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Ableism - Blog Posts
So many people wouldn’t have asthma in the first place if it wasn’t for these corporations…Shifting blame from actual culprits to people with asthma (and people who can’t help but use plastic straws at that) is peak capitalism.
Not smoking weed before I use my forearm crutches so I'm not operating machinery under the influence
"ai is making it so everyone can make art" Everyone can make art dipshit it came free with your fucking humanity
what abled ppl think is a massive problem for disabled folks: 13 year old on the internet faking something
what is actually a massive problem for disabled folks: "well you don't LOOK disabled, are you sure you're not faking? I'm not giving you accommodations until you PROVE you're not faking. Please give me, a stranger, your medical info and explain your condition to me in detail so I know you're not faking and only then will I respect or take you seriously"
Reminds me of when I went to a Renaissance festival with a big wooden staff and I was so excited because I didn't have to worry about my balance so much. And then it still took me months to start using a cane even just at home
A reminder that if you didn’t need a mobility aid you wouldn’t be day dreaming and fantasizing about how they would help you navigate the world and that no matter how much internalized ableism you hold it won’t change your reality about your conditions and you SHOULD do what is best for you because no one will punish you more than yourself if you keep ignoring your needs
Yes! So, I am a disabled and chronically ill aroace cane user. I fully understand that not all disabled people are aspec and vice versa. But some are! What we really need is more variety in representation, but there's just not enough of it in the first place.
There can be issues with characters like this depending on their story and how their identity is handled. For example, I think the way Viktor from Arcane was confirmed as ace was... not the best, and potentially insulting to some aspecs and disabled people. It could have been done better. BUT that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad!
With Viktor specifically, I totally get why some people don't want him to be ace, and they're welcome to have other headcanons, I will never begrudge someone that. But the problem starts when I tell someone I like him being ace because I see myself even more in him (I was also starting to use a cane around the time I watched the show, and seeing him made me so much more comfortable using it), and they tell me that it's inherently offensive. Because it's not actually, otherwise so is my existence. You don't have to agree or see him as ace, but please do not invalidate my identity and experiences.
I saw a post that made me think.
Why do people say it's ableist for disabled characters to have aromantic or asexual identity in headcanons or canon? It's seriously weird how people are mad at stuff like that. Having an identity like that is not a bad thing.
I'm asexual, autistic and physically disabled. Is it ableist that I exist like that? I like headcanoning characters who are autistic coded as asexual because it makes me happy because they are like me in my head.
I have seen people online be mad at others for headcanoning a disabled character or autistic coded to have an aromantic or asexual identity. People even get mad at disabled people who share those identities for headcanoning like that. I don't know what is up with that.
Some people seem to be mad only because they think things like an aromantic or asexual identity implies that the character that is disabled will not want things like being intimate, but that is not true. It is up to the person who has that identity, they can choose to be intimate or not intimate. Things like that confuse me. Like how people talk about Viktor from arcane.
I like Viktor, I am happy he is asexual canonically. It means he can still have a relationship with Jayce hypothetically, though. His asexuality is valid no matter what way he is portrayed.
Viktor is my favorite character. Seeing Viktor in Arcane made me feel better about using a cane when my health got worse, I felt internalized ableism at that time. Seeing a depiction of someone who is like me in a way helped me. Learning he is asexual made me happier too because he is also like me in that way, too.
Asexuality is defined as experiencing no sexual feelings or desires; not feeling sexual attraction to anyone. And I think it should be fine for Viktor to be like that and it should be fine for everyone who feels that way.
Let people on the aro/ace spectrum be who they are, disabled people can be like that and still have intimate relationships. And let people headcanon whatever they want as long as they're not harming people.
And that is my thoughts on that. I hope I wrote that in an accurate way. I just feel confused about that topic. People are so hard to understand.
[Disclaimer, obviously not all people think the how I described about asexuality. Some people are fine with disabled characters having an aromantic or asexual identity. And when I say aromantic or asexual identity, I am referring to the whole spectrum of those identities.]
actually though medical trauma is often really glossed over in general discussions and depictions of disability. i always get the sense that fiction mis-attributes medical trauma to hating being disabled but like. even people who are perfectly fine with their disability can experience extensive and severe medical trauma. people who are diagnosed or undiagnosed. people who were born disabled or became disabled after birth. you have to submit yourself constantly to the whims of people with significant power over you! you're forced to consent to things that you might find invasive in order to access healthcare. if you're trying to access healthcare you have to expose your difficulties, sometimes pain, sometimes suffering up for someone else's dissection and perusal. and it feels like shit even when they don't dismiss you or berate you, or assault you, or gaslight you, or deny you healthcare. god help you if you're also trans or black or brown or can't speak the local language well or a number of other intersecting issues
I recently started using a cane everyday and so my previously invisible disability is suddenly visible. I also started medschool. It's been a while since I was properly social so I have questions...
People don't walk next to me. And if they accidentally do, they leave to walk next to someone else even if that means squeezing in three people on the sidewalk. No one talks to me if it's not to ask me "what's wrong". I have really tried to make an effort and talk to people but I don't know what to do.
Can it have something to do with my disability and my cane? Like they're scared to say the wrong thing? Or maybe it's because they've sensed the autism?;)
It's so frustrating that my neurologist is so clearly in over his head. To my face he's denying that there's any uncertainty in the diagnosis he has given me and is blaming anything that doesn't fit on my mental health. But on paper he has gone back and forth between two diagnosises for months now. He is switching between the two every time he writes in my medical chart and when I ask him about it he denies that he's unsure. I can't fucking wait to start af the headache clinic
I've been dealing with some of the worst pain of my life for the past 6 ish months. Knowing it could have been avoided if my pain doc had not decided to stop one of my medications is bittersweet. If she had only listened when I told her the pain was worse. But she didn't care. She simply told me to try not to think about it. I should have fought harder but I was so exhausted and dissociated. I've finally started treatment for it again, I just hope it works fast. I'm so tired...
First day of med school some of the older students "dress up" as and pretend to be first years. I spotted four of them within 15 minutes and one of them was in a wheelchair with a leg and an arm in casts and a neck collar on. So basically, he was pretending to be disabled. And most of us knew that he was a fake first year and I overheard people joking about pushing him out of his wheelchair to prove he was faking it. I don't understand how a group of future doctors sat around a table and decided it was a good idea to have a fake disabled person there. It just perfectly sums up the attitude of most doctors.
Anti-vaxxer extremist RFK Jr, the US Health Secretary, is now actively trying to collect medical records of folks on the autism spectrum. First, he used dehumanizing and infantilizating language to insist people with autism won't 'pay taxes and live a 'normal life' which we all know is ableist bullshit and is literally a precursor to genocide. This man is a monster.
This is beautiful and educational. Thank you for sharing!
“if there were a cure for your disability, would you take it?”
Percy is objectively just as autistic as Nico,just on a different end of the spectrum,and the assumption Percy is allistic to bash her for her nonexistent privilege against Nico as a transfem egg to his closeted gay boy is only used by Perc*cos and J*sicos to make Nico look like a 'victim' against the oh so evil non-stereotypical autist when she loves him more than anyone else except for Hazel,who is ALSO objectively as autistic as BOTH of them and is widely ignored in potentially autistic Pjo characters literally just because she's a black girl and white autistics love pretending we can't be autistic because they wanna play victim against us too
In hindsight it's very insulting to be told that flunking out of college due to adhd is actually "quite common"
fyi if you're trying to use the fact that that rancid ass muskrat cunt is autistic to be like "oh he didn't know what he did was wrong" about the fact that he threw up a fucking nazi salute then you are one of the stupidest fucking cunts to walk the earth and since we're in a housing crisis you should start offering the massive amount of empty fucking space in your skull for rent
(signed, an autistic person)
There are people at my job who won't talk to me because I'm a janitor. And yes, I go with "janitor"--derived from Janus, the Roman God of gates and doorways. There's no shame in the title and I wear it proudly enough.
Maids, cleaners, janitors, and sanitation workers are all the most important people of civilization by far. Even 12 hours without them is VERY noticable and they simply need to be highly compensated for it
Tumblr: Only neurotypical people do X. Neurodivergent people never do X. It's literally never necessary to do X, and if you do, you are by definition acting out of malice.
Neurodivergent person whose neurodivergence primarily expresses itself as X:
so the academy is reviewing whether or not to remove Will Smith’s award and here are some interesting tweets about that :)
so ur telling me easter’s on 4/20 this year and i WORK??????
These three pieces of media have a trend
I love these movies and shows so much and I want to talk about just one reason I love them:
Autism.
The three main characters of all these franchises have a similar situation. They are all weird and friendless and they have a dream that no one believes that they can accomplish.
Izuku with his dream to be a hero. PO with his dream to be a Kung Fu warrior and Hiccup with his dream (at first) to kill a dragon (which turned into being friends with dragons).
They are all bullied and ridiculed. What I find really interesting though is there's The reason for them being bullied and then the hidden and (seemingly) more likely reason that they are bullied. Izuku is quirkless, no one thinks he can be a hero because he has no powers. PO is big, no one thinks that he has the body to be a warrior and Hiccup is small. As he says, he's a walking fishbone.
However from what I can tell, those are merely (horrible, might I add) excuses to hate on them. Like what gobber says, 'its what's on the inside that they can't stand.'
What I don't get is that in Mha, 20% of the population is quirkless. In a school of just 300 there would be sixty kids who didn't have a quirk. I know we didn't see much of other quirkless kids but I really do think that the bullying that Izuku received would have been much worse than everyone else. It seems to me that the main reason that they don't like him, (especially Bakugo) is because of his personality. Because he's annoying.
I think that a big reason they hated him was because they noticed autistic traits, didn't understand it was autism (or cared) and didn't like it.
(I can make a separate post about why I think all these characters are autistic)
Now with Kung Fu Panda. (I just want to say really quick that I do not mean to take away from the real situations and ridicule that plus size people receive. I know that it happens and I know it can be really bad and I'm sorry for anyone who experienced bullying. I think that Po does face a lot of discrimination just because of his body, I just want to highlight the underlining albeism that seems to be present)
Po in my opinion is so clearly Audhd. He has an intense interest on Kung fu and everything surrounding it. He knows everything about the five, and he misses a ton of social cues. He just blurts things out and doesn't realize how they can be inappropriate for nuerotypical standards.
When Shifu first speaks with him he is immediately unimpressed. Yes, he does bring up (if I can recall correctly) his 'flabby' body. But it was also because Po was so excited and he was speaking in a way that Shifu or one of the five wouldn't. He was describing all the artifacts and knew exactly what the pinky hold was.
In fact, to me, the movie wouldn't have happened if Shifu didn't accept Po's weirdness. Really, in the end, Pos's body shape wasn't a detriment at all and I think Shifu knew this. He's worked with so many different species before, he has to know that every type of body has their own value. He teaches a prey mantis for crying out loud.
And also, I don't think most of Po's insecurities came from his size. To me, he seemed mostly insecure about himself inwardly. (Though I haven't watched the movie in a few months) Come on though, the whole secret ingredient thing? I think there was a reason that when he looked into the scroll it only showed his face.
Yes, his size did help a lot in the fight and I love that part of the movie so much but his creativity and his differentness helped a ton too. He literally imagined the scroll as a comfort food to get to it first... I mean, are they even trying to hide it? (We know it's his comfort food cause he literally did the splits to get to them when he got upset)
I'll move on to How to Train your Dragon now. Hiccup had ADHD. Hiccup has autism. I think that's a universally accepted, right? I think most of the movie is a metaphor for nuerdivergence. The movies already have amazing physical disability representation but that came later. In the first few minutes, we already knew something was different about Hiccup compared to everyone else. He was impulsive, he didn't listen, once he was set on something he was going to accomplish it, he said things without thinking, he was terrible with socializing. Especially with those his age. Gobber said, and I loosely quote, "it's not what's on the outside, it's what's on the inside that he can't stand."
That boy didn't have any friends until he met the dragon that he shot down. I'm sorry, or is that not the most autistic thing you ever heard. It's like autisitic people and their animals. My dog was and is my best friend. Always will be. And a dragon is basically a giant cat/dog, and reptile.
He didn't get friends until his 'uniqueness' set him apart in a 'good' way. It wasn't until he was useful and cool that he got any human friends which is something I wished they touched on in Race to the Edge. Like, Hiccup has to have some insecurity surrounding that, right?
Anyway, my point is, whenever you see a character get bullied. Just remember that they are most likely nuerodivergent and that's probably why none of the characters like them. Peter Parker is included in this list.
putting all of the leftie amerimutt vocabulary on the shelf until you idiots start writing your shitty essays on discrimination and oppression in a way that is digestable to non-english users
do you really fucking think everyone understands whatever the fuck "utilizing acceptance within power structures to their own benefits" or any other word salad of yours means?
just say you hate nonwesterners with your guts and go because that's the tactic ive seen - use complicated and niche words that an average nonwesterner does not comprehend, and when they (rightfully) are like "wtf is this even" you target them as racists/ableists/whatever ism has been invented in the past 7 days because this must mean they interact in bad faith
USE SIMPLE ENGLISH IN YOUR POST AND STOP ACTING LIKE EVERYONE IS OUT THERE TO ABUSE YOU, YOU FUCKING SCUTTLEBUGS
if you didn’t realize, ableism is actually bigotry and systemic ableism and inaccessibility are really oppression and it’s not something disabled people brought on ourselves by having bodies&minds that you think are inferior and therefore not worth fighting for. disabled people’s lives and wellbeing matter. we don’t have to earn our worthiness by doing “enough” to deserve a good life. nobody does.
Saw a thread on Twitter of "gifts to give a person with ADHD and autism" that was full of stereotypical and quite frankly patronizing items, so here's a list of I (autistic individual) want instead as a gift
Money
Fourteen billion dollars
Free coupon to kill somebody with my teeth
Suitcase full of money
Cool looking rock
Scratching post for me to sink my claws into
An albino elephant
The head of Jeff Bezos mounted on my wall
Uncooked rice
A cup full of blood
100k in cash
i wasn't planning to be this invested in the whole marina autism thing, but. here we are.
as someone who's also some flavor of neurodivergent, it's actually disturbing to me how so many of yall are reducing her down to the most stereotypical autistic babygirl traits. and when there's more to it, or these just don't apply, respond like we're attacking her pure childlike image with our edgy headcanons or something.
the sentiment of "there's nothing deep about it, she's just autistic and it makes her quirky and clueless" i've often seen whenever her past, her culture, or her accomplishments come up, is... kinda concerning. and it's gotten plenty more common.
can't we collectively not be ableist, and understand that the fictional octopus woman is a whole complex grown adult with skeletons in her closet, and not an angelically innocent baby untainted by worldly filth? or does the word "autism" need to be removed from some people's vocabularies, at least in association with the word "baby".
so the academy is reviewing whether or not to remove Will Smith’s award and here are some interesting tweets about that :)
disability advocacy went wrong when it became about inspiration porn and “differently abled” and savants. its incredible that that guy with no legs did a triathlon but your sister with no legs will not and she doesnt need prosthetics or five hour training days to deserve respect and compassion and accommodations. its incredible that that autistic guy can look at a city from a helicopter for an hour and then draw the entire detailed skyline from memory when he lands but your autistic friend cannot and they dont need to have a special Autism Power to deserve respect and compassion and accommodations.
activism framed around “we are just as CAPABLE” means that when people genuinely are less capable they are left behind. activism framed around “we are just as WORTHY” is fundamental to radical compassion.
“this bathroom is accessible!!1!1”
if my chair was one (1) inch longer, the door wouldnt have shut. this stall was also the exact same size as the non-accessible stall next to it. you cant just slap some grab bars on it and call it accessible 🙄
image ID: first image: a shot of someone sitting in their wheelchair in a bathroom stall, the stall is so small that the edge of the toilet hits their knees. the stall is very narrow as well. there are grab bars on the walls around the toilet. second image: a shot from the other view showing how the wheelchair fits in the stall. the back wheels hit the stall door, and there is about an inch between the footplate and toilet. end ID.
Ableism and fatphobia spin around in circles. Can't say this enough.
Many people gain weight after becoming disabled/chronically ill due to being forced into a less active lifestyle, and losing weight becomes harder and harder when physical activities become more and more challenging. We get put on medications that have weight gain side effects. Some of us women go into premature menopause, which also leads to weight gain and slower metabolism.
The next fatphobic ableist who tells any of us to diet and exercise owes my dog a femur to gnaw on.