#disableism

People are taught to believe that disability is a simple “Can’t”. Can’t walk. Can’t talk. Can’t hear. Can’t see. An ability is just excised and no longer exists, if it ever did.

In reality, it’s rarely that simple.

It’s “I can sort of do x thing sometimes, but I get muscle spasms making it very dangerous or impossible to do it reliably or safely”. Or “I can do x thing but it causes me so much pain I will be unable to do anything else for hours or days after doing it”. Or “I can do x thing but I constantly injure myself doing it because of lack of muscle control”. Or “I can do x thing but so badly I functionally can’t do it two inches beyond my face, but now I have a mobile phone I can put up to my face so I can do it in certain very specific circumstances”.

None of these things mean someone isn’t disabled. And if you think it does, then it’s *your* ideas about disability that need to change.

The reason disabled people end up saying “can’t” when the reality is more complex is because people don’t trust our boundaries. They force us to injure ourselves instead of accommodating, or use energy that means we have none left to do *anything* else we need to do for the rest of the day. Or week. Or month.

Abled people need to start trusting disabled people, or you need to shut up, get out of any situation where you have power over us, and provide someone who will. Those are the only options.

The way we are expected to live in a performative hell of the making of more privileged people who then turn around and criticise us for not suffering in the precise way they have decided we should is genuinely nothing but ridiculous.

Being a full time mobility aid user with chronic fatigue and sensory overload makes use of public transport nightmarish.

If *real* efforts were made to make every train and every station fully wheelchair-accessible, *without* having to rely on unreliable or downright abusive station staff to put ramps up and, down, it would be a fantastic *start*. On good days, I *might* be able to use it for certain kinds of journeys.

However, it still wouldn’t solve the issues with sensory overload, or the problems getting to train stations from my home due to severe chronic pain and chronic fatigue.

If overdo it when I’m out, I *crash*. I cannot expend all my resources getting places. I then cannot do anything when I am there, and am unable to get home safely.

This is not that uncommon a problem. My issues are due to hEDS, POTS and autism, but they are incredibly common symptoms of Long COVID and ME/CFS resulting from Long COVID. So, unsurprisingly, folk with these needs are becoming increasingly common as Covid continues to rampage through the population. *Some of us need transportation we have control over*, and we need environmentally sustainable options to do this.

While expanding the public rail network, making it completely affordable (or, realistically, free) and making it fully accessible for wheelchair and other mobility aid users, children travelling alone from about age 8, elderly people with limited eyesight and hearing and parents travelling with infants would be an *incredible* start and massively increase usage of public transport, there are those of us who will always need at least part-time access to vehicles which can come to our homes and that *we* have control over, that are just as affordable as public transport, and the environmental movement needs to acknowledge this, plan for it, and stop treating it as selfishness, laziness and all the other “fun” terms disabled folk face constantly just for trying to live, especially outside our homes.

Its never ok to use AI TTS, but its always ok for anyone to use non-ai TTS.

Its only ok to use AI TTS for a disability, but non-ai TTS is ok for anyone to use

Its only okay to use TTS for a disability, otherwise its never ok to use

Its never okay to use TTS

Other/show results

Hi anonymous! I will write this poll for you, but just a heads up - I'm expecting you might get people being offended considering that TTS is a crucial accessibility tool for many disabled people. It's the equivalent of asking "should a disabled person use a cane if that cane has been made by a machine and not handmade by a human?" I don't think you've asked this question with malice though, so I am approving it, but also adding an additional option for those of us (like me) who think both AI TTS and non-AI TTS is okay for anyone to use regardless of if they are disabled or fully able bodied :-)

"How is such a place allowed to exist?" Because medical establishment as it exists today is not on the side of disabled or neurodivergent people and it never has been. Eugenicist ideology still permeates medicine today, medicine is still designed around conformity to a species norm more than it is designed around freedom and quality of life. Despite it's many benefits, established medicine as it exists is not a tool at our disposal, but a weapon wielded against us. The JRC is only one of the more obvious examples of this, but it is evident in what we as a society consider "success" and "functioning" under capitalism. A miserable Autistic woman who's instincts to stim or act otherwise visibly Autistic have been beaten out of her is "healthy" as long as she keeps that job and is a good tradwife, and an Autistic woman who is visibly Autistic, supported by and supports others and is able to pursue her goals is a failure because she won't pop out babies or generate shareholder value. "Success" and "High functioning" for Autistic people are designated by our usefulness to an exploitative capitalist system and our conformity to arbitrary standards of "health". Just because most of us aren't being electrocuted doesn't mean that oppression isn't there at every hour of our lives, in the back of our minds.

As horrified as I am by the existence of the Judge Rotenberg Center, not one iota of me is surprised.