Image ID: comment reading "lunod 14h ago @smolfrenchtoast my eyeglass prescription is -6.25/-6.50 and I have 4 separate eye-related conditions besides the nearsightedness. I am aware of why people wear glasses. It doesn't make it a mobility aid and it definitely means if you're trying to call it a mobility aid that you should be educated on and participating in blind/VI community and talking about issues pertaining to them."
You don't get to decide that for the entire community. "You need to be educated on participating in blind/VI community"? So far I've read more blind and visually impaired people calling their own glasses mobility aids than I've read sighted people doing so in my entire life.
But more to the point, it was a comment on this post:
"What about high support needs autistic people who use wheelchairs/have severe motor skill issues!"
What about them? Last I checked, you all treat them like shit and talk over them. Last I checked, half of you saying that kind of thing are still on your "autism actually makes me smarter and better than everyone else :)" schtick. In fact, are you normal about any and all stigmatized psychiatric conditions?
"Eyeglasses are mobility aids too, being mildly nearsighted makes you disabled"
Okay, and have you spoken At All about how people using white canes are treated or about genuinely any accessibility issue the blind/VI community faces? Have you talked about Any mobility aids, really?
"Psychiatric conditions are physical disabilities because it affects the brain"
Okay, and do you identify as physically disabled broadly or only when you're trying to be in cripplepunk? Have you aligned yourself with Any of Us beyond semantics arguing on the internet? Have you talked about any disability issues at all that aren't about your specific mental health diagnosis? How have you approached and reconciled the social, political, and legislative differences in how physically disabled people are treated versus mentally ill people?
Otherwise what it sounds like is you using other disabled people as tools and tokens in your arguments and that you don't actually give a shit about any of them.
Ah yes, the old, "you're tokenizing yourself!!1" argument. Because here's the thing: these points are primarily being made by multiply disabled people negatively affected by these things.
Let's take this point by point, shall we?
- What about them? Last I checked, you all treat them like shit and talk over them. Last I checked, half of you saying that kind of thing are still on your "autism actually makes me smarter and better than everyone else :)" schtick. In fact, are you normal about any and all stigmatized psychiatric conditions?
Okay, so platforming severely autistic voices is an ongoing issue in our community, one that a lot of us are working on addressing. Autism/aspie supremacy and ableism does exist on our communities - and is being shut DOWN to the point that even FACEBOOK GROUPS don't allow conditions as stigmatized as NPD and psychotic disorders to be used in their colloquial derogatory form of synonymized with abuse or a lack of ability to exercise autonomy.
Also, the existence of ableism against a subgroup does not mean people cannot bring up other forms of ableism against them. Not to mention this is a fucking spectrum. Quite frankly, the ONLY reason I don't consider my autism, which causes me to have middling to high support needs, a disorder, is because those needs are actively and continuously being met.
I am not severely autistic, but I am SIGNIFICANTLY autistic. I am the autistic person in between the person you're accusing me of tokenizing and the one you're accusing me of being.
-Okay, and have you spoken At All about how people using white canes are treated or about genuinely any accessibility issue the blind/VI community faces? Have you talked about Any mobility aids, really?
First of all, what about the people who aren't 'mildly nearsighted' who are saying this. What about the significantly visually impaired and even legally blind people who are saying this? What's with your assumption that everyone saying this is in fact privileged? You did that with autism too, because apparently none of the high support needs physically disabled autistics you're white knighting for are saying this too. Almost like you're not listening to them, the same thing you accuse us of doing.
What about the people who are talking about all those things? What about the blind/VI people who don't or even CAN'T use canes? What about the people who are simply focusing on a form of exclusion that harms them?
-Okay, and do you identify as physically disabled broadly or only when you're trying to be in cripplepunk? Have you aligned yourself with Any of Us beyond semantics arguing on the internet? Have you talked about any disability issues at all that aren't about your specific mental health diagnosis? How have you approached and reconciled the social, political, and legislative differences in how physically disabled people are treated versus mentally ill people?
Yes. Fucking yes. The people screaming for cripplepunk inclusion are by and large ALL physically disabled. Most are physically disabled by primarily physical conditions, and simply have physical symptoms from their psychiatric disabilities as well. Most are screaming about disability issues, from physical accessibility to the struggles with their illnesses and injuries to being physically assaulted by strangers. We talk about legal issues from lack of regulations to archaic and inhumane regulations to "benefits" laws to eugenics movements like MAID. We talk about how we're being exterminated.
We talk about the differences in our treatment, but we also talk about how they're less than most people say they are. We talk about how when mentally ill and invisibly physically disabled people experience the same oppression, it is erased. We talk about the vectors along which neuroableism and corpoableism sometimes operate identically, and you don't like that.
We are not "aligning with Us" because we ARE us, and that's the whole point we've been making this whole time. As soon as we disagree with you, you strip our entire disabled identity from us. You call us "abled" and even "able-bodied". You accuse us of tokenizing ourselves and not giving a shit about disabled people when we're telling you WE ARE DISABLED PEOPLE AND OUR EXPERIENCES MATTER.
What was the point of this post? Quippy discourse to fulfill your internet superiority complex? Other than visual impairment, are you insane? Do you have stigmatized disabilities like NPD, ASPD, schizophrenia, and DID. Do you actually acknowledge the depth of stigma that exists for "acceptable" mental illnesses such as autism, ADHD, depression, and anxiety, and that the veneer of acceptance only holds up so long as we aren't symptomatic?
Do you identify as physically disabled outside of cripplepunk, or is this all projection? Because even if you are all these things, You're certainly tokenizing the rest of us.
If your point was "hey make sure you're not doing this because it's still harmful and ableist even when fighting for unity, inclusion, and safe spaces for neurodisabled physically disabled people" then you should have said that. A single line about "if you're not doing this, this post isn't about you" would have gone far. An additional line to the effect of "I'd like to think most people involved in the discourse are not doing this, but I've still seen too many" would have gone further.
Because unless you and I have seen completely different discourse, quite frankly, you're making up a strawman.
The people arguing for cripplepunk inclusion are physically disabled mobility users. The people calling glasses mobility aids are referring to their own glasses helping with vision so bad or comorbid with other conditions (such as ones affecting balance) they can't move through the world without them. The ones talking about people physically disabled by their autism who have high support needs are one or both.
I'll point again to the assumption in each point that the people saying this are the privileged ones within each group. "Last I checked, you all treat them like shit and talk over them." Not even an allowance that some of those people are saying this too. A mention of essentially autism supremacists, by their description of the type most of the community can't stand. No acknowledgement that autism is anything other than essentially "a socially awkward savant" or "a severely disabled person".
"mildly nearsighted". Aside from the fact that yes, this does still in fact make you disabled, and that you're allowed to talk about erasure of your own disability and fight back against it and name what category your disability aids fall into, it's literally primarily actual visually impaired and blind people having this conversation. How dare you.
(For reference for those that might not know, visual impairment is a specific term that does not cover visual disabilities that are fully corrected by use of glasses. Not sure if OP considers visual impairment to the point it cannot be fully corrected by glasses "mild" or if they're just erasing everyone in their community who disagrees with them entirely. Considering how they say that glasses are not a mobility aid, period, despite that experience not being universal and blind/VI people who do consider their glasses a mobility aid existing, I suspect the second.)
And finally, there it is. "Do you ALIGN yourself with Us." Not, are you one of us, but do you even consider yourself to be part of OUR group. Do you IDENTIFY AS one of us.
What does that mean? Is it quite literal? Are you saying 'do you consider yourself a physically disabled person in general when you say your neurodivergence physically disables you?' is it less literal, meaning 'are you physically disabled outside of your physically disabled neurodivergence?' Is it 'are you a disabled activist and have you done enough for our liberation to have a voice on our liberation?' None of those options are good.
Why does someone have to talk about other issues to talk about being physically disabled? Is someone with a primarily mobility disability only allowed to talk about it being physically disabling if they address general physical disabilities? What about someone with a chronic illness, whether gastrointestinal, cardiac, autoimmune, vascular, respiratory, limbic, endocrine, renal, multisystemic, other, or multiple of the above? What about someone with a sensory disability that affects their mobility?
Where do you draw the line?
Why must people do a deep dive into the plight of all disabled people to justify talking about their personal experiences with disability? Is it not enough to acknowledge and allow room for intersectionality - something this post seems to be actively pushing against?
Like, this is not helping. There are actually good, salient points that COULD have been made with some of these arguments, but none of them actually WERE.
It seems a bit like you're making up a guy to get mad at on the internet.
If you're not, perhaps you should make a post about them DOING these harmful things, and not that they also happen to be against mind body dualism (usually due to being materially harmed by it, as it is a key component of legal and medical ableism) and exclusion and gatekeeping in disabled spaces when talking about shared oppression and experiences.
