#SOCIAL ableism.

[bonefall]

wait, why can’t a decent amount of the members in proto-thunderclan not hunt?

A lot of them have serious physical disabilities! It's enough that it poses a logistical problem, which they are committed to overcoming together.

Thunder Storm's three legs makes him slower than his companions. He's ferociously powerful, but like a male lion, he has to rely on his "lionesses" to slow a large animal.

Bright Storm has asthma from her heroics trying to save SkyClan cats from a fire. She's taking that from Gray Wing, who is famously the first major death now. Like her son, she has a difficult time with chasing prey.

Bumble is dyspraxic. She's a terrible hunter and fighter and struggles with self-worth because OTHERS used it to dehumanize her, and continues to, even after an entire society forms out of love of her.

Sunlit Frost has permanent nerve damage in his arm from the fire, and ends up working so hard that it makes his disability worse. A bite on the good paw from Snake becomes infected after he refuses to sit out from digging graves after the First Battle; I am planning a chunky B-plot about Sunlit coming to terms with the fact he has to retire early.

That's FOUR major members of a small group with physical disabilities that make hunting hard or impossible. They have a lot of logistical problems that I will actually be exploring solutions to.

[crippled-peeper]

telling people living off of social security to “start saving in case it collapses” is so SO out of touch that it’s almost funny. most of us have negatives in our bank accounts at the end of the month and barely eat. we barely are surviving. there is nothing to for us to “save”. what the hell are you talking about

I’m gonna need yall to actually fight back and protest DOGE and Trump or shut the fuck up. your advice sucks

[liberaljane]

Increased accessibility benefits EVERYONE!

Here are some ways YOU can advocate for increased accessibility:

Online:

Use alt-text to describe any images

Record events

Have closed captioning

Share content warnings

Avoid flashing lights or imagery

At Work:

Invest in meaningful Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Initiatives

Provide more PAID time off

Avoid ableist language (like 'lame' or 'crazy')

Provide remote working options

UNIONIZE!

For In-Person Events:

Communicate ANY walking distance (in distance, not minutes!)

Include information about public transit

Provide gender neutral bathrooms

Avoid heavy perfumes or scents

Hire sign language interpreters

Created by Liberal Jane and Sex Ed with DB

[the-barefoot-hatter]

pediatricians are hard to find.

you aren't broken and other important things a triangle needs to hear

[painfordays]

Being the only disabled person in a friend group is like. Argues against mental age for 30 minutes without achieving anything because they will die if they cant call developmentally disabled adults 6 year olds. Feel guilty for cancelling plans for disability reasons and making up a lie so you dont have to tell the truth. Get called a cripple after explaining your symptoms. Get told nothing is ever the doctors fault because they work soooo hard and you're just not persistent enough. Realize the only way theyd ever do even minor caregiving tasks for you is if they were paid. Spend an hour arguing against eugenics. Listen to someone talk about a group of disabled people and with every sentence it gets more obvious they never interacted with anyone from this group personally. Get compared to peoples elderly relatives. Get -

[crazycatsiren]

Some of us don't have the spoons, the head space, the mental capacity, the physical strength, the energy to be the kinds of activists and advocates that you would wish to see us being.

You might want to make sure to check your ableism in your social justice.

[headfullof-ideas]

I was thinking about HTTYD, as one does, and had an epiphany that I wanted to share. I highly doubt that the Vikings of HTTYD, or at the very least the Archipelago, had any basis of ableism at all. Because half of them have lost limbs to dragon attacks, it’s so common place and the raids were so bad that anyone and everyone pitched in regardless of whether they had all four limbs or not. And so it never became a thing where people who were disabled were considered incapable (just want to clarify that I do NOT think that at all, in any way shape or form) because it was not only common but impractical to think that.

Like, I was thinking about it harder, and I don’t remember even an episode where someone even insinuated that Hiccup or Gobber couldn’t help or do something because they were disabled. Like, dragons basically stopped ableism by biting a bunch of people’s limbs off until it was normal to know or be someone that was missing something.

[cowsabungus]

Non disabled people will take services away from disabled people and then cry about how their gran never gets any help

Wonder who's fault that is

Have fun in the hole u dug for yourselves

[lagomoz]

sometimes I'm resentful that as a disabled person I have to be pleasant.

like, I want to be a good person. I want to be friendly, nice, polite, patient, caring, all those things. I try to be! but it's not as much of a choice as it is for abled people.

I rely on others to survive. I can't function on my own, and if the support systems I need ever get sick of me, I'm just fucked. if everyone that cares for me one day decides I'm too much, my best chance is hoping someone else is generous enough to help. and people are rarely generous to someone who isn't pleasant.

lots of people are abrasive assholes, and they live the sort of life where they can get away with it. you can afford to be a cunt if you have the assurance you can survive independently.

I like to think in a world where support was truly unconditional I would try just as hard to be kind, but I can never truly know, because that world doesn't exist. as it is, your options if you're not palatable enough to be cared for are rich, lucky, or dead

can't say yes if you can't say no

[disabled-dragoon]

Seeking help to make a disability more "manageable" does not:

Magically make the disability go away

Negate the fact that the person seeking help is disabled

Negatively "enable" people (???) (what??)

Mean that everyone who cannot/is not currently seeking some form of aid for their disability is a bad person

Give you the right to condemn the rest of the disabled community, even if you personally know someone in it

Disabled people can still be "awesome" whilst disabled.

Describing someone as disabled is not bad, insulting or negative unless you purposely use it in that manner. (which you shouldn't be anyway)

And just because you personally cannot understand how a certain action or exercise is helping someone manage their own condition does not give you the god damn right to insult them or insinuate they're "faking".

Grow up, learn some fucking respect, and find something better to do with your time other than trying to insult disabled people on the internet.

[noxexistant]

hi your local real life disabled person is here to critique wider crutchie writing and headcanons again, re: “crutchie hits people with his crutch”

crutches are not strong, especially not modern metal ones. they’re hollow tubes of thin metal with significant weak points all down them where one tube of metal slides into another, and where they bend to accommodate the forearm.

trying to use them as a weapon — applying any force along them rather than down against the tops and handles, ie using them like a bat to hit someone or something — will risk snapping them or bending the thin metal. they’re unwieldy too, they’re heavy and awkward, and pretty much no hit with them is going to cause any genuine damage, especially not broken bones. more likely: the hit will be ineffective, and whoever you’re up against will then have easy access to grab the end of your crutch and wrench it off of you, and then you’re fucked if you, y’know, need it to walk. this also applies if you break it.

crutches are also expensive. they’re about $30 at the absolute cheapest for ones that hurt the most and can cause the most damage, and can go up to $100+ for the more comfortable models intended for daily lifetime use. even the old fashioned wooden crutch that crutchie uses in canon would be very much breakable — it’s a stick of wood — and would be pretty much priceless to him without any resources to get another.

crutchie would almost definitely not use his crutch as a genuine weapon. practically no disabled character would (see also: canes, unless specifically designed for that and reinforced). your mobility aids are an extension of yourself, and you’re not going to put them in any sort of danger when you need them, and that holds even more weight when you know you can’t afford to replace them.

[enbycrip]

Big thing I’ve got from my study of disability in the early modern period in Britain, including dissertation research?

Poor relief that gives money out to the poorest people is probably the most benefit per amount of money, but it’s *massively*, *massively* resented by wealthier people. Not only because it’s redistribution of wealth, given it was usually raised by local taxation, but because it takes both control and opportunities to benefit from them.

The big thing money gives is options, choice, and freedom. Wealthier people value having that and massively resent poorer people having it. They much prefer giving charity to paying their taxes because a) giving charity lets them keep control of the money, even at a remove, and b) they usually find a way to benefit more directly from it.

This is basically why we have the current social security systems we have, where so much more is spent on control and policing of the behaviour of poor and disabled people than actually helping. Universal benefits were popular when the systems were set up for a variety of reasons, including reducing resentment by wealthier people, but largely because means-testing is *more expensive* and *less efficient*than universal benefits.

Wealthier people screaming for more means-testing are doing so because they prefer to have more money spent on tormenting people who are struggling with the conditions that those wealthier people create and maintain because it benefits them than that money actually reaching them.

That’s not how they parse it in their heads, I’m sure, but it *is* the reality of the situation.

[crippled-peeper]

The thing about disability being a social construct is largely true, because when you have a physical issue but receive accommodations + care such that they can do everything able-bodied people can, you're no longer considered disabled. Case in point: glasses. If glasses fix near-blindness, you're not considered disabled, even though you're basically blind without them.

In a hypothetical world where mech suits existed, were cheap and comfortable and accessible and worked well, and were normalised such that people didn't even notice, even quadreplegics wouldn't be considered disabled (although of course that's distant science fiction).

That's what "disability is a social construct" means. In the same way gender being a social construct doesn't mean boobs aren't real, or money being a social construct doesn't mean physical cash doesn't exist.

I don’t agree with this analysis at all.

What hypothetical disabled people might be able to do in the future holds no meaning in the current reality I occupy

You say that quadriplegics will be “considered” abled with exoskeletons - but then you fail to elaborate on the relationship between these devices, their users, and the people who supply them

My father has had type 1 diabetes for 30 years. 30 years is an entire lifetime for some people. The cost of his insulin increased literally that ENTIRE TIME until last year when the Biden admin put caps on insulin prices

Furthermore, his insulin pump retails for 4,600$, and if it breaks, he is still diabetic at the end of the day and will slowly and terribly die without it.

I noticed a lot of people on here have lots of ideas and hypotheticals about how disabled people should and could navigate the world, but their arguments fall flat and topple so easily because you’re not connecting these ideas to anyone’s intrinsic reality

This is why so many physically disabled people are fatigued by the entire “disability is a social construct” conversation. It’s overwhelmingly used by uneducated 17 year olds to minimize and downplay and discredit the real-life, life-or-death interactions and experiences many physically disabled people live with

[alexandraisyes]

Hey chat today's socialization tip is that making fun of someone's disorder is fucking ableist. If you don't have the disorder then don't make jokes about it. Having a disorder that's "similar" doesn't give you clearance to make jokes about it.

As someone with ASPD. I wouldn't make an insulting joke about someone who has NPD, OCPD, or ScPD in regard to their disorder. That would be fucking rude. Just because I have a personality disorder it doesn't give me clearance to make fun of someone else for their personality disorders. Same thing with any other disorder.

[unveilandresist]

[love-ardour-anarchism]

Clinically relevant anxiety is the result of a brain that was forced to remain in a state of caution and fear for too long without respite.

We live in a world where we are increasingly aware of the constant danger we are exposed to.

Climate change, COVID, wars, bigotry, terrorism, poverty and human suffering, the once-more rise of far right power are all persistent sources of concern and worry. Capitalist society however tells us that these things are simply without alternative. Capitalism says there is no way but to live like this. Some people tried to be cautious about COVID for a while and then started repressing their worry and stopped being cautious. Some people repressed it all along and pretended COVID never existed. They lost themselves in conspiracy ideologies to escape that dread.

And those of us that are still cautious about COVID are gaslit constantly. The reality is this: the world is dangerous. COVID is a danger to us all. But as long as society (capitalism) claims that there is simply no way to change or remove that danger (this is false, of course) most people see no other way than to repress their own fears and gaslight those that don’t. The reason people lash out at those that are still cautious (like when we wear masks in public) is because it hinders their attempt at repressing this otherwise seemingly inescapable mental torture.

And when we as COVID cautious people struggle with the clinically relevant anxiety that constant caution breeds we are gaslit once more. We are told that our anxiety is clinically relevant and requires treatment and all too often clinical professionals claim that our anxiety stems from irrational worries and caution unnecessary. The truth is that our fears ARE rational. We live in a dangerous world and its NOT a healthy thing to repress it. The natural and healthy thing would be to CHANGE conditions to not be a source of constant worry but as long as capitalism blocks that it appears that the most prevalent coping strategies are either repression or taking constant psychological damage. And when we seek support for that sustained damage its the opposite of helpful that our reality is invalidated and we’re told our fears are clinical. The way we live is unhealthy. The way we live is not natural. The way we live is damaging. But we still need to find ways to manage our anxiety and our existential dread WITHOUT damaging ourselves but also WITHOUT closing our eyes to the horrors of this world entirely. To be aware and awake and STILL find ways to destress and live because it won’t help the world NOR us if we destroy ourselves and burn out.