Today my applications for SNAP, medical assistance, and cash assistance were denied. So that’s great.
In case you missed it, I am currently trying to raise money to escape my abusive father and move in with my disabled mother upon the finalization of her divorce. Neither my mother nor I can afford to live on our own. I moved back in with my parents at the start of the pandemic after suffering an unrelated mental breakdown. This was a mistake.
I do have a redbubbleshop, where I sell mostly stickers (Fruits Basket, Haikyuu!!, and Persona) and some wallpapers I’ve made as my only source of income, as well as a paypal - Laurrante@ gmail. com (no spaces). I am trying to raise at least $2,000 to cover the initial costs of moving into an apartment with my mother (rent, car insurance, utilities, groceries, and medication for both of us) without my father finding out. He doesn’t know about the divorce and we don’t want him getting wind of it.
My father is abusive emotionally, verbally, and financially. Some of the things he’s done to us include: Refusing to put in the window AC units during a heat wave which almost put me and my mother in the hospital for heat stroke, threatening to poison, kill, or throw out our animals, insults the animals almost daily (calling them stupid, ugly, disgusting, etc, and threatening to eat them), constantly berate and insult us for not being able to work or “not doing anything” during the day, completely control every penny spent and meticulously monitor mail for packages, berate and insult us whenever he has a bad day at work or is annoyed, scare the shit out of our cats by screaming and stomping around and then yell at the cats for not wanting to be near him, and every day undermine everything we say, act like we’re stupid and don’t know what we’re talking about. My father also cheats on my mother, and has since the last time she got out of the hospital after heart surgery. He expects her to do all the housework, yard work, and grocery shopping with no help, and if I attempt to help or do it myself he yells at us both. He’s called me a failure as a daughter, an adult, and a human being.
My father is extremely racist and attempted to disown me several years ago for dating a black man. The only reason I was allowed back in the house was because my mother begged. Our only relationship is his abusive commentary and my trying to ignore it.
Please help my mother, myself, and our cats escape my father. Any amount helps at all. The last time I posted we received $175! I am adding more stickers to my redbubble shop, and am accepting donations through Paypal. It’s my goal to raise at least $2,000 without alerting my father.
(Pleasereblog this post, rather than like. Only reblogs spread posts through this platform. Likes only bookmark it for yourself and no one can see them.)
We’ve received $375 in total since Thanksgiving. Thank you so much to the people who donated, and please, if you can spare anything, even just a dollar, consider sending it our way. You can also check out my redbubble if you’re uncomfortable/don’t know how to just send money through Paypal.
We’ve received another $10 bringing the total up to $385.
Yesterday my father announced that we’re not doing Christmas because “I hate Christmas.” This means we aren’t going to the family’s holiday party (my dad’s decision was not influenced by COVID, which he thinks it’s a hoax), no Christmas dinner, no presents. I know my mother has already bought some small presents, and if this is anything like in years past, me receiving them will have my father screaming that I’m ungrateful, selfish, and a drain on his resources, and my father getting presents will have him screaming that my mother wasted money and he hates this day.
The truly fucked up thing is that if she doesn’t buy him presents, or if she and I exchange without him, he also pitches a fit about how we’re excluding him and hate him.
I’m hoping for this to be our last Christmas as a family. Please donate if you can so we can escape this hell.
I was gunna put this in the tags but it’s a lot. When i first started going through the process of getting a diagnosis, i was labelled with ODD. I immediately took issue with this, it seemed like an unfair diagnosis based entirely on the session the psychiatrist had with my parents (which mostly consisted of “my child is being really difficult on purpose”), and Hoo Boy when i tell you ODD immediately strips you of your ability to call out anyone on anything, that would be an understatement. I couldn’t even disagree or bring up my concerns about the validity of MY OWN DIAGNOSIS without it being labelled as oppositional defiance. Whenever i displayed any negative emotion the “treatments” did so much more harm than good. When you label someone as ‘defiant’ (ugh), when that word is put on their medical record, that person is never allowed to complain about anything again. Knowing that POC are disproportionately affected with this diagnosis makes me feel sick, i can only imagine what’s being swept under the rug as someone just being “defiant to authority”, not even just in the medical field but as justification for police brutality and mass incarceration. When i say medical racism kills people, this is what i mean.
“So when I would show my prosthetic leg in my YouTube videos, I began getting age restricted for potentially “disturbing imagery.” So i made a video talking about this, talking about how messed up and wrong that is, and the hardest thing to deal with has not been people being, like: “You do need to have a trigger warning on you.” “You’re gross.” Whatever. Uh, it’s the people who are like: “Dude, I totally get it. I’m on your side. I don’t think you’re disturbing, but–” Uh, like this one: “You kind of do deserve a PG rating in life, because you could be traumatizing to the children.” I just want you to pause for a moment, and think about that. You do realize that there are disabled KIDS out there. You do realize that there are kids with, uh, limb differences and amputations, who have to go to friggin’ school. Are you suggesting that the world and their other classmates need to be protected from the sight of them, because they could be traumatizing? “What if the kids don’t know how to deal with it?” Then they LEARN. That’s part of growing up. This is absolutely absurd. Comments like this make me so frustrated, because it’s like they’re coming at you like they’re an ally, and they just want to help, but what they’re saying is so messed up.”
I’m angered and frustrated by the newest crop of anti-trans, anti-queer, and anti-critical race theory laws in their own right, because they are unjust and detrimental to the whole of our society, even though I am cis and white.
But then, I get occasional reminders that there are people working at YouTube, and people in YouTube’s audience who think Iand other Disabled people, are also“Age-Inappropriate,” and I get a momentary twinge of fear, mixed in with that anger. How much longer until I cannot freely discuss Disability History, without fear of retribution or sanction (not that disability history is discussed at all, now, except within the Disability Community).
And I also realize that that twinge of fear is evidence of my own privilege, because it’s surprising when it comes, and it’s brief, until it comes back. And that reminds me of how I’ve been protected by White and Cis privilege, all the rest of my life.
I’m genuinely concerned that I’ll have no real way to tell when it’s safe for me to start doing things again, because the CDC basically told everyone to get fucked and die, I’m surrounded by people taking the, “eh, if I get covid, I get covid” approach, and I can’t fucking tell what’s a reasonable safety precaution anymore.
I’m exhausted all the time, and I’m still scared of getting sick, but the world is moving on without me, and I’m just so disoriented, y'all.
Everyone I live with IS immunocompromised, and this comment comes off very “it’s fine, the only people who are still dying are disabled people,” which really just serves to cement my original point about the world moving on without me.
Just want to add that that person is so incredibly wrong! The current science (or in layman’s terms check here) says that about 50% of everyone who gets covid, vaxxed or not, immunocompromised or not, will end up with long lasting symptoms, ones that last beyond the four weeks of infection. Now this statistic includes symptoms that resolve on their own eventually as well as ones that are permanent. But one in every two people will have long lasting covid symptoms. Sure being vaxxed decreases your chances of catching covid in the first place and it decreases the chances of it being severe, but it won’t stop the long term symptoms. Even if you get a “mild” or asymptomatic infection, you still have a 50/50 shot of having long term symptoms. And this is just the most current science, for all we know the number could be higher! We don’t yet know the full extent to which covid fucks up the human body.
Oh and PLUS, omicron has an R0 value of somewhere between 8 and 15, making it the second most infectious disease in the whole world (second only to measles). The R0 number is a measure of how infectious a disease is. For comparison the R0 of the flu is generally 1.5.
And yet EVERYONE I talk to is completely ignoring this and calling omicron more mild than previous strains, that it’s comparable to the flu (never mind that the science says it’s about twice as likely that you’ll have long lasting symptoms from covid than the flu). It makes me feel like I’m losing my mind. But we’re not losing our minds. Especially if you’re disabled/chronically ill, getting covid could be devastating even with a “mild” infection. My brain doesn’t know how to process all of this. The wide spread scale at which people are saying “fuck you” to disabled lives makes me want to vomit.
But uh OP I hope this justifies your actions/thoughts. You’re not alone in this either!
I am triple vaxxed and caught Omicron while masked and outdoors, but working with the unmasked public.
Yes, technically I’m fine. But I spent a week basically unable to sleep or really rest because I had what I can only describe as restless legs syndrome. It hurt to lay down or sit down. I frequently had to move to keep from being in pain. While I’m grateful that this symptom eventually went away, it’s the kind of symptom - weird & neurological - that has become a permanent condition for others.
My breathing also remains permanently impacted. I am, was, in great shape - cardio and strength building exercises on the regular. I now frequently get winded walking up stairs. Exercise in general is much harder and I am fighting to maintain my current state, let alone get back into the kind of fit I used to be.
And there’s NO WAY OF KNOWING how long I will be impacted or if my symptoms will ever increase or resurface. We just don’t know.
I’m the best case scenario: a person in excellent health and triple vaxxed and I still suffered and continue to experience symptoms. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about your own health, and plenty more to care about and be concerned for the health of others.
The immunocompromised are not disposable.
OP, I’m sorry we as a society failed so hard and you have to live with this fear and exhaustion.
‘women’ means ‘women’ - trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise
‘(perceived) women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone that others - radfems, etc - mistakenly perceive as women (nb afab, sometimes trans men, etc)
‘women and/or people presenting as women’ encompasses (1) women, trans, cis, intersex, or otherwise, and (2) anyone of any gender who chooses to present as a woman for whatever reason, not limited to genital arrangement.)
so ….
you know how I’m always on about radfem lite rhetoric? as in: people who don’t even like non-intersectional radfems, much less their subgroups (terfs & swerfs), will say this stuff without understanding the buried connection to radfem thinking?
the examples rainbowloli used are all that kind of rhetoric - or closely tied to it.
‘f-o-f, you’re trying too hard. it’s women looking down on other women for their choices because of internalized misogyny.’
well the funny thing is, nonintersectional radical feminism totally encourages (perceived) women to look down on other (perceived) women for their choices. The difference is only that:
radfem rhetoric judges (perceived) women for what they see as ‘catering to men’/’the patriarchy’ too much*
misogyny judges (perceived) women for not catering to the patriarchy enough(or not doing it ‘the right way’).
(*’catering … too much’ should be read as ‘doing something that might conceivably please men, even if it also pleases the (perceived) woman doing it.’)
In short: both radfems & patriarchal social structures try to control and police the behavior of (perceived) women.
That’s why radfem rhetoric can easily flourish among the unaware: the behavior it encourages replicates the behavior encouraged by patriarchal/misogynistic social structures. It’s only the reasoning that’s changed.
Let me demonstrate:
“Wow, I feel so sorry for women dating ugly dudes like girl you can do so much better.”
this is closest to internalized misogyny. In general, when a woman is seen as significantly more beautiful than her partner we assume the guy is somehow buying her affection, and we judge her for being bought off. that’s internalized misogyny.
But lop off the ‘ugly’ in the middle of that sentence and you’ve got word-for-word radfem rhetoric. ‘I feel sorry for women dating dudes like girl you can do so much better.’ because dudes are always hopeless, self-centered trash and women are always attentive, woke angels. That poor silly woman. she needs to find a good wife who will make her happy. Dating men is an act of catering to the patriarchy.
and no: neither misogynists nor radfems consider that maybe the woman is happy with the man she’s dating, nor are they willing to respect her choice to date whomever she likes, for whatever reason she chooses.
“I feel so sorry for girls who spend hours doing their makeup and they can’t catch a break from the patriarchy.”
as is often the case, there’s a grain of truth in here. Dress codes & appearance standards for (perceived) women in client-facing jobs are often more strict than those for (perceived) men, and certainly more expensive to maintain (jobs that require women and/or people who present as women to wear makeup should have to pay for it. just saying). Plus, those standards are often set by (cis) men who are in positions empowered to make those calls. There’s also plenty of internalized misogyny involved in the social perception that anyone who is and/or presents as a woman must maintain their appearance at a certain standard to attract a (male) mate, whereas men are seen as capable of attracting a woman via qualities other than appearance.
But the idea that all people who present as &/or are women are forcedorbrainwashed into a makeup & beauty regimen purely at the behest of men/patriarchy is both an insult to free will and too narrow a look at daily primping. Plenty has been written by others about how applying makeup often isn’t about men/attracting men at all. and men and/or male-presenting people are also under social pressure to meet certain beauty standards to be seen as attractive (though perhaps not to the same degree).
‘women are forced to do [thing] by the patriarchy/the only reason women do [thing] is because of patriarchy,’ where [thing] is something that women and/or female-presenting people choose to do for many reasons, is a radfem dog whistle.
The underlying assumption is that any (perceived) woman who says they do [thing] for a reason other than ‘i’m forced to do it for the pleasure of men’ must be a brainwashed victim of internalized misogyny; the only way to truly free oneself of patriarchal brainwashing is to submit oneself entirely to a husban– I mean, the radfem worldview.
And the third statement has the same energy:
“I feel sorry for women who enjoy [insert thing] because they’ve been socialized to enjoy it.”
Here’s another statement that presumes that women only do [thing] because they were tricked or brainwashed into it. Here, the word ‘socialized’ stands for ‘taught by patriarchal society’ - i.e. (perceived) women only enjoy [thing] because men & misogyny taught them to enjoy it.
and hey: our society is patriarchal. and hey: that totally does influence how women are socialized and how women think about themselves and others in negative ways. but this statement once again takes it too far: it posits that women functionally have no free will and are more or less mind-controlled by the influence of patriarchy into all their likes and dislikes.
If you’re having a hard time seeing the radfem influence, insert ‘giving head’ for ‘[insert thing]’, and ‘taught by men’ for ‘socialized’: ‘I feel sorry for women who enjoy giving head because they’ve been taught by men to enjoy it.’ because to a radfem, (perceived) women doing anything that gives pleasure to a (cis) man cannot possibly be a pleasure to herself as well. It’s impossible for a (perceived) woman to choose such a thing of her own free will.
And no: radfems do not respect that some people they see as women enjoy things that they find reprehensible or disgusting. instead, they see that perceived woman’s enjoyment of what they hate as traitorous to the cause of womanhood. These traitors - who are also victims - must be rescued from their own desires, even if that means screaming at them daily about how terrible they are and how they’re hurting and betraying their fellow women and how they’re harming themselves. (because screaming at (perceived) women about how terrible they are isn’t at all a carbon copy of the behavior of misogynists towards women.)
The takeaway is this:
When you see a blanket statement about how women* are forced, tricked, coerced, trapped, etc by patriarchy, men, or misogyny to do [thing], please consider whether or not it respects autonomy/free will before resharing or agreeing with it.
It’s true that patriarchy influences the lives of people of all genders, and that much of that influence isn’t for the better. it’s true that it particularly harms anybody who isn’t a cis man (and even cis men, if they don’t perform masculinity to satisfaction). but arguing that patriarchy robs people, particularly (perceived) women, of all their free will is a step towards trying to control the actions of those (perceived women) for their own good - and that’s gateway radical feminism in a nutshell.
I hate to make this go off topic but I think this whole thing gets amplified when the target of the radfem rhetoric/patriarchal shit are neurodivergent/disabled (perceived) women?
Already, neurodivergent and otherwise disabled (perceived) women have their autonomy stripped from them in too many ways to count, with one of those ways being that a lot of us get masculinised because of our difficulty to keep up with beauty norms, and feminised for any perceived “childishness” (read: we get infantilised, and then coercively gendered for it); one trend that’s been happening recently, however, is radfems doing something similar.
Research suggests that autistic afabs are more likely to be trans or non-binary than allistic people, and so there’s lots of think-pieces out there as to why this is the case, with the current big theories being: autistic people have less social restraint and are thus more likely to just do what they want; autistic people can’t relate to neurotypical gender roles; autistic people believing that their lack of ability to relate to neurotypical women, combined with tomboyish interests ‘convinces’ them that they must be men; and, of course, the “extreme male brain” theory of autism and everything that’s related to it (so shit about high testosterone or whatever). Generally we don’t know why this is, but it’s not actually a problem really?
Either way, you can imagine that there are plenty of radfems who do not like this fact at all, and are more than willing to lean on ableism to express this.
Most commonly, it’s expressed as autistic people being “brainwashed” by “the trans cult” into falsely thinking that they’re not women, with calls for us to be “saved”. It’s bullshit and relies on ableist tropes of autistic people not being cognisant enough to consent to…well, pretty much anything that’s even a little bit “adult”, but it also relies on this radfem idea of (perceived) women not knowing or understanding what’s best for them.
They’re using ableist tropes, but the attitude is just an expansion of shit they already say.
this is absolutely NOT off-topic, but rather another excellent example of how nonintersectional radical feminism is - well - not intersectional.
radical feminism is trying to intimidate & coerce (perceived) women to submit themselves to radfem control, just as systemic patriarchy is trying to intimidate & coerce women, perceived women, & those presenting as women to submit themselves to patriarchal control.
any movement trying to force people to trade one kind of control for another is toxic and dangerous - and like most toxic/dangerous things, it is most dangerous and toxic to people marginalized on multiple axes.
I’ve seen a considerable number of people discussing how lack of accessible, safe abortion will force pregnant trans people on T off of it. That’s a good conversation, and I’m glad it’s happening. I now want to add another dimension to the conversation. Testosterone is not the only medication that is considered unsafe for pregnancy.
An incomplete list of medications that are not considered safe for pregnancy:
-All current stimulant medications for ADHD
-Lithium, for bipolar disorder
-Some medicines to control seizures, such as valproic acid
-ACE inhibitors, for blood pressure
-Xanax and Valium, for anxiety
-Diabetes medication other than insulin
-All pain medication except for Tylenol, which can cause liver damage if overused
Most of these medications can be approved for use during pregnancy if your doctor considers the risk of not using them higher than the risk to the fetus. However, many pregnant people are forced onto medications that do not work well for them because the medication that they use is strongly discouraged. In addition, the changing of medications can wreak havoc on if your insurance is willing to pay for what you’ve changed to- an additional expense on top of the usual financial burden of pregnancy care.
This is hard enough for disabled people to deal with when they are pregnant voluntarily. If abortion is criminalized, then use of medications that may cause defects or miscarriage will likely be considered criminal if there is a miscarriage. This is especially true if there is no exception for the life of the pregnant person.
This only scratches the surface of the problems that disabled people will face if abortion is made inaccessible. For this and many other reasons, maternal mortality and/or morbidity is strongly elevated for disabled people. I strongly encourage you to consider disabled people as a particularly vulnerable group in regards to this issue, and to consider our needs important.
Further reading on disabled people and pregnancy mortality or morbidity is linked below. They refer to all pregnant people as mothers and women, but the data that they have collated is still important.
I’m not particularly active on this blog right now due to reasons, but I think it’s important to highlight this.
I need everyone to understand that this is and was always the goal. Banning access to trans healthcare for minors was always the first step towards banning access to trans healthcare entirely. The focus on trans minors has been purely to drum up outrage (“won’t someone think of the children”) and to popularize the bans.
The Overton window has been shifted, so to speak. Less conservative individuals might be uncomfortable with the idea of outright banning adults from choosing what happens to their own bodies and making their own medical decisions…but if it’s banned for 17 year olds, is it safe for 18 year olds? 19? 20? 25? 30? Anyone?
I need everyone to understand that trans healthcare rights are inherently an issue of bodily autonomy, and that Christian conservatism is deeply opposed to the concept of bodily autonomy. Banning trans youth from accessing gender affirming health care is to trans rights as the 20 or 15 or 6 week abortion ban is to abortion rights–the goal is to ultimately erase the legal right to bodily autonomy.
I need everyone to see the connection between transphobia and ableism. I definitely need everyone to stop perpetuating the concept of mental age. This includes repeating the incorrect and neuronormative line that “brains aren’t fully developed until age 25” or suggesting that autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people aren’t capable of understanding and making our own decisions. An adult is an adult regardless of neurotype, regardless of neurological development.
I especially need everyone to be worried about the implications of banning 18-25 year olds from having full control over their own medical decisions. How else might that eventually be weaponized? Especially in regards to reproductive rights?
I’ve believed for years that banning the ability to medically, legally, and socially transition entirely would become a popular Christian conservative goal, and possibly a reality. Not only to enforce their religious beliefs around assigned sex upon us legally–but because trans people who need and are able to transition have better mental health and are more likely to live happier longer lives. And they don’t want us to live.
here is a fun fact! asthma used to be considered at least partially a mental illness, and still sometimes is. in terms of pokemon this is reflected somewhat in wally, who just mysteriously improves his asthma as he gains more confidence in ruby, sapphire, and emerald. this is also why his pokemon is a ralts, because his asthma is portrayed in part as a mental condition.
in the manga wally undergoes intensive, specialized physical therapy to train his lungs because the other stuff is such bullshit
this is also why asthmatics are often portrayed as scared, weak, shy, nerdy, quiet, etc in media, especially old movies
Asthma is also highly comorbid with anxiety and trauma, on account of the whole ‘you could die choking at any moment and everyone around you thinks you’re a whiny brat for saying so’ thing.
Worse still, panicking during an asthma attack (like panicking during any medical event) worsens outcomes. Panic often causes breathing difficulty in its own right, and can both trigger asthma and worsen it. Same for the blood pressure spikes panic causes.
Combined with the fact that childhood asthma can spontaneously resolve during puberty, right around the same age that many children become 'rebellious’ rather than 'reserved’, and you end up with a perfect cocktail of disaster.
One where people treat asthma as a temporary personality flaw and sign of immaturity, in the exact way that makes it WORSE overall.
Wait what’s a buildings fire evacuation plan if you aren’t supposed to use the elevator to get down
You go down the stairwell/fire escape. Is that weird?
But what if you have a walker or a wheelchair??
in america at least, in this situation, there isnt one. either your loved ones or the firemen can get you out using the emergency fire escapes or stairs, or you die
That’s fucking horrific, thank you
“fun” little story:
last summer my friend who is an amazingly talented artist and i were in this super tall building, and she’s in a wheelchair and i’m pushing her around the room. it’s an art exhibit and some of her art was chosen to be showcased there and so it’s all fine and dandy until suddenly an alarm starts going off
a FIRE ALARM
everyone starts running for the stairs and my friend just looks at me with this forlorn look on her face
“i can’t go down the stairs”
but i’m a stubborn bitch “i’ll carry you”
“what about my chair? it’s too expensive for me to be able to get another one if i can’t get this one back”
“i’ll carry that too”
and i did. we went to the stairs (by then most people from our floor were gone) and i lifted her up in a fireman’s carry over my shoulder and then lifted her chair up and used the ridiculous amount of adrenaline that was coursing through my veins to make it down approximately 20 half-flights of stairs until we met some people exiting lower floors, one of which who kindly took the chair. I changed positions so i was holding my friend bridal-style which was, somehow, easier and the person who took her wheelchair (with her permission to handle it of course) accompanied me to the ground floor and then out the doors
basically there is no real protocol for people who can’t use the stairs in an emergency. it’s up to the people with them, if anyone, to help them or the person to somehow make it down the stairs alone, unassisted
thank fuck that it was just a faulty alarm system, because if i was unable to carry her down those stairs and the building was on fucking fire???? then i don’t know what would have happened to her, but i don’t think it would have been very good.
it’s fucking ridiculous and ableist to the absolute max.
I use a cane. When I did a day-long fire safety training at my northeast American university (UMass Amherst), I asked that exact same question: “what am I supposed to do if the fire alarm goes off and I’m in my lab on the twelfth floor?”
the fire marshal hemmed and hawed for a while and then said to take the elevator- you’re supposed to leave it free for the fire department to use and they want able-bodied people out fast not waiting for elevators. if the fire alarm has just gone off the building probably hasn’t suffered enough structural damage to make using the elevator dangerous, and modern elevator wells are heavily reinforced. many large and high-trafficked buildings on my campus have fire rated elevators that link in with the fire alarm system so they won’t let you off on a floor with a possible fire.
if the elevator isn’t working, wait in the stairwell and call the fire department to let them know where you are. modern stairwells are also heavily reinforced- it might not be pleasant but modern building code usually requires fire-resistant stairwell doors in office and big residential buildings, also to help firefighters get in and out safely. older buildings’ stairwells may or may not be retrofitted with fire-resistant doors but a stairwell is generally the safest place to wait if you can’t get out.
what happened to your friend was horrible, and i’m very glad you were there to help her out, but you can absolutely use the elevator to evacuate if it’s not shut down. those don’t-use-the-elevator rules are for abled people.
This is GOOD TO KNOW. why do they not tell people this??
Okay, firefighter here. If you are not physically able to use the stairs, and the elevator is NOT compromised, use the elevator. But you MUST be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the elevator is NOT compromised before you get into it, because there is always the chance that once you get into it, you may not exit it. Power could go out. The elevator may actually BE compromised and you just couldn’t tell from where you were until you were in there, and it suddenly shuts down on you. Something else could happen.
Understand that once you enter the elevator, you could POTENTIALLY be taking your life into your hands there.
It is NOT LIKELY, to be perfectly honest. It’s only in a pretty catastrophic scenario - think the Twin Towers, USA, on September 11th - that the elevators will be compromised and out of service. But there is a NOT ZERO PERCENT CHANCE and you need to understand that and accept it.
As for leaving the elevators free for the firefighters, okay, here’s the deal. Unless your nearest fire station is literally right next door? Your first on scene fire truck is NOT likely to be there on scene and needing that elevator before you get to the ground. It takes us TIME to find the address, gear up, and drive to the building. Then we need to hoof it into where the elevators even ARE, so YOU HAVE TIME to use the elevator to get down to the ground floor… BUT ONLY IF THERE’S NOT A RUSH ON THE ELEVATOR! And THAT is WHY we don’t tell people this shit. That’s WHY we tell people to NEVER USE THE ELEVATOR… because every self-entitled asshole will use it because they don’t feel like walking, and then put YOU in danger by delaying the elevator’s arrival to you.
IF, however, the elevator IS compromised, or you just can’t get it to come for you, or whatever, and you either don’t have anyone with you who has the adrenaline fueled BALLS to be able to toss you over their shoulder and hoof it down the stairs with you - because, let’s face it, that is RARE AS FUCK, then HERE IS WHAT YOU DO:
You call 911 and tell the call taker that you are in the building that has a fire alarm going off, and you are not able to evacuate because of a physical disability, and you tell them what floor you are on, and EXACTLY what stairwell you are waiting at. And the very FIRST thing that the firefighters are going to do once they arrive, if it is, indeed, a REAL emergency, and not a false alarm, is come get your ass and bring you down. Whether that means carrying you down the stairs, or whether that means locking out the elevators so that no one else can override them and coming to get you themselves, they WILL come get you FIRST THING if it is a real event. And if it is a false alarm? You will probably be the first person who is not involved with the building to know, because the call-taker is going to stay on the line with you until you are under someone’s care and out of danger, or until the scene has been sorted out as real or false, and you are out of danger that way.
These are pretty standard operations in the fire service throughout the United States. There may be some minor variations based on specific municipalities, but, for the most part, this is pretty typical: LIFE BEFORE PROPERTY. So, as long as SOMEONE knows where you are - hence why you call 911 - Firefighters will come get you. You are NOT alone, and you have NOT been abandoned. I PROMISE. It’s like, our whole reason for doing the shit we do: to save lives and to break shit. Sometimes, we get lucky enough to do both at the same time.
High rise fires suck ass, and I always hated them. But the very FIRST thing I asked anytime we got one was if we had “any entrapments” - which is what we call anyone who could not self-evacuate for ANY reason. We ain’t leaving you behind. And yes, your friend who doesn’t have the stamina to carry you down can stay with you, too. Because I would never ask that of someone, honestly.
Also, just a little FYI… MOST fire alarms are false alarms. Not to make anyone complacent or anything, but, yeah. Most of them are either system malfunctions, someone accidentally hit a pull station, or someone burned popcorn in a break room. So don’t let a fire alarm freak you out until you need it to - by smelling or seeing smoke or flames.
i have had multiple nightmares about this very thing because NOBODY BOTHERS TO ACTUALLY TELL WHEELCHAIR USERS THIS STUFF
Having an invisible illness means trying your best in as many ways as you can, feeling your body fall apart day by day, and stillbeing told you are lazy for not doing the dishes right away.
drug tests are evil btw and they should be illegal.
“but what if a school bus driver comes to work high” well they could also come to work drunk and literally nothing is stopping them from doing that besides their own judgement. so.
Thinking about how a year ago I was interviewed by a very popular radio show about my long COVID symptoms (I was over a year into experiencing them). They ended up not using my story because “it was too sad” and “I didn’t recover like other people”. They told me to contact them when I had recovered to potentially share my story in the future. I wrote back and told them that most people with long COVID will never recover, and that they weren’t accurately reporting on how COVID affects people. They never replied.
A year later and my symptoms still haven’t improved at all. Anyways, here’s your reminder that the COVID reporting you’re reading (at least in the U.S.) is probably not accurate and is not actually reflecting the suffering of real people.
“We’ll be willing to talk about your chronic illness/disability once you’re over it” is hands down the most abled thing I’ve heard in my life.
When people talk about the eugenics movement, they always seem to do one of two things.
They talk about race and maybe class, and totally eliminate disability from the discussion.
They talk about disability and maybe class, and totally eliminate race from the discussion.
The reality is that the eugenics movement had to do with race, class and disability. Not as separate entities, but all mixed together in different ways at different times. If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand eugenics. Either the old eugenics, or the new, current eugenics that nobody wants to talk about or acknowledge.
Speaking of things like this.
Nobody seems to get that ableism is behind every other kind of oppression. There is no form of oppression that does not involve ableism deeply, at its very core. So if you’re not addressing ableism, you’re not addressing a core part of the oppression you’re talking about, and you’re likely just shunting off various parts of your own oppression onto disabled people.
There is ableism all the way down to the core of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, sizeism, ageism, classism, and every other form of oppression possible. Without ableism, these forms of oppression would be much less powerful than they are. Ableism is the only form of oppression I know about that doesn’t just intersect with other oppressions, it occupies a spot at or near their center every single time, no matter what the other oppression is.
And yet.
Even though ableism is central to every form of oppression out there.
Nobody deals with ableism.
People still think that “dealing with ableism” just means changing your language. There will be discussions of all the forms of oppression, and at the end they’ll mention ableism and all they’ll say about it is “don’t use words like stupid, they’re ableist”. (Which words are actually ableist is controversial within the disability community, mind you. So never assume we all agree on stuff like that.) People don’t talk about what ableism really is, or how deep it goes, or how it is at the heart of every other form of oppression out there.
Ableism is part of the mechanism for how marginalized groups are considered inferior to privileged groups. If you don’t understand that, then all you’re going to do? You’re going to say “My group isn’t inferior,” but you’re going to let disabled people remain inferior, because you won’t be questioning the ableist methods by which people are considered superior and inferior in the first place.
Any time that you’re dealing with medicalization of your oppressed group, you’re dealing with ableism.
Any time you’re dealing with “scientific” reasons that your oppressed group is inferior to people with privilege, you’re dealing with ableism.
Any time you’re dealing with assessments of the ability of people in your oppressed group, compared to people with privilege, you’re dealing with ableism.
And most of the time, what people do?
Is they question the notion that their group is inferior. But they don’t question the methods by which their group and other groups are pronounced inferior. Or they question the methods, but only in a shallow way that doesn’t get to the core of what ableism is.
Disabled people have been noticing this for a long time. Lots of us, me included, have independently figured this out, over the years. That ableism isn’t just oppression of disabled people. Ableism is something that is necessary for every other kind of oppression as well. It’s deeply woven into the fabric of oppression, so deeply that people can’t even see it.
But it’s there.
Ignore it, and you’ll have two very unpleasant results:
1. You’ll never get rid of your own oppression entirely.
2. You’ll take a step up for you and your oppressed group, but you’ll leave disabled people dealing with the exact same crap you were dealing with. And you may, in your particular manner of taking that step up, reinforce the ableism that disabled people deal with.
So if you want to learn about your own oppression, learn about ableism. Learn deeply about ableism. Don’t learn a list of words that you can memorize and learn not to say. Learn about the history of disabled people, learn about the way disabled people are treated, learn about disablement, disablism, ableism, whatever you want to call it, but learn it deeply. Learn how it affects physically disabled people, cognitively disabled people, psychiatrically disabled people, chronically ill people, developmentally disabled people, learn about it deeply.
I guarantee you will learn about your own oppression in the process, no matter what kind of oppression it is. I guarantee that if you look deep enough, you will learn things about your own oppression that you could never, ever have understood without understanding ableism.
When they say black people’s IQs are naturally lower than white people’s IQs. When they say that radical black activists are schizophrenic and in need of treatment. When they say women are weaker than men, physically and mentally. When they say that homosexuality is a disease. When they say to fat people, “I’m only concerned about your health.” When they say poor people should be prevented from reproducing, or are naturally more suited to manual labor than to intellectual work. When they say that being trans is a delusion, like thinking you’re Napoleon. When they say that children or old people are too incompetent to make any decisions about their lives.
All of these things are not only racism, sexism, homophobia, sizeism, classism, transphobia, or ageism – they are also ableism. And they are more the ableism they have in common, than they are the particular form the ableism takes for the exact oppression it’s being used to justify.
And at that point you have a choice.
You can argue to distance your particular oppressed group from this ableism, without actually doing anything to get rid of the ableism. This will leave disabled people, as well as other oppressed groups, dealing with the exact same crap your group was dealing with – you’ll escape but leave others behind.
Or you can dismantle the ableism at the root of the problem. Which benefits your oppressed group, it benefits disabled people, and it benefits every other oppressed group who is oppressed in the same way through ableism.
It is so strange to me… that ableism is intertwined with the roots of every single kind of oppression out there, and yet it’s also one of the least talked-about oppressions, the one everyone thinks is a joke. No seriously. I’ve watched the tumblr conversations. I’ve seen people – people of color, women, LGBT people, just about everyone – saying that ableism is going too far, that it’s just one more group of people claiming to be oppressed and jumping on the bandwagon. That ableism is trivial. That it’s not real. That disabled people aren’t dying from ableism, that we aren’t being incarcerated due to ableism, they rattle off this list of things that are supposedly not happening, that actually are exactly what is happening to disabled people around the world.
It makes me furious to read this because I know so much about exactly how disabled people are dying and being incarcerated and dehumanized and such through ableism. And also because I know how much every oppressed group would benefit from understanding ableism at a deep level, because without that, they’re missing a huge piece of how to dismantle their own oppression.
So don’t write off ableism as this silly lightweight thing that can be dealt with by memorizing a list of forbidden words. It’s so much more than that. And understanding it might just be the key to understanding your own oppression.
Every person who voted for anti vaxxer and demonizer of autism Jill Stein owes every American autistic person one hundred dollars. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.
A dude told me (right after I had a seizure): “All girls are always such bitches when they wake up from a seizure”
Then when I tried to correct him: “I would know I have ADHD so I went to a special school and a girl there had seizures”
He’s a firefighter which means at least in my town he would be called to help someone with a seizure or other medical problem kinda scary
Manslation: Ever since I was a child, I have expected women and girls to unceasingly and unerringly perform an obscene amount of emotional labor for me, including in circumstances that physically, mentally, and emotionally make it difficult (if not impossible) for them to do so. Any word or action that doesn’t align with what I want is wrong, and you’re a horrible person for acting even for a second as though I’m not the center of your universe. It is frighteningly possible that this attitude will not only lead me to abuse women I’m in relationships with, but also to neglect the safety of women whose literal lives I’m personally responsible for.
