#but goddamn. disabled people are truly invisible to these people

[formulaqueer]

went to a large event at a concert venue tonight with my mother--visibly disabled with a mobility aid--which required golf cart to get between the car and the venue. and twice, TWICE, as we were waiting for the golf cart, when one finally drove up a family of able-bodied people just hopped on and decided it was theirs. as if there was not a whole group of disabled people waiting for their transportation right in front of them. the venue staff had to run after the golf cart as it left and yell at them to get off. twice. after it took an hour for the golf cart to even get there. wow

[havent-thought-of-a-name-lmao]

man i've heard "but what about the fakers" with regards to people "stealing resources" from disabled people but never "what about the people who are wrong". except i typed this out and realized Yes I Have but about mental illness and neurodivergence as opposed to physical illness. but this is about the latter.

i would genuinely, truly have someone be able to take the steps to figure out the root cause of a problem and be wrong about what it was so they can take next steps to figure out what IS going on than have even a single disabled person be denied resources because "what if they're Not Disabled".

i spent YEARS not being able to get resources because But What If Not Disabled because i have an invisible illness. turns out, not only am i disabled, but it shows up on my blood work. blood work that no one did for fucking years because it could be this that or the other as opposed to antibodies attacking my goddamn body.

and honestly for me that's lucky. what about people with invisible illnesses that require ruling out, like ME/CFS? hell, even if they don't have a chronic illness, what's going on that's got them feeling like they're in pain or fatigued? why don't you want people to go through the process of figuring it out?

this post is about physical disability primarily and i would prefer for it to stay on that topic but ftr, again, i see this a lot in mental illness and neurodivergent spaces bc i've been in them longer. same logic applies.

let people be wrong so they can figure out the underlying issue. everyone has that right.

[yelloskello]

i fucking hate the stag/doe - butch/femme thing. I hate it. I hate that we are explicitly told that we’re not allowed to use these terms, and for what? I went a’googling to see what lesbians were actually saying in regards to why they’re lesbian-exclusive, read the arguments straight from the horse’s mouth, and it amounts to this:

TERFs (and no, I do not mean lesbians = terfs, I mean it is TERFS who came up with this) straight-up believe that bi women and trans women just weren’t there in our history. They say that butch and femme carry the weight of a painful history and fighting for our rights in the words, and that when anybody but lesbians use the terms, they’re putting it on like a fancy dress and calling it an aesthetic.

As if bi women and trans women just straight-up weren’t there for that history, too.

They argue that ‘nobody fights men to use phrases like bear/otter/twink!’ and quite frankly, i’m pretty fuckin’ sure bisexual men and/or trans men can happily use those terms, too, so shitty argument there pal. 

So they kick us out of a history that we were actively a part of, and younger lesbians who want to do the right thing but don’t know the history of this argument latch onto it, and bisexual people... Within the last year... Create the terms stag/doe, since it’s evidently morally wrong to use terms that are part of our own history, but since we can experience the same kind of dynamics in our relationships, we need SOMETHING to describe them. And what do people say?

‘wtf this is so dumb/fucked up, this is just watered/down butch and femme, they’re literally the same thing, why would you make up new words to mean the same thing?’

because we experience the same goddamn thing, just because we like multiple genders doesn’t mean we always hop on “opposite” genders, we can have relationships with similar-gendered/nonbinary people, even outside of a relationship we are still part of the community, we still experience Gay Attraction, and it can still be part of our identity because we’re still LGBT+, but we’re not allowed to use those terms! We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

I hate the wave of separatism that we’ve gone through. I hate the idea that everything has to have shit exclusively for them, even if it has a history of being used by multiple sexualities. I hate that people think No Experiences Overlap Ever, when in truth, marginalized people (and I don’t mean just queer/LGBT+ people - I mean PoC, disabled folks, etc) have SO much more in common than anyone might ever think. Yes, some groups do have things that exclusively happen to them, as a white person i’m NEVER going to fully understand the struggle that brown and black people go through, there’s SO much i’m still ignorant to concerning that, i’ll never pretend all our experiences are exactly the same, but there are also at least some issues that I can strongly empathize with because I hear what they go through and can see similarities in the way i’m treated as an AFAB person or as a bi person or as a nonbinary person. A microaggression because you’re gay and a microaggression because you’re brown are both microaggressions, even if they’re presented in different ways, over different issues. Multiple groups are denied housing and jobs for their identities, even if it’s done quietly behind closed doors so the law doesn’t crack down on peoples’ bigotry. As a trans person I can feel the personal pain of my people being accosted in bathrooms by bigots, and I can look at how black people are assumed to be criminals by virtue of simply walking around in a store, and even though the issues are very different, I can see the similarities - we both are mistrusted by “””normal””” society based on hideous stereotypes - and I can feel for them, even if I don’t experience being assumed to be a criminal personally. I listen to them and I believe them not just because they’re fucking people who deserved to be listened to and believed, but because I have seen how general society treats people like me, so why should it be so hard to believe they could be treated like shit, too?

People think that our struggles are so fucking exclusive that they lose all empathy for other groups, thinking that the only people who have ever suffered are themselves. It’s always baffled me that LGBT+ people can be so fucking ignorant and racist and hateful when you think they’d be able to tap into their own hurt and understand that other people are being treated in similar ways because they’re ‘different’, too. But then again, LGBT+ people can barely understand how other subsets of LGBT+ people have struggled, so I guess it shouldn’t be that surprising. I think of how ace people can write a laundry list of things they personally experience, and other subsets will scoff and say ‘yeah as if we don’t go through that too’, completely fucking ignoring what that overlap means. Thinking that since they go through that, anybody else who reports that they might, too, are just Faking, or trying to steal the spotlight. How can people so completely lack empathy? Why are we not there for each other? Why do we not care about anybody else? Why can’t we recognize the same fucking pain we’re all going through, even if that same pain comes in different flavors, and try to be there for each other because nobody should have to go through what we’re going through?

Like, it’s a complicated issue. Like I said, yeah, groups do have stuff that effects them exclusively, and it can be frustrating to express unhappiness with something exclusive to your group and have people who clearly aren’t actually understanding what you’re going through say they can relate. But denying that there are any similarities at all just drives us farther apart when right now marginalized people desperately need the support of one-another. 

(I was gonna give bi people’s Double Discrimination as an example of that exclusivity, unwanted by communities on either side of the fence, since obviously lesbians and gays don’t experience that... But y’know who probably can empathize? Mixed race folks. Or folks with invisible disabilities. Or ANYONE who’s caught between both communities, not x enough for one and not y enough for the other.)

Speaking only of communities that I am personally in: in LGBT+ circles, separatism breaks up the subsets and causes infighting. In circles concerning disability and mental/physical illness, it isolates its members, denies them support, makes them feel like nobody truly understands, even people dealing with the exact same disability or illness, because symptoms can be so widespread and varied. Hell, even when dealing with our oppressors, separatism fails to actually try and change the views of the people oppressing us: i’d much rather have narratives where men are gentle, kind, feminine, loving, supporting, open to their emotions, and respectful permeating our culture, teaching young boys how to be as they grow, than narratives where men are just evil.

There’s a lot of gray area. There are people who have been so hurt by oppression that I do not blame them one bit for prescribing to a separatist narrative. But I mean in a general sense... I don’t want separatism to be pervasive. I don’t want it to be the mindset people automatically turn to regardless of what they’ve gone through. I want sympathy and support for the people who have been hurt, and I want the groups that have been doing the hurting to change. I want people to recognize the similarities between each other and be unafraid of empathizing and sharing.

The butch/femme and doe/stag thing is a result of separatism, and I can see where they get the idea for it - basically pulling the ideas of appropriation from communities of PoC telling white people not to appropriate their stuff - but they’re lashing out at the wrong people. When a white person appropriates locs, they’re seen by the public eye as being carefree, trendy, and cool, while black folks are still punished for wearing the same look that occurs naturally for them. When a white person puts on a war bonnet, they’re seen as being high-fashion and ‘exotic~~~’, while literally desecrating a sacred part of a culture they don’t belong to in any way, shape, or form. When a bi person calls themselves butch, they’re a part of the community that shares the exact same history, their histories are literally interwoven, and experiences extremely similar dynamics, at the very least, as lesbians. These are two very different things. Tell cis/straight people not to appropriate the terms, but remember, other LGBT+/queer people aren’t fucking cis/straight.

anyways this got way longer than I was expecting but shit, I got like 60 followers, who gives a damn what I say, right? peace.

[jednozycie]

I'M DONE MY DUDES!!!! BUT ALSO NEW BEGINNINGS!!!

Long rant ahead about personal things (keeping it kind of vague but then not vague, you'll see what that means). This is also an update as to where the fuck I've been since I've been super absent on the wonder that is the internet and social media; aka I suck at keeping contact in general. Like so bad. Astronomically bad. This is also an experience to type on mobile but I'm doing it anyway!!!! Also I go into ableism. SO MUCH. MOSTLY MY OWN WITH MYSELF. BUT STILL.

ALSO LONG.

WELL. A few months back (or two??) I had a very bad(TM) episode involving mental health things, which I am keeping vague but those that know, know and if not there's always private messages I guess. But that started spiraling last year, BUT THAT'S GETTING SORTED SO NO WORRIES (I feel caps really gets the point across so sorry in advance)!!!

Now we get to the other things that therapy has dug up. Internalized ableism. Which is as prevalent as externalized ableism, honestly. It also applies to phsyical disabilites as much a mental or invisible disabilites but to avoid writing a goddamned 100 page post, I'm going to stick with the more physical or external because that's what I've been coming to terms with these last few weeks; aka that's what has been more salient so here we go!!! (This is honestly the first time I'm putting any of this into actual words and sentences, so if it's seems kind of like paragraphs are random. Yeah.)

I'm also more of an advocate for the affirmation model of disability so if that's not your jam, maybe you're better off not reading this? Or you can see the point I'm trying to make; there is a point to this, not just rambling!

The condensed version of the affirmation model is essentially not viewing diabaility as this TRAGIC, TERRIBLE CIRCUMSTANCE. It's understanding and being able to understand it as an identity or as a part of an identity; aka I really fucking hate the medical model and it can go suck a fuck because most of it is archaic and it deserves to be trampled. BUT AGAIN, THAT'S A DIFFERENT POST IN ITSELF SO I DIGRESS.

I'm done with dealing with shit as a """medical condition""" and """bad luck""" because no, it really isn't and it doesn't have to be just because the rest of the able-bodied world is the "gold standard" (FUCK THE GOLD STANDARD ALSO, BUT AGAIN I DIGRESS). I also do want acknowledge that I am white and college educated so I definitely have a lot of fucking privlege in other areas of my life.

So let's go back in time to where my crippling internalized ableism started. Ah yes, back in February on a shitty, stormy Sunday in 1994. But how could it start when I was just born? Well, because of ~ableist culture~ that was already there the day I arrived. I don't even know if I want to state that I ""appreciate"" that they tried to surgically fix my hand, although it did give me the use of my thumb so I'm conflicted. Still. Super medical model.

Queue doctors trying to convince my parents for the next five years of my life and random years in between during my childhood that they could "fix" my hand via hand transplant or by removing my fingers and transplanting my toes and making them more "finger-like" so they could become fingers on my hand. I'm still creeped out about that to this day, but I'm not going to judge anyone who may have had a similar procedure because I do still understand and in the end, you do you.

This essentially lead my parents into the mode of "you need to compensate for that disability so no one can judge you on it". Like what the actual fuck. Who puts that idea into their child's head???? ~Ableist culture~

And oh man, I still got fucking bullied as a kid. Like I'm talking about being called terrible things I didn't even understand at 5, and even getting spit on!!! The best part is that happened at a PRIVATE, CATHOLIC instituition. : )

That did get better because I involved the principal to the degree of having the guys almost expelled (and they were like 11-13 when they did that kind of shit and I was 5-6 so. HM. NICE LADS. TRULY).

This led to a life long habit of hiding my hand and freaking the fuck out anytime there were activites that involved holding hands or having hands visible.

But for every fuckwad that made me feel like an abomination there were good people that quite literally did not give a single fuck and thought it looked cool. So kids are alright sometimes. It's actually children who still are super accepting of it and just roll with it even if they don't understand. Teenagers... on the otherhand. Well, I love getting candid (but so fucking obvious) shots of my hand followed by laughter. Alright.

Even worse is the pity. Like bruh, I did not ask for your pity. Nor do I need to hear about it as "it happened for a reason; all in god's plan". Bruh. BRUH. NO.

"Wow you're dealing so well with it" "Wow you really don't let it affect you" "it could have been much worse you know, (insert story about another person with a disbaility that they know)"

Gotta say, more than my actual hand, it's those comments now that make me go fucking berserk. Those comments do come from our ableist society, but also from misunderstanding, or a society that is hyper-focused on appearance. Or all of that simulateneously.

Even my own relatives get angry with me when I try to discuss my hand or anything related to ableism because it's something I should be ashamed of!!!! NO. no. N. O. NO!!!!!!!!!!!! As if we're supposed to just sit back, hide it from plain sight and "manage" it.

It's only after therapy that I've realized how much I've internalized everything and how it does connect to other problems with myself and the self-hate I used to struggle with and I am going to get over it. Self compassion goes a long way. And if that doesn't work I will live out of spite for all the shit that I've gotten over the years.

This is the hand I was born with; the hand I will have for the rest of my life; the hand that has chronic pain; the hand that has made some tasks difficult; BUT IT'S MY HAND!

TLDR; I don't ""suffer"" with ABS (Amniotic Band Syndrome), it's just another part of who I am and I'm done with trying to obscure it. I may only have a full thumb on my left hand but I have enough of my middle finger to throw it up when the situation calls for it. I've found peace with that. From now on I will absolutely wave my hand around like it's the shit. Because I'm done trying to fucking conform. DONE.

This is also a big FUCK YOU to a French doctor that tried to convince me that "beauty is pain" and that I should have gotten a cosmetic hand prosthetic. Like if wanting cosmetic prostheses (and cosmetic surgeries) comes from a place within the individual, aka outside of pressure to conform or pressure from peers and this fucking pervasive culture then I'm all for it. But personally, none of it was ever about my needs. I'm now old enough to discern that I never needed it and I never will.