#wheelchair

Sturm der Liebe 2890-2911 Folge

Nondisabled storytellers often seem to think of disability as an abusive roommate coming and imposing its will on a disabled person. When they think about wheelchair users, they don’t think about the mobility that’s made possible by assistive technology. They think about how they’d feel if someone chained them to a wheelchair and forcibly prevented them from walking.

This misconception is dangerous. When people see disability-related limitations as similar to violent restraint, they don’t know know to tell the difference between the innate limitations of someone’s body and limitations being forcibly imposed on them by others. When people don’t understand the difference between living with a disability and living with an abuser, they assume that abusive experiences are inevitable for people with disabilities.

In reality, there’s nothing inevitable about abuse. Coming up against the limitations of your body is fundamentally different from being forcibly restrained by someone else. Whether or not you are disabled, having physical limitations is part of having a body. Being disabled means that you have a different range of physical limitations than most other people do, but they don’t come color coded ‘normal’ and ‘disabled’. When you’re used to the way your body works, the disability-related limitations feel pretty similar to those that aren’t disability-related.

Using assistive technology is pretty similar to using technology for any other important reason. Everyone uses technology to do things that their bodies alone would be too limited to do. Most people use cars to go further than they could walk; some people also use wheelchairs to go further than they could walk. Some people type or use communication tablets to say more than they could with their bodies alone; some people use musical instruments; some people use both. People with disabilities have different limitations, and as a result, often benefit from technology that wouldn’t be particularly useful to nondisabled people.

When technology is associated with disability, people tend to have the dangerous misconception that using it is the same as being restrained. This can very easily become self-fulfilling. When people prevent disabled people from doing things, their inability to do it is often misattributed to their disability. For instance:

Wheelchairs as restraints:

• Anthony lives in a nursing home.
  
• Anthony speaks oddly, and most people interpret most of what he says as meaningless. They say ‘Anthony doesn’t communicate’.
  
• Anthony can walk and wants to walk, but the nursing him staff don’t let him. 
  
• George, the supervisor, tells Sage, another staff member, ‘Anthony wanders. We need to keep him in his wheelchair to keep him safe. Just lock the seatbelt. After a few minutes, he stops resisting.’
  
• Every morning, Sage puts Anthony in a wheelchair that he can’t move, and ties him down so he can’t escape.
  
• Sage tells Marge, a new volunteer, ‘That’s Anthony. It’s so nice to have a volunteer - he’s been spending most of his time in the hallway lately. He doesn’t walk or talk, but he loves visiting the garden! Can you take him there?”
  
• Marge and Sage don’t know what Anthony actually wants, and it doesn’t occur to them that it’s possible to ask.
  
• Anthony actually hates the garden and hates being pushed by other people. He prefers to spend his time in the library or with children in the children’s wing.
  
• Marge assumes that Sage is the expert on Anthony, and assumes that Anthony’s disability prevents him from walking and communicating.
  
• Marge doesn’t know that Anthony has stopped talking because he’s constantly surrounded by people who refuse to listen to him. 
  
• Marge doesn’t know that Sage is tying Anthony to a wheelchair against his will to stop him from going where he wants to go.
  
• Marge doesn’t know that she’s doing something to Anthony against his will.
  
• When people see disability and restraint as the same thing, they fail to notice that people with disabilities are being violently restrained — and often unwittingly participate in physical abuse of disabled people.
  

The disability-as-restraint misconception also causes people to fail to understand that when they deny people access to assisstive technology, they’re preventing them from doing things, eg:

Mobility:

• Beck is an eight year old who can’t walk.
  
• Beck has a wheelchair, but he’s not allowed to bring it to school.
  
• At school, he’s strapped into a stroller that others push around. 
  
• His classmate Sarah has *never* had a wheelchair that she can push herself.
  
• At a staff meeting, Lee, their teacher, says “Because of their disabilities, Sarah and Beck can’t move around by themselves. Even though they stay in one place all day, they’re so fun to have in our class!”
  
• Lee is missing the crucial fact that the reason Sarah and Beck are immobile is because they’re being denied access to assistive technology. 
  
• When people see disability and externally-imposed limitation as the same thing, they don’t notice limitations being imposed on disabled people.
  

Communication:

• Rebecca types on her iPad to communicate.
  
• Clay takes away Rebecca’s iPad.
  
• Clay tells Sophie, ‘Rebecca is nonverbal. Her disability prevents her from communicating, but we’re working on improving her speech.’
  
• Sophie sees that Rebecca can’t talk, and assumes that it’s her disability that’s preventing her from communicating.
  
• Actually, it’s *Clay* who is preventing Rebecca from communicating.
  
• When people see disability and abuse as the same thing, they don’t notice abuse of disabled people.
  

It’s important to be clear on the difference between disability and abuse. Disability is not an abusive roommate; people with disabilities are only abused if someone is abusing them. When people with disabilities are restrained against their will, this is not caused by their disabilities; it’s caused by the people who are restraining them. Restraint is an act of violence, not an innate fact about disability. When wheelchairs are used as restraints, the wheelchair isn’t the problem; the violence is the problem. When people are denied access to assistive technology, it’s not their disability that’s limiting them; it’s neglect. When we stop conflating disability and abuse, we’re far less likely to see abuse of people with disabilities as inevitable.

I’m currently watching Warrior Nun and I can’t explain how happy the scene made me when Ava saw the wheelchairs with the neural net as a wheelchair user this is exactly how I act when I find out about new wheelchair and it makes me so happy that they didn’t just toss out the fact she spent most of her life with a disability.

So I’m currently watching Crip Camp and the only thing I can think of is why the fuck aren’t what these people did being taught in schools. We learn all about the fight for gender and racial equality and I literally had one teacher say that they do this so kids to today can remember and look up to the people who fought for their rights. What about the people who fought for my rights? The history books only ever cover the ADA signing they show the picture sitting with two disabled individuals signing the bill. And they act like their was no fight to get that I honestly thought the protesting was so minimal that their was no need to cover it cause it wasn’t a huge fight like the fight for racial equality. I didn’t know that there were marches and people going hunger strikes so and other disabled people can access the world. So thank you to the people that fought so I could live thank you.

A bunch of furry designs I’ve done recently!

Sarah was unlucky. She lost her arms few years ago due to rare infection. Surgeons needed to amputate her hands, because the infection was speeading. Suegeon could amputate her arms below the elbow but to make sure infection doesn’t spread it was the best option to make a double amputation close to the shoulders. It was the right decision. Today she is healthy. She was very desperate ar first. Her arm stumps are useless as they are too short to do or touch anything. So Sarah has to rely on her feet. It was hard at first. Using feet instead of hands take time to adapt. Holding a cup of tea was impossible at first. There are many others things she suffered with: dressing, holding forks while eating, showering, doing makeup etc. But she got better as time goes by. She met a boyfriend recently as she learned how to use the phone with her feet. She met a devotee attracted in amputations and has a foot fetish. They were very honest to each other. She accepted him because he gave her love and soo much passion. He helps her with her daily tasks and in the evening he massages her feet that are tired more tha before. Something else has changed. The more she relies to her feet the less she forget had arms once. Stumps are useless because they are so small. She doesn’t use them and they just hang down with no purpose. She never moves them as it makes no sense. She simply forgot them. One of the reasons is se is so great with her feet. She even paint her toe nails by herself. There is one more thing she became great at. It was strange to hear that foot fetish exist but now she is fully awarw and started to like it. You can guess that footj** is her specialty. Her boyfriend helps her with sexuality she can’t control anymore. Touching her breasts, between the legs… to be continued.

She was a normal girl once. But she was dreaming of becoming amputee. A true wannabe who couldn’t be stuck in her own body anymore. She loved her legs, because they were beautiful, especially her feet. Small, nice, smooth… But she couldn’t resist a wannabe inside her. She cut a pinky toe by herself. What a wondeeful feeling. She knew this was right decision and she found a surgeon to amputate both her legs. She told a surgeon: “As high as possible. Do it at the hip. I don’t want even the tinyest stump dowh below.” And there she is today. Her dream came true. She excercises every morning. She moves her phantom legs because you never forget how to move a limb. But there is nothing below her hips. Not even a tinyest movement. The same as she was a paraplegic. Just a nicely rounded ass with no legs attached to it. And two symetrical stitches. One on the left of the hip and one on the right. She is a complete DHD now and this turns her on.

embyrr922:

marauders4evr:

Ahem.

It’s called the Zinger Chair.

Here’s a picture of it:

It’s an electric wheelchair that’s controlled by the levers on the sides (so yes, you do need two hands to operate it, just like a manual). It’s only 40 pounds and can be folded down to fit into any trunk. The creators/managers all seem to be wheelchair users. I personally talked to one on the phone who told me the features he uses.

You don’t understand, I’ve been in New York City for almost four months now and it’s been incredible and in that time, I’ve wheeled my manual chair about 300 miles (there are times I’m going up to 40 blocks a day) and I am so sore and so bruised and so tired and it’s going to s n o w soon and even though the city won’t get nearly as much snow as upstate, it’s still not going to be fun, but I’ve always been afraid to get a big, bulky, electric chair because I don’t want to:

A.) Completely give up my autonomy.

B.) Have a 500 pound electric chair run out of power and have to figure out how the heck I’m getting it and me home.

But this chair, this chair, lads…

This chair can get me all the way from my apartment down the island to Times Square and into Amorino for the world’s best waffles/gelato/hot chocolate before it even considers running out of power. And it only takes 3 hours to fully charge ANDif for some reason, something happens, it can be folded up and put into any NYC cab and I’m just so, so, excited. NYC is filled with so many hills that I’ll now be able to go up/down without straining myself. I’ll be able to take the M5 down Riverside and still get to the center of the island without heaving and huffing and sweating. I just really, really, hope it all works out!

Note: Absolutely none of this is sponsored. I’m just really excited about this wheelchair. The Amorino part isn’t sponsored either but seriously, you should all go to Amorino at some point in your lives, I should stopgoing to Amorino because at this point, I go once a week and that is what we call Unhealthy. But I don’t care because life is short and Amorino is good. And so is this wheelchair (hopefully).

Here’s a link to the zinger chair website.