(for people who don’t know kathleen stock is an infamous British terf who triggered a whole “free speech” university row over her views)

this is what people mean when they say that transphobia and ableism are interlinked. because *of course* the same person who refuses to believe people when they assert their gender also refuses to believe them when they assert a disability. because who knows their bodies better than a random british upper-class white woman!

The article written in a way that makes it clear this is meant to be deeply horrifying but all I can think is “yeah that probably happens all the time but most people don’t have 2:1 care so it never gets spotted or recorded properly”.

Just last month I asked for flavoured water (in the fridge but I didn’t think to specify) and was given bubble mixture (admittedly in an old flavoured water bottle without the label but under the desk, next to the bubble machine I take to Pride). I was thirsty and took two big slurps through a straw so there was no smell to give it away until it was too late and I threw up shortly after (for anyone curious there were bubbles). This carer is genuinely lovely if chronically short on common sense, but I feel safe with him in general.

And a few years ago a carer mixed up my meds and tried giving me 8x the dose of one of my meds over 24hrs. I noticed after only taking twice the prescribed dose and didn’t become seriously ill (I looked it up and if I’d taken all the doses then the mistake could have been fatal). I also found out later that the mistake wasn’t formally recorded anywhere so never officially happened. (This person no longer works in care, no one else is at risk).

I'm seeing so many mildly or mild-moderately disabled people call themselves severely disabled it is hard to find people who are actually severely disabled.

I think it comes from people acting like mild disability = no disability. But mild disability is still disability, too. It just is not severe.

Lied and said he was non-verbal

Lied and said he was incapable of communication

Lied and said he had not gotten the surgery of his own accord

Lied and said his "guardians decided [he] was trans"

Got MGT to call a procedure done on a consenting adult "criminal" just because he had cerebral palsy

Mass reported his video and his account, which he ran, until facebook terminated his account for "child exploitation" despite it being his account, him being an adult, and him not being exploited

Ableism and transphobia are inseperable. Just like ableism was used to prop up bigotry throughout history, now it is being used to deny transgender people bodily autonomy the same way it is used to deny disabled people bodily autonomy. It's not a coincidence that so much of the rights transphobic rhetoric is focused on labelling us as "mentally ill". They don't think any disabled people, let alone mentally ill people should have independence or liberation.

• who have been degendered because of ableism

• who have been on the receiving end of medical ableism because of their gender or agab

• whose transition goals look different because of disability

• whose neurodivergency affects the way they experience gender or a lack of it

• who have to hide their transness or disability

• who can't hide their transness or disability

• whose transness or disability has been denied because surely one person can't deal with two things at once (sarcasm)

• whose gender expression and transition is dependent on a caregiver or health team

• who can't afford to transition because ableism prevents a decent income

• who didn't realize they were trans

• who didn't realize they were disabled

• who are reading this

🩶❤️💛🤍🩵💚🩶

it is also widely accepted that women get raises less often because they don't ask as much as men. this is objectively not true.

it is also widely accepted that women are more talkative than men. this is objectively not true.

it is also widely accepted that women are taken less seriously when speaking because their speech patterns are associated with a "lack of confidence". this is objectively not true. [1][2][3]

every time we talk about gender discrimination, people look for an explanation that starts with women's behavior.

and every fucking time, actual research shows that across the board, women actually don't behave that differently from men.

there will be autistics who never can do [thing] no matter how forced, no matter how punished, no matter how anything.

i can’t force myself to do [thing] i can’t do. not ever.

many autistics like me.

especially hate hearing autistics say “well if i didn’t do [thing] i would get abused” as if we autistics also didn’t get abused, except we still couldn’t do [thing].

you are dismissing higher support needs autistic who are or have been abused.

Like for example, universities in US were built near “insane” asylums so that populations could be sorted between desirable characteristics (universities) and undesirable characteristics (asylums) in order to encourage reproduction between white upper class people and discourage reproduction between those deemed ‘unfit’ & also so the unfit could be experimented on and studied. (Folks who wanna read more on the eugenicist origins of universities should read the book Academic Ableism)

Eugenics underpins the entire pro-life/pro-choice debate in America where white women are encouraged to reproduce and people of color are discouraged (or literally sterilized, or have their children routinely killed by police)

It’s in IQ tests and other forms of testing to sort people into groups where certain scores are implicitly “better” than others. It’s in how those tests will be used to talk about how different ‘races’ perform.

It’s in the anti-vaccine movement where people believe that it is better for a child to die than to be autistic.

It’s in our language evolving so that the default negative things we can call someone are idiot, stupid, crazy, lunatic. It’s in every joke about how “humans need a new plague” “there’s too many people”