#ableist malarkey

Good to know!

Nah, it was exactly the opposite of that. Misleading name to get people to support it, policy that’s actually crap and hurts most everyone. 

No Child Left Behind was intended to get all schools in America up to the same “high standards”, regardless if they were rich or poor. The idea was that kids from poor (read: usually minority-majority inner-city) schools were not getting the same education as kids from rich (white, suburban) schools. Therefore, in order to Not Leave Them Behind, we’d hold all schools to the same standards, make sure they had a similar curriculum, and test kids to make sure they were getting the same education. 

(This is where the phrase “soft bigotry of low expectations” comes from, for the record. The idea was that liberals were actually keeping poor not-white kids down by not expecting them to meet the same standards white kids were meeting. But it’s pretty hard to meet the same standards when you have no money and your students are getting one meal a day.) 

And ... well, in theory, it was not a bad plan, but in practice... hoo boy. 

First off, NCLB is why there’s so much testing in schools now. “High-stakes” testing- meaning, ‘how the students perform on these tests determines how much money your school gets’- was a cornerstone of NCLB. They turned getting school funding into a contest- the schools that were doing ‘best’ would get a bigger chunk of federal education money, and the schools that were doing worst would get less. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, LEONARD. 

Because of this, education actually got a lot less accessible. See... if your school gets money based on how students perform on tests, it is a disincentive to properly educate disabled students, because disabled students will not be able to compete in a high-stakes testing environment. The government did give schools some money for taking severely disabled students- like, intellectually-disabled, Downs’ Syndrome, nonverbal-autistic, kind of disabled.

But what that meant is - if you weren’t severely intellectually disabled, but you were disabled enough to have trouble getting good grades and participating in high-stakes testing, you were kind of scroomed (a word which, gentle reader, means ‘both screwed and doomed’.) 

What would happen is, the school system would try to figure out how they could milk the most money out of your existence. If you were functional enough to be able to get good grades and participate in high-stakes testing, they’d try to ‘mainstream’ you- put you in the ‘normal’ classes with the ‘normal’ kids and give you the minimum accommodations you needed to be able to get good grades on the tests. If you weren’t, you’d be put in the program with the intellectually disabled kids, even if you weren’t severely ID, because they could get more money out of you that way. (In the words of my former vice-principal: “eh, just put them in the monkey room.” )

So... basically, NCLB made school into a Game of Teacher Thrones. You get high enough test scores for your students, by any means possible- or you don’t have any money to educate your students. School became less accessible for any student who couldn’t pass tests, and more of a hassle for parents and teachers alike.

@lizardywizard- Unfortunately, no, we haven’t. 

.... this... okay. If I had to talk about why this story is fucked up, why it made me angry as opposed to just “ugh, crap!feminists being crappy again”... it puts the main character’s passionate, obsessive Love Of The Thing on par with his creepy-lust and his creepy-prideful-condescension towards the main character as flaws. You’re supposed to think that it’s pathetic that he has all the merch all of it, or that he knows off the top of his head that there are no left-handed crewmen on the not!Enterprise. You’re supposed to see him getting mad at the alien for interrupting a con panel and “ruining everyone’s childhoods” as being petty and venial. 

Like.... maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just supposed to be Nerd Posturing, maybe I’m picking up dynamics that aren’t there, but... 

I know some guys like this. They’re of the less harmful, less sexist variety; it’s more “I know every little detail about $Thing, and if you get something about $Thing wrong I will passionately in detail explain to you why you are wrong about it, because it physically hurts me to  see people get the thing I love so wrong.” 

... the problem here isn’t Obsessive Love of the Thing. And it makes me sad and upset when people think Obsessive Love of the Thing is what’s wrong with creepy gatekeeper nerds, or that Obsessive Curative Love of the Thing is somehow inferior to Obsessive Creative Love of the Thing. I get that it’s mostly backlash from years and years of people going “obsessive curative love of the thing is the only way to be a real nerd” and from years of skeevy guys being sexist and using “but I’m a nerrdddd” as an excuse. I get that there’s reasons for it. But that doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make it not ableist. 

also honestly it feels like the narrative is punishing the guy for not knowing things he obviously couldn’t have known? Like, someone at a con jumps up brandishing a phaser and yelling, I’m going to assume they’re a disgruntled, delusional, and/or LARPing cosplayer. Yeah, his views about women are fucked, but it’s a reasonable assumption to make.        

Statistically, there are tens of thousands of people in the USA who look like that picture. (Un-fun fact of the day- black people are actually more likely to be amputees than white people, due to poverty and racism in the medical community.) 

 These people deserve to have a voice in the world and to not be made to feel like crap for what they look like. They deserve to feel good about how they look- whether that’s feeling beautiful or feeling confident and powerful in their ugliness.

Sure, we shouldn’t be setting up Social Justice Standards requiring us to fetishise people who look like that- and I get that that’s the point of that picture, that hardcore obnoxious SJ types feel like any body positivity is bad unless it targets the Most Oppressed Person in the room. 

But while that’s the intended message, the message I get out of it is “I’m going to laugh at people who want to make ‘ugly’ people feel good about themselves. Because there are so few fat black amputees in the world that they’re freaks and don’t deserve to feel good about themselves.” 

....You’re still at this? Kinda beating a dead horse here. 

I really ought to just delete this but here goes nothing

Okay. Here’s the thing. I talk about the issues that affect my people. Everyone does this. I cannot talk about racism, because as you’ve clearly noticed, I am white as the driven snow. I know it has effects on people, I just don’t have personal experience with it, so I cannot talk about them effectively. In short, I’m trying not to talk over you.

I do have experience being disabled and being working-class. And so I will talk about these things, especially about being disabled, because these are things that are important to me. And I do think these things are conversations we need to be having. 

If you’re oppressed, but not in "sexy” ways, you’re gonna get screwed over repeatedly, sometimes by the people who are supposed to be helping you. If you’re working poor, for instance, or developmentally disabled,  or a fat person who weighs more than 300 pounds, or Jewish, say- It’s not high-status to talk about the issues affecting you. It will not get you social justice points. At best,  people on the Right will tell you to suck it up because the world sucks, and people on the Left will smile and nod and tell you to suck it up, but, you know, in a nice way. 

So yeah. I talk about these things, because a lot of other people want to ignore them. 

And frankly, it seems to me you're contributing to the problem. White people have a history of speaking over poc. Just like it would make no sense for me to speak over you as someone who experiences autism, it doesn't make sense for you to diminish the experience of thousands of poc because your feelings were hurt by a statement that wasn't about you

Yes. Yes we are speaking on ableism. You are completely missing the point of everything I said. I suspect this may be my fault, and I’m going to try to speak more clearly.

You are taking this as an issue of people’s pride and inability to get over themselves because they are white. If the person really does have anxiety, then it is not an issue of pride. It is an issue of badbrains. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a panic attack? It feels like a heart attack. You literally feel like you are dying. Even a milder anxiety attack feels terrible. It’s not something I’d wish on my worst enemy. This is something to be avoided. 

And no. People speaking non-English languages is not one of my personal triggers. But. But. 

If a horrible greasy weeb guy was talking about how all Japanese women are meek and submissive waifus, and he wants a Japanese waifu SO BAD, would you be offended? It doesn't apply to you, does it? You're not Japanese. And yet I bet you’d call his ass out faster than speed, because he deserves it.

This is, again, the same sort of thing. You are talking over me. You’re demanding that I concede that your ableism is okay, because psych disorders are messy and impolite and even racist sometimes, and that makes it okay to be ableist. 

So, no, my feelings weren’t hurt, I’m telling you that you’re wrong. One more time: this is an issue of competing needs.

 Sometimes, people need things that directly contradict each other. You need to be able to speak your language in public as an immigrant, because it is an important part of who you are and your cultural identity. Someone with anxiety triggered by foreign languages needs to be able to not hear foreign languages so they don’t feel like they’re having a heart attack. 

So, um, about that.

I’m autistic. I have issues with incoherence and speaking in word salad and I often trip over my words and mispronounce things. And yes, people have thought I’m stupid and mocked and ridiculed me for this, since I was very, very small. So no, I don’t have that particular problem, but I can understand where you’re coming from. 

Here’s the deal. If you saw someone posting comforting anti-sexism things on the internet, but they were doing it in a helluva racist way, you’d stop and call them out on it, right? Because the way I see it this is the same damn thing. You are trying to comfort your people, but you are doing it in a helluva ableist manner.   

People’s badbrains do not follow the rules of polite society. People’s badbrains can be problematic, even. But someone who is asking for accommodations for their badbrains is doing what they need to do to manage them. If they really do have an anxiety disorder, or a paranoia disorder, it is not your place to tell them that they’re a horrible person for trying to manage their condition.  

 Now the answer to this, short of like exposure therapy, is that everyone involved avoids each other. That is the appropriate accommodation to make and it keeps everyone happy.    

As I understand it, you were talking about someone who’s a repeat customer at a nail salon and is apparently using anxiety as an excuse to get the workers to shut up? So okay I can understand how that particular person is racist? 

But phrasing it as a blanket statement like that hurts people. It gets people to think that if someone’s triggers are #problematic, they can safely ignore them, or- worse- trigger someone deliberately, because they’re a "somethingphobic asshole”. And that’s not okay; that gets people hurt.

Just for the record, I am having multiple chronic illness flares at the moment, so I am both surly and mildly incoherent. Apologies in advance.

I am not an economist. I cannot speak as to the numbers. But I am a bit of an armchair sociologist, and more to the point, I have had to depend on charities on a number of occasions. What I can tell you: there are reasons beyond the number-crunching ones why private charity doesn’t necessarily work.

For starters- many private charities are religious. For you, Nonny, that might not be a problem- but I left a fucking cult. In the state I used to live in, said fucking cult controlled about... eh, I’d say 50% of private charity? I didn’t want to go to the cult for anything. They might have fed me, sure, or  even given me money to pay my rent- but I would rather have chewed my own leg off than gotten any help from them. It’s the principle of the thing.

As another example: I’m transgender. The Salvation Army would not help me unless I hid my trans status long enough to deal with them. Since I’m at that awkward place where I can’t really stealth but can barely pass as a girl anymore either... well. Dealing with them would be like pulling my own teeth out with a chainsaw.

Last example: a lot of private charities will only help you if you’re homeless or if you have a child. Because if you have a home and you don’t have a kid, clearly the answer is to go get a job, you lazy freeloader. Never mind that I’m disabled (but since I’m verbal and didn’t have the barrage of diagnoses I have now, none of the charities for disabled people would help me either), I wasn’t worth helping, because I could, theoretically, get work.

The US government, by its very nature, at least has to pay lip service to tolerance, fairness, and the separation of church and state. If I get told by a lady at a government office that she can’t give me benefits because I’m a trans pagan, I can go to the ACLU and get some degree of justice. If I get told by a lady at the local Catholic charity that she can’t help me because I’m a trans pagan... well, it’s a Tuesday.

Maybe for you, this is a good thing, because it weeds out people like me. But again: I like to be alive. So I’m going to be in support of government charities, even if technically private charities could make more money without taxes, because I like being able to eat without betraying my Gods, thank you very, very much.

As for the other part of your question- no, I am not in favour of sharia everywhere. I am completely okay with it in some places, as long as the majority of people in those places has decided that sharia is the best way to live- but I don’t believe that most people feel like that in most of the world. 

Most people do feel like that about taxes. They are a mandatory social protocol. Don’t like them? There aren’t many places you can go that don’t have a welfare state.