illness is not a metaphor

robin 24 they/he. cripple punk.

[disableddyk3]

my chronic illness blog- because i’m tired of it being the only thing i have to talk about when i see people in real life, but i need to vent somewhere.

veteran tumblr user but my ex deleted my old tumblr :(

hypermobile ehlers danlos - fibromyalgia - pots - undiagnosed chronic fatigue condition - adhd - autism - undiagnosed muscular dystrophy condition

[rars]

being disabled and lgbt is such a horrible curse because you will see the most ableist take on earth online and you're like "oh surely this is some right-wing fascist loser" and then you look at the person who said it and there's pronouns in their bio. and it's like, how did we get here? but the reality is that a lot of abled people (and often disabled people who are intolerant of different disabilities) are just not even willing to confront the idea that they are capable of punching down on other marginalized groups

like i don't know who needs to hear this but you are Not as progressive as you think you are if you're saying stuff like the R slur, "jobless behavior", making fun of nonverbal people, mocking physical differences, using psychotic as an insult, or calling people "lazy" for using disability aids. even if you're gay!

[bitchautism]

the online identity and gimmick-ifying of autism is so odd. I'm diagnosed with autism and yet I barely identify with any stuff I see about it anymore. It feels like autism is being rebranded as the Silly Guy Disorder that gives you smart and beautiful hyperspecific interests. it's not that I mind silly jokes or being lighthearted about being autistic- but when the entire social movement is based around marketing us this way, I just can't help but feel isolated from it. it feels like I'm not the right kind of autistic. I'm not marketable and digestible to common audiences, and therefore I am discarded by the movement in the name of progress and acceptance. it feels foul.

[flowercrowncrip]

I don’t care how they’re marketed, these things are not wheelchair accessible, especially for large power chairs.

ID: a yellow and black plastic cable cover which is approximately 5-10cm tall with steep sides and looks like a small speed bump /end ID

Every time I go over one I need someone to help hold my chair and get me over it. Even with that support it hurts like Hell and has caused whiplash injuries for me in the past. It’s also very unsafe for others because even with support I cannot 100% control the angle my chair will end up lurching over it (and my chair weighs over 150kg without me in it so it’s not something you want to collide with). It’s also terrifying and makes noises that make me very concerned for my chair’s structural integrity.

If you want your event to actually be accessible to wheelchair users then consider using something more like this:

ID: the same kind of cable cover but it’s fitted with a much shallower ramp with the international symbol of access embossed on the black plastic. The ramps are about a foot long on either side of the cover /end ID

[lustcannibalism]

ooh I get it now. this world wasn’t meant for me

[mtndewbajablast]

“i’m autistic” = 👍

“i’m a little autistic” = mark of the beast for annoying people

[mtndewbajablast]

“touch of the ‘tism” = punishable offense

[mtndewbajablast]

cartel style execution

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

We need to talk about how when you shut down or restrict discussions of mental health struggles on social media platforms in the name of "protecting mentally ill people" what you're really doing is excluding mentally ill people

[bebsi-cola]

health isn't a virtue.

[bebsi-cola]

people still go around acting like they've done something good in order to be able bodied and healthy. that they worked for it, that it's due to their moral fibre or good upbringing or self control. they genuinely, on some level, believe that they are a good person solely based on the strength of their physical abilities. they will resist the fact that it is largely down to chance that they were able to maintain such health. whatever they think they've built from scratch, the building blocks were already handed to them. not because they're more worthy of it, just by luck. and they really think they're worth more based on that sheer luck. i've met disabled people worth a hundred of the healthiest ableds alive.

[littlefingies]

Sorry for us politics posting, but we have until May 22, 2026 to submit public comment to the FCC:

More info from GLAAD:

https://glaad.org/fcc/

They have some good tips about writing a comment and protecting your privacy which, fuck it, I'll just paste here:

Providing an email address is optional. If you have concerns about privacy, you may use your initials or public address in your local area, such as City Hall. Do not use a joke name. It diminishes the comment’s credibility.

Your submission does not need to be long. A single, well-reasoned paragraph is sufficient.

Do not copy/paste a template comment. The FCC values unique perspectives, and an original comment carries significantly more weight in the public record. You can explain why this matters to you without revealing private or sensitive personal information.

Here's what I said:

“Free speech is a fundamental American freedom. I do not need a warning about seeing queer people, much like I do not need a warning about women, veterans, or any other group of people.”

Here's the link to submit your comment by May 22:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express?proceeding%5Bname%5D=19-41

[wishful-seeker]

Just looked up "self defense for wheelchair users" and first thing that pops up is how to defend yourself FROM a wheelchair user what the fuck.

Anyways i want to talk to actual disabled people so hey friends what do i need to know as a wheelchair user traveling anywhere alone? More info of my circumstances below the cut

Edit: non wheelchair user DNI please

I will have handlebar spikes and a defensive knife on me at all times anytime i go somewhere alone.

I live in the suburbs, a nice and safe neighborhood. But, right outside it is not so nice. I am isolated from other neighborhoods as mine is surrounded by busy roads. There is a sketchy gas station next to my neighborhood. I will never go in that direction, i go in the opposite, but im still technically close to it. Around the neighborhood are small shopping centers with shops that are not big name brands. I will not be traveling more than 2 miles alone from my house. My friend lives in the neighborhood down the street. I am not traveling by self propelling or a power chair, but by an electric scooter attached to my chair which can travel up to 15 mph. Right across the street from my neighborhood is a thrift store i frequent. Its a safe space with good people who know and recognize me.

I think thats everything, any advice and tips are welcome.

[crippled-peeper]

I’m seconding the ppl in the notes saying pepper spray. They make tiny ones you can store in your saddle bag. The only problem is you can’t travel long distance with them as pepper spray laws vary by state and county

Tasers are useful but only if you are somewhat ambulatory and you can really hold on to it. The last thing you want is for someone to take it from you and use it on you

Button alarms and air horns are also a last resort to get people’s attention. I carry an alarm with me on the train. It’s VERY loud and impossible to ignore once activated

The best practical self-defense advice I have is to never travel alone, and if you have to, to acquaint yourself with people on your route such as the bus driver or other commuters. Strangers will be much more inclined to step in and defend you if you are familiar to them.

[bebsi-cola]

strong reminder that everything doesn't "happen for a reason". a lot of the time things happen, and it's not a test or a punishment or predetermined. sometimes you get cancer or lose the ability to eat or can't walk and it doesn't have any greater meaning. i know as a species we love pattern recognition to try and avoid bad things from happening but that doesn't mean whatever explanation people make up to rationalise the fact that anyone can be disabled no matter their status or moral character any more truthful

[pjackk]

The crazy part about pain is that it actually hurts alot

[archivearchangelica]

Parade of the Politically Depressed, Chicago, 2006

[creekfiend]

what if I never got a fucking migraine ever again

[creekfiend]

WHAT IF NOBODY ON EARTH EVER GOT A MIGRAINE EVER AGAIN!!!!

[sagekuromi333]

was talking to an ex friend once about being disabled and was like “yeah, the government wants me dead” to which she responded “noooo dont say thatttt that’s not true :( “ and i just need people to fucking think critically before saying something they think will be comforting because what the fuck do you mean the government doesn’t want disabled people dead have you never fucking heard of EUGENICS

[anim-ttrpgs]

something I don’t get about the disability metaphor is that for eureka monsters obviously it harms another person to eat them. the help a disabled person needs doesn’t actively harm or kill another person. Maybe it’s a difference in perspectives that cannot be resolved

(What I’m about to write could potentially sound very fucked up at first so I’m going to need to trust everyone to read the whole thing before forming an opinion.)

Also this message and response references these two posts.

Disabilities and Monsters in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Through a discussion with @vixensdungeon (great blog to follow for TTRPG stuff by the way) it came to our attention that some of our more jo

The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery

@dragongirlteeth We were aware from very early on that this game would attract that kind of crowd, and decided it was better to embrace it,

Eureka’s stance on disabled people is that they (including myself writing this) are, or at least can often be, burdens.

Disabled people often require more resources to live than they are able to “give back,” which, in our capitalist and artificial-scarcity-based economy, is just about the worst thing a person can do.

Anti-ableism sentiment often focuses on the idea that “disabled people aren’t burdens, that they’re just as good and capable as everyone else,” but if they were, they wouldn’t be “disabled” would they? When you say stuff like that, you’re conceding that a person’s worth is determined by how capable they are at doing work, and then having to bend over backwards to justify thinking that a person without arms is just as valuable as a person with arms. Eureka is asking you to decouple a person’s value from how much net resources they can produce.

Often times also, the resources that real disabled people consume are human resources, and those human resources are very much capable of suffering for it. Nurses are overworked, around-the-clock care is absolutely physically and mentally exhausting, people who have to care for their elderly or otherwise disabled relatives on top of their regular jobs don’t get to have social lives or hobbies, etc.

To this end, we wrote the monsters in Eureka to be unquestionably people who “cause damage” to society by literally eating up human resources, because they have to to live, they have no other choice unless they want to just die. Your friend is gone from your life because he has to spend all his free time caring for his comatose wife after a freak car accident. Your friend is gone from your life because a vampire randomly ate him. Providing a metaphor isn't all the monsters are doing, they just work well through that lens.

And then Eureka forces you to look at these people as people, and make up your mind as to whether they have value and a right to prologue their own existence. We can’t force you to agree that they do, but if you think they don’t, then you’ll have to make that argument looking at an intelligent person with a life rather than a pure hypothetical or statistics on a chart.

There are some monsters in Eureka where, if the economy or societal structures were changed, they would stop being such severe drains on resources and could exist harmlessly within society, and there are some monsters where no imaginable amount of societal change would solve the problems they cause. This is true of disabled people IRL as well. Some of them would require no further assistance with living if certain things about society changed, and others would still require a massive amount of human resources.

And even when it’s not necessarily human resources, the extra resources that disabled people need also cause huge energy expenditure and create huge amounts of plastic waste, which are things that contribute to global warming and pollution, which do have significant harmful effects on everyone’s lives. Despite this, they are still “worth it” to keep around.

As for actively causing harm, that happens too. I randomly scrolled past this post after we got this message and saved it so I could link it here.

The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery

being aware of the impact of things we can often not think about (like straws) is important if we’re to make strides on environmental preser

This person and their family had to cause a big stink in a restaurant just to get an accommodation that they needed, and to us reading it from their perspective, we’re obviously on their side, but I can assure you that the overworked staff at that restaurant didn’t see it that way. They saw the disabled person as an aggressive Karen whom they would never in a million years want to have to provide customer service to. The disabled person & family had to get aggressive, and ruin the staff’s day, to get what they needed. That’s actively causing harm - harm we all agreed was justified to cause - but harm nonetheless.

Plastic straws aren’t that big of a deal for global pollution, but even if they were, the point is that this person still would have needed a straw. It doesn’t line up one-to-one, because metaphors rarely do, but a vampire asking if they can drink someone’s blood, and being told No, may find themselves in much the same position. (And if you bring up that some people find vampires really sexy, you’re missing the point. “I would give them a straw if they had sex with me.” is not actually a great thing to announce about yourself.)

I can also come up with an example from my own life. I personally am very sensitive to noise and noise pollution. If there’s music playing at a public space, I usually can’t handle it. (Earplugs don’t work for other reasons I won’t get into - plus, if I just deafen myself to all sound, how can I socialize with anyone in this public space?)

If I want to exist in this space, I will have to actively cause harm to everyone there, or else stop existing in that space. I will have to go up to whoever is responsible and ask them to turn off the music, actively taking it away from everyone else who was enjoying it. I have to take action to ruin their good time if I want to exist in that space at all, and they might, very understandably, be pissed off at me for doing that. Because, like I said in this other post, the people that monsters eat do have a right to prevent themselves from being eaten by monsters. We aren't proposing that the solution is everyone has to line up to be mauled to death by monsters or else they're a bad person.

Who has a greater right to enjoy themselves in that space? That’s the kind of question that Eureka poses, and makes you consider both sides as human being rather than denoting one as just an ontologically evil villain to be destroyed.

We actually don't know of perfect solutions to all the problems presented by the existance of monsters in Eureka, we just know that "exterminate all people who are parasites and burdens to society" ain't it.

[virgosimulator]

My boyfriend shared this post with me and as an Accessibility Studies Minor (literally was so niche and new the major didn't exist until after I graduated), I just have to respond. (and I am so excited to do so!)

I’m going to have to play this game, even if it's not specifically about disability, because it’s so exciting to see someone actually doing disability theory work. I know disability scholars are out there, but our community is fractured and so pushed underground it's very hard to connect. I so often only see opinions about disability written exactly as OP says, black or white. Good guy vs Bad guy. And most often by people who do not identify as disabled, or are disabled and are only drawing on personal experience (which is great, but there's much more to consider!)

I am most passionate about Universal Design which is a field of study that…almost doesn’t exist it’s so niche, despite the fact that it concerns itself with everyone. I wanted to move across the country (America) to join the only Universal Design lab in the world (general, NOT UD for Education, which there is a lot for), originally created and run by the author of the Universal Design manual, Ronald L. Mace (he died 1988). Unfortunately, it had shut down just a few years before I even encountered the phrase "Universal Design." (I just googled it but couldn't find a date, I believe it closed in 2010 but I don't know that for sure.)

In any case, one of the core tenants of Universal Design, the core issue it seeks to resolve, is that all people have conflicting needs. In class we often talked about this in terms of one type of disability vs another (sensory vs mobility, for example), but really it’s ability vs ability. Sidewalk safety is a good example as curb cuts (where sidewalks slope downward to meet with the road usually between pedestrian intersections) are 100% necessary for people using wheelchairs, however they can be challenging for people walking on foot who have low mobility. They can also be dangerous for blind persons. Some added accomadations have been a bumpy texture to let blind people know by touch that the sidewalk is sloping, bright caution yellow paint for people with low vision. However, if these curb cuts aren’t maintained properly, especially with added bumpy textures, something could happen like when I was in highschool a girl flipped her motorized wheelchair onto herself because the curb cut was too steep and the road. Instead of being a benefit to everyone, it probably killed her and her accident could have caused a corresponding car accident.

And, by nature of expressing how disability (and some accomodations) can be bad for everyone, OP is also alluding to the truth that accessibility options have the potential to help everyone. You do not need to be “unable to work” to have a different set of abilities and needs from another person. Trying to design a universally accessible world is actually limited by thinking of it in terms of “disability.”

I didn't have a point to this really, I was just so excited to share some of my education with people who might actually be interested. Oh, some might be happy to hear it does appear there is a non profit called RL Mace Universal Design Institute which is keeping his work alive, thank goodness. Perhaps I will reach out and see if they have any education or research opportunities.

[trans-axolotl]

faq: getting arrested in the US as a wheelchair user

i've been having a lot of conversations with wheelchair users new to protesting lately, and many people have questions about what to expect if you're risking arrest. disclaimer that this isn't legal advice, a lot of this will vary based on where you live, and cops rarely bother to follow their own departmental policies.

1. How do cops transport wheelchair users to jail?

Depends on the police department, the type of wheelchair you have, and whether you're ambulatory. The ADA does not specify that we have a right to be transported in a wheelchair van--examples from ADA resources just state that "Officers should use caution not to harm an individual or damage his or her wheelchair."

In practice, this might mean:

Cops lift you out of your wheelchair, handcuff you, and put you in the back of a regular patrol car. They fold up your wheelchair and put it in the back of the car.

Cops have a specific patrol van with a wheelchair lift and transit securement system. You can often find this information listed in police policy if you search for your city's police department and "prisoner transport van wheelchair." Keywords often include Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle (WAV) or Prisoner Disabled Accessible Van (PDAV).

Cops have a contract with an external company (often local public transit, sometimes a private company) to call for one of their wheelchair accessible vans to use as a transport vehicle.

Cops make you transfer or ambulate into the patrol car and then just leave your wheelchair on the side of the road.

2. Will I be taken to a architecturally accessible jail?

Depends on the police department, but probably not. All that ADA resources specify is that wheelchair users "must have access to the toilet facilities and other amenities," at the jail we're taken to. When I've been arrested, I've been held in an "ADA compliant cell" which featured a very narrow toilet with no grab bars that I know for a fact would have been impossible to transfer to for most of my friends who use power chairs. There seems to be very little enforcement when it comes to architectural access.

Relevant info is that police departments will often have one specific jail that they always transport disabled prisoners to in your city. You can usually find this information in prisoner transport policies that are often posted publicly on police department websites. This can be important information to know, especially in the cases of mass arrests at protests, where wheelchair users might get separated from the rest of our comrades and taken to a completely different holding area.

3. Will cops let me stay in my wheelchair in jail?

Depends on the police department. Some police departments will let you stay in your chair, some might make you take off any removable parts (cushion/footrests/sideguards/etc) and then let you stay in it, some might make you transfer to a basic wheelchair that the jail supplies, some might leave you in a cell without access to any mobility aids. My comrades and I have experienced all of those scenarios while getting arrested.

4. How can I try to protect my rights while being arrested?

Unfortunately, there's not always a ton that can be done in the moment--knowing that we have rights under the ADA doesn't mean that we can get cops to take that seriously.

But if you're familiar with local cop policies and your rights under the ADA, it can sometimes be helpful to verbalize what policies are not being followed in the moment, especially if cops have cameras on. Saying things like "I am not resisting arrest, I am a wheelchair user and cannot walk/disperse/get on the sidewalk/etc," can be helpful for trying to fight charges later on.

Memorize your local legal support hotline/NLG chapter and do not answer any questions or offer any information to cops without a lawyer.

After you're out, your local Protection and Advocacy organization for your state might be able to help you make a formal complaint or sue the police department for disability discrimination.

5. Other things to keep in mind:

Cops are fucking bastards and getting arrested as a wheelchair user can be really scary! It's even scarier when no one in your community knows how to prepare, what to expect, or how to support you afterwards.

It's super important for protest buddies, affinity groups, and local jail support organizations to know this kind of information before a wheelchair user gets arrested. More people being able to recognize PDAVs on sight can help wheelchair users get advanced warning if cops are specifically preparing to target us for arrest at a protest. Knowing which specific jail wheelchair users are taken to before a mass arrest means that lawyers won't have to scramble last minute to track down wheelchair users that get separated in the system.

Even if you're not a wheelchair user and you think that there aren't any wheelchair users protesting with you, PLEASE make sure you know this information, especially if you do "know your rights" trainings or are a legal observer.

feel free to send any other questions in regards to getting arrested with mobility aids my way and I'll do my best to answer!