Untitled, and it might stay that way.

I wish all of you would understand that “non-binary” and “androgynous” are not synonyms. And yes, that means you, even though you already consider yourself a trans ally, or maybe are even trans yourself.

Non-binary and androgynous are not synonyms. There are non-binary people who, say, love sports and have rugged beards. There are non-binary people who maybe love fashion and have long hair. There are non-binary people who are none of these things. They’re all equally non-binary.

And yes, this DEFINITELY includes non-binary people who were amab and are masculine, and non-binary people who were afab and are feminine.

Divergent evolution in plague doctors

(I am nearly certain this has been done before but I couldn’t resist the shoebill stork doctor.)

I wasn’t going to derail the disability pride month post for people with peanut allergies but in relation to that topic

I have never seen another allergy that has been so viscerally hated and mocked by people working in education like nut allergies. I’ve seen fellow teachers cringe that their classroom was the “nut free” classroom that year. Support staff that are trained and willfully don’t follow cross contamination protocol in the lunchroom because it’s too “tedious” or “time-consuming”. Full preschools + childcare centers that refuse to accommodate nut allergies. Schools where the only free lunch is a PB&J. Before/after school programs and summer programs whose food curriculum has nuts and doesn’t provide an alternative activity.

Allergy discrimination is so so insidious and prevalent. It’s happening behind their back and it is everything from the exposure joke to possibly causing someone to go into anaphylaxis from willful ignorance.

Also other parents in the classroom are guilty too. The “not my child not my problem” brain rot means that those lunchboxes are like bombs for airborne exposure allergies

I was not downplaying this. The stigma is real, and people are 100% willing to let people with allergies die.

This woman was laughed at for asking for allergy accommodations at multiple points in her trip, and was denied to the point that she was practically told she’d be refused care in the event of anaphylaxis.

I work in healthcare. I cannot get my coworkers to consistently change their gloves after handling a PBJ. They literally do not think of it, and I don’t understand why. I also don’t know how to make it stick in their brains that this is a thing they need to do.

I grew up in the early 2000s with severe allergies to not just peanuts, but ALL nuts as well as beef, pork, shelfish, seeds, kiwi, and some food dyes. The resistance that my family faced from educators in the early 2000s is frankly bananas, not to mention the shit other parents and kids got up to.

When my mom tried to enroll me in preschool, the school principal refused any basic accommodations like asking everyone to wash their hands after lunch before re-entering the classroom, not bringing straight up peanuts to snack time, etc. There was no such thing as a nut free classroom at the time. The principal told my mom and me (I was 4 at the time and definitely in the room when this happened) “if she’s so sick, she belongs in a bubble, not at school.” THE FUCKING PRINCIPAL! My mom had to threaten legal action under the ADA to get them to comply.

Look, I was on a 504 accommodation plan under the ADA for the entirety of my formative education (elementary thru high school). That’s all 12 years!!! And yet I have had teachers hand me items I’m allergic to as a “reward”. I have had other kids intentionally try to send me into anaphylaxis. One girl in 3rd grade asked me why I “wasn’t dead yet” when she had put on a lotion with almonds in it and then held my hand. I’ve had other parents write letters to the school saying what a terrible inconvenience it was to them to not be able to send their kiddo to school with PB&J, demanding I be Removed to a special education only class if my “needs” were such a “burden” to others. During elementary school “parties” held in the classroom on holidays and for student birthdays, I was always sent to sit out in the hallway or go to the library, because even though parents were only supposed to bring safe foods into the room (they had a list of all my allergies) they never once got it right. Administrators fought me tooth and nail for the right to carry my epi pen and other meds on my person at all times. Why they thought I would start dealing benadryl on the playground, I do not know. At lunch, I was always sat at a specific segregated table labeled the “Nut Free Table” alone because who the fuck is going to sit there with the literally segregated outcast? But ONCE notably I was sat on one side of a line of blue masking tape down the table top with the rest of my class on the other. One side was the NUTS side!!! As if allergens would respect that tape barrier. (Spoiler alert: they do NOT!)

Literally from preschool to my senior year of high school, I was “the peanut kid”. Other parents gave my mom books about how to “cure your child’s food allergies from HOME” by micro dosing with things they are allergic to (please never ever ever even attempt anything like a food challenge with a known allergen outside of the care and supervision of a medical professional, holy shit that’s so dangerous). My mom joined the PTA in my last year of high school so that I could maybe participate in all the senior-focused events like pool parties and breakfast at school on the first Friday of the month. The number of times another parent either (a) decided it wasn’t worth it to care or (b) intentionally brought peanut products to an event to spite either me or my mom??? I literally could not count. It happened constantly.

College was better, but I still occasionally had people BALK when I asked them to please not eat a Nature Valley bar with whole nuts in it right the fuck next to me in lecture, thanks. Work parties and catered lunches were always impossible. A few conferences I went to as an undergrad were SUPPOSED to be nut-free, but always fucked up the catering. At one, they set up snack tables by every exit of the conference auditorium so that when people left after the talk, they all congregated around the exits and opened macadamia nut cookies and granola bars. When I had subsequently had a massive allergic reaction and needed help getting home (I’d walked) after taking like 200mg of benadryl, the staff offered me a stack of napkins and a lukewarm apology.

Food allergy is a disability which touches literally every aspect of a person’s life. Everytime I share with someone new about what it was like growing up with my allergies, they have never heard anything like it in their lives. They’re always like “holy shit, seriously??? People did that??? Kids tried to kill you??? Parents wanted you kicked out of the classroom????” Yeah, man. Yeah. My own brother (who doesn’t have any allergies at all) doesn’t understand why I don’t “eat more adventurously” and why I won’t travel internationally. So, saying it REALLY LOUDLY for people in the back:

FOOD ALLERGY IS A DISABILITY FOR WHICH EVERYONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO ACCESS ACCOMMODATIONS AND HAVE THEM TAKEN SERIOUSLY.

"Proposed legislation could help clear significant credit reporting hurdles for transgender and nonbinary people. Democratic Sens. John Fetterman and Tina Smith will introduce a bill Thursday requiring credit reporting agencies to use only a person’s current name in their credit reports, Fetterman’s office shared with The 19th exclusively.

The Name Accuracy in Credit Reporting Act would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which regulates the way credit reporting agencies can collect, access and share consumer data. Credit reports for people who have changed their names often will either include their deadname or be created as a separate report under their changed name, which can lead to inaccuracies and trouble accessing credit.

...

“Updating a person’s name on their credit report should be simple, and credit bureaus have already been doing this for decades to accommodate married or divorced consumers,” Stephanie Landry, strategic lead for digital finance at Consumer Reports, said in a statement after the introduction of Pressley’s bill. “Credit Bureaus are choosing to fail transgender and nonbinary consumers by creating careless and unnecessary hurdles to accessing accurate and complete credit information—which can lead to unfair denial of credit, housing, or employment.”

Advocates said transgender and nonbinary people often face numerous issues following a name change: Some report their credit reports being fragmented into unconnected files, effectively erasing their credit history. Some said their name changes and the actions following them did not reflect on their credit reports at all. Others reported their credit scores dropping by hundreds of points. Changing a first name instead of a last name can create the problem, as credit reporting agencies often use the first name to match up information."

asking a trans person if they like astrology is so fucking funny like "hey do you like arbitrary categories that people are sorted into because of the circumstances of their birth" im not sure i do no

as my own direct immediate list of game grievances i hate that stardew valley expects you to side against a wheelchair user who is upset that he was moved without his consent. i hate that the mass effect trilogy gives you visible scarring as a direct result of choosing mean dialogue and heals it if you're nice. i hate that the vampire the masquerade ttrpg has a monstrous player class that can appear as horrible vampiric monsters or as visibly disabled people and both of these appearances are mechanically the same. i hate that dark souls games have a difficulty level implemented in a way that cannot be adjusted for disability. i hate that i can play as a mermaid or a werewolf or a horse in the sims games but can't use a wheelchair. i hate that the ace attorney games have so much flashing and not all of the games can disable it. i hate that disability is constantly something that happens to teach a lesson, i hate that disability is something that happens as a punishment, i hate that disability is either compensated perfectly with no drawbacks or something that is endlessly sought to be cured. i hate that no character customization will ever include the mobility aids i use, that the player avatars that represent me will never look like me. i am so goddamn annoyed and so goddamn tired.

the problem with autism is sometimes you want to do something (brave) but you need someone to gently walk you through each step so you know what will happen. and people don’t like doing that

"Disabled writers, directors, and actors are rarely hired to work on projects that feature disabled characters because studios and production companies have prioritized hiring disability consultants."

When are people gonna understand that autistic burnout doesn't require a day of rest, but a lifetime of accomodation in school and work. Like trust me, even if you gave me 3 months of rest, the burnout is still going to be there for as long as I force myself to do things I am not supposed to do.

I hate driving because you have to do everything perfectly as fast as possible or everyone around you will announce their displeasure with airhorns

oh and if you mess up you die and kill a bunch of people at the same time

LITERALLY like disarming a bomb except there’s a peanut gallery watching you and they’ve each got an airhorn and also another bomb

Shout out to every blind/low vision person with speech disabilities that can't use high tech augmentative alternative communication (AAC) because of their vision. I see you and I am you. You have a place in speech disability communities. Please remember us when discussing speech disability and non/semiverbality.

Actually I am going to say more about being both blind and semi/nonverbal + neurodevelopmental communication disability because I have big feelings about it. I am a low masking semiverbal autistic with speech loss episodes and I'm also legally blind. I do have residual vision, but when I look down at an AAC board, I see a confusing mess of shapes and colours and can't read them or tell what the symbols are.

But that doesn't mean I simply opt to speak where high tech AAC should be used. It means I just don't speak then. A lot of low masking autistics who are speaking disabled are also higher support needs and multiply disabled and can't reliably type/handwrite to communicate for that reason either, I fall into that group.

So I cope with what speech I can do, large/high contrast communication cards, pointing and gesturing and grunting and mumbling, LOTS of scripting and echolalia, having carers translate what I'm saying to people. And I only get by because I'm still only semiverbal. So many blind semi/nonverbal people are in a similar situation where even with the most most high tech AAC, shifting through a sea of words with a screen reader means it takes too much time effort energy to have any spontaneous conversation with AAC.

For that reason we are shut off from a lot of the rest of the developmentally disabled community and the world. We face inaccessibility and exclusion in many other areas too, Doctors will refuse to diagnose us if we don't have enough vision to complete all the vision based development assessments and deny us resources, diagnose with behavioral disorder instead, etc. So please please remember blind developmentally disabled people, and how much more dramatically we can be isolated if we're semi/nonspeaking and low masking.

Real homies respect trans people!

[Image ID: a photograph of protestors standing on a pavement behind a sign that reads “Respect my trans homies or I’m gonna identify as a fucking problem”. The words “Respect my trans homies” are written in the colours of the trans flag. /End ID]

A c. 1800s advertisement that reads: “Tourists' guide to the shortest route to Yo-semite Valley [and] Calaveras Big Tree Groves! The largest in the world!” This was supposedly the only correct map of routes to Calaveras Big Tree Grove, South Grove, Natural Bridges, Tuolumne Big Trees, and Yosemite Valley. From our online catalog.

wheelchair, cane + forearm crutches, walker 90% chance if you're hesitant to draw mobility aids you're overthinking it. start somewhere. obviously these are not detailed references.

wheelchairs and walkers should be proportioned like chairs. canes are held on the opposite side of the painful leg because you want to put weight on the cane instead of the leg (dr house lied to you)

[ image id: a title image that reads "learn how to draw mobility aids very fast" followed by three simplified drawings of different mobility aids broken down into two steps each. the changes made in each step are colored red.

the second image shows a wheelchair, with the steps "1. seat with footrest", showing a simple chair shape, and "2. wheels", which adds two large wheels to the back and two small wheels to the front.

the third image shows both a cane and forearm crutches, with the steps "1. stick", showing a single line of color, and "2. add handle", which shows a hand grip and a forearm rest on two different sticks. and additional label below this step reads "handheld stick height is where the hand rests at the hip" and "forearm stick height is the forearm".

the fourth image shows a walker, with the steps "1. platform with wheels", showing a backless chair shape with a wheel on each leg, and "2. add handlebar", which shows a handle raised above the seat. end id ]

Autism is a visible disability for some Autistic people

Autism is an invisible disability for other Autistic people

Just because your autism is invisible, doesn't mean that other's is as well

Listen to Autistic people more marginalised than yourself

Signed, someone with visible autism

cmon child safety lid you know it's me

Really starting to think that pretty much all queer discourse on this site could be avoided if people stopped treating the community as a country club when it's actually more like a union