Very tired of our lives being seen as not worth living.
[Image Description: A two-part illustration in monochrome dark blue. The illustration features five disabled people: A cane user, a manual wheelchair user, a person with an invisible disability, a person with a prosthetic leg, and a power chair user. The first illustration focuses on their feet, captioned “We are NOT disposable.” The second illustration features their smiling faces, captioned “We are not a fate worse than death.”]
applying the social model to every other disabled person apart from yourself is the spoonie equivalent of ‘how come every girl in the world is pretty except for me?’ but also, mood
A tweet that reads “just a quick reminder that a society exists to serve the people within it. there’s no such thing as a person being ‘useless’ to a society, only a society that is useless to a person”
It disappoints me that people are more quickly drawn to the concept of “Normalizing Mental Illness” as being a problem instead of “Normalizing a severe lack of mental health resources.”
Like recently I have been seeing a lot of posts about how people should never express suicidal ideation openly, typically with this sort of attitude that anyone who is really feeling so badly would just go to a doctor / therapist / etc,
But that fundamentally is not the situation. Particularly when mental healthcare often involves a significant amount of money, or the threat of involuntary confinement and further traumatization of the individual.
Essentially, complaining that people are “Normalizing mental illness” when they acknowledge their suffering is a form of victim blaming, when the real underlying problem is a society which produces mass-trauma and fails to create mental health resources beyond the most absolutely basic “Lets try mindfulness!” crap.`
Has anyone else noticed how, when you have a chronic condition of some kind, that there’s always the basic assumption from people around you that you’re not already doing everything you can?
It’s all about the illusion of control. People who are healthy like to believe they can always keep being healthy if they do the right things. They don’t want to think about how good people get struck with terrible circumstances for no reason.
So they keep assuming that if they got sick, they could do something to make it better.
And if you’re still sick, that must mean you’ve done something wrong or not done enough.
Nail. Head. The same attitude can be seen in how a lot of people talk about poverty.
And sexual assault. All they have to do is not go there not drink that not wear that not date them and they’ll be fine, right?
The Just World theory – that as long as I do everything right, I’m safe, and everybody who isn’t safe is at fault for not doing everything right – is perhaps the most harmful and widespread mindset today
if you ever see a conservative and wonder just how in the world they have so little compassion? they are genuinely convinced that most – not all, but most – bad things that happen are the fault of the person affected, because then they don’t have to feel bad
somebody explaining this to me as a young adult was, quite literally, the start of me seeing the world in a new way and moving considerably to the left politically. by letting go of the just world mindset my conception of reality shifted considerably
“Unlearning ableism requires a fundamentally anti-capitalist change in perspective.
Specifically, it necessitates that you believe in the inherent worth of human beings, regardless of someone’s social position or productive potential.”}
{ID: “is this a pigeon” meme but the guy is labeled “abled people,” the butterfly is labeled “me, disabled” and the subtitles are edited to read “Is this a lazy person who needs to try harder?”}
@ other service dog handlers: stop using wheelchair analogies if you are not a wheelchair user. yes, an abled person would touch someones wheelchair without permission. yes, an abled person would take a photograph of a wheelchair. c’mon
i dont know where we get the notion that [x] group of disabled people is more respected. yes, they would say that to someone with cancer. yes, they would say that to an amputee. yes, they would say that to a wheelchair user. none of us receive a magical get out of ableism free card
hey before you call something wheelchair accessible just go ahead and invite a wheelchair user or two over because I almost guarantee you that an able-bodied person is not capable of guessing what is accessible without having ever used a wheelchair solo before
some but not all cool things nobody ever thinks of:
put hand sanitizer or a sink in the accessible bathroom stall, or alcohol wipes outside of it. people who cannot use their legs have to use unwashed hands to roll to the sink, and people who can use their legs are afraid to walk out of stalls because they get harassed and even assaulted.
enough space for wheelchair in doorway…AND ARMS. HOW DO YOU THINK THE WHEELCHAIR MOVES! if I cannot roll through it without scraping my arms it is not accessible
brick paths suck the end
gravel paths suck. make it smooth
a ramp is not accessible if it is too steep. not every wheelchair user is ripped enough or capable of using muscles enough to propel themselves up a steep angle safely. some wheelchair users have heart issues. you want heart attacks? this is how you get them
perfect 90 degree turns suck and are often impossible to turn through
some wheelchairs have foot rests. account for them
wheelchair accessible means wheelchair accessible while alone. if you expect someone to have to be helped out to use your facility, that is not acceptable or accessible
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