Tag: disability

How can we help people with disabilities? For example, autistic people who see the world differently.*

* This question was posted on another social media site. What follows is my answer.

1) Treat us as people, not as less. An adult or an older child being talked to in a baby voice is not on, regardless of how their disability presents. Talk to us at age appropriate level. If we’re interested in something, get excited about it with us, rather than telling us we’re boring. Sharing our interest is our way of trying to communicate. We love a thing. We’re opening up ourselves to you. It might not be how you’re used to doing a conversation, but it is meaningful communication, and it means we want to share that excitement with you. That’s a big deal. Recognise it.

2) Our diagnosis is none of your business, unless we feel comfortable talking to you about it. It’s really none of your business if we were diagnosed as a kid, an adult, self-diagnosed, or questioning. It’s none of your business if our autism has changed its presentation as we’ve aged. It’s really none of your business if you think you know what autism looks like, and we don’t match up with your preconceptions. And please, if we’re verbal, dressed appropriately, out in public and unattended, it’s not a compliment to tell us how well we’re doing. We’re just as autistic when we’re ‘passing’ as when we really aren’t. Passing for normal is not an achievement, it’s a monumental effort that most of us feel long term health effects from if we have to do it daily. Allowing natural autistic behaviours is something a lot of us have to relearn in adulthood to manage our anxiety. An adult flapping, pacing, tapping, or playing with a stim toy isn’t being babyish or playing at autism, they’re trying to take care of themselves. Don’t stare or tut or tell us we’re embarrassing you. (Telling us our Tangle is awesome and you want one is totally okay, though.)

3) Our sex life is none of your business, unless we’re in a sexual relationship with you. Just because we’re autistic doesn’t mean we can’t consent. That said, if there’s someone being weird and intimate with us when we’re a minor and they’re in a position of authority, make sure we’re okay. Compliance based therapies heavily used with autistic children (like ABA) make autistic children very vulnerable to sexual abuse, because they teach children to do things that are uncomfortable, painful or unnatural to them to please adults for rewards.

4) Make a conscious choice to be okay with difference, be it physical, intellectual, neurological, whatever. This might be harder than it sounds. Disability can come with mobility needs, sensory needs, dietary needs and routine based needs. It might require communication devices or sign language, or a picture-based communication system, even if to you, the person ‘seems’ verbal. It’s rare for an autistic person to have no difficulties with verbal communication, and if you’ve only ever seen them happy or relaxed, you might not know they need to use their phone to communicate when they’re upset or overwhelmed. Also, non verbal autistics might have a couple of words, scripted speech, or echolalic phrases they can use when conditions are right, even though they primarily use AAC or sign. Verbal ability isn’t a fixed thing. It fluctuates. Be patient if we’re struggling. It’s more frustrating for us than for you.

5) Everyone’s disability is unique. No two autistic people are the same. Likes, dislikes, sensitivities, strengths, difficulties. An autistic person might be sensory seeking, non verbal, highly intelligent, low anxiety, highly organised. They might be highly verbal, high anxiety, low executive function, mild intellectual disability, dyslexic, supertaster. They could have any combination of interests and personality traits, and come combined with a whole array of other disabilities. Don’t think because you know one autistic person, you know every autistic person. We’re individuals.

6) Listen to us, not to Autism Speaks or ‘autism moms’. Our experience is unique to us. It cannot be fully understood by a neurotypical bystander, regardless of how close that relationship is. Read books by autistic people (there are a lot). Donate to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network or Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. Don’t light it up blue, put puzzle pieces on your car, or spread anti-vax rhetoric (which is fake science and basically hinges on the fact that a lot of people would rather have dead kids than autistic ones). Watch documentaries produced by autistic people about their experiences. Check out neurowonderful’s Youtube series Ask An Autistic.

7) Don’t assume we’re straight. Don’t assume we’re cisgender. Don’t assume we don’t understand the complexities of our multifaceted identities. Gender and sexuality variance is present in autistic people, just as it is in neurotypical people. In fact, there’s actually evidence there is a higher proportion of transgender, nonbinary and genderqueer people in the autistic community than in the genpop. Our experience of sexuality and gender is also viewed through our lens of autistic experience, and there are terms created specifically by autistic people to encapsulate this (like gendervague).

8) Don’t assume we can’t have relationships, friendships, and families outside of our parents and siblings. Don’t assume we can’t be awesome parents. Don’t assume we can’t make informed choices about our bodies and procreation. Autistic people have been here as long as people have been here. I’m from a multigenerational family myself, with both male and female autistic people, stretching back at least five generations, anecdotally (further than that, highly probably, but we don’t have the information).

9) Don’t think we’d be better off dead. This is why adults and children are murdered by parents and caregivers every year without legal repercussions. Our lives have value. The next time you see a news article where a parent cries about killing their child, don’t rationalise that ‘it must be so hard’ to be taking care of us. That’s essentially saying we’re responsible for our own murder, and that it was justifiable homicide. MURDER IS MURDER. If you want to campaign for better respite and support in your area, GREAT, but don’t give parents who murder their children a free pass. Parenting is hard, but people have a choice, and we must stop allowing people who make the choice to kill to get away with murder. Whenever it happens, someone else, somewhere, thinks murder is an appropriate solution to the problem of a disabled person needing care in their life, and another irreplaceable, unique person dies.

10) We have the right to exist in public spaces. Yes, that autistic person having a meltdown might be disrupting your shopping and hurting your ears. I can guarantee their life is harder than yours right then. Have some compassion (not pity) and give them some space. We have the right to be in restaurants, in theatres, in libraries and in schools. If you think a person with a disability being in those spaces is going to have a negative effect on your children, maybe you should think about your parenting, rather than about segregation.

fangirlinginleatherboots:

symmetras-microwave:

fangirlinginleatherboots:

some things that horror movie culture has taught you are scary…. are just ableist

….clarify?

okay sure. psychosis? scarier to have than to know someone who has it. DID? im more a threat to myself than people around me. wheelchairs and psych meds? are tools that help people live more functional and flexible lives and are not judgments of the persons character and for sure are not scary things. and for real, intellectually disabled people are not threats, but movies love to make them villains because they act different and understand the world differently. and people with notable physical differences? people who’s bodies look different? people with scars, growths, amputations, etc? are literally just people. and seeing themselves painted like monsters on the big screen is absolutely sickening and damaging to how society will see them.

its not only bad writing but its extremely harmful to people who actually live with conditions that are misrepresented in media. when i found out i had DID, my mom freaked out because her only point of reference was Sybil. when i was younger and first went on psych meds, i thought it meant i was set on a track to be a bad person, because in so many movies and video games you find out the bad guy has medication in his bed side table for some sort of psych disorder. the worst thing a hallucination has ever made me do was wake my mom up at 3 AM to check my bathroom to see if the bugs i saw everywhere were real and the worst thing an “episode” of any sort has made me do is hurt myself. my ptsd doesnt make me kill people, my alters dont kidnap people, my autism doesnt make me so morally unaware that ill murder for senselessly, my ocd doesnt make me hurt people etc etc etc

literally the only “horror” is the ableism. and the only way you can write good horror about disability and mental illness is if the focus is on how society and the medical field treat us rather than focusing on how we are apparently so scary, threatening, and bad.

mrsmichaellorca:

prokopetz:

vanquishedvaliant:

some middle aged white dude who has never had a problem with his perfectly sculpted body in his life: Does replacing our flesh with metal and circuits… disconnect us from humanity? When you replace man with machine… how long does the soul stay connected?

literally anyone who has had a limiting physical condition, interacted with prosthetics or assistance devices: You really don’t understand the ‘Punk’ of Cyberpunk, do you?

Something a lot of early cyberpunk’s modern imitators don’t seem to grasp is that the reason early cyberpunk treats cybernetic modification with suspicion is because those modifications are often performed against the recipients’ will at the behest of state and corporate interests. It’s an explicit metaphor for the commodification of bodily autonomy under capitalism – and it draws a direct line to contemporary abuses of the same. It’s not by accident that the first chromed-out street samurai to grace the pages of cyberpunk literature is a woman.

I like the OP’s post as well as the preceeding reply. Both make excellent points about cyberpunk and cyborgs.

Yes, the post is great, disability, punk and women combining in a genre of sci fi, but I WANT TO READ A FLAGSHIP TITLE WITH A STREET SAMURAI WRITTEN BY A WOMAN. What is the title???

Well, that went… badly

I got a free-to-review queer ebook, set in a summer camp for disabled kids. (The MC and LI were staff, not kids.)

I had to nope-out by halfway, after pervasive, persistent ableism.

(Oh, and one reference to the Gestapo, when the parents were seeing their disabled kids off. I guess the author doesn’t know – or doesn’t care – that the Nazis used disabled kids as their test subjects for the Final Solution. Thousands of them.)

Please, writers. Disabled and neurodivergent people don’t need you to labour every other page how much of an inconvenience we are, how ‘quirky’ our mannerisms are, how emotionally exhausting we are, how disgusting our bodily functions, how annoying our routines and dietary and sensory needs are. How we’re sucking the life from our families like vampires.

You never have to tell us. You never let us forget.

(No, I’m not going to name-drop the author or the book. I just need to vent.)

EDIT: I will add that this wasn’t just a ‘ugh, won’t read any more’ situation. This book gave me a severe anxiety spiral requiring a long hot bath with a Lush bath bomb, a valium, and I’ve been sitting here rocking most of the day, something I generally only do when my anxiety is most severe. I very, very rarely leave a book unfinished, but this was a ‘for my own safety’ situation. Ableism is toxic, y’all. Get a sensitivity reader. Not a professional, not a family member, but an actual disabled person who feels comfortable enough to call out your bullshit.

EDIT 2: The author contacted me and was really respectful and thankful for my review, so, guys, THAT IS HOW YOU DO IT when a marginalised person has genuine concrit of your thing, when you have asked for an-honest-review-for-free-book. Even if you don’t 100% agree with the reviewer, it costs you nothing to respect the feedback and the position of the reviewer as an expert in their own experience.

Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours | Baggs | Disability Studies Quarterly

awn-network:

“The problem with people quantifying that richness is that they completely forget it is infinite compared to the broadest of humanity’s finite capacities. A similar problem happens when people try to quantify personhood. The richness I experience of the world is not merely a more limited version of other people’s experiences. My experiences have their own richness that other people may not be able to see.”

Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours | Baggs | Disability Studies Quarterly

patrexes:

qjusttheletter:

“Imagine that you wake up in the morning and I hand you twenty-five very sharp forks. Every time you say something ableist to me, I take a fork away from you. When you are all out of forks, each ableist thing you say means I get to stab you really hard with a fork, and leave it stuck in your skin.

You are still talking. And so I take the last fork, and I shove it down your throat. This is called fork theory and it’s about how angry I am.”

[link]

@sabreprincess

If you haven’t clicked on the link and read the whole piece you need to.