This week's highlighted card was created in response to a situation at a restaurant I often go to. I use a cane, which is unusual for my age (I'm a few months short of 31), and it's fairly common for people to seem to take this as an indication that I'm significantly disabled and should be offered extra help if I seem to be in need of it at all.
(This is not exactly an unwarranted assumption on their part - most people have enough internalized ableism that they won't use assistive devices without a pressing need. I'm obviously unusual in having the philosophy that if a device makes my life easier, that's a good enough reason to use it; I see people all the time who would clearly benefit even more than I do from having a cane, but for whatever reason they've apparently decided to get along without one. As an aside, it's possible to get a cane or even a basic wheelchair without consulting a doctor about it at all; my primary cane was about $25 on Amazon.)
Anyway, I appear to be physically disabled, and one particular employee of one particular restaurant that I spend time at regularly seems to see this as a reason to hover around looking for opportunities to offer to do things for me, rather than just keeping an eye on me like any other customer and offering help if I seem to need it. This is rather annoying, and also horrible etiquette when dealing with someone with a disability, and not something that I'm inclined to let continue. At the same time, I don't want to make a scene about it and run the risk of having the employee in question lose her job over what is almost certainly just a lack of knowledge on her part. I also didn't want to run the risk of having to give up going to the restaurant: When I was writing the text for this card, I wasn't sure whether the person I was writing it for was an employee, or one of the owners of the restaurant. I've since confirmed that the person in question is not an owner, but the card was written to be able to handle both kinds of situation.
As to the text itself:
Like many disabled people,
One of my goals here is activism; I want to make it clear that this doesn't just go for me, but that her actions are problematic in general.
I am picky
A few of the friends that helped me with this objected to the word 'picky', suggesting that I use a less negative word like 'choosy' instead. I've chosen to stick with 'picky' specifically because of the negative implication, though - it says something like "You might think I'm being unreasonable, and I won't disagree with that. It's not a reason to ignore the rest of my message, though."
about who I allow to help me in ways that go above and beyond normal interaction.
The main implication here is that normal interaction is fine - it's a roundabout way of saying 'treat me like you would treat anyone else, including in when and how you offer help to me', basically.
We do this because, as vulnerable people, it is very easy for us to be taken advantage of, even unintentionally, by people who we've allowed to get close to us.
This bit might raise some eyebrows in the disability community, I know. It's a significant oversimplification, for one thing, and casting disabled people as vulnerable is not without its problems. I think context overrules that last part, though, in this case. In particular, this card is meant to be used by someone who is both visibly disabled and visibly functioning independently in the world; the message is clearly not 'I can't manage on my own'. It also more subtly challenges how the reader sees their own role in the situation - they're not just a body acting out a prescribed pattern of behavior, but a person; the card user is not just a body to be acted on, but a separate person who the reader is in one way or another establishing a relationship with, and whose perspective on that relationship is an important one.
(As to it being a simplification - guilty as charged; my only defense is that this card already has rather a lot of text on it, and there's only so much you can expect most people to take in at once.)
I would appreciate it if you would respect my right to make decisions about whether I need extra help and who I get it from.
The wording here is fairly straightforward and blunt, but still polite, and with some subtlety conveyed mostly by what isn't here: There's an assertion that the card user has the right to make these decisions, rather than a question. There's also no question about what the reader intends to do, and there are two reasons for that. The first reason is that if something like that is phrased as a question, it implies that 'no' is a reasonable answer. The second and more subtle reason is that many times when someone says that they will do a nebulous thing like this, they then consider whatever they do afterward to meet that agreement, no matter how poor or nonexistent of a job they actually do. If the request is phrased like this, though, the question of whether they're doing a good enough job for it to 'count' is not actually answered until they actually change their behavior, which is the goal here.
Thank you.
This isn't actually communicating much; it mostly just felt like the card needed a clear signal that the message was over and there wasn't more to be discussed.
Overall, the message is 'we are equals; I understand that you don't mean to hurt me; here's what you need to do to avoid that'. Ideally, I think the card should be presented with reserved to very slightly fearful body language; some small amount of irritation should also be safe, but any defensiveness or anger seems likely to evoke a defensive response from the reader, and showing a significant amount of fear seems likely to get an overly apologetic one that will cause problems down the line. Friendliness will interfere with the 'I am concerned with being taken advantage of' point and will probably just confuse the reader. Also, I suggest avoiding using this card with anyone that you have a significant amount of social power over (for example, an employee), since the results could be unpredictable.