please please please don’t forget to include intellectual disability, psychosis / schizospec disorders, level 2-3 autistics, folks w dissociative disorders, and others with “severe mental illness” from ur conversations about mad liberation.
these are some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised mad people, and we need to give them a voice.
these are the places where liberation is needed the most
you have any fucking word in the dictionary to describe your abuse. please stop using the one that describes a personality disorder
Me Giving a Pressed Conference: our advocacy for the disabled must include the addict, the imperfect victim, those we despise; the right to autonomy and life cannot devolve into a popularity contest
Reporter I Hate (Not Sexual Tension): Does that include all the attendees of the Bored Ape NFT event who went blind
Me: *Blood streaming from my nostrils and eyes* david, it includes everyone
Stop Making Psychosis A Villainous Trait Challenge
I see a lot of posts about how shitty it is to film disabled people in public and to make jokes when someone is having a medical emergency, and while in general I absolutely agree, there is a degree of nuance.
I have seizures, (most likely psychogenic/nonepileptic, I'm still going to be working with a neurologist to confirm my brain is intact though) and sometimes my friend @corypaws films them so that I can show my doctor. They have expressed guilt about doing this, but here's the thing: not only did I consent to this, it was my idea.
I had a seizure yesterday, and another friend, @thosegoodbois , made a joke about Caesar salad during it. They also felt guilty about this, but it was still incredibly helpful for me. On certain rare occasions, I'm fully conscious and aware for seizures. This was one of those times, so I heard everything. The people around me staying calm helped me stay calm too.
If a disabled person outright asks you to film them, you should really consider doing it. If a disabled person asks you to stay calm during a medical situation, you should at least try. Videos can be a very helpful diagnostic tool, and help make sure we are believed by doctors*. Freaking out when we have a medical problem might cause us to freak out too.
So basically I agree that in general filming disabled people and making jokes during medical emergencies is bad, but it's fine if you have consent.
Remember: disabled people are not a hive mind. At the end of the day, it should come down to what the individual wants.
*you probably shouldn't post it online though
Communicating about problems is hard for me.
I don't know why. If I'm having a problem like I'm sick or I'm having a migraine or I can't do something, I can't just tell people that verbally. It gets harder to make my thoughts come out of my mouth. I stutter and I pause and I use a lot of filler words and even then, usually I can't actually say what's wrong. If I can manage to say it, I can't... like, if I tell my manager that I can't do a specific task right now and she pushes back and says there's no one else to do it or that if I can't do it she'll send me home, I can't stick up for myself. The second I meet a tiny bit of resistance, I always fold. I always try and force myself to stick it through. Even if it's an issue where I really, really need to go home, I can't communicate that with my words.
Writing out what I need to say is better. I can write out my thoughts and feelings way easier and better than I can speak them. So I write down what I want to say. I explain the issue, and I explain why said issue is causing a problem and why I need some intervention here. But even then, actually communicating with that is hard. Because it's hard to just hand my manager a note. It feels weird. Like, socially, it feels like I thing I absolutely should not be doing. But say I manage to give her the note. Now I need to explain why I am handing her this note and we're back to the first problem. And if she chooses to push back, I still can't help but fold.
I don't know what it is. But it's hard to deal with
Once again, leftists are forgetting disability in their activism.
The vast majority seem unable to acknowledge how dangerous a Trump presidency will be for disabled people along with other minorities.
These days there are legal systems in place for adopting an adult, even for adopting someone out of adult foster care (like someone could probably adopt Genie Wiley.) That's probably the closest example to what they did.
…how does adopting an adult even work..? I’m a little thrown off by that part, but regardless it seems to have been the best thing that could’ve happened for Horace. He sounds lovely, and it seems a shame the world couldn’t have had him in it for longer.
I honestly don't know. Horace was a ward of the state, as his family had handed over all rights in 1921. Unfortunately, my grandparents and my uncle who adopted him have all died so the specifics are unavailable to me.
Came across a video of a guy showing other wheelchair users how to get up and down escalators in a manual chair, and my God, the comments were just filled with people, or rather 2 very dedicated people yelling "This is SO DANGEROUS!! You should not be showing people how to do this!!! You will never need to do this because everywhere HAS to have lifts!!! Its the law!!!!" Over and over again.
Like tell me you've never gone to a public place with/as a wheelchair user, lol. Even in countries like America that have the ADA and Australia that has the DDA, you aren't garuenteed accessibility. You should be, but the unfortunate reality is that just because it's the law doesn't mean businesses/people will listen.
If I didn't know that escalator trick in uni I'd have probably missed so many classes I'd have had to repeat a year because the lift at the local train station broke at least once a week, and the ones at my local shopping centre I think worked maybe...twice the 3 years I lived there. Like obviously, it should be more accessible and lifts should be available because not everyone can do that trick, but why are you getting mad at disabled people for working with what we've got? Get mad at the people breaking the ADA/DDA, not us.
Disabled people aren't these fragile little flowers, nor are we children that need protecting from ourselves. If we are using the escalator, we can handle it, I promise.
When I talk about visible autism on my blog, I’m usually not talking about those who are clocked as quirky and weird. Although that’s completely valid, I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about those of us who are VISIBLY autistic. Those of us who are clocked as those autistics. Who are clocked immediately as having something wrong with them. Those of us who are named as slurs. Who are yelled at. Who are attacked. Who are glared at, pointed at, stared at, pitied. Those of us who are automatically assumed to be with caregivers. Those of us you see talked about in medical journals and on the news as “inspiration” when we graduate or get invited to prom.
This is us. This is who we’re marked as. This is who we are seen as. We are seen as less than, as animals, as objects, as “inspirations”. When we accomplish something it’s usually not seen as our accomplishments but as the accomplishments of our caregivers and support staff.
I get so mad when someone comes onto my blog, MY blog. Me. A visibly autistic, nonverbal person, and doesn’t even look at my tags or pinned post and says “Omg me too, I’m seen as quirky and awkward, I’m visibly autistic 🥰” and like…go you but I’m not talking about you. I’m not talking about “low masking”. Im talking about LOW masking. No masking or very very low masking. Those of us who are immediately seen as autistic.
And it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating when people come into my blog and say this because, you DON’T get it. You just don’t. You don’t get what my life is like, what my experiences are. What it’s like to be LOW masking or no masking. You don’t get that. And yet you try and squeeze yourself in. And that hurts. It hurts to have people who won’t ever understand this squeeze themselves in. Stop doing this.
Raven, he/him, 20, multiple disabled (see pinned for more details.) This is my disability advocacy blog
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