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8:57am June 8, 2014
Anonymous asked: I'm not even remotely disabled in the same way as you, but as a disabled person your writing has meant a lot to me and helped me evolve my understand of disability life and activism. Thank you.

patternsmaybe:

okideas:

withasmoothroundstone:

I’m glad it has been helpful, and you don’t need to be disabled in the same way to get good things from other disabled people.  That’s one thing I like about disability communities that are less about the type or severity of disability and more about the shared experience.

True, and important.

Disabling society teaches us that there’s “only so much access or tolerance to go around.” If that were true, then it would make sense to police who gets to be called “disabled” (or more likely “handicapped”).

One thing I’ve learned from disability community is there is room for all of us, especially when we make this happen. Someone else’s access, acceptance, freedom doesn’t reduce mine.

(I realize there can be conflicts where one’s accommodations is another’s barrier, but we can work those out when we decide to face them head on.)

And the right approach to competing access needs isn’t “figure out who is most disabled and therefore deserves it”, either.

Yes, that.  That gets tiresome and old extremely quickly.  That sort of thing is rarely the sort of thing a person can calculate, anyway.  I mean occasionally something’s that obvious, but it’s rare.

One thing that’s important for dealing with competing access needs, however, is honesty on all sides, and a willingness to set egos aside.  Without that, you really can’t address the issue properly.