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[Brooke Winters tweeted: “As a disabled person I don’t want to be told I can do anything if I put my mind to it. I want to know that what I can do is good enough.”]
Tag: ableism
A lot of [usually ableist] autism awareness infomercials like to use metaphors to show how autistic people are so distant and different and “not there”. Often it’s the glass metaphor, like when they literally put an autistic child behind a glass wall. And I understand where that’s coming from cause sometimes, maybe even a lot of times, I do feel like I’m behind a glass wall and can’t communicate with the world as easily as everyone else.
But it wasn’t me who put that wall between myself and the world.
And it wasn’t my autism.
It was you.
It was the world.
It was non-autistic people.
In a new video for Digg, Cara Reedy, who was born with achondroplastic dwarfism, opens up about the struggles and gifts of being different. In the video she explains the truly degrading origins of the slur “midget.”
Everyday Ableism presented by Facebook. I initially commented on this video found within the article. (DIsclaimer: i do not have Downs Syndrome, I am primarily physically disabled and face/witness prejudice regularly.) People I think might want to read/boost this: @annieelainey @disabled-activist @disabilityhealth @katblaque @petitetimidgay @kat-blaque @marinashutup
This exchange just goes to show that no matter how well worded and polite I am, disability activism (even just progressive conversation) is taken as an enormous threat by abled people – this one in particular. The commenter does not deserve to have her name blurred, she chose to spew these hateful things on the public internet and I will not let it slip under the rug.
There are SO many different types of ableist thought she is displaying, so I won’t go in depth. But in summary, Hannah fits in insults, speaking over disabled voices harmfully, fake activism (”we’re all the same!”), minimizing oppressed experiences , infantilization, abled superiority, identity and ability erasure, gaslighting and abuse all into two comments! Wow! That might be a record.
Overall, I think this experience reminds us that people with disabilities are not even recognized as in need of help or allyship. That’s how damn negatively we are viewed. Either disgusting, dramatic, “inspirational,” or invisible. The awareness about struggle of disabled people is extremely low on all planes (economic, social, accessibility, representation, political, opportunity, and more) EVEN THOUGH we make up the largest marginalized group. We make up 15% of all humans. One Billion people. STOP LEAVING DISABILITY OUT OF YOUR ACTIVISM.
INCLUDE DISABILITY RIGHTS IN YOUR ACTIVISM
IGNORING THE EXISTENCE OF DISABILITIES AND THINKING OF ALL PEOPLE AS ABLED IS NOT ACTIVISM
IGNORING THE FACT THAT SOME DISABLED PEOPLE CANNOT BE INDEPENDENT IS NOT PROGRESSIVE
IGNORING THE FACT THAT DISABLED PEOPLE ARE DISABLED BY THEIR DISABILITIES IS NOT AWARENESS
IT IS IGNORANCE. WILLFUL IGNORANCE.
just so you know
the US minimum wage that we all agree is too low to live on ($15,080/yr) is far more than many legally disabled people receive in benefits
the maximum SSI for a single person is $8,796/yr
if a disabled person marries another, each drops to a max of $6,600/yrwhile you’re fighting for 15 maybe look at that too
Not to mention we aren’t allowed to have more than $2,000 saved at a time. EVER. Like EVER or we lose all benefits completely. In the bank, in cash, it doesn’t matter. The government literally keeps us poor, while also making us pay immense amounts of money for health care that we require to even survive or function (let alone work enough to be able to get off of benefits, not to mention that there are a ton of people who will never be able to do that anyways). It’s a very, very broken system and not one that was ever meant to actually help anyone.
Plus, “marriage equality” is still a huge problem for disabled people (as you can see), which is something almost everyone is ignorant to/doesn’t care about.
DO NOT LEAVE DISABLED PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR ACTIVISM.
DO NOT LEAVE DISABLED PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR ACTIVISM.
Hey guys?
So I’ve been noticing that lately we’re making fun of adults who live in their parents’ basements again…
Guess where I live! My parents’ basement! I’m mentally ill and autistic and not capable of living independently. I can’t go grocery shopping alone, I can’t drive, I can’t make transfers on public transportation, and if I’m left alone I forget to do things like eat, drink, shower, take my meds, and do laundry. Even if I were capable of independent living, I don’t make enough on disability to afford an apartment.
If y’all are actually committed to intersectionality, you’d best find a better insult for misogynists than living in their parents’ basement, because honestly I already get down on myself for feeling useless enough without this stuff.
Also this is totally ok for abled people to reblog and signal boost if you don’t mind? 🙂 Thanks!
“i don’t judge people based on race, creed, color, or gender. i judge people based on spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.”
i hate to burst your pretentious little bubble, but linguistic prejudice is inextricably tied to racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and ableism.
ETA: don’t send me angry messages about this…at all, preferably, but at least check the tag for this post before firing off an irate screed.
no one seems to be following the directive above, so here’s the version of this post i would like all you indignant folk to read.
no, i am not saying that people of color, women, poor people, disabled people, etc, “can’t learn proper english.” what i’m saying is that how we define “proper english” is itself rooted in bigotry. aave is not bad english, it’s a marginalized dialect which is just as useful, complex, and efficient as the english you’re taught in school. “like” as a filler word, valley girl speech, and uptalk don’t indicate vapidity, they’re common verbal patterns that serve a purpose. etc.
because the point of language is to communicate, and there are many ways to go about that. different communities have different needs; different people have different habits. so if you think of certain usages as fundamentally “wrong” or “bad,” if you think there’s a “pure” form of english to which everyone should aspire, then i challenge you to justify that view. i challenge you to explain why “like” makes people sound “stupid,” while “um” doesn’t raise the same alarms. explain the problem with the habitual be. don’t appeal to popular opinion, don’t insist that it just sounds wrong. give a detailed explanation.
point being that the concept of “proper english” is culturally constructed, and carries cultural biases with it. those usages you consider wrong? they aren’t. they’re just different, and common to certain marginalized groups.
not to mention that many people who speak marginalized dialects are adept at code-switching, i.e. flipping between non-standard dialects and “standard english,” which makes them more literate than most of the people complaining about this post.
not to mention that most of the people complaining about this post do not speak/write english nearly as “perfectly” as they’d like to believe and would therefore benefit by taking my side.
not to mention that the claim i’m making in the OP is flat-out not that interesting. this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook. the only reason it sounds so outlandish is that we’ve been inundated with the idea that how people speak and write is a reflection of their worth. and that’s a joyless, elitist idea you need to abandon if you care about social justice or, frankly, the beauty of language.
and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real ramifications–in employment (tossing resumes with “black-sounding names”), in the legal system (prejudice against rachel jeantel’s language in the trayvon martin trial), in education (marginalizing students due to prejudice against dialectical differences, language-related disabilities, etc), and…well, a lot.
no, this doesn’t mean that there’s never a reason to follow the conventions of “standard english.” different genres, situations, etc, have different conventions and that’s fine. what it does mean, however, is that this standard english you claim to love so much has limited usefulness, and that, while it may be better in certain situations, it is not inherently better overall. it also means that non-standard dialects can communicate complex ideas just as effectively as the english you were taught in school. and it means that, while it’s fine to have personal preferences regarding language (i have plenty myself), 1) it’s worth interrogating the source of your preferences, and 2) it’s never okay to judge people on the basis of their language use.
so spare me your self-righteous tirades, thanks.
Oh my gosh YES, this post got so much better.
this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook.
and
and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the
basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real
ramifications
Solutions Without Problems 