If You Don't Know Anything About Eugenics Beyond Forced Sterilization, Or Only Define Eugenics By Forced

If you don't know anything about eugenics beyond forced sterilization, or only define eugenics by forced sterilization, or by any one version of it, you're not only never going to understand eugenics, but you'll never be able to fight that ideology or keep it out of your spaces or unlearn it yourself. Saying you think disabled people just shouldn't exist in an "ideal" society is eugenics too, just like genetic engineering us out of existence, just like saying you wouldn't have a disabled child, or promoting the idea of us being completely separated from "abled society" in some sort of "separate but equal" supposed compromise.

Eugenics can be born simply out of believing our lives are nothing but suffering and that makes them less worth living, thus we shouldn't exist. But that's not true. I do suffer horribly in this ableist society, and I also suffer solely from certain aspects of my disabilities, but that doesn't mean disabled people shouldn't exist. Suffering doesn't mean I shouldn't exist. It means you should be working to eradicate ableism and people should continue working on science to help disabled people live with our disabilities. It means you should listen to us, ask us "how can we help", not eradicate us and the fact people move so quickly to that idea is scary as fuck.

And yet, today I had to talk with a trans person who told me people like me shouldn't be born, that mental illness' were "diversities" but cripples were disabled and lived their lives in suffering, so they should be engineered out of existence. This was all very leftist, mind you-No forced anything, just a dream of a mass program to genetically engineer cripples away until no disabilities were left at all, for "the better of our species".

It just makes me sad, things like that. I wish it made me angrier but no, people who should be my community telling me my people shouldn't exist is just sad, especially when it comes with the determined stance that it's not, in fact, eugenics. I mean, if you're going to be a dick, at least call your bullshit what it is. At least know what eugenics are! That's basic as hell!

So lesson of the day: learn your eugenics, listen to disabled folks, fuck ableism and never tell disabled people you don't believe people with their disabilities should exist.