#because a bigot doesn't believe in 'you go low and we go high'. like... they're bigots because they choose to go low | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xxlovelynovaxx · 1 month

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Hmmm (screenshot)

(it reads "i think having worked a retail or food service job actually is more important to not being a loser than doing drugs or having sex. the poll that showed that so much of this site has never worked on of those jobs was actually way more concerning to me than any of the celibacy sweep polls")

huh.

If you told them "hey, not being ABLE to work a customer service job because you're DISABLED doesn't make you a bad person" do you think they'd say "oh well OBVIOUSLY we didn't mean (real) disabled people, they're an exception" or do you think they'd go "ACKSHUALLY some disabled people CAN work customer service jobs" or do you think they'd say "yeah that's why so many disabled people are losers/jerks" because I can guaran-fucking-tee they would not be chill about disabled people.

I cannot even begin to get into how harmful these takes are. What makes you a good or bad person (which is what I assume is implied by "loser", since this is the Moralizing Everything site), to the extent that those are even useful labels, is directly related to your actions in any given situation. Not where you work, not whether you have hobbies, not whether you have sex or drugs or anything. Your. Actions.

There's no magic formula for "if you engage with these facets of life you're guaranteed to be cool. Some people who have sex are abusive or aphobic shitwads and some people who don't are puritanical christofascist shitwads and some of both are chill. Some people who do drugs are the nicest people you'll ever meet and some are the cruelest and almost all are varying degrees or vulnerable to anti-addict and ableist bigotry but those who partake in socially acceptable substances in socially acceptable ways sometimes have some access to power over others.

I've met people in food service, retail, and hospitality (a similar class of job) that are the worst people you'll ever meet, and they don't even treat others in their profession right. I've met waiters who brag about tipping a penny on a 50 dollar dinner, in one case because their waiter was marginalized and they were a huge fucking bigot. I've met people who have zero working class solidarity. I've met minimum wage scabs who weren't even desperate. I've also met some of the best people in the world who have never worked a job of this type, both because of disability and not. I've met people who are compassionate about experiences they know nothing about because, y'know, that's the decent thing to do. I've met people even, who never worked a day in their life because they were born into money, who tip a hundred percent and always take the receipt surveys and give full marks because they've been told it helps and then give away whatever free little cookie offer the survey generates.

It helps that I'm a massive extrovert, to be sure, but I digress.

It's just... when you judge people for anything but their direct actions in a given situation, disabled people ALWAYS get hit first and hardest, because people simply don't CARE about the difference between "can't" and "won't/didn't", they don't believe "can't" anyway, and for the record, they're actually right that the difference between the two doesn't matter anyway.

(And of course, as soon as we mention the ableism inherent in a statement like that, the response is so much more explicitly ableist and cruel, while also being in denial of just how deeply cruel it is.)

And... this is supposedly acknowledged as the autism website. Did y'all forget that for most autistic people, autism is a disability? For all that there are issues with low support needs and high masking autistics sometimes accessing some level of abled hegemony and aligning themselves with our oppressors instead of having solidarity and fighting for justice for all autistic/disabled people; and for all that there are exceptions to autism-as-disability... this is, in essence, the disability website.

People on this site having never worked one of the types of jobs that are extremely punishing to both physical and mental health, often being directly disabling themselves? Largely autistic people never having worked a job that involves high amounts of interfacing with people in difficult and often emotional interactions? People on this site not having worked in a job that involves high volumes of close contact with people for the ongoing duration of a pandemic, when so many of us are already disabled or vulnerable (in other ways, as well)?

If your answer is not any of the three mentioned earlier, but "well, I didn't think about that": Yeah, that's because erasure is extremely prevalent. It's also deadly. Disabled people die because people are socialized not to notice us, to ignore us, to shut their eyes and plug their ears until the problem - us - goes away. They're taught to view US, not our oppression, as the problem.

And until you unlearn that, well, you likely will continue to be unintentionally ableist. You likely will hurt more people. And if you get defensive when this is pointed out, it doesn't matter what your intentions are, because you were given the chance to learn and be better and instead chose ableism. And that's on you.

I'm not saying this to guilt anyone. Guilt is useless. I don't even expect anyone who has done this to apologize to us personally, at least. If you quietly worked on your ableism, or even came to me or other disabled people open to helping people, I'd be perfectly happy with that.

I'm pointing out something you may be unaware of, including how it's a form of violence to respond to this kind of thing by ridiculing, attacking, or otherwise being shitty to the disabled person talking about it. Yes, even if you're disabled yourself. Disabled people aren't immune to being ableist.

I could get more into how the use of the word "loser" shows how this is divorced from any actual logic, reasoning, or reality about the effect of having a certain job. I could get into how the common usage of "loser" as an insult is rooted in the bullshit concept of meritocracies in the first place, and how that's also something that deeply harms disabled people. I could get into how disabled people and especially disabled traits are very specifically explicitly often framed as "loser things" to demonize us - living at home with parents as an adult, not participated in societally expected milestones (or participating in them differently) such as use of drugs, participation in sex, working jobs, engaging with hobbies, having relationships, traveling, attending school, etc, etc, etc. I could even get into how this focuses only on one specific type of a larger category of similar blue collar jobs - receptionists, tech support, truckers, mail carriers, librarians, etc, etc.

But I think this post is already long enough. If anyone wants me to expand, I can.

Just. Stop moralizing and valorizing random aspects of people's lives that have nothing to do with whether or not they treat other people with decency and respect. Seriously.

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