if you want to stop ableism towards mentally ill/disabled people, you wanna be supportive of autistic people, learning disabled people, dyslexic people and so on so forth: I wanna know how you treat strangers
yeah, okay you're supportive of autistic people, cool. but how do you act when someone uses AAC in real life, when someone has poor spatial awareness, when someone speaks odd, when someone makes strange movements in public, what if you don't know if they are autistic? would you extend the care you have for autistic people towards this person?
yeah, okay you're cool with dyslexic people, but how do you act when someone takes a really long time to write something, when someone doesn't really read books, when some is "media illiterate" and doesn't understand subtext very well, what about if they are an adult and can't tell the difference between "then" and "than"?
and schizophrenics and schizospec people, what if you saw someone talking to themselves, what if someone's speech didn't make sense to you, what if they have a very flat monotone voice and smile inappropriately?
what if you didn't know any of these people were disabled, what if they WEREN'T? that guy could just be bad at spelling, or he could have had a poor education, or english could be second language, or he could be dyslexic. that woman who's talking to herself on the subway could be on drugs, or maybe she's schizophrenic, or maybe that's just a quirk she does subconsciously. that person who speaks very slowly and doesn't understand things and needs them explained, they could be disabled, or maybe they are just tired.
you'll never know. you will never know, unless you are told. and most people won't tell you.
being okay with disability means being okay of disability in everyday, normal situations. a person shouldn't have to tell you they are disabled or mentally ill for you to not be a dick.
I don't want to tell you I'm dyslexic so that you'll stop lecturing and joking about me on how I make so many grammer errors and why I misread things, I don't want to live in a world where I have to tell you about my disorders so that you'll leave me alone, if you fucking care so much about dyslexic people you wouldn't be lecturing me on my slow-ness to begin with!!!