#post edited because i mispelled dominate lmao <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[knife-enby]

#why does it matter though. in conversation here. if youre more or less disabled than someone else#however you actually define that i guess op is doing so by level of support needed#like is it claiming more authority to speak on issues by being more disabled?#whats the actual difference on tumblr dot com#obviously it affects your life. and might affect communication so be patient and dont harass people for bad grammar etc#this just reads to me like remember there arw more disabled people than you who therefore have greater social currency?#genuinely asking#am i misreading this whole thing

via @softness-and-shattering // hey, i'm not OP and can't speak to his reasons for this post, but i've found it's important to keep this in mind because of how a lot of people who are low support needs dominate conversations, target accommodations at the level they and all their low support need friends need, and then think the conversation is over, all without the input or care of people with high support needs. something i've noticed a lot is that the more specialized a conversation about care becomes, the less people participate and listen (which is probably a little inevitable, but that doesn't make it a good thing. i've been on the inside of this before and it's really lonely). it's important to be aware of the needs of people who aren't yourself, especially in a community like this one, where we're often ignored and neglected by abled people and society as a whole.

additionally, without awareness of and input from people more disabled than you - and the input of people with other disabilities than you in general - you're going to end up holding onto biases and ableist ideas that hurt other members of your community. there are plenty of disabled people out there who are cruel to other disabled people; who make jokes out of their accommodation needs. it happens really often from people with 'common' conditions, targeting those with 'obscure' ones (psychotic disorders are one i've personally seen bear the brunt of this harm, for instance).

also, keeping in mind that there are people objectively more disabled than you is actually an important reminder for keeping your head out of the trauma olympics gutter. i'm sure we all know that a lot of the internet is obsessed with 'who has it the worst?' and people have tried to respond to this by saying "nobody does, actually! we're all doing equally bad!" when this isn't an accurate perception of reality. it's an unhelpful one for every single person who is doing worse than the wider community that has staked their philosophical faith in "we're all doing equally bad" (again, usually in this instance disabled people with low support needs). the high support people continue to be alienated, to be unsupported, to be the "freaks" of the population, and everyone who isn't them gets to walk away with the assurance they've healed their biases. yeah, there isn't an objective answer to 'who has it the worst?' and actively trying to find that person probably isn't helpful in the vast majority of situations. but you have to be able to sit with people who are doing worse than you. you have to be able to listen to someone talk about how a condition impacts them without feeling as if your place in the social hierarchy is being threatened. answering "who has it the worst?" with "not me, and that's okay" is a more difficult, more productive, and more honest approach than "nobody."

sorry this is so long, hope it helps <3

I feel like there's a pretty significant issue with a not insignificant portion of people on this site assuming that every physically disabled person they talk to on here is ambulatory, invisibly disabled, has low support needs or is generally at the same severity of disability as them. I think that's where we get a lot of this "nobody is more disabled than anyone else" and "physical disability and neurodivergence is ALWAYS the same because it's the same in MY experience" stuff from. It's easy to broadly apply your own experiences to people you've never met in person and haven't witnessed the real everyday life of.

But I really urge everyone to make a conscious effort to NOT do that. There are people who use this site who are bed bound, cannot breathe or eat without assistance, experience varying degrees of paralysis, rely on full time care, have high grade neurological/cognitive disabilities, have a terminal illness, have undergone very extensive surgeries just to survive, etc. and are OBJECTIVELY more disabled than you. There are tons of people on here who are OBJECTIVELY more disabled than me. Those aren't obscure hypotheticals, these are real people who you and I have interacted with in this community.

That doesn't mean your disability isn't real or that you aren't struggling, it's just a fact. If you feel invalidated by that, perhaps that's an issue you have to work on yourself rather than outright denying and ignoring other people's experiences and silencing them to feel better. Literally none of this whole validity competition stuff matters in the real world, where the REAL PEOPLE you are talking to exist.