ableism

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thatdiabolicalfeminist:

einsteinbrosofficial:

disabled people shouldn’t have to  disclose their disability to get treated fairly

like u can’t go treating people like shit for being weird or for shit you don’t think makes sense & only turn your ass around when they admit to you they do that shit bc they’ve got [x]

like! you can’t only respect people once they’ve been forced into disclosing highly personal information to you

don’t be shit in the first place

and like this shit goes for a LOT of things! like:

  • acting harmlessly “weird” in literally any way
  • being exhausted all the time/saying they’re too tired to do stuff/needing o sit down when you’re not tired
  • taking a lot of meds, otc or not
  • talking a lot/having times where they don’t wanna talk verbally at all
  • asking, respectfully, for things that take very little effort from you but are mildly “weird” like not wanting to be touched, asking you to repeat yourself a couple times cos they didn’t hear, needing closed captioning on
  • using hand sanitizer/antiseptic after touching you or your pets etc (it’s not an insult!!)
  • not wanting to go to crowded events
  • having intense interests that you think they’re a little too into

Like fun story, your litmus test for “should I be an asshole to this person” should be “are they hurting anyone”, cos if it’s just “do i think they’re weird” you’re literally just enforcing boring regressive social rules that assume everybody’s brain and body should work exactly the same way!!

Even if your target isn’t disabled this time, you’re still reinforcing ableism by demanding obedience to rigid abled standards as “normal” and punishing variation.  Disabled people need the normalization of variation, and honestly the whole damn culture benefits from it too.

“That kid is fucking ugly” “She’s got a disability” “Oh fuck, I take it back,” was one I saw recently.

Whether she had a disability or not you’re an asshole.

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andreashettle:

my-mad-fat-fibro-diary:

Please stop excluding disabled people in your posts about minorities who are being affected by the election results. Disabled people in the US are being affected too and we matter.

And, no, we’re not just upset because Trump mocked that reporter. I mean, sure, I do think that was immature and petty of him, but that’s not the worst thing he has done to the disability community or the worst thing we’re scared of. We’re a lot more upset that Trump has shown himself to be basically hostile to disability rights. For example, he keeps getting sued for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act even though he has to know by now that it’s always a LOT cheaper (less than 1 percent of the building cost) if you integrate accessibility features into a building if you start at the design phase, before you even start digging the hole. It only becomes expensive if you try to ignore your legal obligations under the ADA until you get sued and are forced by the courts to go back and literally have to tear part of the building down and redo it. But he keeps on defying the ADA anyway, than blaming people with disabilities for being “anti business” when we’re just trying to get into the building so we can do all the same things that everyone else in the building is doing. So we’re worried that he will try to find ways to undermine the ADA and its values of equality and inclusion in society, and worried that he will continue to perpetuate misconceptions about what the ADA actually does and doesn’t require and why it matters. Many disabled people also worry that he will sabotage Obama Care so that people with disabilities will lose a lot of the crucial care supports they NEED for daily survival. Please stop leaving us out and start educating yourself about the real issues affecting people with disabilities. One good place to start is in Twitter under the hashtag #CripTheVote, or do a web search for Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility project (I can’t link to it on my little bitty phone)

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pardonmewhileipanic:

marxism-sjwism:

annieelainey:

painandcats:

hatred of disabled people doesn’t have to be blatant:

  • complaining about “people who walk slowly”
  • calling people with specific dietary restrictions needy/fakers/high-maintenance/etc.
  • insinuating someone isn’t responsible if they’re “living in their parents’ basement”/some variation thereof
  • insinuating that students with disabilities are actually “cashing in on special treatment”
  • praising what are basically snuff films about disabled characters
  • defending the casting of abled people for disabled roles
  • defending paying us lower wages

*swoons at the accuracy*

also complaining about

  • people who talk slowly
  • people who read slowly/cant read aloud
  • people who take the elevator for only 1 floor (my college had really slow elevators in all the buildings and people would constantly bitch about this and even yell at people for taking the elevator instead of the stairs)
  • people who need you to repeat yourself multiple times before they can understand you

most i knew, some i didn’t. super appreciate these kinds of posts

just so you know

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dragonsatmidnight:

chronicallyannoyedwithpain:

nocturnalvisionary:

fogblogger:

thatdiabolicalfeminist:

the US minimum wage that we all agree is too low to live on ($15,080/yr) is far more than many legally disabled people receive in benefits

the maximum SSI for a single person is $8,796/yr
if a disabled person marries another, each drops to a max of $6,600/yr

while you’re fighting for 15 maybe look at that too

Not to mention we aren’t allowed to have more than $2,000 saved at a time. EVER. Like EVER or we lose all benefits completely. In the bank, in cash, it doesn’t matter. The government literally keeps us poor, while also making us pay immense amounts of money for health care that we require to even survive or function (let alone work enough to be able to get off of benefits, not to mention that there are a ton of people who will never be able to do that anyways). It’s a very, very broken system and not one that was ever meant to actually help anyone. 

Plus, “marriage equality” is still a huge problem for disabled people (as you can see), which is something almost everyone is ignorant to/doesn’t care about. 

DO NOT LEAVE DISABLED PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR ACTIVISM. 

Btw that’s $733 a MONTH they want us to use for rent, food, and everything else. I asked once why it’s so low- how that’s even fair. She responded that they only factor in how much it would cost for rent and for food (with food stamps). That’s it. That’s all the government thinks we need to live. Rent and food.

And in case you weren’t aware, the disabled cost of living is much higher than the fully abled cost of living.

Mobility aids are expensive.
Medications and supplements are expensive.
Special diets to accommodate illnesses are expensive.
Avoiding a long list of allergies is expensive.
Wheelchair accessible home and car modifications are expensive.
Hiring someone to do all your cleaning and laundry because you can’t is expensive.

And yet they still give us so little money that abled people couldn’t possibly live on it.

Okay thinking you can pay rent with this is laughable. Pretty much everywhere I’ve looked, and I’ve looked a lot of places, is 599 a month plus utilities. Cheaper than that and you end up in situations where you have to move every few months because the room you’re renting is going to go to a child, or the lease is up, or roommates who steal your stuff, or sleeping on a couch in a living room or your car.

These are all actual things that have actually happened to me, real life disabled person ™.

And this doesn’t even get in to a security deposit, and the deposit for utilities that companies would need.

Then there’s transportation to get to the doctor’s appointments that you are legally required to keep lest they cut off your benefits.

And stuff like toilet paper, toothpaste, laundry soap, money for a laundromat, paper towels, soap and shampoo, razers, qtips, deodorant.

These are all necessities of being an adult in our society.

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taraljc:

crippleofficial:

“medication is a crutch!”
“accommodations are a crutch!”
“that is a crutch!”

yes. crutches are tools that help people do things more effectively and efficiently, just like meds, school/work accommodations, and everything else. there is nothing wrong with using crutches, and there’s nothing wrong with using other “crutches”. that’s not what’s being said here, though, and we all know it.

using “crutch” this way not only stigmatizes needing these other tools, but it stigmatizes having a physical disability and using crutches and other mobility aids.

so if we could stop using this expression, that’d be great.

Yeah, i lost my shit about this a while back. Something that stabilises me and supports me, so i can continue to function and enables me to better live my life is bad HOW EXACTLY?

Why Do AMC Cinemas Hate Blind People?

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andrewhickeywriter:

Crossposted from https://andrewhickey.info/2016/08/24/why-do-amc-cinemas-hate-blind-people/ . Please reblog far and wide.

My wife is legally blind, and likes to go to the cinema. There are a
few cinemas that we go to, and most of them are very good about her
blindness. We sometimes go to HOME, and they provide audio description
headphones whenever there’s a description for that film (sometimes, as
with watching classic films from the 50s or whatever, there isn’t).
When, as sometimes happens, there’s a technical problem with the audio
description, they apologise, refund us the money, allow us to watch the
rest of the film for free, and give us complimentary tickets for a
future showing. Most of the time there isn’t a problem, of course.

Other times we go to the Cineworld in Stockport. They also provide
audio description headphones for every film (they only show big new
films, all of which now come audio described), and will do things like
suggest the best place in the cinema to sit for optimal reception of the
signal. They do this quickly, professionally, and without any
confusion.

And on occasion we go to the AMC in Manchester city centre.

We will not be going again, and suggest you don’t either, if you care even slightly about disabled people.

Holly only discovered the existence of audio description as a regular
thing a year or two ago, and we’ve only been to the AMC twice since
then. The first time was a little over a month ago, to see Ghostbusters.
Unlike at HOME or Cineworld, where as soon as you ask for audio
description headphones they go and get some, explain where the switches
and so on are, and generally go out of their way to help, the people at
the AMC seemed to treat the request in much the same way as if I’d
requested they provide me a porcupine that speaks Spanish. Eventually,
after about four people had some earnest conversations, they provided a
pair of headphones and I took it in to Holly, as the film had already
started at that point.

When she put them on, she discovered it wasn’t the audio description,
but rather the soundtrack, amplified for hearing-impaired people. I
took the headphones back out, explained the situation, explained it
again to someone else as the first person didn’t understand (that is NOT
a dig at the person in question, but at the lack of training they have
been provided), and eventually explained it to the projectionist, who
they called out, and who said, and I quote:

Oh, we never bother with that, as no-one ever asks for it

I repeat:

Oh, we never bother with that, as no-one ever asks for it

so now I had to go back into the cinema and make my wife cry, by
explaining to her that she wouldn’t be able to properly watch the film
she’d been so excited about seeing, because the cinema couldn’t be
bothered with her.

After the film, we complained to the manager, who said “he shouldn’t
have said that” (note what she *didn’t* say, which is “that’s not true” —
she just said he shouldn’t have said it). I explained to her the duty under the law to provide reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities, and she said “this won’t happen again”, and gave us a couple of complimentary tickets.

As I explained to her at the time, though, what we wanted wasn’t tickets, but an assurance that they would start to bother.

Yesterday we (along with our friend Debi, who’s here to stay for a
few days) gave them a second chance, going to see Finding Dory (a film
Holly had already seen once, so if they messed things up again she
wouldn’t be totally lost).

This time, after talking to four different members of staff, we were
eventually told “well, it’s not *advertised* as being audio-described” —
as if it were our fault for expecting them to fulfill their legal
obligations whether or not they were advertising it.

They then told us they *did* have an audio-described showing of Finding Dory, if we wanted to see it.

A 3D showing.

Not only do 3D screenings cost more than 2D screenings, and require
glasses which cost extra — thus ensuring they are charging extra for
providing disability accommodation, which is illegal — there’s also the
rather important point that

BLIND PEOPLE OFTEN CAN’T EVEN SEE IN 3D!

I say often here because “blind” covers a variety of problems and
most blind people have *some* vision. Some blind people can probably get
something out of 3D effects — but it certainly shouldn’t be expected.

At that point I just became a raging ball of fury, and I still am twenty-four hours later.

The first time this happened, I tweeted about it and got a reply from
them, offering to discuss this in private by DM or email or any other
way which didn’t give them bad publicity. I didn’t take them up on it,
because I told them I wasn’t interested in private compensation for us,
but in *public* steps taken to actually solve the problem. When Debi
talked about this time on FB, she similarly got a reply as a private
message (which I haven’t read but which from her description solved
nothing). Again, no public acknowledgement that this is even a problem.

So I have a simple question to ask AMC. Three questions, actually:

Why do you hate blind people?
Why do you like making my wife cry?
Is there any reason at all that we shouldn’t pursue prosecution under
the Equalities Act 2010 for your active contempt of disabled customers?

I asked the first two questions on Twitter yesterday, and of course
got no response. Maybe adding that third one will get them to publicly
apologise, not only to one disabled customer, but to all the others
they “don’t bother” with or illegally charge extra for their legal
rights, and more importantly maybe it will get them to actually fulfill their obligations to disabled people.

Because if asking the question doesn’t get them to do that, then I will have an answer, and will have to take this further.

Me Before You Would Have Killed Me

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marauders4evr:

I’ll make you all a deal. This will be one of the last posts that I make on the matter. But you all need to signal boost this. This one needs to be heard by everyone. 

–

I’m at a really good place in my life right now. I just turned 22. I just finished my fourth year of college with a 3.7 GPA, I moved into my first apartment, I’m doing an awesome internship, I’m doing a ton of advocacy work. I’m genuinely happy.

I’m at a really great place.

I wasn’t always.

I’ve been disabled all my life but about ten years ago, I walked into an operating room and came out in a wheelchair. (Well, technically I came out on a stretcher, but you get the point.)

And it took me a while to realize that my life was completely different. In fact, it wasn’t until about three years later, when I was about fifteen, that I really realized it. I don’t know if I was in shock all that time, if I was numb, if the medications that I was on limited any conscious thought, let alone emotion. But it was around the age of fifteen that everything came crashing down and I fell apart. I became extremely depressed. And let me tell you, no matter how hard you try, you never forget that feeling. It’s one of the worst feelings in the world. Depression is like being in a room where everything is pitch black. And people are screaming at you to turn on the light switch, but you can’t find it, you can’t see it, even though everyone else seems to know exactly where it is, you’re completely lost in this dark room with no way out. Depression is horrible. I would never wish it on my worst enemy. Even now, there are days when I struggle, though those days are nowhere as bad as the weeks, months, that I battled depression as a teenager. As a fifteen-year-old, too weak to put up a fight.

Now, I should mention that I never tried anything.

But believe me when I say that I know what it’s like to want to.

And believe me when I say that if you built a time machine, if you took Jojo Moyes’ infamous book, if you sent it back to 2009, and if fifteen-year-old me had read it…

I probably wouldn’t be here right now.

I’d be dead.

I would have lost my battle.

Because I would have picked up a book wherein the main character kills themselves because they think that their life isn’t worth living now that they’re disabled.

And I would have related all too well, and I would have done something that’s genuinely terrifying to think about. I know I would have. I was not in a good place at that time, I was not strong, and while I did survive, it wouldn’t have taken much for the scales to tip in the other direction.

And I keep going into the Me Before You tags on different websites and I keep seeing teenagers who are in the same place that I once was, who are saying that they were sobbing in the movie theaters because they didn’t expect the ending and they genuinely don’t know what to do.

I would have been one of those teenagers.

I dodged a bullet.

Literally.

And I know that the author probably didn’t mean for any of this to happen, she didn’t expect the huge backlash from the disabled community, she didn’t expect a very tired college student to be revealing something very personal at 1:06 AM.

She just wanted to tell a story.

I can respect that.

I read an interview a few days ago where she talked about how she had seen a few debates over assisted suicide and she felt compelled to write a story, to give a perspective, to give a voice.

And whether she meant to or not, that voice is a single mantra:

“It’s okay to die.”

And I keep seeing people defend the book, defend the author, defend that voice, by saying that it’s just one perspective, it’s just one voice.

But it’s not.

It’s not okay.

And it’s not just one voice.

You see, we didn’t need Jojo Moyes to be that voice. She thinks we did. But we didn’t.

We hear that voice every single day.

We hear that voice every single day.

Every single day.

We hear people talking about how it’s okay for the disabled to die.

Every. Single. Day.

(Note: I was actually going to make this a video but at this point, I started crying and couldn’t finish, so I’m typing it all out instead.)

And we hear our own inner voice, whispering to us at night, urging us that it’s okay to die.

We hear the voices. We hear them. We hear them every single day. The voices that say that it’s okay to die.

We hear them.

I heard them when I was fifteen. I heard them loud and clear. And I believed them. And had I read Me Before You, it would have been the voice to break the camel’s back. It would have been the voice that I listened to.

This book would have killed me.

This book is going to end up killing someone else.

And I don’t think Jojo Moyes understands, I don’t think that the abled community understands, I think they have the privilege of not understanding just how loud that voice can be and how damaging that voice can be. They don’t hear those voices every day.

But we do.

Whether we want to or not.

And you know what?

For the amount of people who say, “It’s okay to die.” there are very few people out there who say, “It’s okay to live.”

They’re the voices that we need to hear. They’re the voices that are so few and far between.

And I’m here tonight to try to be one of those voices.

For those of you who are constantly hearing the various voices that are telling you that it’s okay to die, please, please know that those voices are lying to you. I know that it’s hard. I know what it’s like to be in that dark room. I also know what it’s like to open the door and to escape.

And I know there are others that have escaped as well. And now, we have to help the others who haven’t. We have to help the others who keep hearing these voices. We have to put an end to them.

Boycott the voice.

Boycott the author.

Boycott the book.

Boycott the movie.

Boycott Me Before You.

Signal Boost!

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