Abelism - Blog Posts

Help whys my grandpa trying to convert me to Christianity bc apparently it'ill "make my adhd go away"

I'm just trying to eat breakfast in peace 😭

Hey if you're not physically disabled and just ND, please don't say "cr*ppling," or any variations thereon, since it's ableist toward physically disabled people. "Disabling," and "incapacitating," are two better words to use instead.

(It took me a while to figure it out; anon was bothered by this post.)

Okay, sure, I’ll try to do that. That said, I want to encourage people engaged in anti-ableism efforts that take the form of asking people not to use certain words to put their energies elsewhere. Firstly, I think they make the disability advocacy community inaccessible to a lot of people, since having to relearn which words are “allowed” is overwhelming and particularly difficult for people who have limited access to words in the first place.

Secondly, every time I’ve seen this implemented it…hasn’t made anyone less ableist? People who scrupulously remove “crazy” from their vocabulary in favor of “irrational” still treat the people they’re talking about like unpersons. Often the recommended replacement words are just as good at suggesting “less valuable person” as the words they replaced. I think there’s some value in asking “does our use of words surrounding disability to mean ‘bad thing’ come from a place of treating disabled people like tragedies?” and often it does, but that doesn’t mean that challenging that mindset is as easy as changing out the words. Thirdly, I think it emphasizes the wrong concerns. I saw a newspaper headline the other day saying “the president’s plan will be a crippling blow to the economy” and one about the “crippling burden of student debt”. I’d think that the fact the president’s plan includes making it harder to get SSI, or the fact disabled students are way less likely to graduate and likelier to end up in debt, is a much more urgent problem than the turn of phrase used in the headline. 

Lastly, it seems like the anti-words advocacy often pretends at a false consensus in disability activism. There are physically disabled people who are bothered by that newspaper headline and those who are not. There are mentally ill people who are bothered by use of crazy and some who couldn’t care less. But no one ever says “hey, that word bothers me personally because people have used it to be mean to me”, they say “it’s ableist towards physically disabled people,” as if all physically disabled people agree on this (or as if the ones who disagree are just obviously confused poor souls and don’t merit a mention). “There are physically disabled people who dislike the phrase ‘crippling anxiety’ and there are physically disabled people who don’t care and there are physically disabled people who have, themselves, described their anxiety as crippling” is much more accurate, but less compelling.

Hey whump community, if we as a whole could stop incorrectly referring to various whumper characters as "sociopaths" "psychopaths" "bipolar" "narcissists" or any other demonized mental conditions, that would be nice.

If you're going to write a story which seriously takes into account how a mental illness, cluster b disorder, or whatever affects a character (yes, including villains) I'm fine with it so long as you put in your due research.

But if you're going to throw around improper diagnostic terms and slurs for the mentally ill simply to state that a character is "evil" or "abusive" then you are getting yourself blocked no questions asked.

-Abraham ♡♡♡

Sound and Color - Masterlist

Sound and Color

The sound and the colors of Leaves : 2467 / General Audiences / Matt and Clint bond over their mutual love for fall and leaves and their disabilities

The sound and the colors of Snow : 3959 / General Audiences / Matt helps Clint get the support he needs and they take a walk through wintery NYC

The sound and colors of Flowers : 2531 / General Audiences / Matt and Clint are working together as the city warms up.

The sound and colors of Sunshine : 3570 / General Audiences / Matt and Clint suffer in the heat and talk about Family.

fuck school

i'm in my second year of college and i gotta say that "i'm gonna burn the school down" statement that we tell each other is becoming a pretty nice one. my depression and anxiety have become waaay worse each time i go back from vacation and to school. not to mention how fucking abelist the system is. the vice principal has been harassing students for a while and she fucking terrifies me. she could be nice and actually try to do her job without becoming a menace everyone hates because she's so confrontational all the goddamn time. i'm told to attend my classes and do better when i tell them explicitly that my mental health cannot take all this pressure. the students bully us and call us names, backtalk and chuck stuff at us witch resulted in my dear friend fighting back then getting suspended until next semester all because she pulled a weapon she didn't use because she felt unsafe. i got so angry but went back to school the next day anyway because i had no choice. They punished poc and immigrant students for jumping on the table once but not the bullies that illegally posted videos about us online witch was cyber bullying. we put posters in bathrooms and hallways as a form of protest against their fucking bullshit that is them punishing the victim vs the bully. it's like they give waaay more of a shit when their poor ego and reputation is bruised but won't do any actual work to fix themselves. also the racism is fucking wild, they belittle immigrants and find any reason to punish them when they overlook the popular kids doing way worse things. classrooms are very overstimulating and there's barely any space to relax except the library wich isn't good either. they won't take down the gender markers on the toilets and when i ask for a break my grade is taken down for not attending. i try, i really do but if they continue like this i will get worse. i have way more things to say but that's all for now.

At-will employment is inherently ableist garbage.

I've seen my partner go through 3 different jobs that all found various ways to fire them or pressure them to quit because the "accommodations" given helped nobody but the company.

When you give companies the power to terminate employment at their own discretion, they will use it at every opportunity they can, especially towards people who are deemed "difficult" (i.e., disabled).

They will always find a way around discrimination laws.