Recently I saw a post on social media saying your advocacy has to cost you something. Sleep, career opportunities, relationships… whatever it may be, they claimed that if your advocacy hasn’t cost you something, then it may be performative.
I have major issues with this thought process!
It assumes you can lose what you have
People like to ignore the cost of rebuilding, if rebuilding is even possible for them. I’ve lost a lot of my life to rebuilding and I won’t anymore. Hate me all you want for that but that’s my boundary now. One piece of debt I have is from an extended period of under employment about ten years ago. I’m still paying the literal fucking cost of rebuilding from that.
TRY HARDER
To me, the message in the social media post read like “if you don’t do what I say / do things in the way that I like, you’re not trying hard enough”. Like I haven’t had that message crammed down my throat my entire like while people ignored how hard I worked, just because me trying didn’t look the way they wanted it to. Read my school reports, full of the classic 90s ignored ADHD signs, comments such as “if she would only try harder / be quieter / fucking just be neurotypical to make my life easier would you!”. As if ME/CFS patient aren’t told to ignore their bodies and push through, risking themselves getting sicker. No, the try harder message is not one I am kind towards.
Visible loss
The post assumes you’ve never tried if they haven’t seen your loss. Which in itself is quite performative, the very thing they’re claiming you might be.
Key lessons:
- Advocacy is never one way, one thing. That is a shitty fucking view to hold and share.
- Demanding advocacy look one in particular feels very similar to the people who make suggestions and then when you point out inaccessibility, they say “Oh, I didn’t mean it for people like you”.
- No one else gets to decide what “doing enough” advocacy is for you
Other reading:
- Apparently I’m an advocate now
- Quiet advocacy is still advocacy
- Actions speak louder than words… or do they?
- Advocacy and change
- Normalise living aids
