as small as a world and as large as alone, Why is bipolar disorder on your list of...

2:57am June 15, 2015

cocoakhaleesi-deactivated201507 asked: Why is bipolar disorder on your list of privileges?

bittersnurr:

familiaralien:

zooophagous:

hobbit-queen:

rasec-wizzlbang:

this is the same person who thinks Chris Pratt having a tan is ‘brownface’

So by that idiot’s logic, anyone with an actual/spray tan is doing brownface/orangeface.

I’ll be sure to tell the people I know with bipolar disorder that they’re privileged because of it next time they’re taking their pills.
This is why you supervise your children online, parents.

Advice for life: there is no such thing as a invisible disability! Not only does it become rather apparent you have it from time to time but because its not in the form of a limp or something of that people don’t feel the same sympathy for you and are likely to treat you like you’re intentionally being an inconvenience.
This isn’t to say mentally ill folks have it worse than those with a physical disability but its certainly no fucking privilege either. Passing privilege is what ignorant social justice noobs say because they don’t recognize clear nasty harmful forms of discrimination that come with lack of visibility as being a lack of privilege all the same. Its just a different type of state of being marginalized.
Oh and btw I’m a dude with a physical disability AND mental illness so yeah I think I know a bit about weighing in on how it is to be both.

it is incredibly disturbing to me we have gotten to this point.
The only thing being invisibly disabled really gets you out of as far as disability goes is street harassment. It works the same as “passing privilege” on sexuality. You only pass if you are closeted. And with something like mental illness it’s a hell of a lot harder to stay in there because if you have something like a panic attack you’ll instantly be outed.
On the flip side for people who say the opposite: no, being visibly disabled isn’t better either because the people you WANT to believe you are disabled aren’t the random people on the street usually, it’s your family and doctors. As someone who uses a wheelchair part time I will say flat out there is no fucking winning there is no real privilege in either.

I don’t even believe in the distinction between visibly and invisibly disabled, just because so much of it is dependent on not what kind of disability you have but rather whether any given observer knows wha to look for. I know lots of autistic people who consider themselves invisibly disabled, but I could tell they were autistic within ten seconds or less of meeting them. Just as one example.

I’ve been having a really weird time of it lately, because I went from being bedridden and a full-time powerchair user, to being someone who walks (usually with a cane or crutches, but I still walk and haven’t used a wheelchair except after anesthesia, in over a year), and I actually had someone describe me as “ambulatory and therefore fairly independent” the other day, as in “does things mostly without extra help”, and my only response was something like “WTF walking doesn’t change the fact that I’m autistic, hello!?” I mean, I’ve never been anything close to the ideal some nondisabled people have that they call “independent” – never – and in fact my worst display of what happens when you leave me to survive on my own devices, was during the last period that I was relatively ambulatory. So I got pretty damn offended, especially given that the person saying it was responsible for training people who are helping me. She apologized after I ranted at her, and said something about “having worked with people ALL OVER the autistic spectrum, so I know what you’re talking about”, but… that didn’t make me feel much better.

I don’t even know how using a cane or crutches would be “invisibly disabled” anyway, because, you know, cane and crutches. Most people when thinking about invisible vs. visible disability are thinking of whether you use tools that are visible to others as a symbol of disability. But still, ambulatory vs. nonambulatory seems to be another way people define it, and it’s very strange moving from one to the other.

Also strange is when I read books where they talk about characters as “unable to walk”, who are walking with a cane or crutches. I’ve seen a lot of that, especially in older books (like 1930s and before). Like unable to walk without assistance maybe, but unable to walk? No, I can walk. (I can even walk without a cane for short distances in very familiar settings. I don’t generally use one at home, just when I leave the house. Although sometimes at home I really should be using one and don’t, so there’s that, too.)

I still love what Cal Montgomery said when on a panel about invisible disability at a queer disability conference:

maliciastarling:

Its an invisible disability so I’m not visibly disabled and people don’t discriminate me on sight.
I don’t believe that there is any such thing as invisible disability. For that matter, I don’t believe in visible disability, apparent disability, or non-apparent disability.
(Yeah, I can’t believe they let me on this panel either.)

(From Tangled in the Invisibility Cloak. For a shorter article by the same author on invisible/visible disability, see A Hard Look At Invisible Disability. I remember using both of these articles to explain why I didn’t believe in the invisible/visible distinction, only to have someone add them to a list of resources on invisible disabilities, described as being “about the problems invisibly disabled people face” <headdesk>. Please don’t do that here.)