ableism

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cyberbullier:

After Ann Coulter referred to President Obama as a “retard” in a tweet during Monday night’s presidential debate, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens penned her this open letter:

Dear Ann Coulter, Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult? I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night. I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have. Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next. Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift. Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more. After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV. I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.

A friend you haven’t made yet,

John Franklin Stephens

Global Messenger Special Olympics Virginia

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revolutionarykoolaid:

Lost in the Margins (9/29/15): A Delaware councilman and a local NAACP are calling for a federal investigation into the death of Jeremy McDole. Police were called out to respond to a report that a man shot himself in a parking lot. When they arrived, they found McDole bleeding in his wheelchair. Multiple officers fired at least 10 shots into Jeremy, claiming his was waving a gun at them menacingly. Witness videos challenged this narrative (warning, the video features very graphic images) however, showing a clearly injured McDole without a gun and struggling with commands. Police begun to revise their account of what occurred. On Monday, they announced finding a gun by his side, instead of in his hands, and have just stopped short of saying “he got what he asked for.”

McDole sits at a unique intersection often ignored in the conversation on police brutality: violence against people who are potentially suffering through a mental illness and those who are a living with a physical disability. He also is one on a growing list of people who the police were originally called out to help, but instead were killed (like James Anderson several days later). These victims of state violence are often the most convenient to label as worthy of lethal force, as many do in fact have a weapon. However, even when police are aware of the potential mental state of these citizens, they do nothing to adjust their approach/tactics. In essence, people like McDole are doubly pathologized, not just for being black but for also being sick. More must be done to uplift the stories of Tanisha Anderson, Janisha Fonville, Lavall Hall, James Anderson, and countless others who have been stolen from us. Rest in Power. We fight for you now too. #staywoke #farfromover

McDole was also killed on the same day as unarmed 19-year old Keith McLeod (who was murdered by police after pointing his fingers like a gun). 

neurotypical feminism

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theunitofcaring:

A couple people reblogged my brief complaint about neurotypical feminism yesterday to say “yes, someone finally described the thing” and a couple other people reblogged it to say “huh, what?” so I thought I’d expand on the thing.

An advice columnist tells a man with crippling social anxiety that an anxiety disorder is nowhere near as bad as being a woman, so “get a fucking grip and do not come to feminist blogs for comfort about this issue.”

Some people say “#yesallwomen experience street harassment and fear of men!” A woman says “as a visibly disabled autistic person, I’m desexualized and treated like a genderless unperson. and, no, I don’t experience street harassment and I’m not hit on.” Another woman says “as someone who was abused by women, I feel much more comfortable around men than around women. Women scare me. Men don’t.”  They are ignored, or yelled at for derailing.

Making fun of men for dressing badly, struggling with hygiene and being socially awkward is okay, even though disabled women who struggle with the same things keep on saying “when you joke that way about disabled men, I feel unsafe.”

An autistic woman talks about how her disability gives her some strengths in her field and a perspective on it that isn’t represented in sexism in STEM conversations. She argues that listening to autistic women in tech might make us better at fixing the gender gap. A bunch of people explain to her that she is femmephobic and has internalized misogyny and just wants to say “I’ve got mine, so screw you”. 

I feel like these have a thing in common. That thing is winning political points with the suggestion that your opponents are disabled, as if that’s good for women. That thing is dismissal, erasure and contempt directed at any women whose experiences don’t fit the narratives, experiences that are specifically often not shared by disabled and non-NT women. That thing is an insistence that the harms to disabled and non-NT people (through advocacy that erases and dismisses them) is negligible compared to the harms done by misogyny to abled NT women, and that complaining about this is therefore itself a form of misogyny. That thing is the repeated insistence that asking feminists to accommodate disabled people and especially people with anxiety or scrupulosity disorders is an unfair and sexist demand for emotional labor. 

If the failure of NT feminism is ignoring anyone whose narrative doesn’t fit, we’d fail just as badly in the opposite direction if we generalized about all disabled and non-NT people. And I’m sure there are some who are reading this post and going “no, haven’t noticed that”, and their experiences are real and valid too. But there are quite a few disabled and non-NT people whose experience of sexism is strongly shaped by their neurotype. And many are not comfortable in a space where “haha does your mom do your laundry” and “don’t use your crippling social anxiety as an excuse, it’s not that bad” are common. Or where womanhood is defined and fought for as a collection of experiences that we don’t share. 

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The most hilarious bit of casual ableism I’ve seen this week is people responding to the girl who lost her leg at Alton Towers by saying that she must have done it on purpose (i.e. engineered a crash at the UK’s biggest theme park) for the money and fame it brought her

Uh-huh

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I keep seeing people posting Frankie Boyle tweets and articles which sound perfectly reasonable, so…I guess now’s a good time to mention that he’s really, disgustingly ableist. I mean, even within the already massively ableist confines of ~controversial~ British comedy, we’re talking someone here who thinks it’s hilarious that people with Down’s Syndrome have shorter lifespans and compared a little Black boy with learning difficulties to a rapist.

He’s also racist. And sexist. He’s basically the human equivalent of the Daily Mail.

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theoneandonlykyna:

My open letter to www.Theberry.com for their photo they potsted of a button stating “gluten free intolerant” that appears to be on a chef’s jacket *shudder*

My dear berries,

What you see here is me the sickest I’ve ever been in my whole life. Some doctors had given up on me while others remained baffled.  I was in the hospital with inflamed organs, locked joints, unable to eat, scared, and malnourished to the point of broken teeth, bones, and hair loss.  This is the day they figured out why.  I have Celiac Disease.  The protein gluten found in wheat, barley, and rye had caused my immune system to wreak havok on my body and destroy the villi in my intestines.  Without villi it is impossible to absorb nutrients you need to survive.  A gluten free diet saved my life.  My organs began to heal themselves and with time I was able to trade in my handicap sticker for a 5k bib.  This is the same gluten free diet you made fun of this morning in your morning coffee album.  In case you forgot it was a nice big photo of a button stating, “gluten free intolerant.”

This disease is life threatening but somehow has become the butt of every joke.  Until now the Berry was one of the few places I could go and not worry about being ridiculed.   I cannot watch TV, listen to the radio, or go on the internet without hearing someone make fun of gluten or call everyone on the diet an annoying hipster.  I realize it is because so many have gone on the diet as a fad weight loss solution.   These are the same people that can’t even tell you what gluten is… As Jimmy Kimmel so kindly showed us.

The jokes, viral youtube videos, and photos are dangerous and have put me and others like me in danger.   The onslaught of negative gluten freeness on the internet, TV, and radio have caused friends, family, and food service workers to view this diet as a joke rather than medical necessity.  They roll their eyes then proceed to contaminate our food (or blatantly give us gluten) because they honestly do not believe that it will cause any real harm.  It only takes 1/5 of a crumb to cause a gluten reaction.  And no it’s not a tummy ache it’s weeks of vomiting, skin rashes, crippling joint and muscle pain, and dizziness… just to name a few.  Every joke puts a celiac that much closer to danger.  I love the Berry and I am heart broken.  Please rise above the ignorance. Please give us a place where we can go without seeing our disease laughed at. Please, for the sake of those struggling and those who have lost the struggle.

Sincerely,

A Celiac survivor 

I’d also like to note that the first response to this was, “lighten up.”

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