The belief that someone might be faking it means they don’t deserve help is one of the greatest social ills put upon us as a society.
Let me explain:
With every charity there will be at least 5% of people (more or less depending) that look like they don’t deserve to benefit from the charity due to their clothes, phone, ability to walk, looking cis or het, looking white or any outwards sign of privilege that they might seem to show.
In actuality, about 0.01% of these people either do not qualify for the charity in question or actually have the privilege that they look like they have.
An example:
You are at a food bank. Mrs. White come up in a shiny Escalade with 4 kids all piled in the back. She comes in to get food for her, her husband, and her 4 kids. Immediately after they leave, you hear one of the other volunteers criticizing the fact that these “obviously well off individuals” are coming in for food.
In reality: Mrs. White’s husband was in a car accident that cost him his ability to walk for long periods of time, the car, and his ability to work. The insurance company paid for the escalade (a dream car of the husband’s) and disability allows them to keep the house, but Mrs. White is barely able to work part time to take care of her husband and the kids. They rely on the donations at the food bank to get by.
Another example:
You see a pair of people walking in the pride parade that look cis and het and are being affectionate at Pride. You hear someone snarl about invaders.
In reality: They are both trans or Bi and this is their first Pride being out.
Another example:
A person on the internet talks about their experience with Autism and how it means they have a hard time working. They’re self-diagnosed.They’ve gotten jeering comments about how they’re faking it and making it hard for real Auties.
In Reality: They’re autistic but can’t afford a professional diagnosis because they have a hard time working and they showed atypical traits as a kid.
I could go on and on.
I’ve heard it all. From just about anyone. But mostly? Mostly I hear it from people who think that if you don’t fit the stereotype you don’t deserve help. That you must be in the very lowest place you can be before you get help. But that’s simply not how it should be.
We should reach kids before they’re on the verge of death, someone before they’re on the street, a person before they’re grasping at the end of their rope. And if we were able to do this, maybe more people would feel comfortable asking before they had no other option than to beg for the scraps that society can leave them.
Society’s greatest illness isn’t those who fake need, but those who think that that tiny bit of people who don’t need the help asking for it is worth forsaking everyone else who does.
“You are too young to be disabled,” they say. You age. “You are too young to be disabled,” they say. You age. “You are too young to be disabled,” they say. You have changed. They have not.
You see a flight of stairs. Your friend insists there are only a few. You don’t see an end. You are tired. There are too many stairs. You don’t see an end.
The door has an accessible entrance sticker. It is not accessible. You tell them so. They insist it is. You try to explain. They point to the sticker wordlessly.
You tell people there is no cute for your disability. They whisper. Soon everyone is whispering. You do not know what they are saying but you hear the word ‘yoga’.
You need an ice pack. You get one. You immediately need another. This has been happening all day. Or was it all year? You try to remember and you cannot think of a time you did not need an ice pack.
You stand up from your wheelchair. People gasp. Your disability has magically disappeared. You sit back down. Your disability returns.
You never notice people using canes. You get a cane. Suddenly you notice them. They’re everywhere. The number of canes grows. You chalk it up to your imagination, but you wonder if it really is growing. Soon, everyone will use canes.
You do not see yourself in magazines. You do not see yourself in movies. You do not see yourself on tv. You do not see yourself in books. You start to fear that you do not exist.
A person asks you what your disability is. “I don’t know,” you whisper, “no one knows.” They stare at you confused. You have never known.
You sleep. You are more tired. You don’t sleep. You are more tired. You go out. You are more tired. You stay in. You are more tired. The moon waxes. You are more tired. The moon wanes. You are more tired. You think about whether these things are related. You are more tired.
[disclaimer: you don’t have to identify with all of these in order to reblog (in fact I don’t expect most people will) but please do identify with the cripple punk movement as a whole! or if you’re reblogging for a friend tag that you are and you’re able bodied. Also please tag for unreality and depersonalization if you can! Feel free to add on]
I got my copy of this yesterday, watched it this evening, and I loved it. It’s not a film with an overblown, fantasy finale. It’s a film about having the freedom to live your best life, and the freedom to explore exactly what that means, in your own time. There’s a quiet kind of triumph to Michelle’s journey, and that’s more real and precious than any artificial ableist narrative of normality.
“Their marriage, which will reach 25 years in August, is a quiet and monumental symbol of advances in civil rights for the disabled.”
This is beautiful. Disabled people shouldn’t have to choose between sharing their lives with someone and receiving supports they need, and this is a really good example of what is possible for DD and ID people if they are given the freedom to both live and love without being penalised for it. For those who don’t realise it, many disabled people who want to share their life with someone in the US have to choose between love and their benefits and supports that enable them to survive. Sean Kirst: For Valentine’s Day, a quiet, but monumental, love story
This Black History Month, we’re featuring quotes from contributors from the AWN anthology All the Weight of Our Dreams: on living racialized autism (editors Lydia X.Z. Brown, E. Ashkenazy, and Morénike Giwa-Onaiwu)
Image descriptions from top down.
[First image text:
“Claiming a heritage and culture is not only about color. It’s about lived experience, attachment, feelings, tradition, home, and love.”
-E. Ashkenazy, “Foreword: On Autism and Race,” All the Weight of Our Dreams: on living racialized autism, an AWN anthology available now on Amazon
Background photo in low-saturation color is a group of tree roots]
[Second image text:
“I came to understand that autism was not something tragic or shameful…. I was born right the first time.”
-Finn Gardiner, "Letter to People At the Intersection Of Autism and Race,” All the Weight of Our Dreams: on living racialized autism, an AWN anthology now available on Amazon
Background photo of a blooming flower in purple hues]
[Third image text is
“We who exist anyway, Our selves proof of a revolutionary survival power. We who must keep breathing and breaking bleeding recreating.”
-Mikael Lee, “Revelation,” All The Weight of Our Dreams: on living racialized autism, an AWN anthology now available on Amazon
Background image is a grayscale dandelion]
[Fourth image text:
“Yeah, I notice. I notice that I’m different from other blacks because I’m autistic. I notice that I’m different from other autistics because I’m black I notice Do you?“
-COBRA, “Confessions of a Black Rhapsodic Aspie,” All the Weight of Our Dreams: on living racialized autism, an AWN anthology available now on Amazon
Background photo in low-saturation color shows the back of a person’s head and shoulders]
[Fifth image text:
“If I had a time machine and could go back to my school days, I wouldn’t try so hard to mold myself into a person whom I was not meant to be.”
-Kristy Y., “Burnout in Recovery,” All the Weight of Our Dreams: on living racialized autism, an AWN anthology available now on Amazon
Background is a faded photo of a chalkboard]
[Sixth image text:
“I’m Black. I’m a woman. I’m the child of immigrants. I’m a mother. I’m autistic. And I know there are more people like me somewhere.”
-Dee Phair, "Unpacking the Diagnostic TARDIS,” All the Weight of Our Dreams: on living racialized autism, an AWN anthology available now on Amazon
Background is a closeup photo of a small child’s hand holding an adult’s hand]
This is one of the best interactions I’ve ever had.
Two school age kids: “Oh look at the big white puppy!”
Their mother: “Come here, let me explain something to you. That dog is a Service Dog. Whenever you see a dog in a store like this you can’t distract it cause it’s working.”
Two kids: “What do you mean he’s working?”
Mom: “He helps that girl. You know how at school your teacher tells you to be quite so you don’t get distracted doing your work? It’s the same thing with that dog. You can’t distract him.”
Two kids: “What does he help her with?”
Mom: “That’s her business. Your business is to not distract him so he can work.”
If children can understand so can you.
This is so sweet.
This is how you educate, destigmatise and support people with service dogs in a way that isn’t othering or ‘inspirational’. It’s giving able people a useful role, which is often where they struggle with interactions with disabled people. Your business is to let service dogs do their job. Why they need the dog is not your business.
From the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights:
“The autism spectrum should be understood from a broader perspective, including in research. We call for caution about enthusiastic attempts to find the causes of autism and ways to ‘cure’ autism through sophisticated but not necessarily ethical research. Autism as a condition is a critical challenge for modern health systems, in which we
need to ensure that the practice and science of medicine is never again
used to cause the suffering of people.
More investment is needed
in services and research into removing societal barriers and
misconceptions about autism. Autistic persons should be recognized as
the main experts on autism and on their own needs, and funding should be
allocated to peer-support projects run by and for autistic persons.”
He’s the best kid in the world. He’s 10 years old, autistic, and charming as heck. I love spending time with him.
I just found out just a couple of days ago that my ex–my son’s other mom–is suing me for full custody of our son because I am living in California rather than Massachusetts (even though she knows I have been working hard to move back). In order to avoid losing the case out of hand, I need to move back to Massachusetts much sooner than anticipated–early February rather than late August– to avoid losing access to my son.
My son is the most important person in my life. I talk to him every day and I do everything I can to see him as often as possible. I am hoping to go back to having him live with me 2-3 days per week once I am back east, since that is what I did before.
For the past several years I have been disabled and unable to work. After years of struggling I moved across the country in 2016 to be with my (ex) partner who said they would take care of me and make sure I would be able to see my son as often as I needed to. That relationship ended because they were abusive, leaving me stranded and broke in San Diego.
Since then, I have gotten help for my disability and I am working again and going back to school. I am rebuilding my life. I am making just enough to pay for my own rent and food and I can put a little bit aside. I will have just enough money in cash and loans in early february to rent a van and move myself and my best friend/partner back to New England, but I can’t do it safely without a little bit more money.
This is a bare bones, budget move where I will arrive with almost nothing to move into a new apartment and barely enough money to pay rent.
I am putting in $4300, which breaks down to:
$800 Van Rental $400 Gas and Tolls $400 Hotels and Food for 5 days $2700 Move in rent and security for the new apartment
I still need at least another $2500 by early February:
$800 furniture so that my son can have a place to live with me $700 expenses for while I am finding a job $1000 retainer for my lawyer, just to get started
I will continue to work as hard as I can to make it happen even if I don’t reach my goal, but I really don’t want to end up being homeless after all of this.
Please help as much as you can. My son is so important to me and I can’t even imagine losing him.
My heart is heavy to even say this – I am homeless. I am writing this from inside a local McDonalds because it is freezing outside. My social worker is working on finding me a motel to stay in, but I am scared to be out here with nowhere to call home. The shelters are full tonight, and most of those are not even wheelchair accessible.
My heart is breaking – I have lost everything I once had. I was enrolled in university, living in student residence, and making friends. It all went south on November 14th, 2017 when I tried to end my own life. I was admitted to the psychiatric ward until December 4th, 2017. When I came home, the university said they were concerned for my safety and they could not offer me the resources I needed to be well mentally. I was asked to leave my only wheelchair accessible home.
Tomorrow I am going into the school to appeal their decision to evict me from student residence. No one should be treated badly simply because they have mental health struggles. I am going to therapy and taking all the necessary steps to ensure I do not end up back in the hospital.
Tonight I will stay in a motel with the money fundraised and see where it goes from here. My mother is still working on making the necessary renovations to our family home but we need your help. Please reblog this and share it everywhere.
If you can, please click here to make a monetary donation to my GoFundMe.
*sighs heavily* So okay here’s the thing. It actually does matter that Clint wasn’t deaf. It really really really really matters. And you know why it really matters? Because for YEARS I have been super self-conscious about being Hard of Hearing, to the point that I didn’t tell people. I’d just pretend to know what people were saying even if I didn’t (believe me, I didn’t). If I had, at an earlier age, seen a deaf superhero asking his colleagues to speak up, to face him so he could read their lips, wearing hearing aids– god I would’ve been so much less embarrassed about doing those things too.
I think about the kids I see at my work in the grocery store and at Lush, kids with hearing aids, whose hands fumble over signs, and I feel this pang in my chest for them. Not because they’re “pitiful”, but because there are people who don’t realize what kind of community they’re going to grow up in. People who don’t care about the way the world works for them, for us. They don’t know they could be superheroes. Because people like Joss Whedon take that away from them without blinking.
Representation really matters. Especially when it comes to some sort of disability or shift in the perspective of what is “normal”. The same way you wouldn’t write a fic in which Matt Murdock wasn’t blind, you shouldn’t film a movie in which Clint Barton isn’t deaf. Because that is part of who he is. And by writing a script in which his deafness isn’t recognized sends a very clear message to the deaf/hoh community, which is: “people like you could never be superheroes” and even worse, “representing your community is not worth the effort”.
Secondly, I need you to read this very clearly: I will never ever write a fic in which Clint Barton is hearing, or a fic in which he does not utilize ASL. If that “bothers” my audience, or they feel disrespected by this fact, they are very kindly directed to this website and may follow the directions as follows.
knitting in the dark 