These are half processed thoughts. There are more connections to be made. That will come with time. I write to think. You don’t have to publish only finished thoughts.
Exploring thoughts and where they come from and how they change and grow over time is interesting and valuable.
***
The more I’ve engaged with disability organisations, the less I’ve seen myself in them. Which begs the question of what role are they fulfilling?
A long time ago I ran polls on my social media asking my disabled friends how many of them were part of a disability organisation. Very few said they were. And yet when consultation happens (lol) it’s only with disability organisations, who don’t reflect us, and we’re not a part of.
***
If people will only tolerate disabled people who can meet performative standards or fake being able bodied, where are we truly at with disability inclusion in the world?
***
Too much of disability narratives centre the perceptions of non disabled people.
Can’t be too medical. Can’t be too tragic. Must remind the ableds we can do stuff too.
But lots of us spend time in medical settings. Lots of us can’t do stuff.
Cos…ya know … our disabilities disable us.
***
We shouldn’t stop speaking about the realities of our lives just because some stranger thinks it’s too boring or weird or tragic.
The tagline to this blog is “we’re all normal to ourselves”. I wrote that before I understood my brain, body, ableism or many many other topics I’ve learned about in the past decade. And while I know some people hate the word normal, whatever I subconsciously stepped on in writing the tagline still holds true to me.
***
It’s funny how judgment works. My life is normal to me. Your life is normal to you. There ins’t a hierarchy. I think what some abled people do is tragically boring (eg I could never find a way to give a shit that I can’t eat at a restaurant).
***
They think being housebound is a fate worse than death.
Even people who know I’m 99% housebound ask me what I’ve been up to, or I’ve been to xyz thing. Their eyes scorn you when you tell them you spent your leave watching urban explorer and history videos because that isn’t socially acceptable, I should have been at parties. Never mind that I’ve never enjoyed parties and that these days synchronous conversations drain the life from me.
***
A note on terminology.
I know some people don’t like terms such as “the abled” and “able bodied”. I use “the abled” as an insult, because I find it infuriating that we’re not allowed to be petty back to people. Why do disabled people have to rise above everything? Fuck that shit. We’re humans too. We can be angry and petty and mature and nice and progressive and regressive. I don’t always use the terms this way and I logically understand the arguments towards the anti-use of these terms. And I will also damn well choose to use them when I want to.
[…] freeform comments at the end might resonate with some others (after all, they’re similar to the last post I published, which people seemed to resonate with). Instead of annoying copy paste across multiple […]