Tag: spoons

i really appreciate the social model of disability (the simple version is that someone being in a wheelchair is not a problem, not having ramps is) and i use it when speaking of being autistic all the time

but i don’t know​ how to reconcile it w my physical disability. i’m so completely exhausted 99% of the time that i can’t really do anything but sit down and. watch TV. and i’m so mentally exhausted that I can’t hold a conversation for a few minutes. i haven’t done anything creative in a year. the only accomodation i can imagine that would help me is telekinesis. or the entire nature of physical reality changes so that actions stop costing energy.

im. out of breath from typing this on my phone. is how bad im doing today.

mhd-hbd:

drakeswheelchair:

drakeswheelchair:

people love to talk about franz kafka’s surrealism, but as soon as you tell them his writing was specifically influenced by him being a multiply disabled jewish man who was bisexual, they become disinterested real fast

#seriously though no one believes me when I say that the metamorphosis is about disability

absolutely nobody can convince me that “the metamorphosis” is about anything BUT disability, ableism, and anti-semitism

like, you can literally look at kafka’s thoughts in his diaries and letters during the time he was writing it, and see him struggling with feeling physically and emotionally repulsive to people as his health was beginning to really decline, and the way his personality is shaped by paranoia, anxiety, and depression, as well as the obvious correlation between annihilation and anti-semitism

then you read the book, and it’s so fucking clear

“Kafkaesque” is reality for a lot of people.

patrexes:

rainaramsay:

patrexes:

heroofthreefaces:

butterflyinthewell:

Okay unpopular opinion time.

As somebody who knows a blind-from-birth person, it’s kinda pissing me off that people are acting like the Doctor going blind is tragic. It might suck for him for awhile because he’s not used to living that way, but ffs if he’s taught how to do things the blind way as opposed to the sighted way and borrowed other people to be his eyes when vision is necessary then not much would have to change.

If the Doctor can memorize a map in a few seconds, I doubt it’d take him long to learn just about every form of Braille or raised reading material for blind people all over the universe.

Imagine if the TARDIS made him a sonic white cane that could do all the cool stuff his sonic screwdriver could do and more. Imagine it having a “homing” signal where the cane will gently tug him back to the TARDIS if there’s danger or if he gets ‘lost’ on an adventure. (And imagine him having to resist it and be all “be quiet, you!”)

Disability doesn’t have to be tragic, y’all.

–posted by an autistic person who headcanons the Doctor as autistic.

He’s already doing this, too. He flew the TARDIS to the stationworkers’ corporate office and then home to Earth without anyone (including any viewer who hadn’t been spoiled) realizing he was still sightless.

hi tacking onto this as a real life blind person and not just “i know a guy”–op i do appreciate where ur coming from, but also, like, chill–it’s actually gonna be disgustingly easy for dr.who to get used to being blind, because gallifreyans’ primary sense is telepathy; hell, they’re already prosopagnosic (link: x, x). dr.who is and was able to navigate the Tardis in part for the same reason why i dont use my cane in my apartment, but also in part because the Tardis, as a gallifreyan technology, is really fucking highkey telepathic and is/was thus more easily navigable than something designed by a generally psinull, generally sighted species, like, yknow, humans.

of course the problem that we’re probably going to run into is that the writers are either gonna get stuck on “this is terrible and horrible and awful and 12 will never be able to function” and it’ll be a super ableist pity party that’ll probably feed into some self-hatred of actual blind people… (link: x) or theyre gonna overuse gallifreyan telepathy so they can have a blind character, but not, like, a blind character who needs help with things
occassionally, or who needs to use assistive tech, or in any way can’t pass for sighted.

or both! there’s always both.

but like, listen, this is a fantastic opportunity for dr.who to be able to raise awareness of some things that actual, real life blind people do – things like the sonic white cane you mentioned already kind of partially exist (link: x), and oh man that’d be killer. i’d have comicon down this year let me fucking tell you. they could show dr.who working with the Tardis on the equivalent of JAWS or VoiceOver. they could also, though, pull a daredevil, and oh my god i am sick to death of daredevil. real people in real life have asked me if i can read a computer screen by touching it and feeling the heat of the pixels. that’s daredevil’s fault.

anyway the long and short of it is basically “dr.who could be really cool with this, but probably only if i was the one writing it, and im not, so it’s gonna be an ableist disaster”. regardless of how the show decides to take this, though, 

@fandom be fucking respectful. going blind is not the end of the world. it doesn’t make you incapable. it definitely doesn’t make humans incapable but-oh-not-dr.who-theyre-fine.

and also, here’s a concept, put fucking image descriptions on your gifsets and fanart.

Friendly reminder that The Doctor needs you to put image descriptions on your gifsets and fanart.  #DoItForTheDoctor

oh my fucking god dont do it for the doctor do it for real blind/vi people why the fuck is accessibility only important when it effects a fictional character i hate y’all

bitterlesbiangrandma:

I had a friend tell me once that they envy me having a terminal condition because I don’t have to figure out my future.

And like. I get depression and fear, and adulting is fucking hard, and sometimes when I’m really sad I think this too.

But please don’t tell your spoonie friends you envy them being sick, and not going to school, and “sitting at home watching Netflix whole days everyday”. We’re ILL. We’re in a lot of pain. This sitting in bed whole days is fun when it’s a cool activity to do, but it stops being fun when it’s a necessity everyday and you want to do things but you CANT.

And the thing is, we’re having to figure out our future too. It’s just for you figure is college and job and happy relationships.
For us it’s our condition getting worse, our parents aging and so us having to find caretakers for us when they’re gone, and ultimately a lot of sadness and then dying.

We’re both scared and I’m not playing pain Olympics here. I’m just here to tell you that sometimes it’s good to shut up.

qcrip:

traumatized pansy with a knife, 2017

Images by Carey Lynne Fruth

( he / him or they / them please)

[image desc: 6 photos of me with finger waves in black lingerie on an indigo background (1) me in my wheelchair with a lacy robe falling off my shoulders (2) me pushing up off the floor with my legs crossed (3) me holding my wheel and looking over my shoulder while holding a switchblade in my other hand (4) my on my stomach on a couch with my legs crossed and holding a switchblade of the side (5) me in my wheelchair holding a sword and fencing helmet (6) me lying on my stomach with my legs crossed at the ankle holding a blade and looking at the camera]

Cool with nsfw aesthetic blogs but hard porn blogs please steer clear!

Source: qcrip

Quick PSA

bitterlesbiangrandma:

So, after my last post went viral I got a lot of messages and some of them were really lovely but the rest seemed to suffer from “not all abled people” syndrome. So I’d like to say something.

Yes. Yes all abled people. All abled people are like that. You’re like that and I was like that before I got on wheelchair. We’re taught to be ableist from birth and we don’t realize that so ALL OF US are inherently ableist.
The point is not to say you’re not like that but to listen to disabled people and challenge yourself to think despite what you were conditioned to! Do you think I don’t have a moment of hesitation before talking to a Deaf or blind person? Or anyone who has different disability than me? Sure I do! Cause I don’t know jack shit about their struggles and if what I do is not ableist to them! But the point is to go out there, and listen! Just apologize if you accidentally did something bad and go! We know you’re not a Bad Evil Person bro.

And if your first reaction is to say we’re wrong and Not All abled People Are Like That™ then maybe you should think for a second why do you do that

bitterlesbiangrandma:

bitterlesbiangrandma:

Like a month ago I messaged a craft group about accessibility for wheelchairs and the answer I got was “there’s a lot of stairs but we have cute boys who can carry you”.
And it’s…not good. As a wheelchair bound person I largely depend on people when I want to go out and do *anything* so I’m used to it, I laugh it off, make an annoyed post about it and off I go. But I wanna just say a thing real quick.

Even if I wasn’t gay, wasn’t a survivor scared of men, getting help as a disabled person is just…Not a pleasant thing to us! Imagine for a sec how you’d feel being carried up a flight of stairs. You’re a grown person. You’re being touched in an awkward way. You’d rather do it yourself. You’re So Uncomfortable. It’s not where I look for the beginning of a romantic relationship.
So like…could abled people stop doing this thing where they think helping us in a condescending and infantilizing way is cute? Cause I’m real tired. Just get me a ramp or lift and I’m cool. I don’t need a dating service when I’m just trying to go about my day

If you’re abled please reblog it cause like…the more ppl knows the better

Have you ever heard of autistics being more possessive about their things?

candidlyautistic:

periegesisvoid:

queerautism:

candidlyautistic:

Yes, a lot of us more possessive about our things.

There are a few reasons of this. The most common of these reasons that most allistics will tell you is that we have reduced empathy and that prevents us from understanding the importance of sharing.

Of course, that is true for some of us, but it is hardly a universal thing. There are many other reasons why we may be possessive.

First, we often have a very strong sense of right and wrong. This comes from rules that we internalize very strongly, and tend to take as absolutes. These do not always reflect what the rest of society sees as right and wrong.

When kids grow up there is a normal phase where they come to understand that you do not touch others’ belongings without their permission. A lot of us internalize that as an absolute. It is a rule, you do not break it, full stop.

For others, it has to do with controlling our sensory environment. Everything has a place and should be in its place. Disrupting anything in that environment is disrupting out personal space that we rely on for sensory management.

Yet another concern many autistics have expressed is a heavy reliance on visual memory. Specifically, when you put something down you take a mental snapshot of where that item is. When someone touches that item, there is stronger emotion involved because they are touching your stuff, and you get a mental snapshot of that person touching your stuff. That replaces the snapshot of where the item was set down.

Even if the item is returned to the correct place, picture in your head is not longer of where the item was placed, but rather that the item was touched without permission. When you go to look for the item you cannot find it because the mental image does not include the location of the item.

There are so many reasons that I have heard from autistics about why they don’t like people touching their things. The common thread among all of them is that other people messing with our stuff disrupts our ability to function.

And like, for most people that is no big deal. Most people can adapt. With our tendency towards rigid thinking, however, this can be an extremely disrupting force in our lives.

The examples I listed above are nowhere near exhaustive. There are many, many, other reasons why we might be possessive. As a general rule of thumb, when it comes to autistics, I tend to assume there is a reason for it and take it on face value that it is important.

You prevent a lot of issues by taking that approach.

I am very possessive with my stuff and it’s kinda funny to me that some people would think it’s because of lack of empathy when a big part of it is my hyperempathy, so basically the complete opposite

Also, allistic people usually don’t respect our wishes unless we’re extremely emphatic about them. If we don’t make a fuss, they’ll just assume they own us and our stuff.

I am glad that you brought hyperempathy because there are two aspects of this that I think allistics tend not to take into account.

First, many of experience secondhand embarrassment. When a person touches our stuff without permission, whether or not they are embarrassed, we might experience embarrassment on their behalf. Especially in cases where we are aware of the disconnect, it can make us angry because they aren’t embarrassed.

The other thing that we often do when we are hyperempathetic is that we have empathy for the object being touched. This is something we may experience even if we are not hyperempathetic – we may exhibit no empathy for people, but we do for animals and objects.