as small as a world and as large as alone, andreashettle: astrakiseki: [A photograph of a...

3:43am May 2, 2014

andreashettle:

astrakiseki:

[A photograph of a person in their bedroom holding a sign reading “#WeNeedDiverseBooks because I’ve never seen a character with two of my disabilities, let alone all of them, in a book.
(Learning disabilities and mental problems aren’t exclusive!)”]
And it took me decades to realize how comforting it is to not be alone in media because no one else was like me.

I’m deaf, I have attention deficit disorder, plus other things (but those are the two disabilities that usually impact me most) and have never seen anyone in fiction with that combination of disabilities either.
Weird how so many non-disabled people seem to think you’re only allowed to have one impairment/disability at a time. Instead of realizing that, actually, many of the things that can cause one disability can often cause other disabilities, including sometimes at the same time. Like meningitis, for example, can cause some people to become deaf, and can cause others to become blind—and sometimes causes a person to become deaf and blind at the same time. Or, people born with cerebral palsy have a higher than usual rate of hearing loss as well. But on the EXTREMELY rare occasions when we see a character with any disability at all, it’s only one disability at a time. And usually the character is also a cishet white person (usually a man or boy) from a middle class background.
We need more characters with disabilities. And the ones we have, need to be WAY more diverse than they are now.

Most disabled and chronically ill people have more than one condition. And yet I’ve been called a faker specifically because I have “too many conditions”. But my doctors tell me that most of my conditions are probably genetically connected, which is one reason that people end up with many conditions at once – because a single gene will control far more than one system of the body.

astrakiseki:

[A photograph of a person in their bedroom holding a sign reading “#WeNeedDiverseBooks because I’ve never seen a character with two of my disabilities, let alone all of them, in a book.

(Learning disabilities and mental problems aren’t exclusive!)”]

And it took me decades to realize how comforting it is to not be alone in media because no one else was like me.

I’m deaf, I have attention deficit disorder, plus other things (but those are the two disabilities that usually impact me most) and have never seen anyone in fiction with that combination of disabilities either.

Weird how so many non-disabled people seem to think you’re only allowed to have one impairment/disability at a time. Instead of realizing that, actually, many of the things that can cause one disability can often cause other disabilities, including sometimes at the same time. Like meningitis, for example, can cause some people to become deaf, and can cause others to become blind—and sometimes causes a person to become deaf and blind at the same time. Or, people born with cerebral palsy have a higher than usual rate of hearing loss as well. But on the EXTREMELY rare occasions when we see a character with any disability at all, it’s only one disability at a time. And usually the character is also a cishet white person (usually a man or boy) from a middle class background.

We need more characters with disabilities. And the ones we have, need to be WAY more diverse than they are now.

Most disabled and chronically ill people have more than one condition. And yet I’ve been called a faker specifically because I have “too many conditions”. But my doctors tell me that most of my conditions are probably genetically connected, which is one reason that people end up with many conditions at once – because a single gene will control far more than one system of the body.

Notes: