#ableism -

[alazyparallelworld]

okay guys lets be honest with ourselves here though. like, for a moment,

to viewed & treated as an adult with "moderate/severe intellectual/developmental disabilities" you have to walk across a very thin line.

if you're too eloquent, your means of operation (ADLs, walking, talking, transportation, self-care) are assumed to be good. there is no true Passing, as an ablebodied/ableminded person online. IRL there are tics; there are deformations in the face, hands, that cue people into. "oh, you are not cognitively All There. got it."

if you are comprehensible, then it isn't that bad. you're basically an ableminded (read: normal) person. you're held to impossible standards of behavior, intellect, and motor skills - when you eventually fail their expectations, they react to it as a failure of you, as a person. that you did it on purpose. worse-case scenario, it'll spread that you're faking. your story of difficulty is just a ploy.

and this is if you're perceived and treated as an adult.

if there's visible, evident in text, that There Is Something Wrong with you on a neuron level? you become a kid. people are fascinated that you're online at all (and doubtful of your independence at this, another bell ring of are you faking?)

people mind their words around you. "fragile, like glass," is an understatement. i've had experiences IRL where strangers worriedly stood beside me, wondering where my parents/caregiver was. one woman got into my face, ignored my jolting away and stuttering, and moved my bangs out of my eyes. because it was Bad for me. (don't you know that?)

and that's, in person, when i have an adult's stature and appearance. where my drivers license has my 90s birthdate.

if your speech is broken - either in grammar or illogical - or you use assistive tools like an AAC board, speech to text, people assume that talking is hard for you. you need to be monitored by someone who knows better - you need to do as little as possible. you need to be away from everyone else; it's disturbing to see someone out of the SPED classroom, outside of the assisted living facilities.

and most of the time - even around the most sensitive, kind people and friends - i still fall into one or other binary of functional/nonfunctional. independent/dependent.

[deservedgrace]

it was really confusing for me for a while how the version of christianity i left could both have an insistence that people be and feel broken while maintaining an expectation of perfection that involves being able bodied and neurotypical and anybody that falls outside of that is seen as """broken""" or """insufficient"""... but being disabled and/or having health conditions is seen as the "wrong" way to be """broken""". i knew ableism had a role, but it just doesn't make sense logically and it bothered me that i couldn't find consistency within it. but what i'm realizing is that in the church i left (and frequently in fundamentalist christianity as a whole) there's a desire for people to be "broken", but only in the way the church has broken them wants them to be

you're allowed to be a sinner to some extent, in that you're expected to acknowledge and fully feel the weight of that. you're supposed to accept that you're """insufficient""" in that way. you're taught nothing you do will make up for who you are and you are expected to be and feel """broken"""

but things like depression, or anxiety, or other mental and physical illnesses are seen as being """broken""" in the wrong way. in my experience it can almost go beyond "i don't believe you're experiencing this" to "you cannot be experiencing this because you're not allowed to." it's often seen as a sin issue, as something to repent of or bring to god, and if you're still experiencing it it's your fault for not having faith or being sinful or any number of reasons they like to give. the church sees it as brokenness, but since it's not in the way they want you to be (or in the way they broke you), it's not acceptable and leads a lot of people to hide and not get proper support

and i can't stop thinking just how insidious and cruel it is to break people and insist they perform brokenness in the one way that you want them to be broken, while also claiming people who don't fit the able bodied, neurotypical standard you uphold are broken... while also refusing to offer them any kind of support because they're broken in the "wrong" way

[shirogane-oushirou]

edit: i decided this would drive me nuts, but i still want to keep it in case there's something worth salvaging in the future. ignore all of this ^_^

for some reason i'm interested the idea of poke!ren beginning our friendship with that like... unintentional infantilization a lot of people do with disabled people when they're trying not to be actively ableist? not because i enjoy that LMAO ABSOLUTELY NOT -- and my pokesona is prideful as hell and would DESPISE it -- but i think it would make sense.

[cw casual ableism, infantilism of disabled ppl. also, disclaimer: i'm basing some of this loosely on my own health issues so it may not 100% apply to all disabled people. just want to keep that straight LMAO.]

most many doctors are SUPREMELY ableist, but doc!ren went into his field SPECIFICALLY to help disabled people and so focused on how best to treat each individual person according to their personalities and disabilities. sure, poke!ren's also technically both a clinical doc and researcher, but if doc!ren is like 80% clinical 20% research, poke!ren is like 10% clinical 90% research.

so poke!ren... doesn't have that knowledge. he does mostly field work and some lab work, with the rare "what do you think about this specific medical case?" appointment. he's the kind of person who hates the more vocal brands of ableism, but is consistently overbearing with his treatment of disabled people in a way that's inadvertently exhausting to deal with because "what happens if i tell him this is also ableist? will he have a fit? will he get angry or upset? will he decide disabled people are too picky if i'm not the Perfect Disabled Little Meow Meow?" so you just end up suffering through it.

therefore, he goes full "paper skin, glass bones," with me, very, "oh i can get that for you! no don't stand up, i can do that. can i cook something for you? no no no, i mean, i know you COULD, but wouldn't it be /easier/ for me to make it for you? you might hurt yourself!". 🙄

we have an evening outing in another city. it gets dark, we're not at the point where we're comfortable staying at his place together, he offers to maybe help me find a hotel, and i say "nope i've got this!" and fly away home on a Fucking Lugia.

and then he has to sit with that and realize some things.

like the fact that he has no idea who the fuck i am beyond surface level. after all, i've been carrying a legendary bird around in my back pocket and he didn't know until now, months after we first met.

like the fact that i can take care of SOME things by myself with the right "tools" or pkmn. i SOMETIMES need help, but i don't ALWAYS need help, and if i DO need help i have the option to tell him myself.

like the fact that he simply saw me as Disabled. as though i didn't have a life before or outside of Disability. i was simply the pitiable, lonely, disabled vn nerd he talks about games with.

and then he has to relearn Me from square one, and it makes our relationship so much stronger. we're able to work on our perfect balance together and build the trust that HE won't take things over for ME when I'M capable of something, and that I will let HIM know when i need HIM to do something I can't do. he has to trust that i'll let him be more doting on the days when i'm having flare-ups, but simultaneously has to respect when there are things i still want to do myself even on those worst days.

.........idk. this is a lot of words to say "god i want to be taken care of, but in a way where the other person sees me as an adult with a personality and decision-making ability and a life that's deeply AFFECTED by disability in many ways but isn't JUST disability." yk?

tbch, after writing it all out, this maaaay end up as canon..... OR it might remain a theoretical offshoot depending on how comfy i am when the Mental Movies (tm) of us finding that trust come together. poke!ren's supposed to be like. PURE escapism, so something like this honestly might hit too close to home to feel good fdhfghfg. like at least he'd end up learning that balance, which is nice... but everything leading up to it? 😬 Maybe A Bit Too Painful....

(damn. verbose king over here, wrote all of this TWICE just to say "i might throw it out" lKNMADKJFNKJDNF)

[daevite]

wildbow just uses "fate worse than death" to refer to certain forms of physical disability way too many times. it's not like taylor isn't allowed to desperately not want to be paralyzed or have a spinal cord injury. it's not like there aren't people with these conditions who would do anything to be rid of them. but the messaging of "i would rather be dead than live the way you do" is way too prevalent in media irt being crippled (i say that because i'm technically crippled myself - though not to the extent of paralysis or a spinal cord injury, though some stuff points to my spine being fucky and that same stuff makes me very ill - and it's best way i can summarize what he seems to target the most with this sentiment) on top of able-bodied people telling us that straight-up irl and it's dehumanizing and in the broader context of how characters who are crippled are handled in worm's narrative, it's a shitty thing to read.

[discworldwitches]

this is honestly so unnerving like the way she so clearly has been lurking on spoonie blogs??

[ocpdzim]

Hey buddy, we understand that things can get confusing with so many differing opinions, but roleplay accounts are much more popular nowadays, and there are many people willing to help with any possible harassment you'd get.

Claiming endogenous origins can at first seem to help against hidden trauma, as coping with that knowledge can be very scary, but we promise that there are ways to help you with it so that you don't have to feel alone.

However trying to claim genuine endogenous origins can be very harmful as by definition, it's not possible. Systems have been trying to fight against stigmatized ideas ever since science uncovered them, and claiming that just anyone can "be" an endogenic system is incredibly offensive as, just like you, we've gone through genuine horrors that forced us to this point just to survive.

I’m going to do my best to respond to this politely, but fair warning, if I get another ask like this I am not likely to be this polite again.

First of all, it is extremely insulting for you to start this out with ~I know things can be confusing.~ I am not confused, and perhaps if you think everyone who disagrees with you must simply be confused, you aren’t cut out for this sort of discussion.

I didn’t go into this in detail in the post because frankly it was besides the point - my personal experience with these things is not the reason we should be treating others with respect and dignity - but when I was first engaging with the system community I had repressed trauma I was not aware of. Over the years, I have figured it out and come to terms with it and am generally doing fine now, but at the time, when I wasn’t aware of the trauma, it was still pretty obvious that I had a system and it was people like you who made me feel unwelcome in my own community, further worsened my already disastrously bad mental health, and further discouraged me from seeking any kind of help (although, in all fairness on that last point, my past experience with psychiatry was already plenty discouraging on its own). Although I never declared endogenous origin, behavior like yours caused me to feel unsafe and constantly on edge that some asshole might come into my inbox and interrogate me about whether I had enough trauma to justify my own existence. I highly doubt my experience there is unique. Now, here you are with your incredibly condescending ask that can only really be addressed by either ignoring it, telling you to fuck off, or providing personal background that not everyone is as comfortable with sharing as I am. It’s baffling to me that anyone familiar with the online climate surrounding this discussion couldn’t recognize this as a harmful and invasive pattern.

Endogenous systems, on the other hand, have never once made me feel unwelcome or hurt or invalidated. On the contrary, they’ve provided friendship, support, and spearheaded efforts to get accommodations and understanding for systems in groups I’ve been in. I’ve also seen how behavior like yours has hurt friends of mine who are endogenous systems, and to put it bluntly, if they’d been faking then there is no way they wouldn’t have abandoned the grift by now due to the sheer quantity of cruelty they’ve experienced about it and the complete lack of any personal gain. Is it any wonder that I’d rather throw my lot in with them than with the psychiatric system that caused me so much pain and trauma or with a group of bizarrely self-important people online who believe they are entitled to know and be arbiter of other people’s mental health, with no concern for the damage done?

Your experience is not universal and neither is mine. I’m sorry that you experienced trauma, I know firsthand how bad that sucks. However, other systems existing without having experienced trauma - or having experienced trauma but not considering that the source of their system’s existence - is not your business, does not meaningfully affect you, and does not stigmatize us. If anything, it helps destigmatize systems, although there’s still a long way to go on that.

Finally, I would not trust the psychiatric establishment as an authority on what is or isn’t possible. It’s worth noting that even if you DO want to place your complete faith in the bloodstained system that has in the past considered homosexuality a disease and autistic people subhuman, the system which to this day is so rife with abuse that there is a psychiatry survivors movement, it’s easy to google the subject and discover that when speaking about trauma causing systems to form, psychiatric sources tend to use language like “usually” and “almost always” instead of “exclusively,” but frankly I place people’s direct accounts of their own experience far above anything the psychiatric establishment has to say on the matter anyway.

If you can bring me a concrete, real example of how endogenous systems supposedly cause harm to the community - as in, not “It makes me feel invalidated to see systems that are different from me” or “I met an endogenous system who was an asshole once” or “They’re in the way of my respectability politics” or “I just don’t think they exist and somehow that’s my business” or “I’ve never actually seen it happen but here’s a harm I think is maybe possible in theory,” we may continue this discussion. However, I will not be holding my breath for that, because in 7 years I have never once seen any argument against endogenous systems aside from those. Begone from my inbox until and unless you have something actually insightful to say.

[illnessfaker]

comical for an allistic person to act as if they can tell a person's autistic based off their autistic friends' behavior and imply only those people are the real autistic ones (aka not myself) when they called me a psychopath not too long ago because i didn't interpret something someone else said as particularly hurtful/otherwise a situation involving like. understanding other people's emotions and predicting their reactions...weird how that works huh.