#disabled people should be allowed to exist

[canideformed]

Yes!

People so often want to simplify things that should not be simplified. Female/male and AFAB/AMAB when intersex people exist, TMA/TME when non-binary transfems exist who feel misgendered by it and don’t identify as TMA, men/non-men and boy/girl when multigender people exist, gay/straight when bi people exist, mentally/physically disabled when many disabilities are both, etc…

Unless you’re very careful in how you apply binaries like those and allow for individual variation (humans aren’t binary and will never fit perfectly into any binary toy try to impose on us)… painting actual people as one or the other is going to inherently harm people.

This is a false equivalency.

The term for somebody who is transfem and who is oppressed for being transfem—is transfem. Intersex people are intersex. Transfem people are transfem. Perisex people are not intersex. Non-transfem people are not transfem.

TMA/TME is more closely equivalent to if I said IA/IE (intersexism applicable/intersexism exempt).

The reason TMA/TME is problematic is because it fails to acknowledge that non-transfem people can be impacted my transmisogyny—the same way perisex transfems can be impacted by intersexism. And also because it completely ignores the existence of the oppression transmascs experience, categorising them in with their oppressors. The TMA/TME binary is problematic because it collapses complex interplays of oppression into one binary system.

If you want a word for somebody who is transfem and impacted by transfem oppression in the way somebody who is transfem would be? The term is transfem.

“Transfems really are the only people who can’t have terms for their own oppression” I have a question. How do you feel about the term “transandrophobia?” How would you feel about the terms “TAA” and “TAE” (transandrophobia applicable and transandrophobia exempt)? If you’re okay with those terms, I’ll eat my words (somehwhat, it’s still weird, but at least you’re okay with it across the board). If you’re not—why? Do you think trans men don’t experience specific oppression? Is your issue just with who coined it? How do you feel about the term transemasculinisation? Anti-transmasculinity? Please consider why you think it’s okay to restrict the language transmascs use to describe their oppression.

Further, why not make it TMNA/TMNE (transmisogynoir applicable and transmisogynoir exempt)? Black trans women absolutely face the highest rates of assault (assuming black trans men aren’t being erased in the statistics, which is a big assumption). If you’re talking about systems of oppression… why not consider the most impactful axes? Why only consider the axis of man/woman? Consider what this says about the proximity of your theory to radical feminism.

[aetherial-boy]

Disabled people should be allowed to exist in public. Yes, I mean all disabled people.

That includes people with tic disorders.

That includes people who smell ‘bad’.

That includes people who can’t help being loud.

That includes people who move ‘strangely’.

That includes people with bulky mobility aids.

That includes people who drool.

That includes people who struggle with incontinence.

We all should get to exist, however that looks, and go out in public, use public transport, do activities outside our homes. And we should be allowed to do those things without being glared at or having ableist things said to us.

[lucabyte]

🐮

[hms-no-fun]

i'll barge in on this post as someone whose youtube career was at least partially made by being on that stream. i'd been watching for a couple days i think when May Leitz DM'd me to see if i wanted to be on. they needed lots of people to fill in at all hours of the day, and there was no plan for how to do that ahead of time because 24 hour streams were still a relatively new thing whose rules were being made in real time. so i got brought into the "tooth gang," a term whose origin i don't remember beyond us chanting "tooth gang rise up." this crowd of usually transfem commentators was a who's-who of 2019-era video essayists, most of whom are still in obscurity but got a huge boost at the time. it was, without doubt, a gargantuan clusterfuck, owing in part to the fact that there was no real process for vetting guests and several people had free invite permissions who really should not have-- and yet, it was precisely these we-haven't-figured-out-livestream-marathons-yet blunders which allowed the DK64 nightmare stream to become such a subcultural flashpoint. you didn't have to be a Name Brand Breadtuber (apologies to all the name brands who resent falling under this umbrella, i know you didn't ask for it) to get on the stream, you didn't even have to be friends with one of the Name Brands-- some in the tooth gang were actively seeking out obscure/niche youtubers and other trans figures to fill in dead air, to give more people a shot at exposure, because it was SUCH a big stream and they needed lots of bodies. i have no doubt this was incredibly annoying for the organizers of the stream, and something they all learned a lot of valuable lessons from-- but for that week, in that moment, the chaos enabled a community to self-recognize on an immense platform, eventually rubbing reputational shoulders with the likes of AOC.

i think what was so exciting about it was being suddenly inundated with the amount of trans people that existed in this community. every one of us that got on the stream was celebrated in some form, because the whole thing was just this swell of FUCK YOU WE'RE ALIVE energy. what was also amazing was the voracious crowdfund support. obviously the stream itself was raising money for the mermaids fund, but every guest was invited to plug any crowdfunding stuff they had. i remember one disabled trans person was suddenly able to afford a really good electric wheelchair after months of getting no donations. i had a gofundme for laser hair removal that met its goal in just a few minutes when i was invited to share it-- and after that, may was like "raise the goal, you need the money and people are giving it." so i did and they did, and on top of laser that kept the bills paid for a couple extra months. there was just this overwhelming sense that everyone was here because they loved trans people and wanted to support us against the growing tide of anti-trans sentiment, and the generosity on display was just amazing.

and then the way the guest list cascaded near the end, as it just got more and more high profile. suddenly you had people from the original DK64 dev team, you had Geralt's voice actor, you had AOC, and definitely a bunch of others i don't remember. it felt like being caught in a hurricane, like we were a bunch of nerdy enthusiasts who got swept up in this fun little thing we liked only to watch as the storm wall expanded around us until suddenly dozens of weird socially awkward often traumatized trans people who'd never really been recognized before were just barely off-stage for an event that made national news. obviously nobody talking about AOC's involvement was talking about any of the rest of us in specific, but it didn't matter. we were part of something that really felt like it mattered at the time. it felt like a substantial victory against popular transphobia, which was perhaps an over-estimation of that stream's material importance but whatever. it meant something, and that matters.

it was on that stream i pitched my politics of the mcelroy brothers video, and everyone who heard the pitch was like "oh that's a great idea, i'd watch that video." so when the stream was over i put all my energy into making it, and it is still the highest-viewed essay on my entire channel. that stream and the environment that emerged because of it changed the trajectory of a lot of people's lives, including my own. the base of support i built at that moment in 2019 remains the bulk of my income today, six years later. i met people on that stream who are still good friends. i've got a lot of fun memories; i'll never forget jumping into a chat one night (the call channels weren't limited until waaaay late in the week) between hbomb, stef sterling and others because someone had mentioned homestuck, and me being the relentless pill i am i jumped in to be like OKAY BUT HOMESTUCK IS GOOD ACTUALLY and sterling immediately was like "and that's my cue to leave!" i think it's safe to say i did not convince anyone on that call that homestuck is good actually, and i doubt that the intervening years have done much to move the needle on that front, but i got a kick out of it nevertheless. once it was over i got a bunch of folks to record their thoughts on what the stream meant for them, and put it all together in an episode of my podcast Trans Questioning. that's a good listen if you want some more contemporary accounts of the event.

so yeah. at the time of the stream i'd been on HRT for less than a year and i'd been out only slightly longer than that. i'd freshly graduated college and released a sort of art film essay about transitioning that i was really proud of but didn't exactly know how to continue on from. the DK64 nightmare stream hit my life at a perfectly miraculous moment. the sudden increased audience for my youtube and podcast meant i didn't have to get a day job straight out of college. being annoying about homestuck at hbomb got me on my first episode of the perfectly generic podcast, a show i'd eventually go on to be a recurring host of. jump forward a year and change to June 2020, when i decided to get the absolute fuck out of Oklahoma and move to Seattle. to do that, i had to raise something like $4000 through streams and begposts. even taking into account the more generous donation atmosphere of the time, i don't think i would have been able to do that if not for the exposure i got from being part of the tooth gang. on the backend, that stream was a catastrophe whose mistakes were rightly aggressively corrected in future iterations. there will never be another stream like it, and probably shouldn't be, at least not quite so purely unmoderated. attempts were made by some to replicate that environment, but without the "big" names anchoring it they just weren't the same and came with diminishing returns. its importance was the result of, in essence, a humorously tolerated hijacking by the trans community. it was a brilliant, strange, stressful moment, one that i hope someday another generation of trans creators will have their own version of.

hi what was it like to be a part of hbomberguy's mermaid donkey kong 64 stream?

for myself, just watching the stream was a milestone in how i view my own relation to gender and im curious how did it feel like to see so many amazing voices speak of their stories and experiences in your position at the time.

I don't want to speculate but ever since you came out i was wandering if you knew at the time

my abiding memory of it was that it precipitated me and my then partner saying "I love you" to each other for the first time, which is a happy memory. Other than that I don't honestly recall much.

[swordsonnet]

when talking about topics like maturity and (self-)infantilisation, it's important to remember that there will always be disabled adults for whom the "normal" benchmarks of adulthood are not attainable or even applicable at all. if you want to be an ally to disabled people, you need to support all of us, not just the ones you find palatable - and that includes people who have "childish" interests, who get very emotional about seemingly trivial things, who aren't able to be independent in the way that adults are expected to be. that doesn't mean that we "need to grow up", or that we're reverting to a childlike state to avoid our responsibilities, or whatever op-ed writers think is wrong with gen z these days. it's just the way we are, and liking plushies or struggling with certain tasks doesn't in fact make us children! disabled adults are still adults, and still deserving of dignity, regardless of whether or not we can live up to the rigid societal norms of what it means to be an adult.

[hylasregilla]

I wish there was more space to discuss humans as a species of animal without racial politics and eugenics getting involved.

The speciation of humans; the splitting and merging of various populations; the ways environments, and cultures, and technology shaped us as a species; speculation on what humanity will look like in another thousand years; the fact that we crossbreed with other human species before they went extinct. It's all so fascinating, yet so sadly fraught.

[here-there-were-dragons]

i have to wonder what super hardcore militant vegans think should be done about obligate carnivore animals, because in all my painfully-rapidly-approaching-30-years i've literally never actually seen anyone give a clear consistent much less halfway feasible answer on that

[diapause]

I need to just stop looking at the comments of any ig post on physical disability whether it's positive or otherwise because it is 99% "As someone with Aspergers-" this isn't ABOUT YOU!

[strawberry-graveyard]

some of you are trying to recreate ugly laws and it’s genuinely so weird.

[cowsabungus]

Make pride accessible for everyone!!!!

I made a post about this last year and the year before, and thought if I did it this way it gives people and orgs something to work towards. Often people forget that disabled people aren't just wheelchair users, and even those who are, need more than just that ramp!

My first ever pride, not only as a wheelchair but my first ever EVER pride, I went in expecting to feel at home.

Obviously I wasn't, I'm disabled, so why should I?

Instead there was just a ridiculous amount of uneven flooring, a steep ramp to the disabled toilet, no sanitary towel bin in the disabled toilet (???) no allowances to be let out of the festival to fetch things from my car, no where quiet and organisers who seemed genuinely surprised to see a wheelchair user!

My next pride, three years later, I was a seller, and while they had sorted their toilet problem (still no sanitary towel bin???), the hill to get in wouod have been genuinely impossible for me to get to if I hadn't been driving to get my stall in anyway, even with someone pushing me, no quiet areas, plenty of kerbs for me to get stuck at and again, genuine surprise.

Why is it so surprising to consider disabled people might be at pride? Not only do queer disabled people exist, but parents and family of queer kids and people, vendors and even entertainers!

Making pride accessible is crucial!

ID available in Alt Text

[angelcatsiel]

ooof there goes my dad pissing me off with his opinions again

[boneless-mika]

Hating The New Topping Book is a lonely experience

[avvoltoio]

Ngl i was initially very put off by the post equating discussion of the two headed calf as ableist discourse. I agreed with op after i actually read the post, but it initially seemed like very flippant rhetoric to equate the possible euthanization of deformed livestock as ableism, especially when livestock is effectively a product.

I mean you can argue whether livestock SHOULD be considered a product or not, but that's opening a whole other can of worms.

Also I'm not disabled so who cares what I personally think on the matter, like genuinely and unironically. I have no horse in this race.

[235uranium]

"you wouldn't be disabled if the world was built to accommodate mobility differences!" and here I thought it was being in pain + having a chronic illness that can cause just about every symptom!

[nicky-olives]

Today I was peeing in a public restroom and overhead a bunch of women with babies st the basins talking about how much they wished genderless toilets existed because it would make caring for children all that much easier.

Their arguments was that caring for children is easier when you can have two parents nearby, especially when you need to manage multiple children. Not only that, another one added, but sometimes single fathers need to help little daughters go to the toilet and are faced with the choice of 1) occupying the disabled people toilet or 2) risking taking their little girls into men's restrooms and having her see someone at a urinal because that's the only way they can keep a proper eye on them. And another one complained that sometimes she needs to change her crying baby's diaper while her little girl needs to go to - and all of this would be easier if only mums and dads were allowed in the same spaces at the same time.

And all I could think about while I finished peeing and heard this was that genderless public restrooms are a female need and would probably be an unanimously held feminist demand (similarly to reproductive rights) if it wasn't for radfems who are so gassed by their hatred towards men and trans people that they refuse to move forward with what should be a very simple and reasonable demand.

[hyperlexichypatia]

As I keep shouting into the void, pathologizers love shifting discussion about material conditions into discussion about emotional states.

I rant approximately once a week about how the brain maturity myth transmuted “Young adults are too poor to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own” into “Young adults are too emotionally and neurologically immature to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own.”

I’ve also talked about the misuse of “enabling” and “trauma” and “dopamine” .

And this is a pattern – people coin terms and concepts to describe material problems, and pathologization culture shifts them to be about problems in the brain or psyche of the person experiencing them. Now we’re talking about neurochemicals, frontal lobes, and self-esteem instead of talking about wages, wealth distribution, and civil rights. Now we can say that poor, oppressed, and exploited people are suffering from a neurological/emotional defect that makes them not know what’s best for themselves, so they don’t need or deserve rights or money.

Here are some terms that have been so horribly misused by mental health culture that we’ve almost entirely forgotten that they were originally materialist critiques.

Codependency What it originally referred to: A non-addicted person being overly “helpful” to an addicted partner or relative, often out of financial desperation. For example: Making sure your alcoholic husband gets to work in the morning (even though he’s an adult who should be responsible for himself) because if he loses his job, you’ll lose your home. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/codependency-addiction-recovery.html What it’s been distorted into: Being “clingy,” being “too emotionally needy,” wanting things like affection and quality time from a partner. A way of pathologizing people, especially young women, for wanting things like love and commitment in a romantic relationship.

Compulsory Heterosexuality What it originally referred to: In the 1980 in essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493756 Adrienne Rich described compulsory heterosexuality as a set of social conditions that coerce women into heterosexual relationships and prioritize those relationships over relationships between women (both romantic and platonic). She also defines “lesbian” much more broadly than current discourse does, encompassing a wide variety of romantic and platonic relationships between women. While she does suggest that women who identify as heterosexual might be doing so out of unquestioned social norms, this is not the primary point she’s making. What it’s been distorted into: The patronizing, biphobic idea that lesbians somehow falsely believe themselves to be attracted to men. Part of the overall “Women don’t really know what they want or what’s good for them” theme of contemporary discourse.

Emotional Labor What it originally referred to: The implicit or explicit requirement that workers (especially women workers, especially workers in female-dominated “pink collar” jobs, especially tipped workers) perform emotional intimacy with customers, coworkers, and bosses above and beyond the actual job being done. Having to smile, be “friendly,” flirt, give the impression of genuine caring, politely accept harassment, etc. https://weld.la.psu.edu/what-is-emotional-labor/ What it’s been distorted into: Everything under the sun. Everything from housework (which we already had a term for), to tolerating the existence of disabled people, to just caring about friends the way friends do. The original intent of the concept was “It’s unreasonable to expect your waitress to care about your problems, because she’s not really your friend,” not “It’s unreasonable to expect your actual friends to care about your problems unless you pay them, because that’s emotional labor,” and certainly not “Disabled people shouldn’t be allowed to be visibly disabled in public, because witnessing a disabled person is emotional labor.” Anything that causes a person emotional distress, even if that emotional distress is rooted in the distress-haver’s bigotry (Many nominally progressive people who would rightfully reject the bigoted logic of “Seeing gay or interracial couples upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public” fully accept the bigoted logic of “Seeing disabled or poor people upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public”).

Battered Wife Syndrome What it originally referred to: The all-encompassing trauma and fear of escalating violence experienced by people suffering ongoing domestic abuse, sometimes resulting in the abuse victim using necessary violence in self-defense. Because domestic abuse often escalates, often to murder, this fear is entirely rational and justified. This is the reasonable, justified belief that someone who beats you, stalks you, and threatens to kill you may actually kill you.

What it’s been distorted into: Like so many of these other items, the idea that women (in this case, women who are victims of domestic violence) don’t know what’s best for themselves. I debated including this one, because “syndrome” was a wrongful framing from the beginning – a justified and rational fear of escalating violence in a situation in which escalating violence is occurring is not a “syndrome.” But the original meaning at least partially acknowledged the material conditions of escalating violence.

I’m not saying the original meanings of these terms are ones I necessarily agree with – as a cognitive liberty absolutist, I’m unsurprisingly not that enamored of either second-wave feminism or 1970s addiction discourse. And as much as I dislike what “emotional labor” has become, I accept that “Women are unfairly expected to care about other people’s feelings more than men are” is a true statement.

What I am saying is that all of these terms originally, at least partly, took material conditions into account in their usage. Subsequent usage has entirely stripped the materialist critique and fully replaced it with emotional pathologization, specifically of women. Acknowledgement that women have their choices constrained by poverty, violence, and oppression has been replaced with the idea that women don’t know what’s best for themselves and need to be coercively “helped” for their own good. Acknowledgement that working-class women experience a gender-and-class-specific form of economic exploitation has been rebranded as yet another variation of “Disabled people are burdensome for wanting to exist.”

Over and over, materialist critiques are reframed as emotional or cognitive defects of marginalized people. The next time you hear a superficially sympathetic (but actually pathologizing) argument for “Marginalized people make bad choices because…” consider stopping and asking: “Wait, who are we to assume that this person’s choices are ‘bad’? And if they are, is there something about their material conditions that constrains their options or makes the ‘bad’ choice the best available option?”