#ablesim

-You can't change your race. But people change from abled to disabled and back all the time. I wasn't disabled as a kid, now I can't leave the house without 3 different braces and a mobility aid. My husband was completely bedbound until he got his back surgery and now he'd able bodied again.

-you often can't tell if someone is disabled just by looking at them, same with being trans.

-it's easier to show how transphobia of all kinds can affect everyone if compared to ableism. The expectation to perform gender and perform productivity overlap exstensively.

-POC have made it VERY clear to stop comparing race and gender and at this point its just infuriating.

Obviously it's still not a perfect comparison but it works sooooo much better.

I hate being infantilized. Just because a person has autism does not mean, you should treat them like they are a toddler. I am a grown adult. Just because I don't understand social cues, and I maybe like more childish things does not mean that I am a child

Adapted from: "To Tell My Disabled Stories, I Needed to Unlearn Ableist Workshop Critiques" by Sarah Fawn Montgomery

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❯ ❯ Disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent writers are often encouraged to create work about these identities and little else.

Be intentional about differentiating between a writer's individual experience or characteristic and a writer's personal, creative interests and aims.

❯ ❯ Assumptions about a writer’s identity or information from their previous pieces may be brought up to imply this information needs to be included. 

Do not presume that unless there is "suffering on the page," then the experience isn't genuine or that the author's research wasn't full, valid, or considerate. Do not presume that pressing forward with an array of invasive questions will somehow legitimize your view or opinion of someone else's lived circumstance.

"We do not have to justify or explain every detail about our disabilities, treatments, and lived experiences for them to be accepted as true or valid or worthy of art, nor do we need to answer invasive questions on the page or in the classroom."

❯ ❯ If writers choose to write about disability, they will frequently be told to do so with an optimistic tone. 

The peculiar morbidity surrounding unasked-for criticism to make a story or anecdote more uplifting is another way of telling a disabled writer, or a writer of disabled characters, that unless an anonymous uncomfortableness or unpleasantness is address, then the story or characters just aren't good enough.

"If even the mere facts of our brains and bodies are so upsetting to abled audiences, then perhaps these are not the readers we hope to engage [..] and certainly not the people we should be turning to for writing advice [...] We do not need to revise our lived experience in order to make ourselves or our characters courageous and cheerful for the reader’s comfort."

❯ ❯ Disabled writers may receive medical advice masquerading as craft advice.

Does the ableist desire for optimism, or optimistic stories or characters, dovetail into providing secondary advice on the disabled writers themselves? As Montgomery writes, resist the urge to recommend, prefer, prioritize, or privilege performative illness, and avoid offering skewed, unsolicited advice to make yourself feel better.

❯ ❯ Ableist audiences often want a triumphant recovery arc, or the promise of one to come.

Not all stories are success stories. Not all stories will necessarily produce warm and fuzzy feelings. Not all authors (or their characters) view their conditions or disabilities as thematic or emblematic of socio-cultural ills. And not all stories should be written with the aim of "curing" a character or a character's condition. Erasure is real (and it's dumb and ignorant and hurtful).

Ditch the compliant death. Ditch the traditionalist concept of the "supercrip." Ditch the magic of a happily-ever-after ending. Ditch the medical miracle. Ditch the spiritual or mythological miracle. Ditch the effects of a perfect rehabilitation, and the subsequent return to a presumptive "normal." And ditch "treatment and recovery" as a cheap and facile solution that satisfies all stakeholders.

We see the way you make fun of disabled characters.

We see the way you laugh at autonomy being stripped from a person.

We see the way you claim disability is a deserved fate for people you don’t like.

We know exactly how you feel about us, your ableism is on clear display despite how you try to hide it behind hatred for a character, your justifications are merely excuses.