Problems I’ve observed within disability discourse/communities:
•Intra community Ableism and violence because being disabled is not a single shared experience. Even microaggressions like gawking at mobility aids, physical differences, and stimming are still very prevalent.
•The question of who gets to be disabled as a salient identity still too often ending up meaning cishet white men.
•The gendered and racialized expectations of labor and what is labor you are expected to do/have the ability to do intrinsically despite disability.
•Erasure of each other’s disabilities in order to hold up individual need. Expectations that others have infinite spoons to help.
•Flattening of different severities of disability across people.
•Forcing expectations of labor on others who have not consented to be supporter or pick up extra work. (I.e. those that say “It’s a gift to get to help me” which I’ve legit seen)
•Using dismantling of ableist expectations of independence to justify unhealthy codependent relationships and erase disabled experiences where autonomy and independence is denied by Ableism.
•Associating severe disability with disabled people who have the privilege to access healthcare, family support, and resources to get by without working; ignoring the less privileged disabled people who have no choice but to push through pain and damage their health in order to get by, who in turn are perceived as less disabled.
Really good things about disability discourse/communities:
•knowledge sharing
•validation
•understanding when you say you can’t do something or need something
•recognition of interdependence in all relationships and the importance of intentional human connection
•a lot less fat shaming cuz fuck if any of us can expect another to have the spoons for losing weight
•generally more diverse body positivity and positivity around visible aids and physical differences
•tons of other stuff
gracieabrams
germansingergirl
ellievsbear
gummygunk
