josiahd:

There’s a lot of talk about social skills autistic people need to acquire in order to do right by the non-autistic. There are also a lot of social skills non-autistic people need to learn in order to do right by autistics. Here are some of them:

Interacting with someone without eye contact. Learning to tell whether someone is listening and respecting you without relying on eye contact as a cue.

Communicating in text. Understanding nuance, tone, content, and emotion when it’s conveyed in text rather than voice.

Communicating complex ideas with people who don’t have many (or any) expressive words. Figuring out, and caring, what that person is and is not consenting to. Respecting no even when you know you could manipulate the person into appearing to say yes.

Noticing when people do and don’t respect the humanity of people with disabilities, and responding appropriately. Taking it seriously when this happens. Supporting disabled people in their humanity and autonomy rather than pressuring them to cooperate in the aggressor’s attempt to dehumanize them.

Understanding that people who do atypical things for people their age aren’t being mindless. They are *doing things*. Notice the things they’re doing rather than the ghosts of the things they’re not doing.

(via moniquill)

biyuti:

10 Things You Should Never Say to a Deaf Person

deafmuslimpunx:

We all occasionally say things we really wish we hadn’t, especially when meeting new people.  For some reason, meeting a deaf person seems to really bring out those moments in people.  In the hopes of  helping you avoid these embarrassing moments, I’m sharing 10 things you should never say when meeting a deaf person.  All of which, in case you’re wondering, have been said to me. And my friends. More than once.

1 – Oh, I’m sorry. (And then walking away.)

Deaf people are really not that scary. When someone tells you they can’t hear you, try making sure you’re looking directly at the person when you talk to them.  Speak clearly, but don’t exaggerate your lip movements.  Or, hey, get a piece of paper or use your phone to write down what you’re saying.

2 – How do you drive? 

I use my eyes. How do YOU drive??  I’m amazed at how many people think that deaf people cannot–or should not–get their driver’s license.  Studies have shown that deaf drivers are no more likely to get in to an accident than hearing drivers, and actually tend to have lower accident rates.

3 – Can you read?

I have now been asked this twice, once at the doctor’s office and once at the DMV.  My Deaf friends have told me they get asked this all the time.  On one hand, I understand the question- after all, English might not be my primary or first language.  On the other… guess what? Deaf people go to school, have jobs, and do everything that their hearing pals do.  Oh, except hear. Assuming that deaf people can’t read is just insulting.

4 - Oh, I know exactly what you mean.  I think I have hearing loss, too – I have a hard time understanding people sometimes. You know, like at concerts and monster truck rallies.

Seriously, why is it that everyone I meet suddenly has hearing loss? Not being able to hear people talking when you’re in a loud environment is not exactly the same thing as being deaf or hard of hearing. I understand that people’s first instinct is to try to find common ground, and connect.  I recognize that this statement is supposed to show understanding and support.  That said, it usually comes across as dismissive, and completely misses the point.  When someone is telling you that they need you to look at them when you’re speaking because they can’t hear you, they’re not looking for you to say you know all about it.  They’re just trying to let you know what they need in order to understand you.  Do that.

5 - Oh, but you can lipread, right? Neat. Can you tell what the guy across the room is saying?

To this I say, lip reading is NOT a super power.  No, I cannot tell what that guy is saying from across the room. It’s hard enough figuring out what’s going on in the conversation I’m currently having, thanks.  Also, stop being a snoop.

6 – Oh, I’m so sorry.  Losing my hearing would be the worst thing in the world.

It has its down sides, for sure, but really it’s not that bad.  This response makes me feel like I’m something to be pitied, and completely dismisses the awesomeness of Deaf culture.  Even if you’re thinking this, please don’t say it. Just don’t.

7 – But, you have hearing aids. 

Yep, I do. They’re pretty awesome, and I’m glad I have them, but they’re not miracle devices.  They don’t suddenly “cure” my hearing loss. I still need to read lips or use ASL to know what people are saying.  They tell me THAT people are talking, but it’s like catching shadows of words. I have to fill in the blanks.  If someone has hearing aids, don’t assume that they can hear things–or that they can’t, for that matter.

8 – Oh, are you going to get that implant thing to fix your hearing?

I’ve had people launch in to how the cochlear implant is a miracle within 3 minutes of meeting me.  They’re usually basing this on a) seeing Ellen talk about it on TV and b) the fact that they like hearing birds chirp, or whatever. The decision to get a cochlear implant is a big one, and involves a lot of factors that you probably aren’t aware of if you haven’t been around the Deaf community for very long.  Besides the fact that this question assumes that something is wrong with me that needs to be fixed, it’s a really personal, complicated question.  If you’re going to ask someone about CI, please be sensitive to that.  And maybe wait until you’ve known the person a while before you bring it up.

9 – But you don’t sound deaf.

Of all the things said to me on a daily basis, this is the one that drives me the most crazy. This is the reason I usually go voice off in public, like at the grocery store.  People have a hard time understanding that just because I have good speech quality does not mean I can hear.  It makes me feel like I need to explain myself – no, really, grocery store clerk, I’m not purposely ignoring you, I just can’t hear you. Closely related to this one is…

10 – Wow, your speech is really good!

I get this well-meaning comment from almost everyone I meet – even interpreters sometimes say this to me.  There are several reasons why you should never say this to someone.  For one thing, it makes the person feel awkward and self-conscious. For another, the underlying message is that speaking skills are to be highly valued, and praised.  It implies that people who don’t have clear speech are less intelligent, capable, or aren’t trying hard enough.

This comment makes me feel like I’m being patted on the back.  I didn’t do anything special to earn my speaking skills. My speech says nothing about my intelligence or abilities.  I just happened to grow up with enough residual hearing to make speech work for me.  In some ways, my clear speech is a drawback – it makes it that much harder for other people to understand my deafness.

One more thing I’d add to the list: hearing people who insist that communication shouldn’t be a big issue when it comes to dating and relationships. The reason most Deaf-Hearing relationships fail is because of poor communication issues—usually the hearing person is not willing to learn ASL and relied on the deaf person to read lips, speak orally, and verbally communicate. Do NOT ever tell a Deaf person that communication isn’t a big issue when that deaf person have had to struggle everyday with communication issues while you, hearing people, never have to worry about how you would communicate or receive accommodations for school, work, shopping, doctor visits, workshops, etc.

coldeyesthatburn:

 you don’t joke about depression

depression is very real and its a struggle for those who have it

its not your way of making a fucking joke

no one cares how sad you are about a fucking concert your gonna miss

you didnt ” catch depression” you ignorant fuck

its a struggle for people who actually do have it to deal with it

their existence isnt your fucking punchline

the fuck

(Source: mariavontraphouse, via biyuti)

sofriel:

FUCK you. Just FUCK. YOU. 

I am SICK of the way your first reaction to me saying this is always, “but you don’t seem to have many social problems.”

Well gee, I’m glad my fucking mainstreaming was successful in making me look like a successful neurotypical person. Apparently it’s never crossed your mind that sitting alone with an single other person in a quiet room is a pretty non-stressful environment and maybe that actually affects my behavior!

Maybe if I video’d my daily experience you could see my routines, see my stimming, see how I lose all ability to even function in certain settings. But that still wouldn’t show you the mental acrobatics I go through to engage in social interactions, or how I struggle to understand much of what is said to me, or how talking is physically difficult for me.

But no. Instead you think you can judge my diagnosis based on your impression of me sitting in a chair, talking to you. You ask me, “What makes you think you have Aspergers/autism?” like it’s my job to run through all the fucking things in my life that led me to that diagnosis? Fuck you. 

(via biyuti)

tide-and-wave:

yellow-eyeballs:

thebeldammightbelistening:

Fuck you and your puzzle pieces.

Fuck you and your nauseating self-pitying about the so called burdens we Autistics are to you.

Fuck you and your scientifically unfounded Claims of causation.

Fuck you and your dehumanizing infantilization.

Fuck you and your weaning over ego because you’re “aware” of Autism.

Fuck you and your vitriolic assertion of an epidemic.

Fuck you and your claims of inspiration.

Fuck you and your want of a cure.

Fuck you and your sympathy for murderers.

Fuck you and your eugenics.

Every time your talk about our apparent need to be cured and your hope of Autism being a thing of the past, you are saying that you wish we didn’t exist and that no one like us will ever exist again, you constant Whinning about what toxic burdens you see us as has created a climate in which you invariably justify our murders.

Fuck you, From an Autistic.

^ This.

(Source: barf-monster, via genderbitch)

genderbitch:

As a wheelchair user, there are a few things I’d quite like the ambulant to get their heads around.

spacedino:

brightorangerain:

The wheel perspective

Stella Young Ramp Up 27 Mar 2012

It doesn’t matter how we got like this. Really. Are you asking because you want to know or because you need to? If you’re just sitting next to one of us on the train, or taking our order at a cafe, you don’t actually need to know. If we’ve actually met and had a conversation beyond “Do you want honey with your chai?” then perhaps it gets a little more relevant. It might come up in conversation, and when it does, we’ll be happy to tell you. It’s just not a very good opening line.

We heart our chairs. I’ve had five wheelchairs in my lifetime and I’ve loved each one as much as the last. I’ve had my current chair for almost 17 years. Based on the recommendation that they should be replaced every seven or so years, this old girl is about 162 wheelchair-years old. She’s well worn and well loved. One day soon she’ll need replacing, and I’ll come to love that one too, I’m sure. My chair is the last thing I touch before I climb into bed at night, and the first when I climb out. And, let’s face it. without our chairs, there’d be no getting out of bed at all for a lot of us. We are not, as we so often see written, “wheelchair bound”. We are liberated by our chairs. They give us the freedom to be who we are, and we love them for it.

We don’t mind if you ask us to go for a walk. Seriously, there’s no need to avoid saying things like “I must be running along,” or “Let’s go for a walk.” Those kinds of phrases are a part of everyday language, and because we live in the real world too, we’re really not that sensitive. I have a blind friend who once told me that the most annoying thing that ever happens to her is people apologising for asking her if she sees their point. Touche.

We have heard that joke before. You know, the one you were just thinking of. The one about drink driving, or whether or not we have a licence. Even the one about putting a V8 engine on the chair. Heard it. We’ve heard them all, so forgive us if your brilliant one-liner only elicits a polite smile. Sorry about that.

We are not on the tram so that you can hang your shopping bags on us. Our chairs are a part of us and a part of our personal space. Leaning on someone’s wheelchair is a bit like leaning on someone’s shoulder. You wouldn’t do it to a stranger, or someone you’d only just met. And I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t hang your full-to-the-brim enviro-bags on someone’s conveniently outstretched arm. Your shopping may be heavy, but our chairs are not shelves.

Just because we are hanging out with a non-disabled person doesn’t mean they are a carer. Disabled people have friends, partners, kids, parents, siblings and families just like everyone else. Quite often these people are hanging out with us because they like to, not because we need looking after, or because they are kind, generous souls. It’s annoying when people assume the only reason someone is hanging out with you is because they have to. Many of us do have personal assistants to help out with some stuff we can’t do, but most of the time the people hanging out with us are just our mates.

We’re into all the same stuff you are. OK, maybe not exactly the same stuff (I’m really not into snowboarding, if I’m honest), but you know what I mean. We don’t all think about disability all the time. I like knitting and crafty things, as well as disability theory and politics, feminist things, comedy things and fashion things, too. I’m really lucky to have a job where I get to be quite nerdy about disability culture and politics as editor of Ramp Up. We can talk about everything from sport to politics, television to weird things non-disabled people say to us. (Not you, obviously, you’re lovely.) Having contact with so many different disabled folks in Australia reminds me how different we all are, even though we have some experiences in common.

Your kids are going to stare. And that’s perfectly OK. When you look different to everyone else they’ve ever seen, kids will naturally stare. There’s no need to be embarrassed about it or consider it bad behaviour. Kids are interested in anything that’s different to the norm. And the thing is, if you tell them not to stare, or discourage them from asking questions because you think it might upset us, you’re teaching them that looking different is something to be ashamed of. It’s not. We’d much rather have an honest conversation with your kids than have them shuffled away from us like we might bite them. Besides, eventually they’ll say something really cute and funny, like “Are you imaginary?” or “Why are you wearing shoes?”

Feel free to offer us a hand, but don’t get too upset if we say no. If you see someone who looks like they’re struggling to do something, it’s very tempting to jump in and do it for them. But you really shouldn’t. It’s absolutely fine to offer your assistance, but don’t be surprised if it isn’t required. Sometimes we look pretty clumsy doing everyday stuff, like shopping or knitting on the tram, because we might do it differently to the way you do it. But we’ve had years of practice at being us and we’re generally in control of what we’re doing. Make the offer by all means, but don’t be upset if we say “thanks, but no thanks.”

We don’t all know each other. No, I don’t know Jenny, the girl on your street who uses a wheelchair too.

We are not brave. Among the aforementioned weird things some non-disabled folk like to say to us are things like “Oh you’re so brave/courageous/inspirational!” We’re not, really. We’re just living our lives like everyone else. Just as you’ve worked out the easiest and most effective way to get along in life, so have we. There’s no need to praise us for just going about our everyday business. Going to the shops to buy milk doesn’t take any more courage for me than it does for you.

If you can use the regular loos, and they’re free, don’t use the disabled ones. OK, we get that not all disabilities are visible and there are all sorts of reasons someone might need a bit of extra space. A friend of mine is diabetic, and she prefers to use the disabled toilets so she has a bit more room to inject her insulin. That’s fair enough. But when we wait outside for 20 minutes and you stroll out with a newspaper and a completed sudoku under your arm, you probably weren’t checking your blood-sugar levels. If the other toilets are occupied, and you’re going to be quick, go ahead. Just remember that needing to poo is not an access requirement. Thanks.

.

I love so much about all of these points, especially the last one.

Going to throw in here, too, that I don’t give a shit if you’re “going to be quick”; don’t fucking park in the disabled parking spaces if you aren’t disabled. Jackasses. 

youneedacat:

I need to be writing my submission for the LHP right now. Now that I got myself off to a good start on a topic I can actually get into. Rather than trying to recombine old tumblr posts creatively.

But I have to say this.

I am devastated over the woman in Sunnyvale who murdered her autistic son.

I am further devastated over the usual responses. “It was lack of services.” (She had turned down services.) “She must have been mentally ill, because you know how violent and scary They are when They aren’t treated properly.” “Every parent of a child with autism wants to kill their child now and then. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. It could have been any of us. Let’s sympathize, not condemn.” “People don’t know how awful it is to have an autistic child. They can drive you to murder.” “It’s better to be dead than autistic. This was a mercy killing.”

I know it all by heart. I helped with the research for the first place that tried to chronicle and memorialize as many murders of autistic people as possible. We got hate mail. From the families of those killed. Saying we just couldn’t understand the murderers or we wouldn’t sympathize with the autistic people. I’m dead serious.

Every time this happens it cuts me to the core.

Every time this happens I know we are not safe anywhere.

If my parents got an ethics transplant and decided to kill me. They could fly out here and do it. They could show the world how bad I look on paper. Autism societies would rally around them and collect money for their defense fund. They would be charged with manslaughter, if anything. Their sentences would be shorter than those of anyone otherwise similar to them who murdered a nonautistic, nondisabled person otherwise demographically similar to me. It’s not that I expect justice out of a system as terrible as our “justice” system, but these disparities show something seriously wrong.

A woman’s daughter comes home from her residential school for the holidays. The girl begins to repeat the words “The sun is rising”. The mother, who has been thinking about murder for years, decides now is the time. She tries to get the girl to walk off a bridge but she refuses. She strangles the girl with a cord. She wishes the girl would die faster, saying “Let go, just let go.”

She turns herself in to the police. The entire country’s autism community comes to her aid while actual disabled people look on in horror. She claims that her daughter’s repetitive speech caused her to “snap”. She is finally convicted of manslaughter and given a few years in prison. Other parents of autistic children protest even this. As a result she gets out after five months. People have been jailed for longer for merely planning to murder their nondisabled kids.

True story. Typical of the people who get sentenced to anything at all. The way to get away with murder is to kill someone society doesn’t care about, and be someone society sympathizes with. You can say you were driven to it by having to care for us, even if you were not at all responsible for caring for us ever. People will eat it up.

Also understand this if you understand nothing else: When people use murders for telling people we need better services for parents, this does two things once it gets into the media. It holds disabled people hostage. And it means the murder rate against us goes up. Lobby for better services on your own time — not using our dead bodies as justification.

It’s a little over fifteen years ago that caregivers (not my family) tried to murder me. They knew I was having an anaphylactic reaction so they just made it clear they wouldn’t treat it and nobody would know that it wasn’t an accident. They carefully noted my swollen tongue and throat, and what that meant, and they insulted me thoroughly and walked out the door. If it weren’t for someone from the outside seeing me collapsed on the floor struggling to breathe, I wouldn’t be here.

That’s typical of caregiver-induced murders in mental institutions. They often simply don’t get help after it’s clear someone’s going to die. This is known because of times when they slip up and get caught. Other times they deliberately kill someone but blame it on seizures or heart disorders. Other times, during restraint, they disregard someone’s complaints that they can’t breathe — often their last words.

I know these things because I’ve made it my business to know them. But it never gets easier. Never.

I don’t think people understand the danger to disabled people. Particularly some kinds of disabled people, autistic people among them. That if someone wants to kill us, they generally can, and they will usually get away with it. That there is no place we can be absolutely safe from this kind of thing.

There’s a reason that some serial killers will try to find work in nursing homes or in medical settings where deaths can be blamed on other things. (One serial killer even murdered patients so that the first letters of their names spelled out words in the sequence of the deaths.) These are far more common than the serial killers who make the news, yet nobody ever hears about this. And if they do, they often think that the killing was justified because the disabled person had no quality of life. (Ever wonder why I see the words quality of life as a knife at my throat? The people who tried to kill me said something similar. That they didn’t want me around because they wanted to treat people who would really get better. And that I was a waste of space in their program.)

There’s a reason that disabled people are often singled out for murder in order to collect life insurance policies.

Another true story: A couple went to a great deal of trouble to adopt a disabled girl. They took out a big life insurance policy on her. They put her in the house and burned the house down.

They were convicted. OF INSURANCE FRAUD. And only that. Get the picture yet? That’s how little our lives are worth.

It hurts knowing these things. Having studied the matter well enough, I can’t get away from this knowledge. It hurts even worse knowing how few people understand it. How many people rush to rationalize when one of us dies.

And here’s the thing.

People swear up and down that nobody hates disabled people. And yet the overwhelming evidence is that yes, yes they do.

If people didn’t hate us then they would never justify when people kill us.

Hate isn’t an emotion. It’s an action. It’s a state of being. Hate can feel like pity sometimes. It can feel like indifference. It can feel like the person in question just doesn’t matter as much as other people do. It can be unconscious.

What else is it when people torture to death people with developmental disabilities. And judges and juries treat it like just a little mischief got out of hand. What the hell else is that other than hate?

What is it other than hate when people refer to those of us who can’t work as leeches. As people who take from society and give nothing back.

What is it when the majority of people in a country think it’s only natural that we are shunted off into nursing homes and other institutions against our will. To live out the rest of our lives. Which will be drastically shortened because institutions do that.

What is it when people want to take away what little help we get from the government. When people blame us for hard economic times.

That last one scares me to death. OMG. Really. It terrifies me. Because when people blame a very poor, very oppressed group of people for the failure of the economy. Then they do their best to toss us off a cliff. And you can’t argue. They always have an answer. There is so much hate.

People have told me I should have been drowned at birth. How is that not hate? And you hear things like this your whole life.

And then if you say something people get all patronizing. “Nobody wants you dead, dear, you’re just paranoid.” If nobody wanted me dead, why did my shrink order them to put a one on one staff for me in a mental institution to protect me from the staff who tried to “allow me to die”. Why have people told me to my face that the Nazis had it right about people like me. That I should be sterilized at minimum and killed at most. And repeatedly that I should have been killed at birth or in infancy.

Anne McDonald reported hearing someone say to her caregiver, “If it was a dog, you’d put it down.”

Among disabled people, those who are, or are thought to be, cognitively disabled in some way, are down with some other groups at the bottom of the disability hierarchy. The more extreme it’s thought to be, the more okay people think it is to kill us.

Autistic people are among such people. Even those of us whose cognitive skills were at least in part obviously advanced for our age, can be described as empty shells when we are murdered. Think of Katie McCarron. A little girl who loved life and was the only child in her preschool to know what an octagon was. Murdered by her mother, who was not her actual caregiver but who still made the “It’s lack of services” argument. Not that it would have been any better if Katie weren’t all those things. It’s just that it shows how killers can lie to gain sympathy.

And think of what a retard is. Really think. I’m talking about the slur, not any particular diagnosis. It becomes obvious that idea in people’s heads is not of a human. Or fully human. It’s a weird shriveled up piece of a human who is empty of a soul and empty of worth.

Which is why people who have been called this near-unanimously want that word gone. It’s not a diagnostic word, it’s a slur against the entire gamut of people with developmental or cognitive disabilities, and those who appear to have them.

Dehumanization is necessary for an ordinary human being to kill. When we are retards rather than people, here is one more thing that nudges potential killers to the edge. Every time I hear retard I am fearful for that reason.

The teens who lived where I first moved out on my own. They’d follow me down the street “fucking with the retard”. I have no way of knowing if they’d become violent. You never know, once you hear that word, or see its meaning written on the bodies of people who harass you. Because people do use that word when they beat you up, when they sexually assault, when they kill you. And sometimes the word hurts worse than a beating.

I still remember the man and woman who, in my twenties, tried to lure me into their car with a toy. I didn’t know what was happening until later. They’d kept touching me and talking about sex. Later I learned there was a group of people abducting, raping, and worse, DD women. They had spotted me in the street ANC tried to reel me in. There have been so many close calls. When I say nowhere is safe I mean it.

And a note about blaming murders on mental illness — like DD people, people deemed mentally ill are disproportionately the targets of violence. Not the perpetrators. Blaming these murders on mental illness fails to understand the fact that it’s usually nondisabled people who abuse us and nondisabled people who kill. Crazy is not the same thing as evil, no matter how many people try to make it so. And these murders are part of a pattern of evil acts against disabled people.

I know I’ve ventured far from my original topic, but these things are all bound together. There is an entire pattern of violence towards disabled people. I’ve only touched on the tip of the iceberg.

And this murder happened within this pattern of violence towards disabled people, and more particularly towards cognitively disabled people. It’s not an isolated incident. It’s not a loving parent who snapped because we are just so hard to live with. It’s not because of lack of services.

It’s because we are not people. We are retards. And that’s different. If we weren’t retards then very few people would be trying to excuse, explain away, or justify these murders. People only rationalize murders when the victim isn’t valuable to them. And the vitriol that comes with these conversations says more about hate than any words do.

And anybody who tries to rationalize this or sympathize with the murderer or anything even close to along those lines, I will block you so fast…

Remember: this is a pattern. People always say autistic people can’t see the big picture but I can. My eyes are open. I know what happens when we are killed. I know how unsafe all of us are from things like this. See the pattern. Please. And try to be one of the people who stops people from making this into sympathy for the murderer, into anti-disabled hate propaganda that results in more deaths.

I can’t even describe what this does to me. It freezes my heart. I feel horrible for the 22-year-old victim. I feel horrible that we all live in this kind of society where this is okay or at least understandable. Please make it stop. I’ve been crying and raging and panicking since it happened. When will people learn?

Some resources:

Murder of Autistics

Really important book: Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities: The End of Silent Acceptance? by Dick Sobsey. If you can find a cheap copy used, buy immediately. Otherwise it’s often over a hundred dollars.

inflateablefilth:

Firstly, the idea of functioning levels is based on how well we pass as allistic which is all kinds of fucked up. Seriously.

Anyway, just because I type, doesn’t mean I talk. I am actually (mostly) verbal if I’m not being overstimulated. Stuck on a train full of loud school kids? You bet your ass I’m gonna look more like a stereotypical hand flapping, rocking, grunting special needs kid. If I am alone all day or don’t have any reason to speak to anyone it will take me quite a while to communicate in anything more than one word answers when I actually do have to speak. I actually often communicate in weird animal noises to people I feel safe not ‘holding in’ the autism stuff around.

So, yes, please stop acting as though we’re all the high functioning Sherlock style autistic folk. Stop acting as though none of us have ever experienced real institutional ableism. Stop acting as you know our autism, that you know autism at all, better than we do. I don’t care whether you’ve worked with autistic kids or you have an autistic relative or you studied autism or whatever else, if you’re not autistic, you don’t know autism.

(Source: cydandthat, via moniquill)

(Source: youneedacat, via kiriamaya)

jemimaaslana:

doctorsheldoncooperforthewin:

firstrisingvibes:

I mean, sure, I can’t get in certain buildings because there isn’t an elevator or a ramp and on a bad day, I can’t walk up stairs. Sure, I have meltdowns because people are covered in perfume or find it funny to play with camera flash guns in the pub, or put up extremely bright flashing Christmas lights everywhere. Sure, I got sick yesterday because the shopping center was filled with balloons and the allergic reaction I had made my face swell up. Sure, I passed out on a train because someone was eating oranges after my partner asked them to stop because of my allergy. Sure, I had a meltdown on the bus because someone was playing music out of their phone super loud. Sure, I had meltdowns in PE because people used body spray in the communal changing rooms.

But that’s all my fault. I’m clearly just looking for an excuse to call myself oppressed. Nobody was directly violent towards me or called me a slur (except during the meltdowns) so it’s not real oppression.  I’m just trying to get sympathy and I totally love calling myself oppressed. After all, who doesn’t like realizing that their physical and mental safety is meaningless compared to someone wanting to wear a body spray or have balloons?

people who think that the concept of ableism is ‘just disabled people looking for things to complain about’ have quite obviously never studied history. at all. ever.

Pretty much all of this.

(Source: cydandthat)