#i rly only have what are termed 'functional deformities' rather than structural. as far as i know

[illnessfaker]

re: your tags LITERALLY i don't understand it, people with acquired disabilities will complain about people with "visible disabilities" getting treated better and it's like

- i KNOW they mean congenital disabilities that often cause visible differences

- so often i wonder, did people not have disabled kids in their school. at all

- it all makes me feel like they don't see congenitally disabled people as the same thing as them

- i also don't think they even know we're on the internet

this has sat in my inbox for a while bc i have a lot of thoughts on the subject but i partially agree.

i think they forget congenital physical disabilities exist to the extent that they probably aren't thinking of congenital physical disabilities when they're thinking of visible physical disabilities. they're probably also thinking of other physically disabled people whose disabilities were usually also acquired, such as disabled seniors who need mobility aids or disabled adults who acquired their disability through significant enough injury that it is apparent to others in some way.

but i think the reason for this is because congenital physical disabilities that tend to cause visible differences are so thoroughly invisibilized in society - i mean, so are physically disabled people in general and the two groups of people i mentioned above, but being someone born with those types of congenital physical disability usually means being invisibilized and stripped from autonomy and agency from the get-go through various sociocultural systems.

they don't think about congenitally disabled people because even if you take into account the fact that society generally teaches the abled to not think about disabled people in general, disabled people who don't have anything like Down's syndrome, cerebral palsy, congenital structural differences, and certain genetic disorders (particularly in the case of accompanying intellectual disability) are taught to see those disabled people as repulsive and inhuman unless that's something they recognize and go about actively unlearning.

but overall i don't think it's about "forgetting" so much as they, whether they realize it or not, don't want to see people with congenital physical disabilities that have "obvious" tells as being anything like them on a fundamental level because that mentality isn't limited to abled/able-bodied people.

btw this isn't really a commentary on my part on who "has it worse" overall because that really depends on what specific groups of people you're talking about and that's a complicated subject. but certain groups of disabled people are able to weaponize ableism against other groups of disabled people in a way that is punching down and mistreatment of people with visible congenital physical disabilities (especially if they're also intellectually disabled) is one of those incidences.