"Death Rider Billy"

No, no, and NO.

AO3 does not live in “the cloud” because that is other people’s computers, and other people’s computers are vulnerable to censorship.

AO3 is on its own computers. It does still have to be housed somewhere, and I suppose a determined enough hater could try to find that place and go after it, but it’s a lot harder than sending spurious complaints to Amazon or whomever going “BadWrong things are hosted on your cloud service!”

AO3 is not “in the cloud.” AO3 is stored on physical machines that the OTW owns.

Extremely fucking stupid bc genuinely who cares. Walking sticks are literally for anyone. They help you when you walk around. Perfectly healthy and abled bodied people use them while hiking because they just work.

And what if it was just a fashion thing? It used to be trendy. It gives your outfit a different vibe. Experimenting with fashion is fun, there's literally zero things wrong with using a cane because you like the way it looks or how it makes you feel.

Every single person choosing to use a mobility aid in public normalises their use, and makes it less likely for me to get harassed out there. It just becomes a regular thing you see while out in public. And that's the exact thing ableist TERFs like Stock are actually against - Not even mentioning the absolutely obvious misogyny here.

@plasticfangtastic The potential physical harm of misusing mobility aids is WILDLY exaggerated to pressure people into not using them.

Hugh Laurie, as you said, never used it properly (or frankly in a way that would feel natural to most cane users imo), and he did so for many hours of filming over many years. There should have been a safety assesment, risk mitigation, a physical therapy consultant, etc. Because that was a professional environment and no one's job should injure them, ideally.

However in actual reality, most people who find mobility aids more damaging than helpful will simply stop using them way before any permanent damage is done.

Potential, hypothetical damage is not more important than the actual real damage many people are doing to their bodies right now, because they don't feel they can use a mobility aid without facing ridiculous scrutiny and judgement.

I actually did get injured because of mobility aid use. I was bedbound for several years, so when I got my rollator, I was desperate to go out to the park across our street and not be trapped at home, and I overdid it. I was out using it for too long, my posture and grip wasn't ideal, and I wasn't used to engaging those specific muscles - I ended up with costochondritis. Very scary because intense chest pain is terrifying when you don't know what's happening. It sucked, but I got through it, adjusted my rollator use slightly, and it is still an amazing mobility aid that greatly improves and enriches my life years later.

Avoiding that potential episode would not be worth it at all, if that meant not using it in the first place. I would be damaging my body in a different way every time I have to drag myself to a doctor's appointment, instead of supported and protected by my mobility aid, once the issues were sorted out.

For many disabled and chronically ill people, our reality is simply that we don't get to fully avoid negative consequences no matter what we do. A cane might put strain on your shoulder and make it hurt, but not using it would make your lower back hurt worse instead. For many of us, it's always choosing the best possibility out of a bad bunch.

Someone who doesn't need a mobility aid will simply stop using it eventually, because unless there's tangible benefits to your life, it is fucking annoying. Sometimes it's because there's another mobility aid which would fit the particular circumstances better, but if you have no issues not using one, you just won't. There are no perfectly physically healthy people fucking up their bodies through mobility aid usage. It's genuinely just a right wing boogieman.

We can reduce injuries due to mobility aid usage by making doctors and physical therapists both more accessible and more accepting of a patient's choice to use one. By destigmatising their use, promoting safety tips, and having information more widespread and freely available. Not by trying to make the stigma worse and making up this whole 'social contagion' bullshit, while doubling down on medical misogyny.

You can genuinely just read up on how to size a mobility aid correctly for your body, and you'll be fine. The people working at mobility aid stores can help you with it. Look up "how to properly use X" and read content written by other mobility aid users.

My wheelchair, however, while it does cause some hassle, I never feel upset about the hassle (unless the hassle is due to abled society being inaccessible, then I'm pissed) as the benefits far FAR outweigh the downsides. I never leave the house without my wheelchair anymore, I used to leave my knee braces and even my rollator at home all the time. The body is remarkably good at knowing what it needs and what it doesn't, trust me, if a mobility aid isn't helpful your body will let you know.

And tbh the only way my body has been damaged by mobility aids is from, uh, me spending a decade without adequate support. Bouncing between mobility aid to mobility aid that didn't help for years meant I was damaging my joints the entire time and there's no way to reverse damage from EDS, but you can prevent it. I would not be as profoundly disabled as I am now if I'd gotten the help I needed at least ten years earlier when the problem actually started instead of literally LAST YEAR. I'm fucking 31 now, these issues started when I was seventeen.

But returning to tumblr for now, I don’t know how helpful it is to dismiss this hatred as a loud few if those loud few are spreading.

I am not reposting hatred on my blog, so I’ll only show the notes to illustrate the spread.