Disability - Blog Posts
"those r just personality traits" but do your personality traits make you take iq tests ? Do they make ppl bully you ? Do they make you think everyone has something going on that they hide bc you've been taught to hide your real self ? Do your personality traits impact every single aspect of your life ? Do your personality traits disable your executive fonction, social abilities, or capacity to care for yourself ? No, they just make you a b!tch Karen ☀️
if my anger issues and lack of selfesteem are "my problems i have to deal with" then so are your triggers
just saying it takes two to play the game, you don't get to downplay someone's issues and telling them to fuck off while also expecting everyone to respect your triggers online
also genuinely fuck you and your life if you use someone's health as an argument in a shitty online drama, weaponizing someone's illness and making all your talk about "mental health advocacy" evaporate the moment someone's not palatable for your sensitive tiktokified ass
this disability month i ask you to stop making fun of anger management issues and using it as an insult/reason to harass someone
i am not going to be kind about it if you do that you're a fucking piece of shit /srs
yes lets build more walls between disabled people and completely forget that mental illness is also disabling
you're either disabled or not there's nothing called "able bodied", the brain is part of the body too
seriously why do yall fall for this crap
(allistics may vote in this poll !!)
this poll was requested a while ago by an anonymous ask.
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
hot take but neetcore is appropiating and distorting the struggles of actual neets, making neetdom look like some „uwu otaku nerd anime fan” shit, making the result of severe disabilities (unclean rooms to the point of mold) an „aesthetic”
fuck neetcore and fuck you rich white kids who turn struggles into aesthetics
disabled people shouldn't have to sacrifice their privacy for your ableist ass to prove their age when joining an adult-only space, especially if it's centered around disability support
in fact, nobody owes you their personal info. go fuck yourself, cop
some of y'all got way too comfortable with looking every excuse to villianize a disabled person.
yes disabled people can also be shitty, but i don't see you have the same energy towards ableds?
different rant below
also i feel like the yell about "look disabled ppl are now closer to equality" is just. fake as hell. because me and many other people are still treated like second class citizens even among our own, we often live in loneliness because people DO NOT want to interact with us.
also, dear ableds please cherish your privilege on having social skills and mobility WITHOUT pushing it onto us like it's something everyone has.
"just go outside and make friends" what a way to say you are so privileged you have no big issues with socializing, rachel
Some rando: You should think about stopping your prescription
Me: My pills make me not want to die tho
They: You shouldn’t want to die, that’s not normal
Me: Yeah that’s why I’m taking my pills
shout out to “gross” disabled people.
people who can’t shower/bathe people who can’t shave people who can’t wash their clothes people who need help going to the bathroom people who have nasty habits (biting nails, picking nose, etc) people who can’t brush their teeth people who can’t go to the doctor people who can’t clean their room people who can’t make their beds people who vomit a lot people who wet the bed people who constantly have diarrhea people who’s physical deformities are seen as repulsive
and every other kind of person I missed that deserves to be here too.
you are people, first and foremost. your thoughts deserve to be heard, discussed, acknowledged, no matter what. you are not lesser. you are just another person. you should never be ignored for what you can/can’t do. you deserve care.
to abled people: check yourself. make sure you listen. and you can reblog, just don’t derail. maybe don’t add on, either.
“Autism doesn’t cause low empathy! In fact we’re all just hyperempathetic we’re not bad peo-“
SHUT UP. SHUT UP. SHUT UP.
There’s a few things going on with this statement.
1. Assuming that low empathy makes someone a bad person. It does not. Actions are what matter, not empathy levels.
2. Demonizing autistic people whose low/no empathy they attribute to their autism. Autism fundamentally impacts the way you interact with the world, others, and yourself. That includes empathy.
Anyway I love you people with low/no empathy this is a safe space for you <3
Signed,
A very pissed off autistic person with fluctuating empathy levels
Its Ehlers Danlos Syndrome awarness month and I would like to be LESS aware, please and thank you.
ive found that partially treated mental illness can sometimes look to uninvolved onlookers like faked mental illness.
every piece of ""autistic representation"" in hollywood sucks not just because of the infantalization and inspiration porn but because movie executives always fail to realize the real universal autistic experience: spending your childhood slowly and unfalteringly realizing all of your friends not so secretly hated and/or merely tolerated you at best and you've missed every social signal about it ever
At the end of the day you have to understand some people are mentally ill like really really mentally ill on a level you can’t understand. I see this a lot when someone does something weird or incomprehensible and people are shocked trying to figure out their intentions and why they’d do it and it’s like there’s people who are psychotic or delusional or have rapid mood swings you’ll never be able to comprehend and very often people with other mental illnesses who are able to function more acceptably have a bad lack of understanding of that and compare what they can do and act like as the standard not understanding that’s not the same playing field
Wait what's a buildings fire evacuation plan if you aren't supposed to use the elevator to get down
stop fucking using the word psychotic to describe bad behaviour and violence already god fucking damn it
i saw a man with cerebral palsy who had top surgery, and lots of people saying he cant consent and assuming things and being ableist.
but the response from people ‘defending’ him was…
cerebral palsy is 100% physical and not mental
he doesnt have any kind of cognitive impairment
i even saw someone say ‘hes disabled not dumb’
i need help with consent, including medically, and theres nothing i want more than top surgery. im so worried about my future
this isnt just abled people, it comes from other disabled people a lot. most people who have been ableist to me have been disabled and use the fact theyre disabled as an excuse to be ableist to me. we need to do better to intellectually disabled people
"In recent years, there has been a rush on the internet to supply image descriptions and to call out those who don’t. This may be an example of community accountability at work, but it’s striking to observe that those doing the most fierce calling out or correcting are sighted people. Such efforts are largely self-defeating. I cannot count the times I’ve stopped reading a video transcript because it started with a dense word picture. Even if a description is short and well done, I often wish there were no description at all. Get to the point, already! How ironic that striving after access can actually create a barrier. When I pointed this out during one of my seminars, a participant made us all laugh by doing a parody: “Mary is wearing a green, blue, and red striped shirt; every fourth stripe also has a purple dot the size of a pea in it, and there are forty-seven stripes—”
“You’re killing me,” I said. “I can’t take any more of that!”
Now serious, she said it was clear to her that none of that stuff about Mary’s clothes mattered, at least if her clothes weren’t the point. What mattered most about the image was that Mary was holding her diploma and smiling. “But,” she wondered, “do I say, Mary has a huge smile on her face as she shows her diploma or Mary has an exuberant smile or showing her teeth in a smile and her eyes are crinkled at the edges?”
It’s simple. Mary has a huge smile on her face is the best one. It’s the don’t-second-guess-yourself option."
--Against Access, by John Lee Clark, a DeafBlind educator
just like going through the members of my family and my friend groups one by one, i can't think a single damn person i know who does not have a disability. ARFID. Autism. Metal rod in the spine. Arthritis. Cancer in remission. Long-term effects of repeated concussions. Bad back. Exhaustion. Crohn's. EDS. More Autism and ADHD. Migraines. Periods that lay them out for a week. Chronic depression. Alcoholism. Bipolar. Cataracts.
I do not know a single person who is not disabled, typically in multiple ways, and we all face increased disability as a natural consequence of aging. Literally every person on the planet becomes disabled on a long enough timeline. Yet we still talk about disability and organize around it as if it isn't social, economic, and contextual. people treat disability as an innate quality that some people have and some people do not have, and as if there is some large class of intrinsically abled people who are benefiting under capitalism and are withholding the fruits of their abilities from us or something.
i saw this post on twitter months ago that was like "I need people to understand that if you are in a relationship with a disabled person you are going to have to do more than them. you're not disabled and so you're going to have to do more of the work (around the house, logisticially, etc). that is what you owe them as an abled person."
and it just baffled me. because i have only ever seen disabled people in relationships with other disabled people, caring for one another in a stitched-together, messy web of interdependence and missed deadlines and dirty dishes and acceptance and love, not because disabled people are ontologically more generous than non-disabled people but because non-disabled people don't even actually exist.
the mythological abled person who can work a full time job, keep a clean home, do all the dishes, buy all the groceries, cook all the meals, run all the errands, stay on top of all the bills, carry everything, dash up the stairs, stand on their feet for hours, and have boundless energy without any mental consequences to that does not exist. it's an ideal created to oppress us all. it is an impossible standard the reification of which disables us all.
there is no one on this planet who is not disabled under capitalism and colonialism. there are only people who lack the class consciousness to recognize that they're disabled.
it's gonna have to be us taking care of one another. it's going to be the disabled caring for the disabled. it always will be that. that is the human condition.
This is literally so important, yes! I’ve watched Footless Jo’s videos on YouTube, and she does such a good job explaining how her life has changed after amputation and what accommodations she has to make to improve her quality of life—and I am here for it! The way she’s being treated by both YouTube and some commenters really sucks.
Even as someone with medical based trauma who has to do calming techniques whenever dealing with medical subjects, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to cut that stuff out of my life! Throughout your time on this earth, you will experience some sort of medical issue or know someone experiencing a serious medical issue. It’s our responsibility to learn to self regulate, and approach these situations with a compassionate and level head. Both for ourselves and our care, and for the people around us.
People with disabilities, scars, amputations, and other visual differences will exist! People need to learn that someone’s existence is not a trigger warning.
I think that there’s not enough talk about triggers that shouldn’t be warned for. There’s a bit of talk about not warning for body differences as “body horror” (that should be reserved for fictional depictions), but not about other triggers, and I think this is actually hampering intersectionality.
The main one I’m going to get into is being triggered by masculinity. This is a you problem. You can avoid men somewhat, but men (and people you think are men) will exist around you. Yes, this includes in public bathrooms. You need to learn how to deal with that (in ways that do not involve the police), and if you are so afraid of peeing in proximity to someone you perceive as a man you need to use exclusively single stall bathrooms. Public places are not your safe space.
Welcome to the Premium Autoimmune Package
Hi. I’m not new to being sick, but I’m very new to being taken seriously. That only happened because my body is currently collapsing fast enough that doctors couldn’t look away anymore.
I live with overlapping autoimmune diseases, but recently I got upgraded to the “CNS involvement” tier. Think brain inflammation, spinal pressure, hallucinations, cognitive fog, and one healing spinal fracture I didn’t even realize I had. I thought it was just my usual back pain. Turns out it was… a broken bone.
I’ve been hospitalized twice in the last month. A spinal tap showed my brain pressure was way too high, 32 cmH₂O, where normal is typically between 10 and 20. My spinal fluid was full of immune cells , 40% of them, when 0–5% is normal. My MRI has white matter lesions. It’s not MS. It likely neuropsychiatric lupus. It might be a weird intersection of multiple things. No one’s totally sure yet.
What I do know is I’m on IVIG now, possibly headed for a brain shunt, and trying to stay out of the hospital. Also, I’m trans and had to pause testosterone because of clot risks from treatment. No, there’s no workaround. Yes, it sucks.
This blog is my space to document what it’s like to be visibly declining after years of being invisibly sick. No pity required. Just here to tell the truth about what it’s like to have the Premium Autoimmune Package, full access unlocked.
Current Working diagnoses:
• Neuropsychiatric Lupus (NPSLE)
• Myasthenia Gravis
• Psoriatic Arthritis
• Intracranial Hypertension
• Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
It is okay if you do not do better tomorrow than you did today. It is okay if you do worse tomorrow than you did today.
If you have made it through the day, that is enough. It doesn't matter if it's been less productive than you wanted, sometimes all you can do is get through the day. And that is okay, even when it feels bad, especially when you used to be able to do things.
It is okay for you to get worse, it does not reflect on you as a person.
Sometimes things aren’t going to get better
If you have a chronic illness or a disability, and that’s going to be with you forever
So sometimes things don’t get better, but that’s okay
Sometimes what you need to do is work on managing things instead of trying to see how the situation could be better or worse, and that’s okay
So I've seen a lot of talk about pain scales. How there should be a special one for chronic pain patients or people who say they're 11 out of 10, etc.
The thing with pain scales though, they are supposed to be about the bodies reaction to pain. A pain scale is supposed to be about how to appropriately treat a patient. So if a person is a 10 from something you'd be a 6, their pain still needs to be treated in accordance to how it feels for the patient (in a perfect world). Your 5 may be another person's 9 but that's beyond the point. 10 is still the peak for the worst pain possible you can handle. Pain where you black out and can't speak. Where you go into shock. Where you can't do anything but lay there locked in agony. That is the peak for anyone period because that's where the body taps out. There shouldn't be extra numbers for chronic pain patients or anything. It defeats the purpose of pain scales. A good pain scale is about physical reactions with the body.
No pain scale is perfect but doctors need some way to gauge how to treat a patient. This one is the one I prefer the most because it is about the body's physical reaction to pain and the treatment for it.
I love to use my disability “as an excuse.” Fuck yeah my disability is an excuse. It’s the most valid excuse I have. I’m not helping you lift that box/etc because my disability would make it fucking painful. Not wanting to be in pain is a good enough reason. I’m not going to put myself in pain to comfort your sensibilities.
Yes I’m using my disability as an excuse because I refuse to hurt myself for you. If you’re mad about it you can cry! ❤️
Happy disability pride month to those:
Happy disability pride month to those who didn’t realize they were in pain till later in life
Happy disability pride month to those who conditions are rare
Happy disability pride month to those who have invisible illnesses/disabilities
Happy disability pride month to those who have visible illnesses/disabilities
Happy disability pride month to those who weren’t disabled until later in life
Happy disability pride month to those who were disabled early in life
Happy disability pride month to underrepresented disabilities
Happy disability pride month to every disabled person!!
When it feels like writing is impossible but you really really want to write anyway, just skip the bits that don't inspire. Write 15 openings of scenes and nothing else. Write that one emotional conversation with only the dialogue like a script. Write that one emotional conversation with none of the dialogue.
Be so self-indulgent you almost feel over-indulged by the end.
Sometimes you're torn between wanting to write but not having the spoons to actually do writing proper. So don't do it properly.
A useful article from King Arthur Flour (my beloved) on baking while disabled.