sarahbeara113:

To the people who couldn’t get out of their bed today, I’m here for you…

To the people who skipped showering because they didn’t have the energy, I’m here for you…

To the people who cried in agony through their shower, I’m here for you…

To the people who suffer daily but no one believes them, I’m here for you…

To the people who feel like they’ve lost or are losing their youth to their medical issues, I’m here for you…

To the brave people fighting for their health every day, I’m here for you, I support you, I believe you. Your feelings are valid, you are loved, and I will stand behind you.

enberlight:

Biden Cancels $7 Billion in Federal Student Loans for Disabled Students Through Data-Sharing Program

The Biden administration recently announced that it has cancelled $7 billion in federal student loan debt for some 350,000 borrowers with disabilities

This is being done for those with a TPD (total permanent disability) discharge, and will be automatic.

It applies to the following loan and grant programs: William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) Program loans, Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans, Federal Perkins Loan (Perkins Loan) Program loans, and Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant Program

thewhaleridingvulcan:

crystalsoulslayer:

I always hate it when people are all “so do you go to school, or are you working, or” and I either have to

• make up some lie, or
• eventually get around to “I am not working because of depression/anxiety,” and subsequently have to deal with whatever bullshit-riddled and completely unsolicited opinions on mental illness this stranger feels obligated to share with me.

So my therapist was like, “You don’t have to do either. You can just say you haven’t worked in a while because you’re recovering from an illness.”

I tried it when the home inspector was here today, and it fucking worked. He was like, “oh, I’m sorry, are you doing better now,” and I’m like yeah, and don’t worry, it’s not contagious, awkward laugh, and we moved on.

MY THERAPIST. IS A GENIUS. Because it is an illness, so it’s not a lie to say that, and it’s also none of his business to know specifically what it is, and I clearly don’t want to give more details, so we should move on from this topic. MYTHERAPIST IS A GODDAMN GENIUS.

Dude I needed this. I never know what to say when people ask if I work because I’m severely disabled and don’t work.

monklemore:

disability advocacy went wrong when it became about inspiration porn and “differently abled” and savants. its incredible that that guy with no legs did a triathlon but your sister with no legs will not and she doesnt need prosthetics or five hour training days to deserve respect and compassion and accommodations. its incredible that that autistic guy can look at a city from a helicopter for an hour and then draw the entire detailed skyline from memory when he lands but your autistic friend cannot and they dont need to have a special Autism Power to deserve respect and compassion and accommodations. 

activism framed around “we are just as CAPABLE” means that when people genuinely are less capable they are left behind. activism framed around “we are just as WORTHY” is fundamental to radical compassion.

tlsanity:

tlsanity:

Just presented a paper proposal topic over zoom, hood over head, 1 hour of sleep for 2 days, voice crack+constant stutter. Instead of weighing me down, those damn things boosted me.

The paper is about cripple punk. I was the very fucked-up definition of cripple punk, no worries about trying to look “appealing” or whatever the hell. Pajamas. Purple eyebags. Tripping over words. I didn’t give a fuck.

I went full on how the disabled youth are told that it’s their fault being disabled.

Or when they stay up late, drink or smoke; it’s suddenly “the reason they are disabled” and how they “don’t put up any effort to get better”.

It’s about how the whole family can get together and fight about “who the disabled DNA belongs to”, the parents that see their children as burden, the people that wish patience to the loved ones of us.

It’s about how we are seen as burdens and nothing else.

People don’t want to see us because they don’t know how to interact with us.

They call us fakers, “not disabled enough”, “too disabled”.

They deny us medication because “a positive mindset will solve it all”.

We want to have a career? Living in constant fear about how much the appearance of a cane can lower the chance of getting hired.

They call us a waste on earth. I, too, believed that I was nothing but a fucked-up life. Then I found cripple punk.

I went full on how accepting our disabilities as our identity creates a culture of acceptance, away from the goddamn comments of the ableists. I talked about how it literally saves lives, because it saved mine.

Professor had nothing to add, nothing to criticise. Full permission. I’ll be on it!

Hello! I’m Karl.

I wrote the paper proposal. The title of my paper is: “Cripple Punk” and the Reclaimed “Cripple” Identity Among the Physically Disabled Youth.

For the actual paper, I need to gather data. Here is a 26-question questionnaire, if you’d like to volunteer. After completing it, you can send me an ask with the “form completed” screen’s screenshot attached, and ask for an art request as my gift of gratitude.

The questions aim to gather data about how physically disabled people experience ableism in many aspects of their lives and how cripple punk has positively affected them to accept their disability as a part of themselves. Some questions are optional. You are allowed to add things in multiple choice “Other…” options as well. There are a few open ended questions that have no limit of words -a word or a whole paragraph, all your choice. There’s also a space at the end if you’d like to add anything (or vent, if you’d like) and even specify if you’d like a certain data of yours to be excluded from or included in the study.

All my gratitude. Here it is:

https://forms.gle/8YYcEtM1kMxfUk5c8

-Karl.

lifewithchronicpain:

greyhavenisback:

lifewithchronicpain:

If a healthy person suddenly felt my pain, nausea, and exhaustion they would call out sick and maybe even go to the hospital. But just like everyone else with chronic illness, the longer it goes on the more life is intolerant of your perpetual health issues and all you can do is deal. If you became disabled tomorrow you either have to deal or die.

How one copes varies, but one thing is for sure, unless it happens to you, (and for real I don’t wish this on anyone) you cannot possible understand what it’s like. Please respect that and stop acting like you’re our doctor when you find out our conditions. We’ve heard it all and done it all.

And please stop telling us to push through. You wouldn’t push through flu, or a dislocated shoulder, or fatigue so heavy you feel like you can’t breathe. Stop telling us we’ll feel better if we just did X or Y. Some of us have been dealing with this for a lifetime. Trust us, we know.

Exactly. Dealing is not acting like the disability isn’t there. It’s resting when you need to, making the choices you need, and planning your future with the disability in mind. If we just keep “pushing through” we will burn out faster than a dry stick.

snailsrightsactivist:

dtsguru:

voidbat:

painandcats:

- Make sure the place where you’re going is accessible!  Your date might opt to use a wheelchair that day, and if they’re using a cane, best to make sure there aren’t a silly number of stairs involved in whatever date you’re considering.

- Call ahead to the place to see if wheelchairs are available to borrow if you’re going somewhere that involves a lot of walking and standing around, like a museum.

- If your date is using a cane, they likely only have one arm to hold things.  Consider bringing their food/drinks to the table along with yours– let them claim a booth while you get the food!

- Be prepared and willing to be someone’s physical support sometimes, especially if your date is having a rough leg day.

- Be prepared for a Plan B Date: it’s so awesome to have a back-up plan for the date if the day comes around and your person is spoonless.  Believe me, it’ll mean a lot.

i just really want to add some from my own experience:

• ask yourself, really ask yourself if you’re fine with plans being cancelled at the last second, cancelled mid-event, and for plans to often be “come over to my house and lump on the couch with me” - if you aren’t? don’t date somebody with chronic pain/fatigue. especially if you will take that sort of thing personally and/or hold it against the person. if you date me, you date my disabilities. i have to deal with them, so do you.
  
• if you are grocery shopping with someone who uses a mobility aid like a cane or rollator, and that person is pushing the cart? DO. NOT. MOVE. THE CART. while they are using the cart, it is taking the place of their normal mobility aid and moving it is like moving their leg. DON’T DO IT. i have fallen in grocery stores more times than i want to think about due to an ex who couldn’t get it through his head that THIS IS MY CANE RIGHT NOW and would just grab the basket and drag it somewhere.
• if your date says “no, it’s fine, i’ve got it” when you try to do something? let them. just let them. my disabilities takes so much away from me, the things i can actually do are things i am proud of. it makes me feel better to be able to do things for myself. i detest nothing more than an able-bodied person INSISTING on doing something that i can do myself, even though i’ve said multiple times that i’d prefer to do it myself. it says volumes on what that person really thinks of my abilities as a functional human, none of them positive. i get that you’re trying to help, but i promise, taking away what autonomy we do have? not helpful.
• learn to tell your date beforehand what the date will entail. learn to look for the things your date would need to know. i had an ex that never factored in things like “walking half a mile” or “it’s a three story walkup with no elevator” because those things were no problem for him. i, on the other hand, would arrive at the destination crying from pain and unable to enjoy a damn thing - and exhausted in advance by knowing i’d have to repeat the journey just to get back home. don’t be afraid to ask your date what things they need to have taken into consideration. ask what accessibility options are necessary for them when it comes to cane/wheelchair access, how much access there is to regular seating, how much walking will happen, how many stairs there are. if you go to a movie and the only parking is way in the back, ask if they’d rather you drop them up front while you get a spot - because sometimes traversing a large parking lot is the difference between watching a movie and sleeping through it, or being too distracted by pain to follow it. by and large, we know our limitations and it means the world to have someone say “hey i want to take you to this exhibit, i think you’d really enjoy it! there’s several stairs to the entrance and the wheelchair ramp is kind of obnoxiously far away, so it’s either a bunch of walking or deal with stairs to get in there, but once you’re inside there’s a lot of comfortable benches and not a whole lot of walking.” because they thought about how you navigate the environment. 
• if your date is using a rollator or wheelchair, make sure your car (or whatever form of transportation you are going to be using) has space to put it. don’t ask me out to the renaissance faire and then show up in a CRX and look confused when i say my rollator can’t go in that so i’ve gotta stay home.
• BE. PATIENT. this shit is unpleasant enough for us already, the last thing any of us need in our lives is another able-bodied asshole making us feel like burdens. we can’t do everything as quickly or as easily or sometimes at all. sometimes we need your help. sometimes we have to cancel plans. even big plans. even big expensive plans. it’s no fun for us either. sometimes we have to back out of shit halfway through because our bodies have absolutely hit the wall and have failed us. i’ve had to abandon a cart full of groceries before and sleep in my car before i could even manage to drive home because my body just gave the fuck out with no warning. can you imagine? just for a second? imagine being young enough to still get carded for booze and your body literally collapses and you have to almost crawl to your car, sitting in the middle of the floor several times on the way. don’t get frustrated with us, we’re doing our best. it’s just harder than you can imagine.

Also remember just because the cane isn’t there doesn’t mean the disability isn’t there. All of these points are still relevant. Be aware. Be considerate.

I want everyone to see this

its just so fucking unfair that disabled people need extra support but in order to actually get that extra support we have to have both the energy and ability to express ourselves to deal with the bureaucracy of getting that support and i just. i am so tired.

you don’t have to tell people what your mobility aid is for if you don’t want to.

you don’t owe invasive people anything.

you don’t need to justify your aid.

you don’t need to give out your medical details to anyone you don’t want to give them to.

you deserve to be able to just exist in peace, and to use your mobility aid whenever you need to.

aspergersissues:

3-ducks-in-a-trenchcoat:

trans-mom:

Are people aware that symptoms to disabilities and mental illnesses and stuff dont start when you get diagnosed? That symptoms exist before seeing a doctor? That expecting people to be 100% abled unless they have that diagnosis is incredibly fucked up? If someone is saying there’s something up with them, dont just shrug off until they have a doctors diagnosis, that shits ableist.

“I diagnos you with arthritis” the doctor says. My joints start to ache suddenly.

If this is what happens to you, maybe look a little closer to check your “doctor” isn’t actually an evil wizard (this happens more often than you think)

therainbowgorilla:

yourg4mem4sterth3whit3r4bbit:

shyocean:

vaspider:

taylortut:

heyatleastitsnotcancer:

vaspider:

heyatleastitsnotcancer:

vaspider:

Jesus am I tired of Tumblr’s gatekeeping of solidarity movements. If you asked someone at an in-person cripplepunk meet-up to provide a list of their disabilities to you so you could validate if they’re the right kind of cripple for you, you’re the one who gets kicked out, not them. Hell, if you asked for a list at an online meet, I’d boot you, too.

The idea that there’s some hard bright line which exists between all disabilities of all other organsanddisabilities of this one organ is bizarre and unhelpful. It also perpetuates the “but mental disabilities are different” mindset which leads to “oh but mental health coverage is optional, different, and can be shunted off into its own little box.”

I have a disability where one of my organs doesn’t function properly bc it doesn’t make enough of a certain kind of juice, which makes it difficult for me to do certain things which I need to do to function. I have to adapt my life, change what I eat and how I move my body, take medications and rely on others for assistance with my condition. If I don’t do that, this condition has been known to kill people. Is that diabetes or post-traumatic stress disorder?

I have another disability in which my nervous system doesn’t behave properly, and that causes me great difficulty in my life. I have had to change what I eat, the medications I take, how much coffee I drink, how I rest, and how I deal with the medical establishment. This disability and its diagnosis has profoundly affected how I live my life, and I require assists and accommodations to live my life as I choose. Is that disability ADHD or physical damage to my spine from the tumor which compressed my spinal cord & left scars behind when it was removed?

Do anxiety and paranoia and insomnia and depression count if they’re symptoms of celiac disease? If not, why not? They’re disabling effects of an autoimmune disorder. And regardless, it’s because body not act right so… wtf? How about my memory issues that come from damage from a medication used to treat the pain in my legs?

Solidarity movements are reciprocal, y'all, and I’m exhausted of “you must be this queer/this trans/this disabled to come in.” Maybe I’m just too fucking old and too fucking tired to listen to this week’s Discourse ™️ about who trademarked what term when while actual problemsexist.

I know it probably seems like you’re doing something productive to you, but I assure you, you’re not. If your issue is “these specific people are being dicks,” deal with those people being dicks, and don’t ascribe their dickishness to their disability. The problem is they’re being a dick.

If your issue is instead “but this isn’t as disabling as what I deal with” or “I have that disability and it’s not as bad for me as my other disability” or “but it feels good for me to draw a line between disabilities of this one organ and every other organ,” then it is you. You are being the dick.

Perpetuating the non-existent line between “physical” and “mental” disabilities helps absolutely no one. It places mental disabilities by default in a “not as bad” category and an “all in your head” one, which … like, do I need to explain to y'all why functioning labels and categories aren’t helpful in disability movements? Why are we resurrecting this shit and giving it new polish?

To be clear, I am not interested in debating this, so trying to tell me how your no-brain-problems-allowed approach is right and good, actually, is a waste of your time, because there is absolutely no way to convince me that trying to keep certain kinds of disabilities out of a general disability solidarity movement based on the organ that disability centers in has any use whatsoever. The line between “mental” and “physical” disabilities is blurry as fuck and trying to fence off all brain problems is not okay, especially since y'all don’t mean that because a lot of things which are caused by the brain acting in a non-standard matter are considered “physical” disabilities.

Jesus, y'all make me tired. This bullshit is the least punk thing ever.

I’m not disagreeing but Tai, the creator of crippled punk, specifies its for it is for physically disabled people specifically here

Obviously mental illness is an issue in the brain which is a part of the body. I’m just stating what the founder of the movement intended. And they felt very strongly about following those tenants of it.

Tai sadly isn’t here to tell us how they wanted this to play out though but I do know I want to honor their legacy the way they wanted it to be.

Here.

I am stating that the creator of the movement disagreed. They are not here to clarify so I can only use their old posts. It doesn’t matter to me but it mattered greatly to Tai.

The issue here is that mentally ill ppl with no mobility restrictions cannot reclaim cripple. It’s not the same as disabled. I have a physical disability and I would default to the opinions of someone with less mobility than I have on the term cripple. If the full time wheelchair users told me not to use it, I would say we can’t. Its not just a movement, it’s a slur. It’s a reclaimed slur.

No. You are wrong.

I am out of patience for having to say this over and over again so I’m gonna say it real big and real loud so hopefully I don’t have to say it AGAIN:

Cripple is a term which historically has been aimed at all disabled people. It was never confined just one kind of disabled person, even if it was more commonly used for one type of disability than another. Expert witnesses in court cases called people with personality disorders “mental cripples.” Epileptics like my father were called cripples and confined to “madhouses.” The phrase “mental cripple” appears in censuses, medical journals, patient files advocating for lobotomies, New York Times articles, and many other “professional” medical and legal settings. The 1981 “cripple tribunal” in Dortmund, Germany, was a protest against poor living conditions in long-term care facilities and psychiatric hospitals!

Please do even ONE CURSORY GOOGLE on Bedlam, the term “mental cripple,” Rosemary Kennedy, Nellie Bly, and the modern-day protests against “warehousing,” and then fuck off and stop putting this very incorrect shit in my notes.

You are wrong, and I am tired of saying this nicely.

The idea that there’s some historical “split” between mental and physical disabilities is wrong wrong wrong. We were all referred to as “incurables” and “cripples,” and sometimes the fashion was to use “cripples” for all other disabilities and “lame” for movement disabled people, as in contemporary translations of Victor Hugo’s writing.

Those articles, by contrast, are not from the 1800s! Nope! One of them is from before my birth, most of the others are from within my lifetime, and the definition of cripple is current!

Now please fucking stop. You are right, this ISN’T acceptable. It’s not acceptable to lecture someone on something you could REALLY REALLY EASILY VERIFY to be wrong if you just did ONE Google search.

You are wrong. This is not a debate. This term has been used for all varieties of disabled people and may be reclaimed by any disabled person.

Goodbye.

Okay, this is for the people replying to OP and gate keeping.

Look, y'all, Crip theory exists and it is good for you. It’s good for all of us.

It focuses on the intersection of queer theory and disability studies, which are both academic disciples focused on civil rights, etc. It goes back to at least 2006.

I mean Wikipedia is not a pure source, but even it will tell you that the term includes mental disabilities. Further, when we say abled or able-bodied, we don’t mean disabled people. People with disabilities are disabled. All disabilities.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crip_(disability_term)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple

There are so many good sources out there, so many people with a huge range of disabilities writing and thinking and doing the activism since the 1960s that gave us the ADA. And they have been reclaiming cripple and crip.

It’s not that one person is the progenitor, even if they coined a term for a popularization and refinement of a massive existent movement that’s been going on for decades. Instead of getting stuck on one person’s blog, please connect with the larger set of work that exists.

Honestly

https://dsq-sds.org/

Is such an incredible free source of work.

Also, in addition to cripple being used pretty much in place of ‘disabled’, people keep acting like there’s only strictly mental disabilities and strictly visible invariable ‘physical’ ones where limbs cannot be used at any time or something very obvious and hard around the edges. And when you try to point out that other conditions are physically disabling they try to reframe it like you’re arguing that chemical imbalances are technically physical too.

And this has always seemed to be in absurdly bad faith.

Ignoring, still, that cripple gets thrown at any disabled person and has historically (and not just out of ignorance of how to be ignorant properly), and setting aside the lack of hard line between ‘physical’ and biochemical, which doesn’t exist in a human body… Setting aside all that….

You know there’s a whole group of disabilities that are very physical and only have what you would consider mental effects as secondary symptoms at best, that aren’t as straight forward as a missing or ‘broken’ or impaired limb, right? Like physical disabilities that are primarily physical include chronic conditions, autoimmune, MS, Parkinson’s, Distrophe, fibromyalgia and other neuromuscular disorders that mean your body doesn’t work right or you can’t always move or coordinate your limbs properly. Many of these conditions are variable day by day and come with variable ability and function.

And yeah, tell me where the line is between your brain and other organs controlling your nerves and biochemistry which in turn controls what your limbs do, not by intent or filtered through cognition, but purely physically.

Like these are actually the majority of disabilities, not counting the likely prevalence of depression and anxiety, and they are largely physical. And they are also largely not what gate keepers think of when they set up hard lines around the term ‘cripple’.

Is someone in a wheelchair for FND instead of a spinal injury less physically disabled? What about for chronic fatigue or pain? If pain doesn’t count what about the person who’s in a wheelchair despite that they could technically walk but the nerve damage in their legs makes it too painful? At what -stage- of neuromuscular degeneration do you get to claim the term ‘cripple’? When you can’t walk easily? Or when you can’t feed yourself?

Is it the mechanism of ‘injury’ that counts? Does it only count if it happens in battle or an accident or from birth? What about other injuries? So it’s the end result? So what about your immune system destroying nerves or other tissue? A virus maybe? Does impairment to the senses count? How much impairment is required to count? Is someone in glasses more crippled than someone with chronic fatigue?

Does a war vet with a missing leg who’s ableism is alive and well because they ‘earned’ their right to accommodations “fighting for this country” (#not all vets) do more for the movement than someone who’s spent 1/3 of their life in bed or a chair from a condition you wouldn’t consider ‘crippled’ by being allowed to use the label?

What about the person being berated by their family and their society, for being a “cripple” because they can’t stay standing due to connective tissue pain or something like POTS? Do you really think gate keeping them helps? What severity of POTS even would you let in? None? Not even the person who can’t sit up without fainting for two months out of every year? Do you not consider them physically disabled? Fainting from shitty connective tissue not providing blood pressure is a… mental disability to you? Not a physical one that has secondary cognitive effects?

So where’s the line? If you can use the limbs half the time or more you’re out? Not allowed to rally and participate and reclaim? More like 80%? Or do you have to not be able to effectively use a limb 100% of the time to count as a ‘cripple’? Is it a question of whether a person has a mobility aid or not? What if they can’t afford it, or tough it out more because of barriers, or what if it isn’t conventional or doesn’t look like a mobility aid or acessability device to you? What if it’s common enough for ableds to use sometimes but without it they wouldn’t be able to feed themselves? (Straws, simple walking sticks that you wouldn’t consider a cane because they don’t ‘look’ like they ‘need’ it, or carts so that they can keep their balance while walking and be able to carry anything home, etc…)

I don’t care what any ‘originator’ says. Trying to cut our community up along these lines is useless and harmful. I have a list of diagnosed physical conditions 7 or so long by now, all of which affect my ability to function physically and I have had the term ‘cripple’ (and gimp) used aggressively against me, and usually I leave the debate on whether to apply the term to myself alone because I’m too tired to argue and there isn’t much offline impact for me, but I resent this idea that I cannot be part of the cripple punk disability rights movement and community because my disabilities don’t seem physical enough to gate keepers because of their own biases about what physical disability looks like. And moreso I resent other people like me being faced with the same.

We had this debate 5-7 years ago about the word ‘gimp’ too, and idk his to tell you this but no abled people as a group have ever made distinctions about types of disabilities when using this kind of language, first because there are no lines, but foremost because of their “us vs otherness” mentality, and the people constantly encouraging us to this kind of infighting are the enemy.

Go spend this mental energy letting everyone you know know that they don’t have to pay medical debt to private institutions under a certain income level, or spreading awareness about how mobility aids can be acquired and what they’re useful for.

If someone want to put a “this machine runs over ablists” sticker on their mobility cart, and one that says cripple punk, next to the one that says “this machine eats fascists”… Why the ever loving fuck are you trying to debate semantics and technical definitions to stop them?

“You can call yourself an ally just don’t claim the term yourself u.u” … … The term that’s used against them and historically against people like them to dehumanize and other them that’s a rallying point for other disabled people like them… …They can claim being an ally to other similarly disabled people, but can’t call themselves ‘cripple’ or ‘cripple punk’ because of your current understanding of what counts as a physical disability or your idea of how limited they are, even if these terms are used against them… ???? Fuck off.

Gatekeeping doesn’t help anyone, it’s just exhausting the energy of people who largely by definition have more limited energy. You can simply put this hill down and move on. It’s not too late to go find a better hill. Just walk away and move on to greener hills that are actually of tactical interest in the rights movement. There isn’t even actually a hill here, you’re looking at the curve of the earth or some shit.

I want to talk about a perfect example of a mental disability that is also a physical disability at the same time, to show how “mental” vs “physical” disabilities aren’t as clear cut as some people think.

I have Autism/ADHD. The disorder I’m going to talk about is sort of a subset of that.

It’s called Sluggish-CognitiveTempo(SCT). Not many people seem to know about it. It’s not technically on-the-books yet, as it’s still being studied, but it’s a “mental” disorder that most definitely causes me severe physical disability as well. I definitely consider it to be both.

Because of my SCT, I am Slow. A word that I am reclaiming here, not to insult myself, but just as a point of fact. I am by no means dumb, but it takes me a much longer time to process information than it does for most other people.

And as a result, my physical movements are also slow.

Take for example, the fact that I love to cook.

A recipe that would take 20 minutes tops for a non-disabled person, may take me 2 hours to prepare. Between getting distracted, my slow mental processing, my executive dysfunction, and my physical slowness, it takes me SIGNIFICANTLY longer to do things in my every day life. In turn, this means I expend a lot more energy doing things because I’m working on them for longer. Which, in turn again, leads to me being always some varying level of tired all day.

For another example, just… showering.

You know those articles and campaigns and ads that always told us to take shorter showers to save water? I’ve heard many abled people can take 5 minute showers???

HOW!?

With my SCT, I’m lucky if my shower is just 15 minutes! So if I don’t have 15 minutes, I can’t shower. Don’t ask me why it takes me so long, because I legitimately don’t have the answer to that other than “brain slow, body slow”. It’s just… How it is, for me.

I have to budget my spoons and my time SO carefully. I’m likely to run out of spoons before I’m done doing what I wanted to do, simply because it took me so long. And I can’t judge time either, because I can’t predict how much time I am going to take to do a thing (since it varies). So trying to budget my spoons and time is incredibly difficult.

All of this, especially when paired with my other disabilities, means that it’s incredibly hard for me to get a job. I can’t be fast due to my SCT. And in this capitalistic world, nobody wants a slow person. Mentally OR physically slow. And I am both.

I cannot separate my SCT into a mental or a physical category, because while it is technically labeled as mental, it severely disables me physically as well. It is BOTH.

Trying to draw a line in the sand saying “mental disabilities don’t count!” is both historically inaccurate since cripple has been used against mentally disordered and mentally ill people for ages, as the above posters brought up,

AND

it ignores and erases the fact that most mental disorders/illnesses can cause physical symptoms that can be disabling if severe enough. And even the opposite can be true.

The reason I’m saying all of this about my SCT disability is to show that it’s impossible to cleanly cut between “mental” and “physical” disabilities. Because then tell me, where on that arbitrary dichotomy does my SCT lie?

I hope this helps explain why being exclusionist about disabilities is arbitrary, wrong, and harmful.

thunnder-thighs:

People shouldn’t feel the need to get out of their wheelchair for photos, no matter the reason for the photo.

Saw a post of a man getting out of his wheelchair at his wedding day so “he could give his wife memories of him not in a wheelchair, even if it was for 1-2 minutes”. How sad is that? That he felt he needed to give her a memory that wasn’t him in a wheelchair. If she married you in the wheelchair, she knows you’re in a wheelchair. She loves you in a wheelchair. The story was her helping him along a hard journey of his disability, she clearly loves him. It’s so sad he felt he needed to give her a memory of him not in a wheelchair as if being in a wheelchair is a bad thing.

I’m really just tired of these “inspirational stories” where disabled people hate their disability so much they fight through hell to try and make sure they have a picture without them in a mobility aid. Why do they hate their disability so much? From stories like this.

I know one could argue “oh well his choice, he may not like his disability/mobility aid, he wanted to give her the memory, etc. etc.” but like, if we didn’t as a society stigmatize using mobility aids for disabilities, this sort of self-loathing probably wouldn’t exist to the extent that it does today.

Idk if any of this made any sense, I’m hot and exhausted but I’m so tired of this being shared to my good news Instagram pages. I want good news, not a reminder that being in a wheelchair is an undesirable trait in today’s society.

bisexualbaker:

bisexualbaker:

Tips for baking with arthritis and other hand-related chronic pain

I luckily haven’t had to deal with much chronic pain or hand pain yet, especially with regards to baking (crochet is another story). That said, these look like some pretty solid tips! There’s also some in the comments section.

As this link nears five hundred notes, I’m just… very quietly touched at how many people are sharing it. Whether they need it themselves (or think they will someday), or know someone else who might need it, the fact that all of them are sharing the sentiment of “I want the people who love doing this thing to be able to keep doing the thing that they love” is… yeah. It makes me happy.

I know it’s not the worst aspect of being disabled, but I loathe the sheer amount of rubbish I generate from all my medication boxes and blister packs, and a lot of it isn’t recyclable