it's just. unfortunately. a common occurrence for disabled people to have not at all been informed about their own health. including diagnosis that they have been given. i think the ideal image of what happens when someone is diagnosed is that they are told what they're looking for before testing, consent to go ahead, and then are sat down with and have the results explained alongside with plans on what to do next. it's not like this can never happen but when you talk to disabled people you find out that a lot of the time, much more than it should, people are told jack shit. people aren't told about their diagnosis, nor they're told that something was diagnosed but not explained to what that fully means. or they're diagnosed and then continuously offered treatments that are detrimental to people with that specific diagnosis. some people only find out they were diagnosed at all after months or years. it's ridiculous

Started out watching sad eyed, funny eyebrow bisexual bottom doctor yearn for a much more assholeish homoerotic partner for ages. Said partner who has chronic ailment. Both of which are ND as balls.

Now damn near decade on Im an EMT-B, transgender bi man, who married my best friend who I was homoerotic with for ages, empathetic and curse way too much and have converted to judaism. And has adhd/asd and a multitude of other shit.

Beware the pipeline yall. You start liking Hilson or JD/Turk. And you end up in a happy relationship, grow a dick and become a punk jew.

Sometimes looking back at how I thought my life would be like, before i became chronically ill, i get sad. Sometimes it makes me angry, sometimes i grieve and sometimes i'm proud i survived. Other times i look back and then look at my life now and it's a little funny because "it's not safe to leave bed" is definitely not something i ever could have expected to say while only feeling mildly annoyed.

The things i consider normal oftentimes are just so...bizarre, i can't help but find it amusing.

uhm. no. literally no. that post of mine was about chronic pain.

Okay, I’m gonna make a post that I hope makes sense because I’ve been thinking about this the whole day and it’s wracking me…

I hate when people say shit like “don’t worry, you are not missing on anything” and it becomes especially horrible when the person who says that has gone through that experience. It sounds very hypocritical. Okay, maybe they are right and that particular experience isn’t as special or fun as it may appear buuuuut they did it and so they know it for sure or they are just lying and it is actually an important experience.

When I would complain, as a child, because I couldn’t do or was denied an experience because of my disability, hearing that sentence didn’t help me at all. Honestly, it’s no consolation.

What if it actually was something special that would leave an important mark in my life? And I can’t have it. I mean, wouldn’t I have the right to be sad, angry, furious?

People usually say it to shut your feelings (at least that was the case with me) and the only thing that it achieved for me was making me sadder or angrier.

Let people grieve and be furious if their situation makes it impossible for them to do something they would like to try. Because yes, they are “missing on something”, even if it’s small and stupid and not fun at all. But they wouldn’t know, would they?

As a wheelchair user I'm trying to reframe my language for "being in the way."

"I'm in the way," "I can't fit," and "I can't go there," is becoming "there's not enough space," "the walkway is too narrow," and "that place isn't accessible."

It's a small change, but to me it feels as if I'm redirecting blame from myself to the people that made these places inaccessible in the first place. I don't want people to just think that they're helping me, I want them to think that they're making up for someone else's wrongdoing. I want them to remember every time I've needed help as something someone else caused.

When I say “school should be disability accessible”, I don’t just mean we need handicap rails and EAs. Kids should be able to miss a day without failing out of school. You shouldn’t be dismissed from clubs because your attendance record is “spotty” (true story). I once missed an entire week of school because of a terrible, unending migraine. I was expected to keep up with my studies despite the blinding pain that came with working on my computer. When I heard my teachers say that you couldn’t miss exams, I asked what I would have to do to be excused from them. Their response? “Either get a doctor’s note an hour before the exam or death of an immediate family member.”

I cannot express how rigid this expectation was. First of all, with my condition, I wouldn’t have enough warning about my sickness to go to the doctor and request a note. For many people, this is exceptionally difficult, especially with the current shortage of medical professionals. Next, it ignores the fact that my schedule may not line with theirs because of my medical needs. Once, I had to visit a hospital a province away (which I was on the waiting list of for over a year) on the same day as an exam. I begged my mother not to take me because I was so nervous that I would be marked as an automatic fail. I was lucky enough to make it work, but that’s only because of my spectacular support system consisting of family members and wonderful doctors.

Disabilities aren’t always about needing a bus that can accommodate wheelchairs. It’s already difficult enough for many of us to maintain school attendance without the harsh punishments involved for skipping a day. We need to be able to miss school without being punished. Only than can you claim that the school is “accessible”

yeah you're "punk" but are you normal about deformed people?

Edit: reblogs are off because my notes have been filled with this post for months. the correct term is 'people with limb/facial differences' and this post was originally about the cripplepunk movement not punk as a whole

I think the reason a lot of leftists struggle with disability justice is that they haven't moved past the concept that discrimination isn't bad because it's objectively "wrong." yes, sexists are objectively wrong when they try to claim women are dumber than men. yes, antisemites are objectively wrong that jewish people are inherently greedy and run the state. yes, racists are wrong when they try to claim that white people are the superior race. and so on.

but then with disabled people, there are a lot of objective truths to the discrimination we face. people with IDs/LDs do fall behind and struggle with certain concepts. physically disabled people are often weaker and less capable of performing demanding tasks than able bodied people. many of us with mental illnesses are more reckless and less responsible. a lot of us are dependent on others and do not contribute much "worth".

and guess what? disabled people still deserve a place in the world. disabled people still deserve the supports they need. because they are people, and that should be enough to support them and believe they deserve a place at the table.

if your only rebuttal against discrimination is its objective inaccuracies, you are meeting bigots where they are at. you are validating the very concept that if and when people are truly incapable of being equal to the majority, that means they are worth less. this causes some leftists to then try to deny the objective realities of disabled people and/or become ableist themselves.

your rallying behind marginalized groups should start and end with the fact that people are completely worthy of life and equity, because they are fellow human beings and that should, frankly, be enough.

some of yall need to understand that "my body, my choice" also applies to:

addicts in active addiction with no intention of quitting

phys disabled people who deny medical treatment

neurodivergent people who deny psychiatric treatment (yes, including schizophrenic people and people with personality disorders)

trans people who want or don't want to medically transition (yes, including trans masc lesbians with top surgery and trans women without bottom surgery, yall are so weird to them wtf)

and if you can't understand that, then you don't get to use the phrase

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when the “10 tips on how to make showering easy for disabled people” list doesn’t include a shower chair or a shower/changing table or grab bars etc, i know they don’t care about us physically disabled people.

good for u that turning off the lights and lighting a scented candle instead and listening to music or put on a show and using a bath bomb etc etc helps u but like none of those tips are that beneficial for physically disabled ppl specifically.

it’s good that those tips are there but for once we’d love to be included.

wanted to do my photo project this semester on the notion of mobility aids being extensions of our bodies, the yarn was done by a friend

edit: the shibari comments are one thing but if you put these non-sexual photos of me in my wheelchair on your porn blog i'm blocking you 👍🏻

disabled people are worth whatever cost or resources is needed to keep them alive. disabled people are worth it even if they don't live long. they're worth it even if they will need extra support and resources for every day of their life. they're worth it even if they spend all they life indoors. none of it is wasted. none of it is in vain. time, effort, money, resources spent on a life are not wasted. these things have served their purpose. the joy of someone's existence is not undermined by not lasting forever. there's no meaningful point, some threshold where you can say "okay this is enough. after that it's not worth it." it's always worth it.

the solution for taking care of "unsightly" homeless people is to house us. that is the only solution. if you can't stand the look of someone living on the sidewalk, you shouldn't stand for them being put into that situation to begin with. housing us is the only answer.

so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.