as small as a world and as large as alone, surprise: people with disabilities deserve to be...

9:50pm July 26, 2015

Anonymous asked: surprise: people with disabilities deserve to be discriminated against because in reality they weren't meant to be born. natural selection ought to have weeded them out to better the human race, but instead they drag the rest of us down.

bittersnurr:

thelamedame:

voidbat:

crypticcripple:

femmecrip:

thefaultinourspoons:

I don’t even know how to respond to this.
I’m sorry you feel that way, I don’t know how you could ever think something like this, I’m not sure how long you studied biology, but natural selection doesn’t work that way. Natural selection means that people with traits that won’t help them survive die out, and people that have mutations that help them survive better in their environment. The whole point of natural selection is for passing on genes and survival, and last time I checked people with disabilities survive and pass on genes. People with disabilities get married and have kids, they live fairly normal lives.
People with disabilities don’t deserve to be discriminated against, asking for small changes for accessibility doesn’t mean we’re asking for a million pounds, we’re asking for something that isn’t difficult, just something small to help us out.
Without disabled people we wouldn’t have:
the telephone
light bulbs
cars
the bicycle
anything by disney
Ikea
Virgin airways and Jet Blue airways
any music, films, books by any disabled people
If disabled people had been ‘weeded out’ the world would be a completely different place
This was an amazing response. However, I want to clarify something about evolution. We hear the oft quoted “survival of the fittest” because that’s what we learned in high school biology - and even then, if we were lucky to get even that much. But stand back,lovelies, because I’m about to Science:
Evolution isn’t just about YOU as an individual surviving and passing on your genes. If that was true, no SPECIES or even single POPULATION would survive past a lifetime or two.
There’s this thing called “diversity” which is necessary for evolution and natural selection to even take pace. It is literally in Darwin’s three main rules for evolution. 1. There is diversity. 2. That diversity is heritable. 3. Individuals and species with struggle to survive.
So, if nothing else, we need genetic diversity and mutations in order to change as a species. Not less.
That’s all great, you say, but what about the “weak links”????
Well, have I got news for you, friend! Even Darwin wrote about this shit! And biologists and anthropologists continue to this day to make major breakthrough studies on this concept that is integral to evolution itself.
Are you ready? It’s called “altruism”!!!!
And guess what? It is a key factor in the success of evolution! I know, right???? Being nice helps us evolve???? But its true!
You see, if you as an individual are the strongest and the best and you survive - or even have a few babies - what happens if no one else makes it? What happens if you beat out everyone else for resources and you told them “only the strong survive”? What happens when only the “strong” survive?
Eventually your species dies out, that’s that. Evolution is not about individuals or even just the Top Echelon getting by and leaving everyone else in the dust. You’re species would not make it. You would lack too much diversity, have too little individuals in your population, and nature would try to create more variation in the form of more new mutations anyway. So.
Altruism has been shown through numerous studies to be both desired by animals and encouraged.It is a key part of evolution. We essentially evolved to be altruistic!
When you are altruistic, that individual will remember and we hopefully return the favor in the future. Even if they don’t, spreading your altruism about with many individuals means you will probably get a returned favor or someone being altruistic to you in the future when you need it. We evolved with this process, to be frank, it is why we are here and it is one of the reasons our species in particular is one of the most successful. Look at species who kill each other for resources constantly - they aren’t thriving like we are. In fact, they can weaken their ranks and their overall population if they are constantly aggressive (Beta fish are a prime example of how, when taken out of the wild and put in unnatural environments they begin reacting in violent and UNNATURAL ways that lead to their lowered numbers overall).
Basically, what I’m saying is: Don’t Be An Asshole. Your evolution depends on it.
-Angry Cripple Who Studies Biology and History

In which Amy is Bill Nye, but cuter

in “survival of the fittest”, fit doesn’t mean strong. it means “fits best into the environment that houses it”

mankind has proven its ability to dominate and overcome almost every environment on this planet. we’re still working on deepest sea and insides of volcanoes, but that’s about it. mankind has the ability to adapt and modify nearly every environment - or the human body itself - to be the best possible fit.

when the environment is inhospitable due to disability, we modify our own damn selves. crutches, prosthetics, wheelchairs, walkers, canes, etc. we modify the environment with accessibility options.

we have the ability to BE THE FITTEST, no matter the environment or situation, and the fact that environments are regularly changed on a large scale to suit able-bodied people’s aesthetics, but simple modifications to suit disabled bodies and our needs are fought against is fucked up. period. there is no justification for it. mankind as a whole fits any environment because we have dominated the entire fucking planet (not infrequently to our detriment) to do so. we have the ability to terraform and people argue about ramps.

tell me that’s right.

“we have the ability to terraform and people argue about ramps”

the environment we live in is pretty artificial and made for specific humans
Like, imagine if instead of stairs, we had holes with a rope down them and you had to climb up like in gym class.
what percent of the population is now disabled? From what I remember from gym class (and these are kids, who are going to be the best off energy wise) only maybe ¼th of the class made it to the top. Probably less because we had so many kids I think there were usually maybe like 5. Everyone else got maybe halfway, just enough to be ok, or not very far at all. I bet it’s even worse then it was when I was a kid because we’ve cut recess and increased homeworks since so kids are less active. In the past when we had to be more active then we were in the 90′s there was probably a larger number of kids who could do it. Being able to climb up a rope isn’t a required skill anymore so it’s not considered a big deal if you can’t do it.
A lot of disabilities were not previously disabilities, and are only so in modern time. Ex, stuff like dyslexia wasn’t important when barely anyone could read. We are developing our world faster then evolution can keep up. It’s going so fast WE can’t even keep up, hence all the middle aged people needing to go back to college because the job market changed and phased out their old obsolete ones due to changing needs.
Tomorrow someone might invent something that flips things again and switch around who is disabled and who isn’t because it just happens to work better with people with x disability and if you don’t have x disability now you will be disabled in the future.
You have no idea who the -next stage in human evolution- is so don’t assume it’s going to be you.

Also (sorry for not reading everything above, so if I’m repeating some people’s points it’s not intentional):

Anything that destroys the genetic diversity of the human race is asking for far more trouble than you get by leaving things well enough alone. So weeding out disabled people genetically is actually destructive to the survival of the species. Not constructive. We’re such a non-diverse species genetically already. We need all the genetic diversity we can get, even when it looks negative in the eyes of some people. (Even when it is very negative by any standard. It’s still better to have that diversity than to smash it out.)

And it’s not because we make cool things that people can use, although that is a good thing.

It’s because genetic diversity is super important to the survival of the species as a whole.

And also because you never know everything a supposedly “defective” gene is actually doing for the person (the example everyone gives is sickle cell anemia and malaria resistance, but lots and lots of things work like that – more things than we’re even aware of yet).

It’s extremely foolhardy to fuck around with things you understand in only the most limited way. And even top geneticists have only a limited understanding of genetics (human or otherwise), as any honest one will tell you outright. Even after mapping the genome. We know much less than we don’t know. And we lose a lot when we pretend it’s good to weed out the “weak”.

Also, in a more sociological than genetic sense, “weak” people have always been around and caring for us has always been a part of what makes us a social species. If we did not care for each other in this way – if there was not evidence of cave people who lived to what was then old age, despite never having been able to walk or even chew food in their entire lives – then we would not be the species we are. The moment we start doing away with disabled people, treating us like mistakes who shouldn’t have ever survived, treating us as if we’re a product of “modern medicine gone too far”, etc. – we’re destroying the ethics that bring out the best in our species. Social species have to take care of each other. If we don’t, then being a social species is meaningless. Even ants will often try and help up injured ants, as my friend who used to feed ants so she could watch their behavior noted many times. Because they’re a social species too. Humans have been helping disabled people survive since probably before we were even evolved into homo sapiens. The way we treat people with the least power and the least ability to fight back if mistreated (which is true of a lot of disabled people), says everything about us as a species. Treating sick and disabled people well is a key part of being human. And also of being several other social species – nothing about humans is exceptional that way – but it’s definitely a part of being human. And we lose core parts of our humanity if we forget that.

Sebastian Haffner once said that nobody should ever be put into the position of having to defend their own existence, or construct arguments for their own existence. This is absolutely true. He was talking about Jews in the Nazi Germany he fled (with his Jewish wife), but it applies to any other target of eugenicist ideas, and disabled people (as well as poor people, people of color, and Jewish people) have always been a fundamental part of who eugenics was and continues to be targeted at. I’d even say the fundamental part, because both racist eugenics and classist eugenics were entirely founded on and informed by the ideas of ableist eugenics, and then they were all twisted together into one thing so that it was hard to see that pattern. But regardless, nobody should have to argue for their own existence, ever, ever, ever, including now, here.