as small as a world and as large as alone

3:38pm July 6, 2014

megachiropteran:

bisexualfandom:

i think people need to realize that ”passing privilege” is essentially just erasure, and is so harmful and toxic to the group who is marginalized in general, but it’s terribly dangerous for the person whose being read as the ”right” kind of person

so, when we’re sitting here, talking about disability, we can’t ignore the fact that people who have invisible disabilities are put in precarious positions, and have their autonomy removed much in the same vein that we as visibly disabled people do

are we really going to act like disability is some monolith where ableism only occurs under a set of specific guidelines? how grotesque is that idea - and how reflective of the arbitrary standards abled people hold us to with the clear intention to have us fail some sort of test to gain entrance to their world

all you’re doing is furthering the stigmatization of invisible disabilities because of your false perception of how that ‘group’ of disabled people are treated

it’s ableist, it’s disrespectful, and i want no part of your ”advocacy” if it’s simply holding people down to claw your way to the surface

this…. isn’t what is happening though. talking about how the dynamics that disabled people go through based on what kind of disability they have isn’t “holding people down to claw your way to the surface.” that is some real shitty hyperbole & i have not seen anyone with a broadly defined ‘visible disability’ do that.

as you said, disability is not a monolith. that means people have WIDELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES based not only on type of disability but also on gender, class, race, and sexuality. no one is denying that invisible disability is hard. but come on. even different invisible disabilities come with separate stigmas. i face different hardships for my mental illnesses than i do for my chronic illness. & i face different hardships when people can tell i am disabled versus when i can hide it. and i will tell you: it does make a difference to be able to hide it.

we need to be able to have open discussion about these things, ableism does not work in a black&white privilege vs. underprivileged dynamic and it never has. it’s so much more complicated than what you or other people in this discussion are saying.

edit: i edited this b/c i made some assumptions about the OP that weren’t true, i’m sorry about that

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