crip4crip always

mod is multiply disabled both physically and mentally, and has a learning disability, but does not have intellectual disability. 15+ as sex will be discussed occasionally but I'm not your mom. header is an orange cat playing with a toy, pfp is a simple graphic of two wheelchair users with their arms stretched towards each other holding a heart.

[disabledlovingdisabled]

I think I'm going to start making this blog more personal because being disabled is a very isolating experience lol. Hi, my name is Asphodel and i use any/all pronouns with a preference for he/she

Despite everything i am an adult

[dankmemeuniversity]

[iamoutofideas]

[decompose1]

i dislike the weird jump to blame suicide victims for their suicides and call them selfish. suicide is very frequently in some way a social murder. i think instead of blaming someone who was in such a dark place that they saw no other way out we should maybe be blaming the people who threw gas on the fire, such as those with a lot of power to make that person's life that bad or those who abused them into it. is that really that unreasonable

[decompose1]

not once has being told i was being selfish- or seeing people talk about how selfish suicide is- EVER made me feel less suicidal. it creates shame. it makes me shut down and never want to disclose feeling this way because oh, g-d, doesn't that make me a bad person? oh, g-d, they'll think i'm a monster, they'll think i'm guilt tripping them, they'll think, they'll think, they'll think (....)

and worse still, nearly every time i've been pushed this far- and, indeed, a lot of my mental health problems to begin with- often stem from the idea that i am less important than anyone else. my thoughts, my feelings, my safety, my life are less important. so to hear people essentially say to me, "but how would everyone else feel!?"?? it doesn't help at all. it makes it so much worse. once more, i am not the important one. even at my lowest, i have to be the one to make compromises and consider how everyone else feels. how could that ever help me? how could you say that to someone?

[martianmoonboy]

Why do psychologists talk about personality disorders, only discussing how they affect other people and not how they affect the person with the disorder, and then blame us when we struggle to get treatment and be honest about our feelings? It is so hard to live in this world with a personality disorder.

The judgment from all sides hurts so much and finding people who understand without judgment is a breath of fresh air.

[cosmichroma]

Disability pride flag made from cropped NASA APOD images! 🌑 ❤ 💛 ☁️ 💙 💚 🌑

[bebsi-cola]

actually tho for people who have spent their whole lives disabled they are often put into the category of "person who cannot and will not achieve anything ever in their lives" including getting qualifications from education or being employed. it's a form of ableism we don't really discuss a lot because a lot of disabled persons are being asked to push themselves through their difficulties to function on the same level as their abled peers but it is not in any way easier being someone that everyone has given up on. who doesn't get encouragement growing up, never given goals to reach, never asked for their dreams or aspirations because everyone assumes they are incapable of achievement. i feel like the disability inspiration porn comes from this group of disabled people when they manage to do anything because the abled perception of someone who has crossed the disability event horizon into "too disabled" is someone who is "useless". and encouraging people or believing in them isn't necessarily the same as pressuring them to push past their limits. and some disabled people won't manage to finish schooling or get a job or be in a relationship or do something independently, but they still deserve to try and still deserve to have someone believing in them. even if abled metrics of success are nonsensical, failing to meet them still gets you exposed to negatives attitudes, and it can still make you feel like crap

[sycamorality]

turns out i have a lot of opinions on subtitles

[sycamorality]

theres a youtuber ive watched before he ever hit 1k. hell, before he hit 800. he had subtitles on his first video. manual ones, not auto-generated ones. IF HE CAN DO THAT THEN SO CAN SOME FUCKASS WITH THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS OF SUBSCRIBERS. OR AT LEAST FUCKING PAY SOMEONE TO DO THE SUBTITLES

[sycamorality]

and i hate the autogenerated subtitles so much. if the person swears or says a slur and it isnt censored, DONT CENSOR IT IN THE SUBTITLES. if its censored in speech, then censor it in subtitles. but if someone says a slur outright, no censoring? put it in the damn subtitles, i dont care, subtitles are for telling you what someone says

[sycamorality]

if your guy says "motherfucking bitch" then the subtitles should not say "motherf*cking b*tch", "mother******* b*****" or void forbid "[_] [_]" like youtube's autogenerated subtitles do. your subtitles should be saying "motherfucking bitch", UNLESS the guy's speech was censored like motherf[dolphin noise] b[dolphin noise], then you subtitles say "motherf[dolphin noise] b[dolphin noise]"

[sycamorality]

youtube's autogenerated subtitles are maybe some of the most ableist and infantilising ones ever and i think im gonna kill someone

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

In This Post, I linked to a video about how horse riding can be used as a tool for physical therapy for people with certain disabilities. And the narrator of that video was using technical, clinical, words to describe the effect of the horse's movement on the rider's body.

The video has auto-generated closed captions.

At the 8 minute, 10 second mark, the narrator says that the motion of the horse's back "may decrease tone in spastic muscles" (which is a good thing; clinically speaking, "spastic" means a muscle has way too much tone).

But because YouTube's algorithm has flagged "Spastic" as a slur (with no understanding that words can have different meanings in different contexts), it simply removed the word altogether, and the closed caption was:

"may decrease tone in muscles,"

(not even giving a clue that a word was edited out).

Generally speaking, decreasing tone in (normal) muscles is a bad thing, 'case it means you're making someone weaker.

So not only is the automatic censoring of words infantilizing of disabled people, it also renders what's actually being said to gibberish.

(I once watched a video on the origin of animal / pet words, and when talking about cats, the word "Pussy" was likewise just removed from the captions)

[normal-with-adhd-is-a-joke]

People with skin conditions deserve better. People with acne, eczema, psoriasis, hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), and other skin conditions do not deserve to be treated like we're contagious or an eyesore. We deserve to be in public and show our skin and not feel ashamed because there is no shame in having a medical condition. We deserve to be free from insensitive questions and unsolicited advice. People with scars, including but not limited to those from burns, surgery, self-harm, injury, illness, and acne also deserve to live life without worrying about rude comments and questions. Don't comment on people's skin, especially strangers'. Even if you think you're being tactful.

[only-knives]

a lot of people are under the impression that mental hospitals have "modernized" and no longer use violent or neglectful tactics. others are aware it still occurs, but think it must have been justified, if a helping professional did it.

but if a middle schooler is freaking out in public because someone was refusing to let her call her father for help, should the response should be restraining the child and breaking her wrist in the process?

if a teenager is sobbing hysterically in an alley, should they be publicly shamed? should anyone who attempts to help them be physically prevented from doing so?

if a severely ill adult needs emergency medical care, should they be left in a room alone for hours on end and denied care for days?

no?? then why is it okay in a psych ward? every time you justify abuse and neglect of patients by clinicians under the pretext of it being "for their own good", this is what you are endorsing. THIS is what they use that rational to do. these are all real things i've experienced (either first or second hand), and it's only one example from each ward.

this happens all the time. these sorts of things are being done to people in psych wards right now. no matter when you're reading this, it's happening, now. it's been happening for centuries. stop excusing it.

[flowercrowncrip]

Happy disability pride month to my disability sailing club who won our annual team racing event against the local kid’s sailing club for the first time in at least 5 years!

[flowercrowncrip]

I really like this event because it lets the kids practice their racing skills and also introduces them to the idea that disabled people have hobbies and also shows them what accommodating disability looks like in the context of something they enjoy.

They were a bit shy and didn’t say anything bit were obviously wondering at the race briefing about how someone like me in a big tilted back powerchair, neck brace and hand splints is able to sail. But then they see it. They see me and other people getting hoisted into the boats. They sail in our adapted boats so get to see how the steering and seating is different, and they can see how my seating looks different from other disabled people who don’t need the same support to stay sat upright.

I meet a lot of adults who were obviously never exposed to visible disability as a kid and sort of panic about how to talk to me or even just exist in the same general area as me. I really hope that these kids will have this memory as a sort of buffer against that panic and assumption that people like me are utterly unrelatable and incapable of anything at all.

[iloveyoudeanwinchester]

I got denied for disability after waiting 2 ½ years for a response and the wording in the letter pissed me off. So I wrote a poem about it.

Image id in alt text

Poem transcript under the cut

You are not disabled under our rules.

Your body may be in constant pain. 

Your back may bend in all the wrong ways and your muscles may feel like sunburned taffy in a press. 

You may be too dizzy to stand or sit for more than a few minutes at a time. 

You may have chronic migraines and chronic fatigue and a chronic sadness from a childhood lacking love. 

You may have a dysfunctional thyroid and dysautonomia. 

You may have to sleep more than you are awake and you may have to use a wheelchair or cane any time you are able to leave the house. 

But aren’t you aware the medications you take to make your pain more bearable can also make you sleepier? 

Aren’t you aware that everyone wants an excuse to not do the dishes and your extreme back pain is laughable? 

Aren’t you aware that your life is expendable? 

Aren’t you aware that we don’t care about you at all? 

You are able to work some; you are able to work more. 

Just adapt. 

Just push yourself more. 

Just break your body more.

Just be a good little number on a screen and stop screaming as we churn you through the system and beat you to a pulp. 

This is because you are not disabled under our rule.

[feefal]

Scoliosis gang rise up..!

[disabledlovingdisabled]

does anyone have an image description?

[hell-on-sticks]

Today in australia they started senate hearings on the bill the government hopes will make enough disabled people die or disappear to make us all less irritatingly expensive for them. We had two weeks to submit feedback on over 400 pages of complicated legal terms. They don't care what we have to say and they don’t care that this will kill people and disenfranchise disabled people across the country.

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare. Oh, and it includes chemical restraint, too. The government has directly refused to exclude chemical restraint from the required process, calling it "trialling medication".

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.

Sorry we're too expensive to have rights, I guess.

[this-is-physi-sensory-ableism]

As someone who lives with chronic dry mouth syndrome, I need people to take disabilities like this more seriously.

From my experience, I struggle with constant stress due the following:

-Having to use specialized treatments multiple times a day, which I cannot easily access outside of the house.

-Constantly trying so hard to keep my teeth clean but knowing that I will inevitably have cavities next time I go to the dentist (and if you're like me, getting cavities filled is incredibly traumatizing.)

-Constantly having a dry and scratchy throat.

-Having constant tonsil stones because my mouth can't clean itself properly.

- Struggling to eat because my mouth is so dry that I can't swallow easily. (This does not pair well with eating disorders.)

-Overdrinking in an attempt to ease my mouth and throat (which also makes me feel sick and/or makes me have to use the bathroom a lot, which when paired with a pelvic disability is absolute hell.)

Don't underestimate the manner of which "simple" conditions can disable someone.

[wheelie-sick]

I have a hard time getting along with animal rights activists for a number of reasons but one of the big one is like.... I can get on board with better treatment of animals but you're also against animal testing for medicine which means you would literally rather I die than an animal be given a treatment that could save my life. ok. well. I don't think we're on the same team anymore.

[wheelie-sick]

this point makes people so uncomfortable too. they haven't put two and two together. they see the removal of animal testing as some nebulous goal that has 0 impact on anything except for the animals

when someone says they don't support animal testing for medicine my immediate response is "so you prefer that die of lupus?" and suddenly they start doing mental gymnastics to wrap their head around their philosophy and the fact that I am standing right in front of them and would be literally dead without animal testing.

they see animal testing as theoretically beneficial, not the process that every single medicine has gone through and has to go through. every single autoimmune disease patient, cancer patient, blood disorder patient, etc. that has survived has only survived because of animal testing.

and the situation gets realllyyyy uncomfortable when you point out the number of lives saved by animal testing.

[aroacebaggins]

This feels like such a minor thing that's barely worth bringing up but at the same time it's honestly a pet peeve of mine so. I've noticed a specific phenomenon with how the internet treats photos of cane users. Pinterest has been the worst offender in my experience, which I'll get to. I also suspect it applies to other disabilities and mobility aids but I'm just going off what I've seen.

Basically, I've noticed that frequently, when i see a photo of a cane user, as in a real life disabled person using a cane in their regular life, it's likely that 90% of the comments are about fictional characters. Especially on pinterest, this is frequently in the form of something like "I'm going to use this as a reference to draw (character)", okay fine, that's just what pinterest is like. But it's also just things like "VIKTOR IS THAT YOU??", or "this is so Kaz Brekker coded". And don't get me wrong, i love disabled characters. I love that abled people love them too. Viktor Arcane is one of my blorbos of all time. I haven't read six of crows but I've heard good things. And I do think people should draw more disabled characters using refs from actual disabled people. But at the same time...

I just don't love that so many people's first reactions to disabled people is to think of us as fictional characters instead of actual people. Especially when the disability/mobility aid is one of the only resemblances i guess? Like yes I'm being nitpicky I'm fully aware of that. But i do think it says something about how you see us if your first reaction to, i don't know, a woman with rainbow hair and a cane, is "omg viktor" instead of anything else about her. Like no actually not every cane user is your fictional man, that's just a person. You're just not used to thinking about us outside of these few characters, so we all get lumped in with them. You don't always have to tell a disabled person how much they remind you of a fictional character. This is really small, but it just grates on me when i see it so much.

Again, liking disabled characters is great! But it doesn't take the place of supporting real disabled people is what I'm trying to say i think.

Sorry if this is not very coherent, idk if I'm being too sensitive/too harsh but i just needed to ramble.

[tofumarinado]

it's so funny to me when i see pearl-clutching articles about how "teenagers are diagnosing themselves with mental disorders via tiktok" because like. this is not happening in a vacuum. teenagers are severely and i mean severely medically neglected. i cannot stress this enough. teenagers do not have free access to medical care. those same news outlets would be clowning on women with housewife psychosis in the 1950's.

i sometimes go pale when listening to some of what my friends have gone through in their childhoods and teenagehoods. they talk about it so nonchalantly, things that would be considered straight up torture if done to an adult, can't fathom the effect this has on children. they are on multiple anti-psychotics and several antidepressants and anxiety meds now that they are adults. medical neglect has legally and effectively disabled them. a timely diagnosis and intervention could have saved them.

of course teenagers are self-diagnosing using tiktok. if your knee-jerk reaction is to scoff at the idea and dismiss it as dumb teenager shit instead of being radicalized because the best shot young people have at attaining the mental health support they need is a fucking dancing videos app, you're categorically a political enemy of the youth.