able to walk for anything from 2-20 minutes per day produces a variety of different scenarios. drive me directly to a store and i won’t bring my chair. probably don’t need it for that length of time given the hassle involved. but if I have to get there myself and i can’t walk that distance, i need…….. a mode of transportation.
can everyone who is able to walk and has ever used a car maybe get off my fucking case?
The car this is really wild because in retrospect the fact I have never been really healthy enough to run around etc is PROBABLY a big factor in why I love cars. I also loved horseback riding and skiing. There is a trend here.
So I call the car the “big wheelchair”, the “friend wheelchair”, the “fast wheelchair” etc. Because that is what it is. A wheelchair that is bigger, faster, and can bring your friends with you.
I honestly think people get obnoxious about this shit because they are JEALOUS we get samll wheelchairs to drive around the store in, which they should be tbh because yes it is fun, but the solution is BUY YOUR OWN DAMN WHEELCHAIR ABLEDS AND MAKE EVERYTHING ACCESIBLE GOD
speaking of fury, why the fuck are we all sitting around making life shitty for everyone by playing stupid evil games about who is or isn’t Disabled Enough in any particular way for any particular accommodation or assistive tech when we could be….
…. using our unfathomable skills and technology to unlock everyone’s untapped human potential? to let us live the fullest lives we can, and achieve things our bodies and minds can’t do on their own, like we’ve been doing ever since somebody thought about giving this whole “tools” malarky a try.
even people who aren’t disabled, if they can remember the rest of us are also people.
we’ve created this mindset where there is some imaginary “normal” set of abilities against which some, like scientists or athletes, are seen to excel and others, like disabled people, fall short.
but i mean, what’s a normal amount of any skill? im better at Spanish than some people, who are better than me at math. which of us has the normal amount of ability in either field? next to a beginner, i might be excellent at Spanish but i often can’t say what i need to say. am i Spanish able, then, or Spanish disabled?
the question doesn’t make any fucking sense, right?
of course disabilities exist. you will not catch me flying the “differently abled” flag or any euphemism for it. the social model accounts for most of my misery but my illness still fucking sucks and would suck in an otherwise perfect world.
but it’s a matter of degree. there isn’t a magical line where Now You’re Disabled. you can start disabled or become clearly disabled suddenly, but not everyone does.
it took me years to claim that word. because of that, i spent years without even considering i could get a power wheelchair that would allow me to……… leave the house. i mean, im too sick to walk far enough to go out, but im not disabled.
i wasted years. i got dramatically sicker. i might have recovered if i hadn’t been too concerned with Not Being Disabled or appropriating anyone’s experiences to take the measures i needed. and every sick person i know has much the same story.
if we had lived in a culture that accepts everyone as they are but understands everyone, disabled or not, need tools to enhance certain abilities, we would have been able to think, “oh, i can’t walk as much as i need to. better find a solution to that.”
and abled people can make themselves laser eyes or whatever. and let me know when they’re ready.
I think @withasmoothroundstone had a post about hir father? At one point and how he had gotten his job when they didn’t require degrees and was very very good at it but if he had to get the job now he couldn’t because there was no way he could manage the degree.
I think that is the thing that fucks over disabled people the most in a lot of cases honestly.
Like I am aware I am not ACTUALLY useless. I have a handful of things I am like, way abnormally good at. But they are all stuff that is assigned minimal value in society I am considered useless.
The thing that kills me the most is that I will have Good Idea but most of the time it doesn’t matter because I am missing a skill to diy it and cannot get assistance for that. And SO MANY of the gaps did not exist until I was forced to try and be good at things I could never be good at. I lost skills from trying to get new ones. Big Regret man.
I found a review yesterday of my wheelchair Poison Ivy cosplay from a comic convention in November. do you know what it said?
“Props to this girl for not letting her wheelchair stop her from cosplaying!”
What do you mean, “not letting it stop me”? It’s not an obstacle to be overcome, asshole, its my LIFE.
I don’t need your pity. And I’m not your Inspiration Porn. fuck that noise
Image Description under the cut
laws about minimum wage should apply to disabled people
laws about minimum wage should apply to incarcerated people
everyone deserves a fair living wage for their labor
wait, they don’t???
Not even close. Disabled folks can be paid as little as $1 an hour in some cases at whats called “subminimum wage.” Prisoners are sometimes forced to work without pay at all.
Hi, I am an attorney in the disability field. Many disabled folks make well under $1 an hour in what are called “sheltered workshops”. There are only three states right now that require people with disabilities to be paid at least minimum wage, and they are Alaska, New Hampshire, and Maryland. Goodwill is a major offender, but there are many, many others.
Here is a recent article on the subject: https://thinkprogress.org/alaska-minimum-wage-diability-b762e00ab279/
Goodwill is evil. Dont shop at their thrift stores.
SSI benefits, for people who have never been able to work, are very low, less than half, sometimes not even 1/3 of the measly SSDI payments a disabled worker can draw. $750 a month/$9,000 a year max. That is well below the poverty line. People so ill they have never been able to work are considered completely disposable by the US government and are given hardly any support.
This directly contributes to abuse, as many disabled people must stay with family or a spouse who makes enough to live on. If those people are abusive, well, fuck you I guess.
Alternately, disabled people may have to forego getting married if their potential spouse does not bring in enough to support them both, as being married reduces the amount you can receive.
All disabled people deserve to be paid a living wage, even those who cannot work at all.
Don’t leave us out of your activism.
New concept: Stop trying to pass for an ablebodied person.
It’s perfectly okay if you Can pass, of course.
No Shame in Having an Invisible Disability, But:
- If you’re worried that you’re not passing,
- If you spend your thoughts and your energy trying to pass,
- If you blame yourself when you fail to pass,
- If you don’t speak up when something is bothering you, because you’re afraid of looking weak, or pitiful,
- If trying to pass hurts,
Stop Trying to Pass for an ablebodied person.
This is one of my early posts. I figure I don’t say it enough.
(Originally posted 26 March, 2016)
<strong>Invisible Disabilities are REAL.
Enlighten yourselves, educate others.
A bus driver literally blamed me for him not letting me off the bus because I hit the button but wasn’t at the door by the time we got to the stop last week. Because everyone stranding in their own two feet who doesn’t have a cane or crutches can keep their balance on a moving bus and has no problem hanging their body weight off an arm.
Me hanging my weight off my dominant arm hasn’t been reliably safe since Thanksgiving before last. (Bad lifting decision at the grocery, turkey was not involved.)
Lately they’ve started pulling off before the last person on reached the first seats even when that person had gray hair and looked slightly frail, so apparently they’re operating on the ‘mobility aids only’ definition of who gets to make it to the priority seats. I need to start reporting the ones that break the federal regulation about the white line – I nearly face-planted this winter thanks to one who pulled out before I could even tap my pass and then seemed offended that I death-gripped every vertical piece of metal to a seat the next time we stopped.
But I don’t have a visible sign of a physical problem because even right after I got hurt using a sling to reduce joint mobility was the worst thing I could have done. People my age decide to race me to open subway seats and flash me smug ‘I won’ looks while I death grip hug a pole – no documentation means I’ve got zero chance of ousting them. I get looks for trying to get on buses before little old ladies because I can use any open seat if I have the time to get there but they can kick people out of priority without having to ask.
I’d like to try riding standing again where there’s a chance to give up and sit if things go wrong, since it’s been long enough for me to mostly heal, but all it might take is one person seeing me ride standing to mark me as a liar even if I ended up in pain for a week afterward and learned I should never do that again. And this is the kind of thing that is lifetime vulnerable to reinjury.
Invisible disabilities aren’t just mental.
<strong>Invisible Disabilities are REAL.
Enlighten yourselves, educate others.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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