as small as a world and as large as alone

12:12am May 24, 2014

mountaingender:

my annoyances with the term invisible disability as being applied to entire disabilities (i.e. people saying all autistic people are invisibly disabled) or to people who do not identify that way:

• invisible doesnt mean “not obvious to abled people who dont understand autism and just think im weird as fuck” or “not obvious to people who aren’t paying any attention” 
• if someone’s “invisibility” is conditional on them…. just sitting somewhere not moving or talking, that’s pretty highly conditional
• very vision based perspective, only focuses on what people can see and not anything else.  why is seeing more important?
• if a mentally ill person is institutionalized, is their disability still invisible?  what if they’re forcibly institutionalized? is being forcibly denied body autonomy not obvious?

I don’t like the entire idea of invisible disability.  Because it makes it sound as if it’s a quality of the disabled person or their disability that makes it “invisible” to other people.  When really it’s the observer who makes it “invisible” or “visible” – what disabilities are they capable of perceiving, looking for, understanding?  

I understand where the idea comes from, mind you.  I just think it’s built on some assumptions about the world that are upside-down.

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