This is a friendly reminder that none disabled people often do benefit from the same accommodations disabled people benefit from.

being fat is hard because you don’t just run into inaccessibility that affects only you. for example, if i’m bigger than a car seat is built for, then i inconvenience those sitting next to me. if i’m bigger than a room is built for, i encroach on others space. it makes the fat person feel like it’s a personal fault, and skinny people are often not kind to fat folks who take up space. i want to make this clear: it is Not the fat persons fault AND i understand the strain and shame it can cause fat people. this world is built to exclude fat people. fitting of my favorite phrase inspired by the social model of disability; it’s not the fat persons fault, it’s the worlds fault.

The Other Half of the Social Model of Disability

Lots of people in fandom are aware of the Social Model of Disability, which is a direct contrast to the Medical Model of Disability. Problem is, most of those people only understand half of the Social Model.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, the "in a nutshell" version is that the medical model views disability as something that is broken and which needs to be fixed, and little or no consideration is given beyond trying to cure it (and little or no consideration is given to the needs and wishes of the person who has it). The social model of disability, on the other hand, says that the thing that disables a person is the way society treats them. So, for example, if someone is paralyzed and can't walk, what disables them from going places is buildings that are not wheelchair accessible. (Or possibly not being able to afford the right type of wheelchair.) Inaccessible spaces and support equipment you can't afford are choices society makes, not a problem with the disabled person.

People then take this to mean that the only problem with disability is the society that surrounds it, and therefore in some utopian future where capitalism is no more and neither is ableism or any other form of bigotry, all problems disabled people have will be solved.

Except that what I've just described is not actually what the social model of disability says. Or, rather, it's only half of what the social model of disability says.

The actual social model of disability begins with a distinction between impairments and disabilities. Impairments are parts of the body/brain that are nonstandard: for example, ears that do not hear (deafness), organs that don't work right (e.g. diabetes), limbs that don't work (paralysis), brain chemistry that causes distress (e.g. anxiety, depression), the list goes on. The impairment may or may not cause distress to the person who has it, depending on the type of impairment (how much pain it causes, etc.) and whether it's a lifelong thing they accept as part of themselves or something newly acquired that radically changes their life and prevents them from doing things they want to do.

And then you have the things that disable us, which are the social factors like "is there an accessible entrance," as described above.

If we ever do get a utopian world where everyone with a disability gets the support they need and all of society is designed to include people with disabilities, that doesn't mean the impairments go away. Life would be so much better for people with impairments, and it's worth working towards, but some impairments simply suck and would continue to suck no matter what.

Take my autism. A world where autism was accepted and supported would make my life so much easier ... and yet even then, my trouble sleeping and my tendency to hyperfixate on things that trigger my anxiety would still make my life worse. I don't want to be cured of my autism! That would change who I am on a fundamental level, and I like myself. My dream is not of a world where I am not autistic, but a world in which I am not penalized for being autistic and have the help I need. And even in that world, my autism will still sometimes cause me distress.

There are some impairments--conditions that come with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, etc.--where pretty much everyone with that impairment agrees that the ultimate goal is a cure. But nobody knows how long a cure will take to find (years? decades? centuries?), whereas focusing on the social things disabling you can lead to improvement in your daily life right now.

In conclusion: the social model of disability is very valuable, and much superior to the medical model on a number of levels. But: please don't forget that the social model makes a distinction between disability and impairments, and even if we reach every goal and get rid of all the social factors that disable people, some impairments will be fine and cause no distress to the people who have them, some will be a mixed bag, and some will still be major problems for the people who have them.

Also on Dreamwidth

Thousands of people did not just suddenly stop using headphones one day because they felt like it, or because they stopped caring about people with sensory sensitivities like me. No, people stopped using headphones because cell phone manufacturers stopped including headphone jacks in their products. 

My sensory-processing issues are a physical element of my disability that would absolutely still exist in a world without capitalism. Like my poor fine motor control and reduced muscle tone, my sensory processing issues debilitate me: there are tasks I simply cannot perform because of how my body is wired, and this makes me different from most other people in ways that are non-negotiable.  Still, my physical disabilities are worsened quite clearly by capitalism: Because large corporations have both a profit motive and a vested interest in reinvesting those profits into advertisements, and because the internet does not receive public financial support, my daily life is bombarded with bright, noisy, flashing, disruptive advertisements, which makes it far more difficult for me to process relevant information and can swiftly bring me to the verge of a meltdown.  If the internet were funded as a public utility and was therefore not sandblasted in ads, I would be less disabled. If my local streets were less plastered in billboards and littered with junk mail advertising chain restaurants, I would be less disabled. 

Because companies like Apple financially rely upon consumers replacing their phones on an annual basis (despite how unsustainable and murderously cruel continuing to mine cobalt in Sudan for the production of all these new phones is), I must replace my phone regularly. With an updated phone model I lose my headphone jack and have to adapt to a new operating system and layout, and so my sensory issues and executive functioning challenges are exacerbated.  In a world where phones were produced in order to help human beings function rather than to make money, I would be less disabled.  Thanks to capitalism, I cannot exist in public if I am not purchasing anything. I cannot simply be present in a store, coffee shop, or even public plaza, enjoying my surroundings and taking the sight of other people in. I must contribute to the economy in order to justify it. If the brickwork of a nearby building fascinates me and I crave to feel it against my palms, I have to pretend that I wish to buy it, and be prepared to tell anyone who asks that that’s what I intend to do. I can’t even stand on the corner and feel the sun on my face without worrying my neighbors might find it unusual and send the cops.  As an Autistic person, I often can’t fake being a perpetual consumer well enough. My desire to simply elope around my environment and take in new, interesting sensations registers as suspicious or concerningly mentally ill. And so I am further disabled and excluded from public life. 

The full essay is free to read or have narrated to you at drdevonprice.substack.com

There's the Medical Model of Disability, and the Social Model of Disability. There's also a third one...

The medical model of disability frames the disability as starting and ending with the individual and their impairment. And dealing with that means fixing (curing) what is broken about them.

The social model of disability frames disability as emerging from the society in which the individual lives -- that an "impairment" becomes a "Disability" when it is not accommodated or accepted.

I was recently reminded that there's also the moral model of disability, that says that disabilities are punishments for sin, or evil in a person.

In today's "Scientific Age," we (in the industrialized West at least), like to think that we've left the moral model of disability in the past -- that the Puritans in the early American colonies might have believed in that stuff. But we don't believe in demons and curses anymore.

But I actually think that the medical model of disability is a direct descendant of the moral model; modern medical schools may not give lectures on demonology. But doctors and other clinicians still treat disability as some sort of "taint," that the person must be purified of before they can rejoin "normal" society. Cure (or as close to it as you can get) is the first, last, and only, acceptable goal.

If that doesn't smack of exorcism, I don't know what does.

Neighbourhoods of poor vampires in the lowest, ever-dark parts of fantasy cities, vampires who aren't wealthy because they're a racial minority and the system was designed to keep poor people poor.

Poor vampires who are functionally disabled because they can't take sunlight in the only hours services are open and have to fight stereotypes of them being all snob nobles.

A nonprofit program immersed in the neighbourhoods paints portraits of vampires for free so they can see themselves for the first time because they can't use mirrors or cameras. Some cry, some don't recognise themselves, some are weirded by their unexpected appearances.

Mixed-race vampires who struggle to navigate their neighbourhoods having to advocate for themselves reminding people they are vampires as well as their other ethnicities.

One of the first things that made the social model of disability really make sense was this:

My new doctor hadn't been doing reminder calls for the 2 years I'd had her. I FINALLY got my act together and talked to the receptionist to opt-in.

"We don't do that."

And I froze. What? How could they ... they just ... refused to remind people of appointments? I politely asked if they could make an exception, got turned down, and was in a fog for the next half an hour.

Because I couldn't get to appointments consistently without a reminder. It was hard to get there WITH a reminder, but I was simply unable to without.

Suddenly, I was disabled. Without assistance from my husband, I lacked the ability to get medical help.

-

I'm thinking about that a lot, today. My husband's back at a physical office for work. I have an appointment with NQ's school. And all day, I've been carefully checking my backups.

If I miss the appointment, I'm only 5 minutes away, so I can get there quickly if called. The resource teacher will be understanding if she needs to remind me - she's willing to ask if I'm capable of talking at the beginning of every phone call, and we've set up back up forms of communication if I can't!

Even with my husband unable to physically check if I'm leaving, I have ways to ensure I get to this meeting.

-

With automatic reminder calls, or husbands by my side, I can sometimes forget just how vulnerable I am on my own.

But there's a reason I can regularly see a counselor, but not a general practitioner. There's a reason my husband used to have to take the afternoon off work every time the school set up a meeting, but today I won't be seeing him until this evening.

(There's a reason that I partially started auditing because I showed up at the wrong time and place for almost every university exam, and the stress was destroying me.)

I think that's what the social model of disability is about. It's society in general bearing a slight cost so that vulnerable people don't have to bear an extremely heavy one. Paying slightly more to design buildings that mobility aids can navigate. Banning really dangerous allergens from some public spaces so that people can use them without dying. Normalizing flashing light warnings to avoid seizures.

There are only so many slight costs society can bear before they pile up into a heavy one. I'm not sure how much diversity a society can reasonably support.

But I really appreciate it when an organization is willing to send me reminders. Because my memory and sense of time SUCKS.

Notes on the Radical Model of Disability

I'm seeing a lot of discussion today about different models of disability, and wanted to share my recent reading notes on the radical model of disability, which for me has been a super helpful model for understanding how disability works.

"The radical model defines disability as a social construction used as an oppressive tool to penalize and stigmatize those of us who deviate from the (arbitrary) norm. Disabled people are not problems; we are diverse and offer important understandings of the world that should be celebrated rather than marginalized."

Source: AJ Withers, Disability Politics and Theory. "Looking Back But Moving Forward: The Radical Model of Disability"

Key Points:

The radical disability model was developed by many disability justice activists (including Sins Invalid and the 10 principles of Disability Justice), and was inspired by many different models, including the social model. Withers points out that there are a lot of valuable parts of the social model, but also lots of limitations.

The radical disability model is not the same thing as the social model of disability. It rejects the strict social model separation between "impairment" and "disability." Traditionally, in the strictest versions of the social model, people use "impairment" to describe someone's individual limitations--generally considered the "biological" part of disability. People often use things like chronic pain and hallucinations as examples of "impairment." In the strict social model, disability is described as oppression added on top of the "impairments" people are living with. People usually describe things like inaccessible buildings and strict social norms as examples of the disabling impact of society. Withers points out how sometimes, the social models ideas about the separation of impairment and disability can leave many disabled people feeling excluded and like their experiences aren't represented. This article by Lydia X. Z. Brown talks a little bit more about those topics--using the terms "essentialism" to describe the impairment view and "constructivism" to describe the social view.

Instead, the radical disability model argues that you cannot easily separate impairment and disability, and points out that both "impairment" and disability are always socially contextual. Disability must be analyzed in context to the society we are currently in, both so that we can understand the experience of oppression and so that we can understand the impact it has on our bodies and minds. For example, someone living with chronic pain will still have chronic pain no matter what society they live in. But things like whether they can sit while they work, whether they have to work at all, if they can afford assistive technology, if there is easy access to pain medications, etc, all affect their body and lived experience of pain in a very real way. Ending capitalism would not suddenly take away all the pain they are experiencing, or make them not disabled. But it might change their ability to cope with pain, what treatments are available to them, and what their bodily experience of pain is like. Similarly, someone's experience with hallucinations can be dramatically shaped by the context they are in, whether they are incarcerated, if their community reacts with fear, whether they have stable housing, and more. The radical model of disability looks at how the different contexts we live in can affect our very real experiences of disability. Instead of the medical model, that only looks at disability as a biological, individual problem that can only be fixed through medicine, or the strict social model, which focuses on changing society as the only solution for disability, the radical disability model looks at how different societal contexts change both our biological and social experiences. It acknowledges that disability is a very real experience in our bodies and minds, but looks at how the social environments we live in shape all parts of "impairment" and disability.

Intersectionality is a key concept for the radical disability model. Withers points out how disability studies often ignores intersectionality and only focuses on disability. "Disability politics often re-establish whiteness, maleness, straightness and richness as the centre when challenging the marginality of disability. Similarly, when disability studies writers discuss other oppressions, they often do so as distinct phenomena in which different marginalities are compared (Vernon, 1996b; Bell, 2010). When oppressions are discussed in an intersectional road it is commonly treated like a country road: two, and only two, separate paths meet at a well-signed, easy-to-understand location. Intersectionality is a multi-lane highway with numerous roads meeting, crossing and merging in chaotic and complicated ways. There are all different kinds of roads involved: paved and gravel roads, roads with shoulders and those without and roads with low speed limits, high speed limits and even no speed limits. There is no map. The most important feature of these intersections, though, is that they look very depending on your location." (Withers pg 100.)

The radical model of disability is inherently political. The radical model of disability looks at who gets labeled as disabled, how definitions of disability change, and how oppressors set up systems that punish disabled citizens. Oppressors set up systems of control, violence, and incarceration that target disabled people, and shift the definitions of disability based on social and economic changes. Withers shares examples of this, talking about the eugenics movement in the United States as an explicitly white supremacist movement that defined "disability" in a way that targeted racialized people, how homosexuality was added and then taken out of the DSM, and many other examples of the way certain people are labeled as "deviant" and impacted by ableism. Disability becomes weaponized by oppressors as a tool of marginalization, and affects many different marginalized groups. This interview of Talila A. Lewis is a really great article that explains more about a broader definition of ableism, and expands on a lot of the topics mentioned here.

Disabled is not a fixed, one-size-fits-all, never changing identity. However, it is an important personal and political identity for many people, because our experiences of disability are real and impact our bodies, minds, and social experiences in many ways. Withers argues that in disabled community, we need to have room to celebrate and have pride in our disabled identity, as well as being able to recognize the pain, distress, and challenges that being disabled can cause us.

Within the radical model of disability, we should work collectively to build access and actively fight to tear down the systematic barriers that prevent a lot of disabled people from participating in our communities. Withers argues that we need to think beyond just changing architecture (although that's important too!) and understand the way things like colonialism and capitalism are also access barriers. Going back to the first point about disability in context, Withers explains that we must also think of access in context--there is no one "universal" way to make some accessible, and we need to be able to adapt our understanding of access based on the political and relational context we are in.

TL;DR: The radical model of disability is similar to the social model of disability, but instead of viewing disability as being only caused by society, it looks at how our real experiences of disability are always shaped by whatever social context we live in. It acknowledges that our disabilities are embodied experiences that wouldn't just suddenly go away if we fixed all of society's ableism. The radical model of disability is a political model that analyzes how definitions of disability shift based on how oppressors use systems of power to marginalize different groups of people. It offers us a framework where we can feel real pride in our disabilities, but still acknowledge the challenges they cause. It points out the importance of organizing politically to dismantle all kinds of access barriers, including things not traditionally thought of as access issues, like colonialism, capitalism, and other forms of oppression. Here's a link to another great summary by Nim Ralph.

other reading recommendations for understanding the radical disability model: “Radical Disability Politics Roundtable.” by Lydia X. Z. Brown, Loree Erickson, Rachel da Silva Gorman, Talila A. Lewis, Lateef McLeod, and Mia Mingus, edited by AJ Withers and Liat Ben-Moshe.

"Work in the Intersections: A Black Feminist Disability Framework.” by Moya Bailey and Izetta Autumn Mobley

"Introduction: Imagined Futures" from Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer.

me: I'm not disabled

also me: why is just existing as audhd and trans in a capitalist world so disabling

The Social Model of Intersex

I recently wrote up an explanation of the social model of intersex and here I'm gonna take what I wrote the other day and expand on it.

Exposition: Some Disability 101

The social model of intersex is based on the social model of disability so first we need to know that terminology:

The medical model of disability views disability as something inherently disordered, requiring treatment/cure.

In contrast, the social model of disability sees that what is disabling about a disability is how society treats disabled people. There aren’t ramps and elevators for wheelchair users. There aren’t enough people who know signed languages or Braille. Videos don't come with quality captions and audio description. Etc.

(image from here)

The Medical and Social Models of Intersex

The medical model of intersex is analogous to the medical model of disability. Being intersex is seen as disorder that needs to be cured. The terms disorder and difference of sexual development (DSD) are sometimes used by people who think of intersex this way. This is the dominant model that most people in Western society use to think about intersex, and similar to how the disability rights movement is resistant to the medical model, intersex people as a community want our medical model to lose its dominance.

The social model of intersex is similarly analogous to the social model of disability. It sees intersex variations as natural bodily variations. What sucks about being intersex is the intersexism - the stigma, discrimination, isolation, and shame that surrounds being intersex; the fetishization of intersex bodies (usually ambiguous genitals); the medical violence/trauma that comes from being coerced into gender-conforming treatments; and so on.

Authority and Gatekeeping

The two models have different epistemic implications, i.e, whose knowledge is important and valid. The medical model places (perisex) doctors and biologists as the authorities on intersex. Being intersex is a result of medical diagnosis, and doctors are the gatekeepers.

The social model places actually intersex people as authoritative, and what emerges from intersex communities is less emphasis on diagnosis and more emphasis on how your bodily variations have affected your life experiences.

And once you get people talking about life experiences and failing to meet a perinormative standard, it becomes apparent that common diagnoses like PCOS and gynecomastia are frequently associated with the same sorts of life experiences that people with diagnoses that everybody agrees are intersex.

For intersex people, having intersex be a big tent is an advantage. We suffer from isolation so terribly. Having more people in the community helps break that isolation. And having more community means more ability to mobilize against harmful practices like IGM.

Edit to add: the social/experiential aspect of being intersex is one of many reasons why intersex people react negatively to non-binary people saying they want to "transition to intersex".

The Futures We Want

For social model folks like me, the ideal future is that intersex people are accepted, respected, given considerate medical care that respects bodily autonomy, and given access to safe and inclusive community.

In contrast, medicalists think the ideal future is that there are no intersex people, because we have all been “cured”.

This is part of why so few intersex people find out their diagnosis is an intersex variation from their doctor (if they're even lucky enough to get and be told their diagnosis). This contributes to why so many intersex people don't figure out we're intersex until adulthood. Giving patients a label to help find social support and organize politically for better conditions just isn’t something in the mental toolkit of somebody who is stuck in the medical model.

Where The TERFs Come In

The medical model encourages the intersex community to stay fractured into different diagnoses, and to view us as rare anomalies.

This is why TERFS and other transphobes love the medical model of intersex. They cannot handle the idea of intersex being common. They need it to be rare so they peddle their narrative that biological sex is simple.

Even though the biology is clear that sex is really complicated and there is no clear line between male and female, and a whole bunch of middle ground, the anti-trans lobby isn't willing to listen.

To them, there is no middle ground. There is instead two separate categories - male and female - and with each categories you have a tiny subset of "disordered males" and "disordered females".

This is why we see anti-trans posters trying to sow doubt about POCS as intersex. PCOS is common. It affects primarily women. And recognizing hyperandrogenism PCOS as intersex is a direct threat to their messaging about sex and gender.

Summary

The medical model contributes to so much of the intersexism that intersex people face, notably from the anti-trans lobby and from doctors. We suffer from seen as being broken/disordered, from coercive medical interventions, and from the isolation that comes from being told you're uniquely broken. The social model allows actually intersex people to be seen as the authorities on intersex; and for us to find community, healing, and political power.

The fact "empaths" don't have empathy for childhood trauma survivors (ASPD, NPD, systems) is funny actually.

Some days, I feel like I’m not a whole guy and my sibling’s not a whole guy, but if you stack us in a trench coat, we almost make one whole guy—and that’s disabled interdependence in a nutshell

A Conversation About Demedicalization and Disorders

Let's talk about demedicalization. What is demedicalization? The Open Education Sociology Dictionary defines demedicalization as "The process by which a behavior or condition, once labeled 'sick', becomes defined as natural or normal." It is the process of normalizing a trait of the body or brain or behavior as a normal variance of human existence, rather than a pathological variance in need of treatment or correction.

Put simply, it is no longer looking at something as a sickness in need of treatment, but rather just another way of existing.

Some background info that is needed: the social and medical models of disability.

The medical model posits that the existence of disability is predicated on inherent pathological differences in the bodymind, that it is active physical limitations, some of which can be treated or "corrected", that make a person disabled.

The social model, on the other hand, states that is is a societal lack of access and accommodations that disables a person, and that a person would no longer be functionally disabled were these access barriers to be removed. Keep in mind that this does not mean they believe that people would not still have "impairments" that affect how they are able to function, but that it defines disability as the disadvantages caused by an ableist society treating impairments as needing to be "fixed" rather than accommodated. I defines being abled as being able to participate in society to the full extent an impaired individual wishes to.

I believe in a mixed social-medical model. I believe that some conditions are inherently disabling and that seeking medical treatment for them, while it should be up to disabled individuals, is helpful and good. My ADHD, for example, will still limit my participation in society to the extent I want to, without medication. You could consider medication an accommodation, but there's also the example of my chronic pain and fatigue and POTS that often keeps me housebound or bedbound. There may not be a treatment for that, and I cannot fully participate in the world around me because of that.

"Ultimately, the social model of disability proposes that a disability is only disabling when it prevents someone from doing what they want or need to do."

I am actively prevented from doing what I want or need to do by an inherent feature of my body that no amount of accommodation can allow for. However, some of my conditions would not be disabling with proper accommodation - my autism, for example, I don't generally consider disabling because the people and structures around me DO accommodate for it.

So why is demedicalization helpful or necessary, and how is is applied?

Well, three psychological examples: autism, psychosis, and schizophrenia.

Autism is currently, in the DSM, called autism spectrum disorder. However, autism is a neurotype, and many autistic people do not feel that autism inherently causes them distress or dysfunction, and is therefore not disordered. That is why many of us call ourselves autistic people or say we have autism, rather than ASD. There has been a push for years for the diagnosis itself to be changed to not contain the word "disorder", and to allow for informed self-diagnosis.

Informed self-diagnosis is also an important part of demedicalization, especially of neurodivergence. It says "someone doesn't need a doctorate to know themselves and their own experiences well enough to categorize and classify them. Good research and introspection is enough to trust a person to make the call, and labeling oneself as a specific kind of neurodivergence is harmless, even if they later find out they were wrong.

Psychosis is the next example. There is a growing movement that I've talked about before: the pro-delusion movement. Not everybody experiences distressing delusions, and even when they are distressing, this movement says that only the individual experiencing them has the right to decide whether they should be encouraged or discouraged. It states that it is a violation of autonomy to nonconsensually reality check (tell someone their delusions are not reality) someone, and that as long as a person is not harming others, they can do as they like with their delusions.

This is an example of demedicalization. Treating delusions as something not to be suppressed with medication or ignored or "treated" or "fixed", but as simply another, morally and "healthily neutral" way of existing outside homogenous neurotypical norms.

Finally plurality. Now what's key here is that demedicalization does not mean saying a thing can NEVER be disordered. In fact, that's why I made this post. I saw someone the other day say that they felt their aromantic identity was disordered. Initially, I balked, thinking they were internally arophobic, but I listened to what they had to say. Essentially, they expressed that the identity was never inherently disordered, but that it caused them distress and dysfunction and so they experienced it as such, and crucially, that wasn't a morally bad thing or something they felt they had to correct.

Because here's I think what gets left out of discussions on demedicalization: demedicalization also means no longer treating disorders as something that inherently have to be treated or fixed, that disorders can simply exist as they are if the person with a disorder so chooses; and that anything can be labeled a disorder if it causes distress and dysfunction without being inherently disordered AND without needing to be treated.

And conversely, this means that if you experience something as disordered, demedicalizing it means that you do not have to meet an arbitrary categorical set of requirements to seek treatment, but can do so based on self-reported symptoms. Treatment cannot be gatekept behind a diagnosis that only a "qualified professional" can assign you.

This means if someone wants to, they can label their autism as disordered, but it is never forced on anyone. If someone feels ANY identity - neurodivergent, disabled, queer, alterhuman, paraphilia, whatever - is disordered, they can label it as such, but they also don't have to. There are no requirements to follow through with "treating" anything you label a disorde, either. No strings attached, just the right to self-determination and the right to autonomy hand in hand,

So, back to plurality. You essentially end up with three aspects of demedicalization. You have nondisordered plurality being normalized, you have dissociative disorders that systems can choose not to pursue treatment for without judgment or coercion, and you have disordered systems that can pursue treatment for dissociative symptoms without receiving a difficult-to-access diagnosis. Based on their experiences, they can choose to label themselves as having DID, OSDD, UDD, or related disorders, or to forgo the label and simply seek treatment for whatever distress or dysfunction the disorder is causing.

"But without a specific diagnosis, what if they pursue the wrong treatment and it harms them?"

This is where the importance of recognizing self-reported symptoms as valid comes in. If an OSDD-1b system that hasn't labeled themselves or receives a diagnosis reports that they don't experience amnesia, they won't receive treatment for amnesia.

And since symptoms can mask, if a DID system reports not experiencing amnesia, they simply do not become aware of it or receive treatment for it before they are ready, which is a good thing because recognizing certain symptoms before you are ready to deal with them can be destabilizing and dangerous. More awareness of dissociative disorders will also make it easier for systems to adequately recognize those symptoms, and this isn't saying that someone else can't suggest it to the system experiencing it. It's simply saying the person experiencing a disorder takes the lead and is centered as the most important perspective.

I consider myself to have several disorders and several forms of nondisordered neurodivergence. My BPD is disordered but I am not treating it because I have healthy coping skills already. Same with my schizophrenia. My narcissism, on the other hand, is simply a neurotype. My plurality is both - the plurality itself isn't disordered, but I do have DID on top of it.

A last example, this one physical, of demedicalization: intersex variations. The intersex community has been pushing to recognize that intersex variations are natural variations in human sex, and not medical conditions that need corrected. This doesn't mean that any unpleasant symptoms related to an intersex variation can't ever be treated - in fact, it's important to the community to have that bodily autonomy to access whatever reproductive healthcare is needed - but it does mean treating our sexes as inherently normal and NOT trying to coercively "correct" them.

So in summary, demedicalization is fundamentally about autonomy. It is about considering natural human variations as such, rather than as sickness to be cured, about letting people determine for themselves whether any aspect of themselves is disordered, and the decision on whether or not to pursue treatment for anything being theirs alone. It is about trusting people to be reliable witnesses and narrators of their own subjective internal experiences, and about never forcing anyone to change any aspects of themselves, disordered or not, that aren't harming others. In short, it is about putting power back into the hands of disabled people. And that is what this blog is all about.

i'm tired of the pathologization of the mind and identity. i'm tired of the medical model of disability. i'm tired of institutionalism and authoritative health care. i'm tired of living in an ableist society that doesn't care if i live or die, yet constantly judges me for existing.

do you think andalites would consider needing glasses a disability?

Okay, this question is fascinating because it really gets at the what the Social Model of Disability means by disability being situation-specific and society-constructed.

The Social Model defines disability as any bodily difference that is treated as abnormal, undesirable, and incorrect by society. For example, some types of facial scarring fit, and others don't. Harrison Ford and Jason Momoa likely don't count, because their facial scarring is widely considered normal or neutral. Seal and Kane Hodder might count as disabled, because Seal has endured many rude comments on his appearance and Hodder has been barred from a lot of roles due to his. If this seems arbitrary and cruel, then that's because discrimination is, in fact, arbitrary and cruel. A person with a cast on their arm is treated as infirm and needing help, albeit temporarily; a person with a compression brace on their arm gets the prosthesis ignored or othered. Deafness is a disability if no one around knows Sign and assistive technology is stigmatized; it stops being a disability the moment 3+ Deaf people hang out together. It really is that arbitrary, whom society treats as being disabled.

Anyway, within that framework, I would say that needing glasses used to count as a disability, but doesn't anymore.

Glasses certainly used to be stigmatized, because that's ableism for you. I have two loved ones (spouse, high school BFF) who A. can't read the top row of an eye chart that's 3' away, B. love learning and school, and C. refused to wear glasses in the 1990s even though it made learning impossible, because of the bulllying they got for needing lenses. And those are just the ones I know. I think about both of those kids, voracious learners who sacrificed their ability to read the board in order to avoid stigma, and I compare them to the (at least two) kids I know today who endure unneeded pain because they're too ashamed to use their canes in public.

However, there was a change in the mid-naughts. More and more TV characters had glasses, and not just the socially incompetent nerds anymore. Harry Potter becoming the icon of the naughts with glasses (and facial scarring!) probably helped. Fashion models wearing those black plastic frames certainly helped. A critical mass of so many young people needing corrective lenses (because of increased screentime in childhood) definitely helped move glasses away from "abnormal".

One signal for me that glasses no longer count as a disability is It (2019). The It novel and 1998 movie portray Richie Tozier's needing glasses as his qualification for the Losers Club — a group of kids who are friends because for various reasons (fatness, minority status, poverty, etc.) they're not allowed to fit in and will never fit in. The 2017-19 It movies give Richie glasses, but make it clear that he qualifies for the Losers Club not because he's myopic but because he's queer. (For example, he's chased by a living eyeball in the book, but the movie instead has him attacked while carving his initials next to another boy's.) A related example is the subtitles for Ouran High School Host Club; Honey's line from the scene where Kyoya gets hit in the face was translated in 2006 as "Bully! You can't hit someone who wears glasses!" but in 2022 as "Bully! You knocked his glasses off!", which suggests glasses are no longer viewed as an infirm condition.

So. I think an andalite would have to have any disability explained to them before they started stigmatizing it, because wheelchair use only counts as a disability because people make rude comments and refuse to build elevators. And I think that an andalite who arrived on Earth in 1996 might develop a different view from one who arrived in 2022. But it'd also depend on what part of Earth they explored, who they talked to, and a million other horribly arbitrary factors that determine whose body gets counted as being "wrong" by society.