For the record, I am not demanding ableism be included when people are talking about a specific form of bigotry. Many conversations center around AO3's rampant racism, for example, and this is good and I am in no way saying those conversations should lessen or 'make room for' ableism instead. I am specifically talking about instances where people talk about AO3's problems as a whole.
Especially with the rise in discussion on the topic now that there's someone running for a board member who said that AO3 could do with a little reigning in - something I don't know shit about nor care to know shit about, by the way. I have no confidence that AO3 will ever change its 'lmao go wild' policy unless it's due to extreme pressure from fandom as a whole, something that does not currently exist.
Furthermore, even if it changed its policy, I don't believe that'd do much for the vast majority of bigotry on the site; the bigotry is rarely outright hateful, and more often ignorant, uncaring, and callously hurtful. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, AO3's reporting guidelines currently do include hateful or discriminatory practices; it's just that the definition of this is so narrow that you'd have to practically write a Nazi manifesto to get AO3 to take action (and even then they might not if the fic manages to structure itself enough like a story that it has plausible deniability). Lower thresholds for action against bigotry, as well as increased encouragement to report obviously are a necessity, but even so, if we want to tackle the bulk of the bigotry on AO3, we need to adress it culturally in fandom.
But circumstances have fanned the flames of this discussion, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that nobody except some disabled people gives a shit about the ableism on the site, or even notices it. I have seen people talk about all of AO3's other problems; the racism, the rpf of minors, the pedophilia, the incest, even queerphobia, when the queerphobia is far more subtle than any of those other problems (intersexism being the exception - intersex people experience rampant and obvious hypersexualization and dehumanization on AO3). Ableism is the one thing that's been left out of all discussions on the topic, and if you can notice AO3's queerphobia but not its ableism, it must be because you're not bothering to look.
When I talk about ableism on AO3, I am specifically talking about ableism against physical disabilities, Cluster-B personality disorders, and schizo-spec disorders and psychosis. Ableism in other forms obviously also exists, but these are the ones I have found to be both uncomplex and rampant. Physical disabilities are exploited for angst with no regard for actually physically disabled people, leading to a metaphorical freakshow where able-bodied people gawk at how hard it must be to be in a wheelchair or be blind or whatever. Cluster-B and schizo-spec disorders, as well as psychosis in general, are so universally demonized I struggle to think of any fics that don't demonize them. This is especially true for ASPD (usually called the outdated or inaccurate sociopathy or psychopathy) and NPD (narcissism). I think I have seen maybe three fics where a character was headcanoned with NPD in a non-malicious way. I have never seen any positive portrayals of ASPD. Psychosis and scizo-spec disorders, too, experience near-universal demonization. When I went through the entire psychosis tag on AO3, I found maybe two or three dozen fics that weren't demonization and/or mindless dark fic that uses psychosis in an exploitative and offensive way. There are currently more than 1500+ fics in that tag. This tag obviously does not include all portrayals of hallucinations, delusions, or even psychosis.
Ableism is one of the most widespread and rampant problems on AO3, and the fact that nobody fucking talks about it says a lot about how little fandom cares about disabled people.
