we've been disabled our whole life, and ableism is related to why we're a system despite somehow not being a trigger independently, but we weren't visibly disabled until fairly recently.
using mobility aids has been really helpful for us; things hurt less, we can walk further, we can balance better, it's easier to stand up, etc. however, the level of ableism you experience when you're visibly disabled is truly massive and not fun in the slightest. yesterday we visited a big city for a concert, we brought along our cane, and we got sooo many strange looks; probably 75-80% of the people we walked past. later that night, at the venue, there was a staff member who noticed we had a cane and offered to get us a chair. we politely declined since we wanted to be able to move around, see the stage, and there were some steps we could periodically rest on. in isolation, that offer would have been great, but this guy kept asking us again and again, and by the end of the show, although we were still being polite, we were thinking along the lines of "we know our own limits" and "this guy is desperate to help us in some way so he feels good about himself" internally.
and my goodness the microaggressions. today we ended up talking to an abled queer person because we mistook the first part of what they said ("I love your cane!") as a genuine compliment, but the conversation quickly devolved into them prying about what "condition" (singular) we have, the classic "but do you really need your mobility aid?," and eventually they dropped "it's really cool that you have this condition but you're able to be so stylish about it." this was likely due to the fact we handmade our cane from solid ash after a lot of experimentation around how to make woodworking more accessible to us, but what of disabled people who can't dress "cool," disabled people who can't make their own mobility aids, what if my floppy wrists give out to the point i need to stop woodworking? does your idea of disabled people include us being inherently "uncool?," is disability only even vaguely acceptable to you when it's pretty; a story of empowerment and resilience?
i used to think people saying the queer community is made up of white abled liberals who largely haven't deconstructed their internalized bigotry were focusing too much on the negative, as that's an easy thing to do and i didn't want to believe it, but now i know just how painfully wrong i was. Disabled queers deserve so much better.
