Happy Monday, @misssquirrel @darkhawk1126 @iamboundtowhen

Yeah i just printed this for my bulletin board

Can we start trusting disabled people to know their own limits? By this I mean if a disabled person says they can’t do something it’s not up to you to say “but you can! You just have to try harder!”

Sincerely, since this month two different friends listened, before they gone trought cataract surgery, that they needed TRY HARDER TO SEE, I'm seriously ready to beat the shit out of people saying that we don't try enough.

I was constantly trying so hard, that I just broke, and now I'm almost two years spending most of my time unable to get out of bed.

But in my work, people say that I'm not trying enough...

i think there's a lot of people who have gotten on the "addiction is a disease" train, which is good, except they've replaced "addiction itself is a moral failing" ablesim with "not doing everything I think you should to treat your addiction is a moral failing" ableism

Addiction is like cancer, in the way that there will never be a one-size-fits-all cure for cancer OR addiction. Two people with brain cancer may need completely different treatments. One may survive and go into remission with a few rounds of radiation therapy, while the other may receive multiple treatments and surgeries and will still die.

Addiction is the same. If you send two people addicted to meth to a treatment facility, one may recover and never relapse again, while the other relapses as soon as they're out of the facility. One treatment doesn't work for everyone.

This, but more specifically:

Some people aren't going to be seeking treatment, for a number of reasons. Some people aren't going to be trying to get completely sober. Addicts who don't try their hardest to get "clean" are not doing anything morally wrong. Not everyone is trying to be abstinent, not everyone is in a space where abstinence is something they are ready to pursue even if they do want it eventually.

There's a persistent type of ableism (that also gets used a Lot in fatphobia), where people who have a medical condition are only given compassion when they are perceived as doing every single thing possible to cure themselves & it is working. People get so angry about people not trying their hardest to recover (from chronic illness, from addiction, from just being fat), they feel like its somehow existentially offensive for someone to be sick and not do everything possible to fix themselves. Its, imo, very based in capitalist ideas of workers having a moral responsibility to be healthy in order to do the most work. But not everyone wants that! Some people balance the pros and cons and decide that putting all their energy into the perfect recovery just isn't the way they want to live.

That's why harm reduction is so important, because people deserve to get whatever help they need to live the life of their choosing. A lot of addicts don't get help because they don't want to stop using. I hate when people look down on addicts who aren't putting 100% of their energy into recovery- especially because its so often accompanied by this holier-than-thou purity bullshit, where addiction recovery is essentially a stand-in for repenting for one's sins. Addiction treatment should be about meeting people where they are and helping them improve their life on their terms, not making them into Morally Good Normal People.

everyone's all for disabled rights & anti-capitalism until your co-worker does the dishes slowly, or gets confused when given directions, or needs to be trained on how to do something that you think is fairly simple, or this or that or whatever lack of ability they have that makes you start to devalue them as a person and call them "useless" for not being a perfect cog in the capitalist machine

like sorry my existing makes your job harder but maybe direct your anger & aggression upwards instead of stamping down vulnerable groups who are just trying to survive and have gone their whole life being abused and screamed at for not being "good enough" or for being Inconvenient or a Burden

Knowing that SPIRK is on the rise is wonderful. (got 14 positions higher)

And Blackbeard started in the list on top 10.

Also, now I know a lot of tags to block and find peace. (I already have destiel and hannigram blocked)

The reason things are by default harder for chronically I’ll folks is because the energy abled bodied people use to actually do things, we have to use just to exist. Meaning it take at minimum twice as much effort to lead a normal life. And yet I’m seen as lazy. You wouldn’t last an hour in my body. I’m in it for life.

abled ppl who insist they aren't ableist are actually so chill with eugenics until you call it eugenics

"well offering euthanasia to people with disabilities who can't afford to live is–" eugenics. it's eugenics.

"why do disabled people have children? I mean they're just consigning them to this painful life–" eugenics <3

"but their quality of life is so reduced how can they justify bringing kids into–" ✨eugenics✨

"maybe medicine has advanced too far. I mean why are we keeping people with [insert condition here] alive when their quality of life–" EUGENICS

idc if you're ✨concerned✨ for my ✨quality of life✨ that's a) not your problem and b) something which could be improved by providing better accommodations for disabled ppl and making sure we have to deal with less ableist bullshit and ableist assholes like yourself.

If you are concerned with my quality of life pay my rent

Painscrolling

When you're in too much pain to sleep and can't do anything else except lie there, so you scroll aimlessly, hoping it all goes away

Instead of "chronic illness" I'm going to call it "eternal illness" because then maybe, just maybe, people will understand that I'm not getting better soon.

Sometimes the worst thing about chronic illness and mental illness is not just the pain and limitations but how you are perpetually perceived as not trying hard enough when in reality you’re doing your damndest and pushing through and your best isn’t enough for people going through less who can’t imagine that it’s really that bad and don’t see all the behind-the-scenes work or the multiple obstacles in your body and mind and it’s just been a theme pretty much my entire life, it’s so traumatic it wears you down and it’s honestly fucking violence against us but the people who inflict it choose not to see it that way because it’s easier for them to assume they’re just stronger or wiser

The thing is, you don’t have to have a diagnoses to make simple “unmasking” changes that make your life easier. You don’t even have to self-diagnose! You are not appropriating anyone’s culture or struggles or hijacking anyone’s movement by allowing yourself to sway in line at the grocery store or buying a weighted blanket or using study or household hacks intended for people with ADHD. If you start favoring the needs that make your brain and body unique over the arbitrary norms of society, you’ll be better off, and you’ll be expanding the norms. It’s a win/win.

honestly I dread a lot of things about living as a man but one of the things I dread the most is buying in the men's section. the clothing industry really said men (and anyone else who buys in that section) shouldn't have fun huh

THE PAJAMAS. IN THE FUCKING NAME OF EVERY DIVINITIE OF CLOTHS. THE PAJAMAS ARE ALWAYS RIDICULOUSLY BORING

I'm serious. Is a sequence of ways to look like a divorced 50 years old cis white man that never got his own cloths before the wife left him.

And the only option is comic book or star wars fan, for three times the price.

there's a Czech transdude in one of my servers who was like going through the complex process of trying to get binders from the UK and it's like my dude. that's gonna cost a fuck ton cuz of brexit shipping and so i told him about an online shop in amsterdam. in the process of getting that info one of the irl trans guys i know is like "i have two old binders from that shop, why don't we just mail it to him?"

so i'm mailing him two free binders (it'll be super cheap to send within' the eu) and in exchange i'm getting his grandma's secret recipe for Žemlovka

this is the pinnacle. community is actually about secret grandma recipes and sharing used gender affirming clothing

Not to mention a lot of us have learned to ‘mask’ some of our more noticeable ‘autistic’ behaviors that aren’t related to overload because we’ve learned society will punish us for acting ‘weird’ in public.

Always pisses me off when people are like ‘oh you don’t seem autistic at all’ yeah of course I don’t because I’m not showing one half of those behaviors because they only show up when my needs aren’t met and I’m meeting those and I’m not showing the other half because I’ve had 30 years to learn how to pretend to be someone else in public since I live in a society that values avoiding even slight neurotypical discomfort over meeting the needs of neurodivergent people.

As an adult, I can choose to arrange my life in ways that aren’t going to overwhelm and exhaust me.

If I start getting overwhelmed because the grocery store is too loud, I can leave! I have other options - grocery delivery, or asking my roommate if she’ll go out later and grab X, or going to the grocery store during a different time when they’re less crowded. I’m not stuck going when it’s convenient for the adults in my life, when I’m already tired and overwhelmed, with a parent snapping at me for getting upset.  I can bring headphones if I need to! I have OPTIONS.

If I know I have an appointment on such-and-such date that’s going to be stressful, I can make sure I don’t have to do X, Y, and Z on that same day.

Also, I can not stress enough how much not being trapped in a classroom 8 hours a day with people who were super mean to me for being Weird and Too Intense and Liking Things Too Much has lowered my baseline stress level.

an under-discussed feature of chronic illness + pain is how fucking boring it is. Like I know that I will get better and stop hurting if I lie down with my eyes closed in a quiet dark room but holy fucking shit if I do that for five more minutes today I’m going to totally lose my marbles.