banner ID: a photo of pikachu plush dolls lined up. end ID | avatar ID: a drawing of a white cat with tears streaming down it's face. next to the face is the word "たすけて" which means help in English. end ID
hiiii! this is my personal and disability blog. every attempt will be made to keep this screen reader friendly. if a post doesn't have alt text or a description then i will add one or not reblog it. consequently any post of mine that is given a photo addition without a description will be ignored. screen reader users are allowed to suggest improvements or issues with the blog's accessibility at any time.
ask games i've made: 1, 2, 3, 4
i don't use pronouns. use my name in place of them.
i am physically disabled and use forearm crutches.
irish + pashtun
absolutely no "proship"/"pro-fiction" people
i believe in the complete liberation of occupied palestine
that means no two-state "solution". that means no israel. only a free and united palestine.
disabled people have endless time apparently but also actually we're only really around at certain times right? so the disabled person bus pass only needs to be valid after 9am and before 6pm. because it's not like disabled people have places to be right? they don't visit places or work or go out in the evenings.
yeah our covid safe hour. for the first hour of our event we're asking everyone to wear masks. obviously everyone who needs protection from pathogens can arrive exactly on time and won't take longer than an hour to go through our whole event. not like they've got anything else to do, or any sort of time restrictions.
yeah our accessible viewing is at 7am on a wednesday. because you lazy fucks don't work right? we put it in the least appealing time slot just for you disabled people because everyone else has important things to do. i'm sure everyone can wake up early and get support to go out early and feels like watching a film at the ass crack of dawn. but hey we're accessible. look. we've made all these concessions and accommodations. what do you mean you want to decide your own schedule? disabled people don't exist after dark
I bring a real 'actually people who are pregnant do deserve some special consideration because they are effectively at least temporarily disabled if not permanently after some complications' vibe to the party that a lot of people don't seem to like
Vent ask
Ive been on hold for disability evaluation for over a year. burned through all my savings, living with my fiance and living off comissions and donos and my fiance is working 2 jobs. Its killing her, In the mean time, im litterally looking into getting a surgery because i cant use my arms full time and my seizures are only getting worse.
But my case is "too complicated" to make this go any faster
mother fucker im going to show you a complicated disability case when i shove my foot up your ass
what are they hoping you'll quietly die while waiting so they don't have to do anything?
they really don't respect the time of disabled people. your application can take up to 12 weeks. the specialist waitlist is 3 years. your assessment will be any time within the next 6 months. let us know if you cannot attend this appointment you waited 7 weeks for and we'll reschedule next year. we've decided to assess you at this time and day and you have to be available or any support you dared to apply for is not going to happen. and in between these long bouts of waiting you have to survive the everyday
it has taken my local council 9 weeks to order my new blue badge. i asked about how long and they told me it can be up to 12 weeks. do they think disabled people have endless time to wait? not only, but that disabled people have to be so on the ball that they can reapply for their badge 3 months in advance or risk having no ability to go places? even if their proof of disability might not be ready that early. anyway it's another 10 days to dispatch.
At what point does someone count as disabled? How difficult does something need to be, or how painful or distressing does something need to be, before it counts as a disability? Does a given action need to be 100% physically impossible 100% of the time, and if not then that person is just lazy and deserves to be expected to power through it? (I am the person who is frequently being expected to power through things, which is why I'm asking.)
In addition, there are things like, say, lifting extremely heavy weights, that almost nobody on the planet can do. What proportion of the population needs to be capable of doing something before not being capable of doing it counts as a disability?
Bottom line is I'm struggling a lot and I have frequently been on the verge of suicide at the prospect of doing several different things, a few of which I have actually succeeded in doing at the expense of extreme physical pain and/or mental distress, and I don't know if I have the right to consider myself disabled or not.
generally the best advice to give people is to give them the tools to evaluate disability enough to be secure in the fact that they are disabled, not disabled but have a health condition, or just not disabled at all. but I'm gonna be honest, causing significant and long-term distress is a qualifier of disability. i don't know the actual limits of what you can or cannot do, but you have to admit that most abled people don't want to die instead of doing tasks. you can call yourself disabled. you are unable to do certain (basic? essential? necessary?) tasks that would support you to live independently. also wrt to your question about how "unable" does someone have to be at a task for it to count, consider the metric that you should be able to do it:
safely (i.e. not at risk to yourself or others. are you always hurting yourself trying to do this task?)
unaided (e.g. without specific medical tools, someone else with you, someone prompting you to do it, etc )
regularly (!!! you have to be able to do it more than once at a reasonable timescale. for example if you can eat without supervision once a week but 6 days a week you need supervision then that's not regular enough)
also to be frank, whether or not you feel comfortable calling yourself disabled has no impact on the fact that you are struggling. i wish being disabled was an acceptable reason for other people to acknowledge your difficulties, but often it isn't. the mindset you have encountered about "powering through" is classic societal ableism and they will tell this to anyone, no matter how impaired. i still think it's meaningful to realise that you are indeed disabled when you are, but you don't have to be disabled to struggle. and you don't have to have to meet a threshold of suffering or distress to be worthy or deserving of help. whatever you can do to make your life more bearable to live, i suggest you go for it.
There is so much casual ableism towards people with intellectual-cognitive disabilities. I was listening to a podcast I listen to religiously (and is a very very leftist podcast) and they hit me with the "you'll understand this unless you are Three Years Old." And it was something I didn't understand. And this podcast (that I love!) does this quite frequently. The hosts would never purposely make fun of someone for their disability- but they say things like "no one is that stupid" or similar quite frequently. And as someone who is that stupid- it kinda fucking sucks.
out of all kinds of people, even among disabled people , we are among some of the most vulnerable largely because the idea of us existing in and participating in society like a person is completely unfathomable to almost EVERYONE . like u said , even people who are leftist strongly in every single other way .
"Clearly I wasn't talking about disabled people-" yeah part of the problem is that the existence of disabled people just isn't considered in your worldview like that's the problem we're criticizing not a get out of jail free card
My wife is now in the hospital, between life and death. The doctors confirmed that she urgently needs immediate surgery, and any delay could mean losing her.
Time is not on our side, and every minute that passes brings us closer to the end.
I am helpless in this situation and cannot afford the cost of saving her.
Your donation today could be the difference between her life and death.
And if you cannot donate, sharing this appeal may reach someone who can save her.
can't even call the police pigs without some people hoping you get killed or brutalised and other people wailing about how mean that is to pigs. abysmal state of things
if you decide to become a police officer then that outweighs any other marginalised identity you can rustle up like. not sorry, who asked you to willingly become a pig
I have heard of black people warning their kids that the race of a police officer is cop and you should not expect solidarity from them. The same applies to other types of minorities.
The sexuality of a police officer is cop.
The gender of a police officer is cop.
When you become the enforcer and protector of capital, you are making the deal to be slightly favored by the system over others like you, in exchange for being its servant. Your solidarity is with the system that you serve, even if it hates you.
If you want solidarity with those the system hates, you cannot be the system's servant and defender.
never said it did + find me a different insult that doesn't compare "bad people" to a type of marginalised human person. i'd rather call someone a pig bastard and it's weird and annoying that there is 1000% more pushback against insulting some animals who can't even read my posts than there are people calling others dumb or stupid or fat
if you decide to become a police officer then that outweighs any other marginalised identity you can rustle up like. not sorry, who asked you to willingly become a pig
I have heard of black people warning their kids that the race of a police officer is cop and you should not expect solidarity from them. The same applies to other types of minorities.
The sexuality of a police officer is cop.
The gender of a police officer is cop.
When you become the enforcer and protector of capital, you are making the deal to be slightly favored by the system over others like you, in exchange for being its servant. Your solidarity is with the system that you serve, even if it hates you.
If you want solidarity with those the system hates, you cannot be the system's servant and defender.
People really just lose all awareness of your body when you're a wheelchair user. When I'm at the grocery store, I have close calls constantly, and it's on me to dodge pedestrians who I seem to be invisible to until they sometimes literally trip over me.
I've been almost run over several times by drivers I could make eye contact with at crosswalks. I've been openly scolded for not moving my grocery cart fast enough when the person scolding me was blocking my way to my cart. I've had people ram their grocery carts into mine because I couldn't stop fast enough and they didn't "realize" I was there.
None of this happens when I can walk.
"It's not their fault" FAQ under the cut
Q: Maybe they didn't see you because you're not at eye level!
A: In my chair I'm about the height of a third grader. People don't ram their grocery carts into third graders. If someone is paying so little attention that they almost run someone my height over, they are an active danger to children, too.
Q: Maybe you were moving too fast!
A: I literally never go full speed indoors or outdoors because of this issue. I am regularly outpaced by small children walking when I am in stores because of how prevalent this issue is.
Q: Maybe you're hard to notice!
A: My wheelchair is bright, sparkly green with rainbow spokes. I have a headlight and a tail light. I am not.
Q: It was just an accident!
A: Yeah, sometimes, I'm sure it is. I would be a lot more sympathetic about that if it wasn't a coin toss if they'll just run off (sometimes bumping into me while they do) or if they'll start aggressively blaming me because they feel bad about it and externalize that shame as anger at me.
This is a real response that happens constantly.
Q: I'm sure other people would step in!
A: People will sometimes step in when I am sitting somewhere unable to get past. When I can speak and say "excuse me," people usually even notice me and move out of the way while apologizing (it's not that deep). Or someone else will notice and get the attention of the person ignoring me.
When I can't speak I've spent several minutes waiting for a car to move out of the way of a wheelchair ramp as I wave both arms to alert the driver I need it. I've had people raise their voice at me, a stranger, to scold me for being in their way, while other strangers just look away.
Sometimes someone will come up to me after and say they thought about intervening but just didn't. Usually with an excuse. I try to be gentle but I know that if I tell them I forgive them they won't step in next time either.
No one has ever deescalated between me and an aggressive person yet.
Q: Maybe they have a disability which makes it so they literally can't notice you!
A: Every blind or visually impaired or hard of hearing or deaf person I have ever run into or has ever run into me has been really normal about it. Usually they'll tell me they ran into or didn't notice me because of X sensory disability, we'll both apologize, and we go our separate ways.
Q: I don't like this post because I've done this and it's not personal I was just [focused/distracted/day dreaming/stressed]
A: Don't do it again. If I take this in good faith, I've already explained how doing this stuff is also putting children in active danger.
I would also ask you to really consider what you're feeling. When we've done something in the past and learned it hurt others we often feel shame or embarrassment. These feelings make it harder for us to learn and recognize how we can be better community members to the people around us.
Interesting that a criticism like "you are always trying to find a way to justify the value of disabled people through labor extraction because your worldview worships labor. this is a weakness of the communist as much as the capitalist" is met with "shut up bitch, get back in the kitchen, wash a plate."
a lot of people will specfically insinuate that you are trying to get out of doing work, because you are a bad person. "Me when i don't want to do chores." Confronting how they will be treated if and when they cant do any chores is too terrifying to think about, so everyone who asks that question is just trying to justify their own laziness.
Please understand that high support needs are substantially more than low support needs.
I hate to say it, but if you can hold a job with minimal accommodation from others, drive a car or take public transport independently, and handle most bADL’s and iADL’s with self-management strategies, you are not high support needs.
I by no means am trying to invalidate people, but it’s incredibly important to recognize where you actually lie on the full spectrum of disability. Otherwise we risk speaking over people who genuinely are HSN.
anything but water @bebsi-cola - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
