#ignored disability

[bfpnola]

Hidden disabilities or invisible disabilities is a term to refer to disabilities that are not visible or obvious. Some common hidden disabilities are Autism, ADHD and dyslexia, as well as physical disabilities like IBS, EDS, RA, POTS or Celiacs.

Here’s the thing.

I feel like “hidden disabilities” puts the onus on the disabled individual as if we are hiding our disabilities. I feel like the term “hidden disabilities” generalises certain disabilities.

There are plenty of people who are visibly Autistic or visibly ADHD — there’s nothing hidden about us and for those who are perhaps less visible, it’s because they’ve been taught to mask for safety and survival.

As someone with EDS, IBS and Rheumatoid Arthritis, even these are considered hidden disabilities but they really aren’t hidden or invisible.

I’m sure people notice when I’m escaping to the bathroom for the tenth time or I’m trying to get my shoulder back in after it slipped out of the place again. I’m sure people notice when I say no to particular foods when I’m invited to dinner and I’m sure people notice when I have to stay home for five days after a big weekend out. I’ve no doubt people notice when I’m wincing with every step and bend. They simply don’t associate these things with disability because my disability doesn’t look a certain way.

I use mobility aids on occasion and I’ve been offered priority lanes, I’ve been offered a seat while I wait, I’ve been seen as a disabled person. While this has its disadvantages when it comes to discrimination and more, there are also some upsides like having my disability acknowledged. When I don’t use my mobility aids, I’m taken less seriously as a disabled person — people make assumptions about me and overlook my needs. I think this shows that many people have this idea of what a disability looks like so when they don’t see their idea of a disabled person, they make assumptions.

It isn’t because our disabilities are hidden or invisible.

It isn’t even because people aren’t paying attention because they are.

If people weren’t paying attention, they wouldn’t tease or bully us, they wouldn’t question us or tell us to act more normal or to get over it or to stim less or to pay attention.

If people weren’t paying attention, they wouldn’t point out our differences or point out when we’re running late or why we’re limping or why we’re leaving early or why we’re saying no.

Oh yes, people are paying attention but most of the time, they associate these things with personal failings or flaws rather than a part of our disability.

Our disabilities are not hidden or invisible.

Our disabilities are misunderstood, denied and ignored by society.

I feel like instead of using hidden disabilities to create more visibility and awareness, we should be educating society on what it means to be disabled and challenging people’s assumptions around disabilities.

Are our disabilities hidden or are people ignoring our needs and challenges?

Are our disabilities hidden or are people making assumptions based on what they observe?

Are our disabilities hidden or do people have a lack of understanding of disabilities?

Our disabilities aren’t hiding.

Our disabilities are quite visible to us.

Our disabilities are quite visible to the people around us if they just listen to us.

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[stonebutchery]

it's kind of baffling to me that entire sub-groups of queer folks endured a decade of being singled out and targeted for being asexual, aromantic, bisexual, pansexual, nonbinary, polyamorous, etc. and i have yet to see any substantial apologies from people who were directly responsible for causing genuine harm. i find it completely bizarre that there are so many people who want to sweep their past contributions to widespread lateral aggression toward specific queer groups under the rug like it didn't happen so they can wash their hands of it... there are people who are irreversibly traumatized because of this. there are people who took their lives because of it.

i'm wording the post like despite the fact that exclusionism targeting these groups (and more) continues to persist partly because it was a really frighteningly common trend to harass people just because they were ace, aro, bi, pan, nonbinary, poly, etc... and it's crazy to me that many of the people who were affected by this massive multi-pronged public online bullying campaign against the 'unacceptable types of queers' are the ones still receiving messages like "my url got put on an aphobe blocklist in 2016 because apparently a post i made making fun of asexuals got some teenage asexuals harassed and i still distrust asexuals to this day because of that" ...are you fucking kidding me?

we will never achieve any kind of unity as a queer community while we are insisting upon ignoring the hurt that lateral aggression has caused, and acting like the burden lies on the shoulders of the people who were harmed to forgive the people who harmed them and 'just move on', many of whom are not sorry for what they did! or they don't consider what they did to be wrong! how is that not deeply disturbing and troubling to more of you?

03/06/2024 edit: i’m putting a complete moratorium on this post because i am really sick and tired of having my point not only completely misconstrued and distorted entirely but also weaponized against transfems (particularly in replies i have decided to delete about how “ugh yes, exclusionism, and now transfems are bullying transmascs”) i find that really sickening and i’m demanding that it stop, and i can make it stop by turning off reblogs. so i have.

my objective in writing this post was never to request an apology from people who have been laterally-aggressive exclusionists in the past. i don’t think we’ll ever get more than a handful of apologies from those people, anyway. my point was that it was pretty terrifying to witness and experience a lot of lateral aggression that transferred from the real, in-person world to the deeply online spaces back into the real, in-person world in a really fucked up feedback loop and being a young queer person during this time and having that shape me, snd shape the experiences of my queer friends who have been traumatized by it.

however, it is absolutely unacceptable to me that the issue of transmisogyny is so blatantly overlooked by our entire community. for decades, transfems have experienced oppression and exclusion from transmisogyny-exempt women and queers. their exclusion from political queer liberation movements has caused many of the major schisms within our community we are still having arguments about to this day. if you want collective queer liberation, you must uplift transfems. there is no other option. you don’t get to write off all transfems just because one person who happened to be transfem was mean to you online or something.

i have answered and responded to way too many conspiracy-brained transmisogynist reactionaries to allow this post to keep fucking snowballing with people writing paragraphs in the tags about “transmisandry” or “transandrophobia.” please get your heads out of your asses.

this absolutely is the transmisogyny website, as always, and the place where all basic textual comprehension skills go to die, apparently.

[satellite-runner]

being physically disabled as a young adult after being an physically active child in and physically active family, who still participates in the online spaces for physically active hobbies but cannot participate physically means… i’m a living nightmare. i talk to people who share this interest with me, and my existence is their worst nightmare. they see my crutches and hear that i cannot walk far or climb a ladder and think, thank god it isn’t me. my existence is horrible and unimaginable to able bodied people.

[stressedjester]

"How come disabled people are always complaining about their disabilities even if their blog isn't about being disabled" I dunno it's almost like. It's something that effects us every day and some of us just need to vent to feel better about the mass amounts of pain we're in because not everyone can just grin and bear it

[starrienights-returns]

shout out to disabled people who can't access aids

shout out to disabled people who have to fight to be believed

shout out to disabled people who can't get diagnosed for any reason

shout out to self-diagnosed disabled people

shout out to disabled people who have experienced medical neglect

shout out to disabled people with unsupportive/abusive family

shout out to disabled people who are forced to push themselves beyond their limits

i love you

[astrolavas]

thinking about the... potential clawthorne woodcarving mentorship.

+ bonus cuz also thinking abt how if hunter ever met dell's palisman and got reminded of flapjack, he'd probably feel bad abt making that association cuz he knows what it's like to be seen only as someone's different version (even though the bird wouldn't mind much so lol)

[fallenstarcat]

depression is kicking my ass here’s photos from the first time i wore a suit (over a month ago)

[love-me-love-my-weirdness]

“See the person not the disability”

NO! SEE MY DISABILITY! IT IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF MY LIFE THAT SHOULD BE ACKNOWLEDGED! OF ALL THE ABLEIST CRAP THIS IS THE WORST ONE!

[joltrify]

can i see some disability aids for aliens in ben 10

cause i liked the Xlr8 one

I'll confess I think that the kineceleran's crutch was the peak of my creativity but here are a couple I came up with >.<

[prussianbluevelvet]

Still seeing feminists in 2023 claiming that ‘emasculation isn’t real’ and it’s still baffling me.

How can you look at the lived realities of Asian and Jewish men and think “yeah these men totally aren’t emasculated and viewed as lesser males or less masculine than white men and it’s totally not dehumanising or racist or anything 😌” like. Racism against MOC doesn’t always look like portraying them as aggressive or dangerous, it can also look like viewing certain types of minority men as ‘failed’ men and ‘lacking real manhood’ as a dehumanising tactic. Myths about Jewish men previously portrayed them as having periods and being ‘basically women’. Asian men are fetishised and stripped of their manhood frequently by K-pop stans and people online who don’t realise that masculinity and gender roles look slightly different in non-western cultures.

Also… trans men. Who are FORCEFULLY emasculated and feminised against their will, by genocidal bigoted conservatives, and sometimes even somewhat by other queer people telling them to ‘tone down’ their non-toxic masculinity to avoid making others uncomfortable, making themselves dysphoric and detached from their gender identities to remain palatable.

What about disabled men? Are they not also viewed as failing to achieve proper manhood? Are they not also emasculated and viewed as ‘un-male’ or ‘less male’?

Minority men absolutely can and do experience emasculation. And it’s not ‘toxic’ or misogynistic to bring it up. Feminists who care about POC in particular should not be pretending otherwise.

[imtrying-ok]

I do not want to hear your opinions on moral OCD if you don't have moral OCD. At all. "People are definitely just using it as an excuse to not know Important world events".

I used to watch the news every day and cry myself to sleep at night, at 12, because I was a horrible, unimaginably cruel person for not helping every stray animal, every house fire, every shooting, every flood. I was an unimaginably cruel person for not giving my last dollar I needed to eat to the man panhandling outside, I would eat my instant ramen crying because I was selfish for eating what could've been someone else's food.

Yes, being able to look at events without spiraling is important. But when it starts to happen, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to stop, without professional support, which many people just don't fucking have! I didn't have a diagnosis until last month, despite this going on for most of my life! Someone filtering a tag on Tumblr and avoiding the news isn't a grand selfish act when it will only make you unable to do anything but spiral.

How are you supposed to help someone if all you can do is have a panic attack at the thought, because others also need the help, and there're probably better ways to help, and maybe you're not helping, maybe this will lead to something horrible... This, on and on and on, for days!

[spooksicl-e]

new year, old john watson doodles^^

[enbycrip]

The Cass Report demonstrates a truly ridiculous ignorance of literally *anything* to do with not only trans lives, but basic medical treatment protocols.

You *cannot* do double-blind tests where an intervention very clearly has distinct observable effects. Medicine also frequently does not do double-blind tests when doing so would be a) basically impossible, and b) inhumane. It’s particularly common to measure efficacy of an intervention by follow-up and statistical analysis where children and young people are concerned because experimenting on kids is so fucking unethical.

The report is treating reports following established medical protocols as though they are some kind of pseudoscience. Literally the only reasons for this are either a) an ignorance of basic medical and research procedures so profound as to show an utter unsuitability to be involved in reporting on anything to do with healthcare or b) blatant disingenuousness to find an excuse to discard the results they don’t want to acknowledge. Which also renders them deeply unsuitable to report on anything to do with healthcare.

They have used to existence of nonbinary people as an excuse to deny under-25s transition care, treating our entire identity as some sort of adolescent identity crisis. As a 40-year old nonbinary person, I can only say how *utterly* this betrays a profound ignorance of trans culture and identity and/or a commitment to patriarchal and colonial gender norms so profound they are utterly unwilling to dive into the easily-available evidence of adults all over the world with nonbibary identities today, and the anthropological and historical evidence of cultures all over the world with an understanding of gender outside the binary.

And the recommendation that transition should be forbidden to people with mental illness or neurodivergence only betrays how deeply and profoundly transphobia is entwined with disableism. There is a line which literally says “transition did not affect manifestation of symptoms of autism spectrum disorder”. As if this was remotely relevant to anything other than pathologising both transness and neurodivergence.

It of course also attempts to ignore the reality that millions of British adults are seeking neurodivergence diagnoses through the NHS and being turned down or stuck on waiting lists that can easily be *seven* years long.

I am sick with fury and fear, and trying to mute my own reactions because I have a dissertation draft due in tomorrow I *need* to work on.

[theautismarcana]

I might make a couple people mad but "Terry Fawles was an intellectually disabled man that Dahlia Hawthrone took advantage of." and "Fawles' relationship with Dahlia was horribly inappropriate and she was right to distrust him" are two statements that can coexist.

[dayz-ina-daze]

FINALLY

I HAVE THEM BOTH

[zillychu]

I feel like what the world needs aren't messages like "do your best and all your dreams will come true!" but rather "no matter your success, you can still be happy!"

we need more media telling us it's okay to fail. that most of us fail. that trying your best and not succeeding doesn't mean you effort was wasted. that you don't need to always try your best for everything. do what you can, when you can, and realize that no matter how things turn out, you can still find a way to be happy day to day. dreams come and go, it's okay to miss your catch and watch them pass by or change into something else entirely.

life is always full of opportunities to be happy!