#disabiltiy

[phoenixonwheels]

The two flavors of being stuck in bed:

There are things I really want to be doing but I can’t because I can’t get out of bed and that’s depressing.

I have absolutely no desire to get out of bed. Am I really sick/having a flare or am I “just” depressed?

[pink-bxxch-club]

I have scars too. But we're going to be okay

[icemutt]

Sometimes my old retired lady decides that being retired is awfully boring and insists on going out for a few hours of work. She doesn’t have the same endurance she used to so we keep it short and mostly to familiar places. 

[Image: Red Doberman service dog in a red service dog pack under a table]

[epic-sorcerer]

flexing on my past self by using the inaccessible gender neutral bathroom at my school

[illegally-blind-and-deaf]

HAPPY DISABILITY MONTH TO

- People with invisible physical difficulties that they're really good at masking

- People with disabilities that are often stereotyped as coming from an unhealthy lifestyle (even if yours did not come from one)

- People who feel isolated in their disability's community because they handle their disabilities differently

- People who are deaf and don't sign

- People who are deaf and do sign

- People who have a degenerative disability that isn't impacting them too much but will impact them greatly in the future

- People with rare disorders and disabilities that currently have no cure or formal medication

- People who don't have access to medication and aids; may you have easy access to them one day

- People who do things that contradict their disability; deaf people doing music, blind people writing stories and creating art, etc

- People who suddenly have a disability (from an accident or genetics or whatnot) and continue to learn how to work with it

- People who were born with their conditions and are proud of who they are and have learnt to accept all the good and bad things abour life

- the parents who love and care for their disabled children

- the children who help their disabled parents if they need

- disabled siblings who support other disabled siblings

- friends who support disabled friends

- the teachers who accomodatebfor their disabled students

-everyone with some form of disability. You're not invisible :)

[poserville]

You dont have to learn how to tie your shoes 'the right way' btw. If the bunny ear method works, it is the right way. For you. There is no reason to force yourself to learn a method that's considered more 'mature' simply because others think it's better.

[somerandomg33k]

"How are you today, Jonathan?"

Well, I have one friend that has negative money in her bank account and no food and is hungry. And I don't have any money to give until next Friday. And I have another friend that has a negative bank account, just got a letter from debt collectors, and has no income what so ever. Let alone no money for food and such. And they were denied for SSI and SSDI. And another friend that is disabled and was denied SSI and always needs money too. And then two more friends that on again off again have been passing the hat around for the last four years since I know them. And are regularly asking for money for groceries every two weeks. So yes, I do some fatalism for the current political system. Because while yes, I hope Biden does win in November. But it is only because of the only other option is a Fascist. And when the other option is a fascist, the none fascist candidate is preferable to run this Fascist country of the USA.

[theonewhoquotesallthings]

It's June. It's halfway through 2024

Usually when I look back at how time has passed I remark on how silly it feels that it’s already whatever time or day or month it is but this time it’s different. A number of life altering events have and have been happening in the last 13 months. Now the ’13 months’ is a specific number because that is the last time The government decided that Mum and I by-proxy were worthy of the help we need…

[aacalienz]

Disabled people deserve support workers that let us make our own decisions about how and when we do things. It’s our life, not theirs. We deserve choice, including the ability to do anything other adults do. We deserve the choice to make mistakes.

[satellites-halo]

Hey can we talk about how typing quirks are genuinely inaccessible and hurt people with screen readers without being called ableist?? It isn't ableism to want to be able to read what people say and to ask them to provide a plain text alternative to their typing. It's actually kind of ridiculous that I have to ask for plain text when people [heavy typing quirk] "7yp3 l1k3 th1z" [PT: type like this. End PT], especially when it's in disability advocacy spaces (like cripplepunk)

[maidfrin]

how parents feel after telling their undiagnosed disabled/chronically ill child "you shouldn't be having [symptom] at your age" and doing nothing to fix or look into the problem

[biestcallisto]

I ended a friendship over this. Was it a friendship? We hadn't seen each other in years and then she moved back in town. So we met by chance and decided to use our bikes to go to the cinema and we talked. The whole ride. At the ride home the conversation turned towards politics. She had a buddy who had the genes for "locked in" Syndrome. His mother already suffered from the sickness, his sister had it and he may also get it.

Her buddy was mad that his mother had kids. She wasn't the first one in the family. He swore that he would not ever have kids because he doesn't want to see his kids suffer from this, or them see their father suffer from this. Fair. That was his choice.

Now what was my *friend*'s (I use the term loosely) take away from this?

Eugenics. Her opinion was that people with genetic diseases should not be allowed to have kids. Should forcibly be castrated. I took offense to this.

See, I was raised on AO3, where it was made clear, once you draw a line into the sand you will always have to re-negotiate where it is. Let's say we do force people w the genes for Locked-In Syndrome to not become parents. (which I already disagree with) What's next? Down Syndrome? (Which ALREADY is sadly done and it is wrong!) People with the wrong skin colour? (You know it IS being done!)

No. This is Nazi shit. This is eugenics.

YOU can decide to not want kids because of a genetic disease. **I** want all people w a genetic disease to have perfect access to health care. But forcing someone to abstain from parenthood because of something in their genes?

This girl was like "You are not allowing for the grey! The world isn't black and white" And yea, there is a lot of nuance in the world. A lot between black and white. But Eugenics is firmly on the evil side. There is no nuance when you discuss medically removing someones ability to have kids against their will.

If you don't want kids with genetic diseases, improve healthcare for all.

Needless to say, I deleted her number out of my phone and she never called me either.

The problem is not this one genetic disease. I can understand her buddy being mad and deciding against kids. It's a valid choice.

If you go down this road, deciding on kids for OTHER people? You draw a line into the sand. This line WILL be re-negotiated all the time. People will decide that this group of people should also be kid-banned, people you never intended to be included in the kid ban.

So just do NOT draw a line in the sand.

[animerunner]

Okay not done entirely

But continuing on the whole healthy vs unhealthy behaviors tangent. And why the show uses them to help kids learn what is okay with disabled people

Like as much as the Raeda breakup sucked as a fan of them. It was fundamentally important in terms of lessons.

Because it showed that hiding this kind of thing from your partner even if it’s hard to talk about it (I would know. Not because I’ve had a partner. It’s just difficult in gen to open up about something you barely know. Though I’m getting better) isn’t okay. And your partner shouldn’t just have to put up with the behavior because your disabled.

It’s a fundamentally important moment in the show. Because not only do we get to see how Edas changed over the years.

But because it drives two very important lessons home around disability

[neurodivergent-media]

“It was brilliant to see so many talented actors with learning disabilities taking centre stage...

“It was important to see people with a learning disability living full lives because it showed what we can achieve. It was also good to see that they were not shy to talk about adult themes like relationships and independent living.”

[ira-407]

PDA Has No Place Within Neurodiversity

Something you’re likely to come across in online autistic self-advocacy spaces is PDA-otherwise known as pathological demand avoidance, or to some, pervasive demand for autonomy. This is not a new idea-in fact, it has been present in the field of psychology since at least the 1980s, before the neurodiversity movement began in earnest. You can see discussion of PDA in autistic spaces from the late 90s-including skepticism of the idea. It is not an official diagnosis listed in the DSM or the ICD. Some people want it to be. It is considered by some to be part of the autism diagnosis, much like PDD-NOS and Asperger’s, which used to be separate diagnoses in the DSM-IV. I’m unsure whether these advocates wish for PDA to be like that or for it to appear under autism. I think either way, it is not a good idea. There are several reasons why I am against the idea of PDA. I think the condition itself is too broad and more importantly, I am afraid of the implications behind it.

The way I see PDA described leaves open a lot of room for interpretation. This could lead to an overdiagnosis (or false diagnosis altogether), though that’s not so much of a concern of mine as it is that there are many reasons why someone may refuse demands or ignore obligations. It could be as simple as executive dysfunction-which I believe is diagnostic criteria for autism and ADHD. People describe PDA as extreme anxiety someone feels when given a task to complete. Again, there are several possible explanations for this behavior-simply chalking it up to “PDA” doesn’t really tell you much. Ok, someone tends to avoid demands-perhaps to a disabling degree-but I feel like the reason for that goes much deeper than just calling it PDA. A lot of things I do probably qualify as PDA to those who believe in it. I have a harder time than most staying on task or starting something I have to do. Also, no, framing it as a “pervasive demand for autonomy” does not change anything. If I don’t want to do something I’m asked to do, it’s definitely not because I only ever do things I want to do. It can sometimes mean that, but it still hardly qualifies as “PDA”. So this leads me to my next point, the implications of PDA.

There are two main concerns I have with the implications behind a PDA diagnosis or label. Not only do I think it’s not specific enough, I am worried about how people use it as an excuse for genuinely shitty behavior. While this does happen with a number of disabilities, including autism, the broadness of PDA, as I previously described, only accentuates this. I’ve already seen it happen. I’ve seen somebody accuse people for their “PDA acting up” simply for not addressing an issue to their satisfaction. That leads me to the second issue-how staff could (and likely already do) use it against people in their care. Pathologization already leads to this in institutional settings. If, hypothetically, someone with a diagnosis of PDA doesn’t stick to their behavior plan, or generally just doesn’t follow directions, the staff could just shrug it off as PDA instead of thinking more critically about the actual cause of their behavior. Alternatively, they could use that against them. This is far from an unrealistic expectation. This already happens with other disabilities. This would just make it worse. Calling it a “pervasive demand for autonomy” would yield the same result. This is also the issue with Cluster B Personality Disorders, which are actual diagnoses. The psychiatric system exists to pathologize and strip people of their self-determination. This isn’t to say the entire DSM is invalid-just that there's a severe power imbalance at play here.

There are traits that are distinctively neurodivergent. Even then, just chalking behaviors up to diagnosis is unhelpful. However, there’s enough evidence that a neurodivergent brain works differently from a neurotypical brain to justify calling it autism, ADHD, tourettes, etc. PDA is not that. It reeks of Asperger’s and PDD-NOS. I thought we were done using Asperger’s? Apparently the only reason why many people don’t like Asperger’s is simply because of Hans Asperger possibly being a nazi and not for the actual issue with it-which was the false sense of hierarchy and separatism that came with it. Supporting the use of PDA is proof of that.

[horce-divorce]

my parents (esp mom) have been getting markedly more conservative as they get older. I think I might start treating that how they treat my disabilities. Next time my mom says some thinly veiled shit im just gonna say, "If I ever start talking like that/sounding like Ayn Rand take me out back and shoot me LOL 🤪"