#wrote this last night and this morning I'm deciding fuck it. leave the Hippo part in

[giantkillerjack]

Coming back to this to add that lying to doctors and the people you frequently interact with actually exists in the same morality as lying to acquaintances in this case.

If it is a matter of being able to get what you need to live your life, and you do not have full control over which people end up as the primary gateways (or gatekeepers) for you getting the help you need, it is not morally wrong to lie to get what you need.

Say, for instance, instead of being available to anyone for $12 at Walgreens, canes were prescription-only. And say in this scenario, you could only get a cane if you proved to a doctor that you can't walk more than 5 feet without one. This is, of course, absurd - clearly someone who can walk only 10 feet still needs a cane; clearly this policy makes no account for how people are supposed to GET TO a doctor with no mobility aid; there is no shortage of canes that would mean you are taking one away from someone else; and certainly the doctor loses nothing by approving you for a cane. In this case, it would be morally correct to tell the doctor you can only walk 3 feet.

If the standards for qualifying to get help are unreasonably set and steeped in ableism, then sometimes lying is the only way to stay safe.

People like parents, doctors, and abusive partners are not only just as likely (or even MORE likely) to be ableist than any rando, they are also poised to do WAY MORE DAMAGE if they are. And if these people love you, sometimes that just makes the damage they do even worse.

Love doesn't help much when it comes to ableism; it often just means the ableist person is EXTREMELY CONVICTED in their belief they are doing the right thing.

You deserve the right to protect yourself.

Just make sure you don't commit fraud [i.e. don't get caught lying about something it is illegal to lie about], and try not to commit yourself to an ever-increasingly web of lies that must be maintained indefinitely.

And if you truly love and trust a friend and believe they have confronted their own ableism and truly have your back (like me and my wife), be honest as much as possible because lifelong partnerships that you get to CHOOSE to engage in (and have the ability to freely leave if you want!) are based on trust and I LOVE MY WIFE

(Sorry, the edibles hit about one sentence ago, and I got sidetracked lol)

The point is if you are actively being gored to death by an angry hippopotamus, and a specially-trained team of professional hippo-fighters came by, and you were like, "Help!!", and they were like, "Sorry, people being attacked by a cyborg hippopotamus have much higher-pitched screams," you could be forgiven for switching to a higher register so that these motherfuckers will do their goddamn jobs and send the damn thing back to the distant future where it belongs.

This would be morally correct for you to do because it protects a human life (yours), which is a huge net benefit, and is thus a good and necessary reason to lie. , especially since the Hippo Hit Squad is an organization long wracked with intrigue and betrayal and therefore can't always be trusted.

And this would remain morally good even if the head of the hippo-fighting force team was a doctor or even your own father!!

And to be frank, that whole situation would end up saying a lot more about the failings of Doctor-Dad Lieutenant Reginald HippoPunch III the best and most compelling villain I have ever conceived as a writer

...than it would about you.

Over and out.✌

Lying about the severity of your disorder to those you don't know if you can trust with your restrictions/accommodations is often the only way to guarantee your safety, and therefore is not bad.

There is a difference between doctors/ people who need to know the exact details vs. people who have very few interactions with you.