Tag: disability

broliloquy:

transhamlet:

thexfiles:

carrie fisher didn’t get laid to rest in a prozac-shaped urn for us not to take our meds…………. so take your meds

i kno posts like this are meant to be positive and nice but like… medications arent a nice pure glass of water theyve got all sorts of social and historical baggage. uwu stay medicated is not a trend we should be getting on

Okay but I don’t care about nebulous baggage, I care about my neurochemical state permitting me to retain executive function so I can be a relatively competent human being who feels like life is pretty okay at least some of the time. So I will absolutely uwu stay medicated and the many other people whose lives would be better if they took their meds should absolutely uwu stay medicated, and I wish to strongly urge everyone else to uwu stop and think critically before you blithely parrot baseless handwringing rooted in the bizarre social stigma against literally just taking medicine for illnesses.

Thanks for reading, have a nice day, ooh woo take ur fuckin meds

Many nondisabled people are not familiar with the fight for deinstitutionalization and the push for community-based living. Well through the 1970s, nondisabled people broadly viewed institutions as the most appropriate place for disabled people in need of long-term support services, whether they needed mental health care or medical treatment for physical impairments. In theory, they offered secure and safe housing along with trained personnel to help people with activities of daily living (like bathing and dressing) as well as sometimes complex health-care needs, which might include feeding tubes, dressing changes, and other types of skilled nursing care. In practice, however, institutions often had an isolating effect, locking disabled people out of society and exposing them to the risk of physical and sexual abuse from indifferent or hostile caregivers.

s.e. smith for Rewire News on the Disability Integration Act and what’s at stake for the disability community under the incoming presidential administration (via realsesmith)

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.

If ONE MORE PERSON says “What if they’d medicated Van Gogh!?” I think I’m permitted to set things on fire.  If they’d medicated Van Gogh, he’d either have painted twice as much, or he’d have been happy and unproductive.  And you know what? Starry Night wasn’t worth a terrible price in human misery. It’s neat. It wasn’t worth it.

Sometimes I wonder if being an artist makes me jaded to ART. Because it’s not magic and it’s not mystical, it’s just paint or pixels.  And it can do amazing things! But you don’t owe humanity to be miserable just so you can move paint around in interesting shapes. Jesus.  Art is not some kind of Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas bargain where you agree to be miserable so everybody can go “oh! Neat!” for 5 minutes.

Ursula Vernon, dropping the mic.  [x]
(via magdaliny)

nbnightwing:

Hey guys? 

So I’ve been noticing that lately we’re making fun of adults who live in their parents’ basements again… 

Guess where I live! My parents’ basement! I’m mentally ill and autistic and not capable of living independently. I can’t go grocery shopping alone, I can’t drive, I can’t make transfers on public transportation, and if I’m left alone I forget to do things like eat, drink, shower, take my meds, and do laundry. Even if I were capable of independent living, I don’t make enough on disability to afford an apartment. 

If y’all are actually committed to intersectionality, you’d best find a better insult for misogynists than living in their parents’ basement, because honestly I already get down on myself for feeling useless enough without this stuff. 

Also this is totally ok for abled people to reblog and signal boost if you don’t mind? 🙂 Thanks!