as small as a world and as large as alone, Moron isn't ableist. Ableist isn't a thing. Just...

3:45pm July 5, 2014

Anonymous asked: Moron isn't ableist. Ableist isn't a thing. Just stop.

clatterbane:

twistmalchik:

clatterbane:

santorumsoakedpikachu:

youneedacat:

translightfield-deactivated2015:

you are saying that abled people do not have privilege and that disabled people are not put under abled people in today’s society, think about that
http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/01/01/ableist-word-profile-moron/

Try to remember that the ableist word profiles all had a disclaimer on them that they were not intended to tell people “you shouldn’t use this word, ever”, they were only intended to make people think about their own word choices and come to their own conclusions.

“Ableist isn’t a thing” is the offensive part. The word ableist has existed since at least the eighties, maybe the seventies, I first I heard it in the early nineties. It refers to the oppression and discrimination faced by disabled people. And very little of it has to do with the language people use. (In fact, focusing on the language so hard only helps convince people that ableism is trivial compared to other oppressions.)

Ableism can involve:

Murders where the murderer gets off without charges or with greatly reduced sentencing entirely because the victim was disabled.

Pressure on disabled people to refuse medical treatment and die, in situations where nondisabled people would be pressured to accept that very same treatment.

When nondisabled people are suicidal, they get some form of suicide prevention (which often turns out pretty bad, but people are at least trying). When disabled people are suicidal, we get a right-to-die movement behind us, even when our conditions aren’t terminal and we’re just dealing with severe stress or mental illness the same way a nondisabled person would be in our place.

Western society mostly believes that it’s normal, natural, and maybe even preferable, that disabled people be forced to live in places built just for us, separated from the rest of society, against our will. Same with school.

A couple went through the process of adopting a severely disabled child, taking out a big life insurance policy on her, putting her in the garage, and setting the garage on fire. They were not charged with murder. They were charged with insurance fraud. This is pretty typical of even clearly premeditated murders of disabled children, especially by parents or caregivers.

Even societies that have nondiscrimination laws for disabled people don’t properly enforce them and have been trying to whittle away at them. (The existence of the nondiscrimination laws, by the way proves that ableism is real. Nobody would pass a law like the ADA if disability discrimination didn’t exist.)

Disabled people who are able to work, still can’t get jobs because of discriminatory hiring practices. And no, before you come up with a really outlandish example, I am not talking about hiring blind people to be bus drivers, I’m talking more about hiring someone with a prosthetic arm to be a bus driver, who has proven they can drive just as well if not better than someone with regular arms.

The very fact that people treat ableism like a joke, in the face of human rights abuses so serious that the UN considers us a legitimate minority group, is ableism.

Disabled children are sent to “schools” where the “treatment” is something that would in any other context be considered torture (like strapping electric shock devices to the backs of children and using them the moment they look at staff cross-eyed). The schools stay open because torturing disabled children is okay as long as it can be somehow justified as treatment.

Things like SSI make it very hard for disabled people who are capable of part-time work to do that part-time work. They also make it very hard for people to save up enough money to get off the system and get a job of their own. These things are known as ‘work disincentives’ and they’re seriously fucked up.

People still have such limited understanding of disability that they’ll accuse a wheelchair user of faking if she can wiggle her toes or stand up, same with blind people who use a white cane to cross the street then pull out a book and read it, etc. And, in fact, the entire idea that disabled people are getting something for nothing, and therefore need to be carefully inspected for faking at all times, is ableist. Very few people would fake disability, because life as a disabled person is extremely difficult. (Yes, I know about the DPW community and people with BIID. They’re the rare exceptions.)

Abuse rates for disabled people are far higher than they are for nondisabled people.

Hate crimes against disabled people are on the rise in the UK, because of anti-disabled hate propaganda by the media.

Some other stuff:

http://andreashettle.tumblr.com/post/76681477628/examples-of-scary-ableism

If you’re interested in a variety of more in-depth stuff, check out Blogging Against Disablism Day from various years:

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2014/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2014.html

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2013/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2013.html

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2012/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2012.html

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2011/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2011.html

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2010/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2010.html

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2009/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2009.html

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2008/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2008.html

http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2007/05/blogging-against-disablism-day-2007.html

That’s eight years of people blogging against disablism, which is the British word for ableism. There’s blogging on all sorts of topics.

Also, if you thought I was kidding about the sentencing of murderers of disabled kids, a friend and I put this page together back in 2003 originally, giving details about murders of autistic children by caregivers, and the response that society gave them (mostly sympathy for the caregivers, and reduced sentences all around):

https://web.archive.org/web/20090412040143/http://www.thiswayoflife.org/murder.html

Ableism is real. Ableism almost killed me last year, when I was urged to go home and die rather than get a feeding tube, entirely because of my disability. I don’t care if your anon is just here trolling or if you’re someone who’s willing to be educated in the slightest, but I’m posting this in case anyone actually wishes to be educated.

What is DPW?

I wondered the same, actually. Searching didn’t help, with the number of things the initials can represent.

Devotees, Pretenders, and Wannabes according to Wikipedia. It seems to be some sick fetishization of mobility impairment.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attraction_to_disability

Thanks, also to
dendriforming
. Makes sense. From the context, it sounded like something that would be pretty gross. And that doesn’t disappoint. :-| I still have trouble not parsing it as DWP (the Department of Work and Pensions here), which is also gross but in a way that kinda casts all of us as wannabes of a different type.

DPW is sometimes a fetish thing, sometimes it’s other things. When it’s a fetish thing, it grosses me out, because it’s almost always a fetishization of helplessness. And because the devotees collect images of disabled women without their consent, especially amputees.

When it’s just people who would for whatever reason rather pretend they’re disabled, I honestly don’t give a fuck as long as they’re not fetishizing helplessness or something. I looked into their writing for awhile, and the devotees almost universally creep me out, but the pretenders and wannabes, when it wasn’t a “let’s pretend to be all helpless” thing, were pretty diverse and not all that disturbing to me for some reason. Much less disturbing than a lot of things that seem to be considered okay by a lot of people.

Notes: