Our Islands Are Not A Playground For Your Little "intrepid Soul Search". Pull Up Or Fuck Off

Yeah, right. It's a great reunion buddy, be well.

Gather ‘round, friends! Class is in session!

(I hope this is the last time I have to make this post, honestly.)

Reasons why it’s okay to criticize or dislike Shannon that have nothing to do with Buddie:

❌ Spoke of her son as if he were a burden by making sure Eddie knew how much she suffered while raising Christopher alone.

❌ Believed her son must hate her because she “did this to him” (“made” him have CP), which is her way of saying that Christopher must not like who he is just because he has a disability.

❌ Sees Christopher’s condition as a sign that she did something wrong, aka she was punished for a mistake she must have made while pregnant.

❌ She thought she “could make up for it” by researching treatments and therapies - Again, viewed Christopher’s disability as a mistake she had to atone for/fix, rather than accept and embrace who he was.

❌ Found the time and effort required to get Christopher the help he needed “so overwhelming and exhausting” that she “needed a break”, thus prioritizing her feelings over those of her son, the disabled person who can never get a day off from the life he was given.

❌ Begged to see Christopher only to realize she still wasn’t committed to being the mother he deserved.

Reasons why it’s okay to criticize or dislike Ana that have nothing to do with Buddie:

❌ She was employed by an inclusive school, meaning disabled students are supposed to be treated the same as their able-bodied classmates in all aspects of education, yet when Christopher fell off the skateboard, she took it as a sign that he shouldn’t do it all because his limitations were insurmountable.

(We know this to be false because of the adaptive skateboard scene, so the takeaway is that she defines Christopher by what he can’t do rather than what he is capable of.)

❌ She views Christopher as a “very sensitive boy” so Eddie should be “cautious” about telling him they’re together.

Sensitivity is not a negative personality trait. It’s important to allow ourselves to feel. But in this context? Ana believes Christopher’s sensitivity is something that might cause a problem for Eddie if he doesn’t react the way they hope.

Referring to anybody as “very” or “too” sensitive is an attempt to dismiss or invalidate their reaction because it makes someone else uncomfortable.

No adult, especially not one that worked with children whose minds function “differently”, should ever say those words about a little boy.

“Dobby and Draco are being released tomorrow!”

(Source)

Transcript of the thread on Twitter by user jenbrea:

You know, it’s taken me awhile to come to this realization, but dropping out of graduate school, losing your career, not having your intended children, and being bedridden for seven years because your neurologists fucked up is…kind of a big fucking deal.

It strikes me as an outcome that should maybe be…counted in aggregate statistics, and that people should be held accountable. Instead, it is 100% invisible to the medical system, the cost borne entirely by myself, my family, and our society. And there are MILLIONS of us.

I was reflecting on my Twitter feed and why I rail on about this. It occurred to me it’s because this (right now) is the only space where this reality can exist. If you counted us and there was accountability for medical fuck-ups/neglect/gaslighting/abuse etc., I’d have no need.

But right now, medicine is (one of the last) noble priesthoods, with all the self-awareness and accountability that noble priesthoods usually entail. (i.e., scant.) And yes, there are absolutely incredible doctors out there, but they are not the norm.

We need to stop automatically lionizing whole classes of people just because we are terrified of disability and death and want to believe in the magic/superiority/infallibility of our doctors or our medical systems (cough, NHS) and start to see things as they really are.

It is ugly, and by the time you get sick, it’s too late to start caring.

Our whole society has contributed to this: the med schools that use absolutely the wrong admissions criteria and curricula; the residency hazing; the shitty systems of rationing that oppress doctors and distort science and reality; the TV fairytales we tell about it all.

By “neurologists fucked up” I mean diagnosed you with hysteria rather than observing the patent abnormalities on your MRI, ordering additional testing, or doing fairly basic clinical exams and *believing the results.*

(No, their diagnostic algorithms do not train them to do this but they still have eyes and brains.)

I wonder how different my life might have been if rather than reach for the easy “nothing to see here” Get Out of Jail Free card, my doctors had kept working under the premise that I WAS SICK.

That truly only happens on TV. Most patients with most doctors get one, maybe two tests. If the answer isn’t blatantly obvious, you basically get kicked to the curb. True investigation and observation doesn’t really exist in modern medicine, not for the average patient.

I have no answers or solutions, but I know that it all starts with seeing the problem, which requires measurement, which is not going to be initiated from within the healthcare system itself. It also requires forcing the medical system to internalize the costs.

I saw someone saying earlier that feeling safe and being safe are different and that we are entitled to being safe, but not to feeling safe, and the example they brought up was like terfs making trans women existing in bathrooms out to be this huge danger to cis women when all stats and research shows that trans women are not and have never been any type of danger to cis women which is what i mean by not all boundaries are valid and I think it’s important to be aware of your reasoning for setting a boundary outside of something just making you feel uncomfortable

Nap time

Body positivity and mental health for men, by Lena Dirscherl (BoPoLena on IG). More under the cut!

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