Pretty much no impairment is as simple as abled people think it is.
People are taught to believe that disability is a simple âCanâtâ. Canât walk. Canât talk. Canât hear. Canât see. An ability is just excised and no longer exists, if it ever did.
In reality, itâs rarely that simple.
Itâs âI can sort of do x thing sometimes, but I get muscle spasms making it very dangerous or impossible to do it reliably or safelyâ. Or âI 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 itâ. Or âI can do x thing but I constantly injure myself doing it because of lack of muscle controlâ. Or âI can do x thing but so badly I functionally canât 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 circumstancesâ.
None of these things mean someone isnât disabled. And if you think it does, then itâs *your* ideas about disability that need to change.
The reason disabled people end up saying âcanâtâ when the reality is more complex is because people donât 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.
