idk who popularised the narrative "i don't let my disability stop me" but it needs to be stomped on, pulverised by a meat grinder and then thrown into the depths of the sea never to be seen again.

it is by far the most popular ableist narrative and i see it so much and immediately just think i'm a bad person for not being able to 'get over' my disability despite the fact it's an incurable, permanent and severely disabling disability.

stop stop stop stop pushing the mindset that people have to persevere despite their disabilities in order to be a worthy person

leave me alone and let me be disabled in peace

Pretty much no impairment is as simple as abled people think it is.

People are taught to believe that disability is a simple “Can’t”. Can’t walk. Can’t talk. Can’t hear. Can’t see. An ability is just excised and no longer exists, if it ever did.

In reality, it’s rarely that simple.

It’s “I can sort of do x thing sometimes, but I get muscle spasms making it very dangerous or impossible to do it reliably or safely”. Or “I can do x thing but it causes me so much pain I will be unable to do anything else for hours or days after doing it”. Or “I can do x thing but I constantly injure myself doing it because of lack of muscle control”. Or “I can do x thing but so badly I functionally can’t do it two inches beyond my face, but now I have a mobile phone I can put up to my face so I can do it in certain very specific circumstances”.

None of these things mean someone isn’t disabled. And if you think it does, then it’s *your* ideas about disability that need to change.

The reason disabled people end up saying “can’t” when the reality is more complex is because people don’t trust our boundaries. They force us to injure ourselves instead of accommodating, or use energy that means we have none left to do *anything* else we need to do for the rest of the day. Or week. Or month.

Abled people need to start trusting disabled people, or you need to shut up, get out of any situation where you have power over us, and provide someone who will. Those are the only options.

The way we are expected to live in a performative hell of the making of more privileged people who then turn around and criticise us for not suffering in the precise way they have decided we should is genuinely nothing but ridiculous.

Just stop.

The narrative that “you should care about disabled people because one day that’ll be you” is ableist in and of itself.

You should care about disabled people’s rights because you should care about the disenfranchisement of a marginalized community.

Becoming disabled is not a punishment. Becoming disabled is not a threat. Becoming disabled is not cosmic retaliation for being ableist. Becoming disabled is morally neutral.

Calling disabled people who depend on social media to connect with people and each other "chronically online" is cruel.

People always talk about how childhood autistic traits can be troubling and problematic for people (especially allistic parents) but how about ways childhood autistic traits can be helpful and convenient for parents? I’m putting some examples below from my childhood.

- my need for routines was helpful to my mom and made her life easier

- my ability to hyperfocus on interests and solitary activities allowed my parents to attend to my sister

- my preference for being with adults who were more predictable made me easier to handle

- I had a very strong internal sense of right and wrong that made me easy to reason with as long as I was given a reasonable explanation

- my difficulty expressing my emotions and internalizing them instead made me seem low maintenance

- compared to my sister who is very reactive my atypical responses weren’t noticeable

- because I was so independent I was easy to leave alone and overlook

- because my traits weren’t disruptive to my parents I was just seen as ‘mature,’ ‘smart,’ and ‘an old soul.’

- even though I was only social when people interacted on my terms I didn’t avoid people so I wasn’t seen as antisocial

- I talked so much that if I had a day I was struggling no one noticed because they were just used to me being chatty

- I had a decent early childhood before things got really challenging so my meltdowns weren’t bad or often at that age

- by the time I was at an age where those things would stand out I was more prone to disassociation and then having a meltdown when I was alone so they didn’t know

If anyone has any childhood autistic traits that were convenient to their parents and overlooked because of it please let me know in the comments! ⬇️

“Oh but not all narcissists have NPD so I’m not really demonising you by calling every narcissist an irredeemable monster”

Fuck off. Just fuck off. That’s like saying not all autistic people have autism. It makes no sense and is completely redundant.

able-bodied people always have the audacity to say “you’re tired because you sleep too much”

So there is apparently a Tik tok trend for an airport life hack where able-bodied people are requesting wheelchairs to get through TSA and customs faster.

As someone in their twenties who can walk but still needs a wheelchair in an airport because I can't walk long distances or fast with my disability, this trend is very frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten dirty looks from elderly people or been made to wait for a wheelchair because people assume that I'm fine when I'm sitting down and not moving. Idk. There are a group of disabled persons called ambulatory users who rely on mobility aids while still being able to walk on good days. They are often stigmatized by people's assumptions. Please don’t this! You are making it harder for people who are invalidated on a daily basis for not being "correctly disabled"

you know what? I deserve to be angry.

One thing I wish more abled people understood is that even with accommodations disabled people often struggle with finding and maintaining employment. A lot of workplace policies cater to abled people and the assumption that no one will ever be sick. For example , I just started a new job and will probably be terminated due to the fact that within the first 90 days of employment, a person can only call off 3 days. I believe it gets bumped up to 6 after that in an 8 month period? A doctor's note does not excuse it either. One of my call off days was used for surgery and recovery.

In other words , even for an otherwise healthy person, they expect them not to have any issues pop up that could require them to take an extended period of time off. "Oh, you broke your leg this morning?" I'm sorry you still have to come to work, or it counts against you, and you could face termination.

I, as a disabled person, get told to "stop being lazy and find a job," and these are the policies I'm expected to conform to.

lmao just got a comment on one of my posts that some people deserve to be disabled because they aren't actually trying to cure their disability. (immediately deleted after i read it because my blog is not the fucking place to share your ignorance when it is literally a disability dedicated blog)

a large number of disabilities have NO CURE! thinking that disabled people 'deserve' to have their lives irreparably changed because they aren't trying to treat it is some wild ableist bullshit

go spread your idiocy somewhere else dumbass

Being fully verbal/writing in "proper english" doesn't make you "better" or more worth listening to , people seem to refuse to realize this

Apparently this need to be said buttt just because you have "perfect grammar" , pronunciation or whatever ..doesn't make you somehow better than other people. This type of thinking make me legit scared to type if I feel like it won't be perfect or if I will leave out words (when its more comfortable for me or if I'm just overwhelmed and leave out the words to be easier for me) . This kind of like people who think your mouth words mean less because you don't speck the way they do, makes me rather not type or talk because I don't want to deal with that sort of response even sound other autistic people..not everyone is fully verbal like you and not everyone can type like you can and seen a lot of people who have struggles typing , whether they use aac to type or it just feels more natural , low spoons etc . Stop pointing out that someone is "illiterate " or "can't spell" or "has bad grammar" personally I'm none of those things (although my grammar not perfect , and even if I was any of those things..doesn't mean my thoughts don't matter either way) its just pretty sure its connected to my autism and my opinion deserve to be heard even with imperfect speech and typing . Don't always type this way but when I do it should still be heard and my stuttering , repeating words and obvious struggling specking should not make you then disregard what I'm saying and I should not have to feel scared/nervous to talk or type in way that is more comfortable/ in the way my brain actually thinks, stop stop stop using the way people talk/type as an insult or a way to pick on them/a way to disregard their thoughts. You're not "better" because you speak or type "proper" english. I see this type of thinking legit everywhere like just saw it in a discord server but it everywhere.

this also go to my mom since she has taught me that stuttering people or people who don't speak "correctly" don't sound smart and etc and so shouldn't be talking/explaining things/making speeches and it has really negatively affected me.

TW: Ableist language

In my school, my classmates call each other autistic as an insult. the dialog goes like this: Classmate 1: *Does a silly mistake*

Classmate 2: Are you autistic or what?

They also call each other r*t*rd*d and other crap like that.

And I'm just like:

*looks up Gale of Waterdeep on tumblr*

Me: "Look at all these pretty arts and memes of my favorite character! Hooray!"

*looks up Gale of Waterdeep on tiktok*

Tiktok: "Gale is awful and annoying! I made my durge chop his hand off! I let him sacrifice himself!"

*they proceed to list all the things they hate about him, consisting of all the neurodivergent coded traits and behaviors he has as a character*

Me, who relates to Gale because of his neurodivergent coding: "🥲 oh... ya'll would hate me too then, huh?"

People are using Stephen Hawking as an insult now? Like, seriously, one of the most brilliant scientists ever lived?

How much do you have to hate physically disabled people to use ALS, one of the most devastating diseases in the history of humankind, against perhaps the greatest theoretical physicist since Albert Einstein.

I'd like to see you try to achieve a smidge of what Professor Hawking had while being completely immobile and nonverbal. Go on. I'll wait.