Tag: ableism

docferdinand:

STOP IGNORING DISABLED PEOPLE IN YOUR FUCKING POSTS

Some of us literally WILL NOT BE ABLE to live through this because our insurance and/or disability payments could easily fucking be stripped from us and we’ll die from that alone

Not through dramatic murder, but through quiet, legislated culling

I have been screaming (internally and externally) about this for months now. I don’t think even the liberal, well-intentioned people out there get how serious it is. There’s this pervasive, incredibly inaccurate mentality of “well, of course disabled people are objectively worthy of compassion! No one disagrees with that!”

The reality is that the Americans with Disabilities Act was a hard-won piece of legislation that didn’t pass until disabled people marched on Washington. In what is now called the “Capitol Crawl,” these protestors reached the steps of the capitol building and abandoned their mobility devices to literally CRAWL up the steps, slowly and painfully. This was 1990. I was four years old when the US government decided to finally enact substantial legislation to protect my rights. 

If you want to get all academic theory about it, the intersection between disability discrimination and all other forms is EPIC and well documented. Throughout the last two centuries, the primary tool for delegitimizing any marginalized group (black people; Jewish people; women; immigrants) was branding them mentally/physically substandard and therefore dangerous and threatening to all the good, hard-working, “normal” Americans.

For the last several years, the already ludicrously shitty and inefficient social services programs for disabled people have become fair game for dismantling, because of bipartisan hack job reporting and fear-mongering about fraud. They have rebranded programs like SSI and SSDI as low-hanging fruit for anyone too lazy to work (HAHA because what healthy person wouldn’t voluntarily choose to live on $400-800 a month?? Nevermind the fact that even the most obviously physically disabled applicants often endure YEARS of legal proceedings and appeals before they can access these programs!). By doing that, they’ve normalized the idea that anyone who claims or appears to be disabled is worthy of suspicion, and swayed popular opinion in the direction of agreeing that it’s wise to cut funding for these programs  – and many other social services, like housing assistance and food stamps, that disabled people HAVE TO HAVE because their “disability check” is nowhere near enough to live on.

Look, I was literally homeless in 2014-2015 because of this shit. Not in the sense that I was couch-surfing and between jobs; my equally disabled mother and I were living out there in the cold, struggling to obtain enough food to not die of malnutrition, begging landlords to even accept our housing assistance voucher. That’s how much these programs already don’t work. We now have a Republican House, Senate, and Administration, and dismantling and defunding those programs has been a chief goal of the conservative party since programs like food stamps were first put in place in the 1930s. They have been SALIVATING over the idea of slashing our benefits into ribbons, and they finally have the opportunity to do it.

Pay attention to disabled people’s rights, because we’re the one minority group that encompasses all the rest. We’re not just straight, middle-class white people. We’re also queer, black, latinx, Muslim, and every other marginalized class that exists. Our lot in life, our misfortunes and disrespect and fight for survival, could be yours or a loved one’s at any given moment. If you can’t care for any other reason, care because of that.

kipplekipple:

If you’re abled and you know someone who is disabled, please be aware that we need abled people to say, “we can’t do that if X says they can’t do it,” or, “Of course you can go home if you’re not well enough,” or, “Stop badgering them, if they say no they mean no.”

The pressure on us to perform to abled standards, socially, romantically and professionally is STAGGERING.

Don’t speak for us, but if we say we can’t do something, stand with us. Don’t let other abled people try to strongarm us into doing something we have stated that we cannot do.

PSA

lesbianrunner5:

If you see someone in a wheelchair stand up or walk, just keep your mouth shut. They either were prescribed that wheelchair and their insurance agreed they needed it, or they became so desperate for the mobility the chair would provide that they paid a lot of money out of pocket (because they don’t have insurance or they have a shitty ableist doctor or whatever).

It’s estimated that around 85% of full time wheelchair users can stand or walk to some extent. Think of it like glasses: the majority of people who wear them can technically see without them, but they reduce pain, improve the quality of the wearer’s life, and enable millions of people to do things they otherwise couldn’t. A wheelchair is no different. In fact, even part time users legitimately need their chair, just as people who need reading glasses legitimately need their glasses. In addition to paralysis, some reasons for using a wheelchair include pain, fatigue, fragile joints/bones, vertigo, and many, many other debilitating symptoms.

Using a wheelchair is already stressful enough as it is, thanks to iffy accessibility. Please don’t add to a disabled person’s difficulties by calling them a faker.