Somewhere I read that a symptom of autism/ ASD is a tendency to feelvictimized.Feel. And I couldn’t get that out of my head because there is a difference between saying that and saying “a tendency to be” victimized. Saying “feel” carries the implication that the victimization is in one’s head.
There’s probably a reason people with ASD feel victimized:
I saw some idiots shaming disabled people for having kids “knowing they may have their condition,” so friendly reminder that 1) disabled people are allowed to exist, and 2) disabled people wanting biological children are not selfish. So long as they make the appropriate changes necessary to welcome a child (disabled or abled) then they are fine!!!
Explain it to me like I’m five. I want people to explain and give a rightful, intelligent excuse on how what Chris Rock did was a joke at the expense of a woman who’s currently suffering of an autoimmune disease. I want it explained without bringing up that he “probably didn’t know” that he’s a “comedian” that the jokes were “drafted beforehand”.
It’s funny because I am seeing an overwhelming amount of white people and non black people using this situation to paint black people as the emotional menaces that we are. All of sudden I am seeing peacemakers from a country who thrives out of won wars and guns. With an active history of violence till this day.
The slap is a statement. It should have some of you shook. It should have some of you from now on consciously acting and behaving in line. Verbal violence is just as bad if not worst than physical violence. Saying whatever you want comes with consequences. I am hoping that those of you who are mostly chronically online are made more socially aware now.
‘you guys cant even make a phone call without getting nervous’ turned into ‘you guys can’t even order at mcdonalds without stuttering and avoiding eye contact’ turned into ‘you guys can’t even go to the bathroom at starbucks without help’
like when are you guys gonna realize these jokes are increasingly ableist
My heart goes out to every disabled person who works for a disability organization and has to deal with abled co-workers who care more about making things easy for themselves than helping disabled people. I’m sorry you have to think on a daily basis about how they must see you the same way.
Imagine a world where medical diagnostics specialists and disability services assessors were advocates instead of gatekeepers. Imagine their target being to make sure nobody who needs help slips through the cracks and doesn’t get it, rather than to make sure nobody who’s trying to “scam the system” slips through the cracks and does.
Scammers affect real disabled/sick people by taking resources from them. Also, many known fakers that have munchausen by proxy/attention seekers can get money from donation’s to pay for medical bills they don’t even have. They get trips to disney and expensive shit from make-a-wish and sympathy.
If every person isn’t checked when they claim they need disability assistence those that fake it have a easier time because they have “proof” and people will keep throwing money at them and wasting resources from real sick people.
You’re missing my point. My whole point was that even if there ARE people out there “faking” (which is way more rare than people seem to think it is - usually what’s perceived as a person faking is just a person whose disability you don’t understand), it would be better that those people are accidentally given resources they’re not entitled to than that any actual disabled person need those resources and not be able to get them. Proving your disability to the satisfaction of officials whose job is to try to keep people out unless they successfully jump through all the hoops would be a hard thing for most people to do, but it’s especially hard when *being* disabled in itself makes it harder to do all the running around necessary to gather what’s asked for. Because under the current model, the people in charge are not making it their objective to make sure every disabled person gets the help they need. They are focused instead on making people prove they are “disabled enough,” and a big part of that is not listening to people’s lived experiences, treating their word on their own bodies and lives like it’s worthless. Most of what we’re trying to get isn’t any kind of luxury, it’s boring necessities that we need just to survive and navigate the world but we still have to spend energy we don’t have appealing to agencies that make a point of denying people just to see if they “need it enough to fight for it,” and if you’re too sick to fight, you fall through the cracks. There’s something wrong with a system built on disbelieving disabled people as the default.
(Also, Munchausen’s is a real and serious mental illness in which people physically make themselves - or others, in the case of by proxy - sick, and those people need help. It’s not a word for “person on the Internet pretending to be sick” like people think it is.)
I hate stuff like this. Im literally in a wheelchair by order of my doctor. Youd think that would be “good enough” for the resources i need but nope. My disability benefit only went through after my doctor stepped in a told them i would end up DEAD without it. When my wheelchair broke? The only thing that lets me leave the house and actually function around the house? The benefit refused to cover it because i “wasnt sick enough”. We dont know yet if im terminal. I MIGHT BE TERMINAL and they still refuse to help me. This is what shit like this gets you.
This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. Everything we need, we have to fight for. I had a similar experience with my own doctor, who is great, fighting so hard to get the right kind of wheelchair because insurance wanted to give me one that wouldn’t work for my condition because it was cheaper for them. Because you have to go through so many channels for everything, you find one person who will advocate for you but they have to refer you to someone else who doesn’t care or has an agenda of keeping numbers low. This happens all the time and just because some people get very lucky and don’t encounter it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Imagine a world where medical diagnostics specialists and disability services assessors were advocates instead of gatekeepers. Imagine their target being to make sure nobody who needs help slips through the cracks and doesn’t get it, rather than to make sure nobody who’s trying to “scam the system” slips through the cracks and does.
Scammers affect real disabled/sick people by taking resources from them. Also, many known fakers that have munchausen by proxy/attention seekers can get money from donation’s to pay for medical bills they don’t even have. They get trips to disney and expensive shit from make-a-wish and sympathy.
If every person isn’t checked when they claim they need disability assistence those that fake it have a easier time because they have “proof” and people will keep throwing money at them and wasting resources from real sick people.
You’re missing my point. My whole point was that even if there ARE people out there “faking” (which is way more rare than people seem to think it is - usually what’s perceived as a person faking is just a person whose disability you don’t understand), it would be better that those people are accidentally given resources they’re not entitled to than that any actual disabled person need those resources and not be able to get them. Proving your disability to the satisfaction of officials whose job is to try to keep people out unless they successfully jump through all the hoops would be a hard thing for most people to do, but it’s especially hard when *being* disabled in itself makes it harder to do all the running around necessary to gather what’s asked for. Because under the current model, the people in charge are not making it their objective to make sure every disabled person gets the help they need. They are focused instead on making people prove they are “disabled enough,” and a big part of that is not listening to people’s lived experiences, treating their word on their own bodies and lives like it’s worthless. Most of what we’re trying to get isn’t any kind of luxury, it’s boring necessities that we need just to survive and navigate the world but we still have to spend energy we don’t have appealing to agencies that make a point of denying people just to see if they “need it enough to fight for it,” and if you’re too sick to fight, you fall through the cracks. There’s something wrong with a system built on disbelieving disabled people as the default.
(Also, Munchausen’s is a real and serious mental illness in which people physically make themselves - or others, in the case of by proxy - sick, and those people need help. It’s not a word for “person on the Internet pretending to be sick” like people think it is.)
They aren’t focused on making people prove they are “disabled enough”. They are making sure people are not faking or asking for benefits for a mild illness or deficiency. If you worked as a builder and lost your leg you would need help since you wouldn’t be able to work as a builder anymore. If you lost a finger you can still work with many different jobs.
People with fibromyalgia for example don’t *usually* as far as i’m aware are eligible to benefits because it’s a illness that is not able to be proved through tests and is only symptom reported by the patient. So it’s very easy to fake it. Fibro isn’t a illness by itself, it is caused by something and if the cause is not found it is categorized as fibromyalgia. It could be something as simple as severe vitamin D deficiency for example that is fixable - so it isn’t something deserving of life long benefits.
I receive benefits because I have severe health issues - if you were rejected, chances are you don’t really need it. There are rare cases that people that need are rejected but this is far from being a common occurrence.
Yes, Munchausen’s is a mental illness but nobody should receive benefits for making themselves sick (or others). They need help, but if they commit fraud or injury other people they need to be responsable for their actions. Mental illness is not a excuse unless what you have is so severe you’re considered insane, which isn’t the case in Munchausen’s patients.
Fibromyalgia is actually a really good example, because it is a real and often debilitating illness that, yes, you can’t “prove,” it relies on doctors listening to and believing patients. There are several other chronic illnesses that are the same way, and many that now CAN be proven with tests but at one point couldn’t. The fact is that medicine is always evolving and things that are diagnosed clinically now might eventually be found to have markers that can be tested for if they develop the right test. That doesn’t mean that the people who have them now, when those tests don’t exist, should suffer.
I’m a disability activist so I don’t speak just for myself, I try to advocate for all disabled people. So please don’t assume that when I make posts like this I am complaining about my own experience. This isn’t sour grapes because an agency rejected me; this is a systemic problem that I can see where we function under a gatekeeping model rather than an advocacy one and I believe that’s the wrong tactic. You’re not going to change my mind about that.
I see a lot of ableism on your page, and yes disabled people CAN be ableist. I have multiple lifelong disabilities and also some recent health problems that have made things worse for me, and I do get help from a lot of places, but I also see people who need help turned away and I have a problem with that so I’m going to speak out about wherever I see it.
Imagine a world where medical diagnostics specialists and disability services assessors were advocates instead of gatekeepers. Imagine their target being to make sure nobody who needs help slips through the cracks and doesn’t get it, rather than to make sure nobody who’s trying to “scam the system” slips through the cracks and does.
Scammers affect real disabled/sick people by taking resources from them. Also, many known fakers that have munchausen by proxy/attention seekers can get money from donation’s to pay for medical bills they don’t even have. They get trips to disney and expensive shit from make-a-wish and sympathy.
If every person isn’t checked when they claim they need disability assistence those that fake it have a easier time because they have “proof” and people will keep throwing money at them and wasting resources from real sick people.
You’re missing my point. My whole point was that even if there ARE people out there “faking” (which is way more rare than people seem to think it is - usually what’s perceived as a person faking is just a person whose disability you don’t understand), it would be better that those people are accidentally given resources they’re not entitled to than that any actual disabled person need those resources and not be able to get them. Proving your disability to the satisfaction of officials whose job is to try to keep people out unless they successfully jump through all the hoops would be a hard thing for most people to do, but it’s especially hard when *being* disabled in itself makes it harder to do all the running around necessary to gather what’s asked for. Because under the current model, the people in charge are not making it their objective to make sure every disabled person gets the help they need. They are focused instead on making people prove they are “disabled enough,” and a big part of that is not listening to people’s lived experiences, treating their word on their own bodies and lives like it’s worthless. Most of what we’re trying to get isn’t any kind of luxury, it’s boring necessities that we need just to survive and navigate the world but we still have to spend energy we don’t have appealing to agencies that make a point of denying people just to see if they “need it enough to fight for it,” and if you’re too sick to fight, you fall through the cracks. There’s something wrong with a system built on disbelieving disabled people as the default.
(Also, Munchausen’s is a real and serious mental illness in which people physically make themselves - or others, in the case of by proxy - sick, and those people need help. It’s not a word for “person on the Internet pretending to be sick” like people think it is.)
Imagine a world where medical diagnostics specialists and disability services assessors were advocates instead of gatekeepers. Imagine their target being to make sure nobody who needs help slips through the cracks and doesn’t get it, rather than to make sure nobody who’s trying to “scam the system” slips through the cracks and does.
fyi things like insulin, hearing aids, wheelchairs, glasses costing money at all is a form of structural ableism
disabled people should not have to pay to live their lives like everyone else. and in the case of insulin, disabled people should not have to pay to Not Fucking Die
Ppl will be like “end the stigma around mental illness uwu” but still judge you if you’re unemployed or single or not completely self-sufficient or healthy or perfectly groomed or still live with parents and don’t see the hypocrisy in that whatsoever
its april so its time to share my autism speaks story. for a few years i worked at a therapeutic recreation center for IDD participants in the summer. it was sort of like camp combined with summer school, and we worked with elementary aged kids with very impactful intellectual and developmental disabilities. every year during orientation, we’d have speakers come and give presentations on disabilities, care, behavioral management, self defense, just sort of whatever might come up. it was a governmental organization, NOT one organized or funded by autism speaks (we also did NOT have ABA on site, i wouldnt work there if we did). it was an exhausting job, understaffed and only well paid because no one would work it otherwise. we had to keep up with an ever changing landscape of terms and names and words we no longer could use, which obviously we should try our best to accommodate except it was under threat of immediate termination if a parent heard us say the wrong thing. i was bitten a few times, and a participant dislocated my arm one summer (please support funding and ballot initiatives for disability organizations, WE NEED IT) but for the most part, it was fine. the participants werent THE problem, im not going to sit here and blame a non-verbal autistic child for biting because they were not being properly understood. but the PARENTS. the parents. look im like, obviously somewhere on the spectrum, and i know having worked with IDD kids for so long how difficult home life can be, especially in low income or single parent houses. not all the parents were Autism Moms, but the ones that were were very pro-autism speaks “we need to cure the children vaccines are the devil” Autism Parents, and we had one of these for one of our orientation presentations the last year i worked there. this father was the reason i left the organization. after his presentation, which consistently stated that vaccines cause autism and featured data and info exclusively from autism speaks, a worker raised his hand. this young adult asked “isnt it true that rates of autism likely havent increased, but rather it is more diagnosed now because medicine has advanced to the point where its easier to recognize” or something along those lines. a professional, genuine question. the parent lost it, and i mean screaming swearing stomping off LOST IT. after they left, the person who asked the question was immediately fired due to pressure from the parent. we lost a good, caring worker, and on top of that the money that paid for that presentation could have been better utilized for one of the many things we desperately needed. i stayed for the summer, my last summer, because i needed the money and leaving would only make things harder for the other staff since i wouldnt be replaced. but i also started really thoroughly digging into autism speaks and why the fuck they made everything so much harder for everyone involved. i mean, i knew the basics, but i was shocked to discover how much money autism speaks was hoarding, or wasting on useless medical research to “cure” autism. on therapies that torture children. i stood around every day, looking at all the problems that money could solve, not only for our organization but for every organization in the country that genuinely respects and wants to assist and enrich the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. and it disgusted me, and i knew that the organization would never uncouple from autism speaks because it was the parents who were involved in and pushing autism speaks on the center. so i left. sincerely, deeply, from the bottom of my heart, fuck autism speaks.
If I see someone mocking a person for having unusual beliefs (whether it’s aliens or ghosts or whatever) I instantly know I can’t trust them. Bc as a schizophrenic who suffers from delusions, I know I’ll be treated as a laughing matter.
being psychotic is so wild because for all the preaching about not being ableist ppl do they still LOVE to make psychotic coded characters just wacky stoners or manic giggly killers (or a combination!) and refuse to listen to people that are actually psychotic when we point out that they’re spreading extremely dangerous and upsetting stereotypes :)
“Just lose weight” is bad medical advice, especially for chronically ill patients. Many chronic illnesses directly cause weight gain or make it too difficult to exercise. Doctors know this, but still tend to view a patient’s excess weight as the cause of their health problems rather than a symptom. They’re less likely to run important diagnostic tests on overweight patients and more likely to dismiss their health concerns. I’ve been taken more seriously by doctors since I lost a significant amount of weight, and that’s definitely not the way that things should be.
some of you may’ve heard about that fancy “bionic reading” typefont thats supposed to be easier for neurodivergent people to read (if you’re unfamiliar, it bolds the first few letters of each word to make it easier to follow)
well guess what, its locked behind a $500 a month API to write in because fuck you!
introducing, Not Bionic Reading! it is literally just the bionic reading typefont but for free. god bless neocities
Also, Bionic Reading’s website is an absolute shit show if you are neurodivergent. You would think a product being touted as an accessibility product would have a website that’s a bit more universal design but nooooooooo
You people realize the body positivity movement is literally a political movement right. Like it’s a movement that was started to improve the rights of fat people and stop discrimination against fat people. You realize that. It’s not a tea party where everyone just compliments everyone else on their looks.
One time I was teaching undergrads and we were talking about how you can even define what is “fair” in employment. And I was explaining how there have been court cases about employers forcing their employees to wear makeup or do their hair/nails, etc, so of course we end up talking about flight attendants. And my students, predictably, are like, “Well ok but in the case of flight attendants, being good looking is literally just part of the job description.” So I point out how applying this principle universally would basically make it so that any employer could refuse to hire someone who was fat or ugly. And That One Kid was like, “Well if it affects the business’s ability to make money, I mean, that’s just smart.” And so I say, “Yes, that is certainly what a capitalist would say. But don’t you think that allowing that capitalist interest to take precedence would lead to a world in which it’s legally permissible to refuse to hire someone just because they’re fat or ugly? Basically legalizing discrimination and blocking access to work and livelihood?” And this motherfucker is like, “Well, yeah. ”
When I tell you I almost had to leave…I was full-body shaking and afterward, my queer students came up and were like, “omg are you okay?”
So yeah, it’s fucking political. What you think is about personal aesthetic preference is actually oppressing huge groups of people, so.
This is a fascinating example because I actually am a flight attendant, and no the fuck it isn’t a part of my job description to “be good looking.” It hasn’t been since the 60s. We’re literally first responders. Should your ER nurse have to wear makeup in order to save your life?
Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!”
Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!”
Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D
Biology majors: it’s dead bodies guys. Corpses.
Listen I hate this take on the uncanny valley so fucking much because many subpsecies of homonids lived in the same areas but some of them got along well enough to coexist and neandertals had enough desirablegenetictraits to the point where human women (see here for a blanket on female vs male choosiness) would often pass up incel homosepian for the chad neandertal.
Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.
You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.
Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.
Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.
Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.
Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.
Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.
After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?
healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.
But yeah rabies is more likely the reason for the uncanny valley effect thanks for coming to my goddamn ted talk.
Reblogging this version bc of sources and I personally think this makes for much more interesting (and terrifying) lore than any other post in this thread.
Holy shit. I never thought of the “zombie virus” to be this take. It makes total fuckin sense. Shit
