You cannot starve the leopards by only feeding them one type of prey
I need people to understand that if you "progressive ideas" do not include mentally and physically disabled people, you are not progressive, you are just a bigot.
Genuinely, the sheer level of ableism in literally every single "woke" space is disgusting, no matter what topic the space is around (POC rights, queer/trans rights, first nations communities, feminism, etc).
Disabled people are not "optional" on your list. We are not a group you can ignore. Because the reason you can be so easily be abused by the laws is because they were put in place to hurt us.
If you're only defense to "Trans people are mentally disturbed and need to be put in a mental hospital" is "Trans people aren't mentally ill!" you're a bigot and a moron.
No one, and I mean no one, deserves to be held against their will and abused in facilities modeled after insane asylums (which were literally built just to torture people). No one. No matter how "mentally disturbed" they are. Existing a certain way is not a fucking crime, being severely mentally ill is not a crime. The only reason someone should be locked up? For committing a crime after being judged by a jury of their peers- and I would argue in the West that the majority the time people don't deserve the absolutely disgusting treatment they are put through.
Black people were thought the "lesser race" due to pumping out of disgusting pseudo-science. This idea that someones mental capabilities made them "inheritly lesser" was already being practiced, because they did it everyone with a mental disorder. The church calling gay people "posessed by the devil"? What do you think they did to schizophrenics?
Eugenicists calling for the removal of your entire people as soon as they get in power? The first groups they target are disabled people.
This is not to say "Your rights do matter because WE were oppressed first!" That's stupid, childish and misses the point.
I'm trying to say that medical and systemic abuse has always, even from and within own race, gender, sex, and sexuality, been pointed at mentally and physically disabled people.
Because the argument about "what can I do to meet up to our bigoted and patriarchal government that chooses work over people's standards?" falls apart. Because disabled people can't. We can't. We never will, and this is why "differently abled" is dumb. We are disabled, we lack an ability to do something you can do.
And guess what: That doesn't make us less deserving of anything you have. Less deserving of our rights and our place in the world.
We still have to earn it, yes. But in the way everyone else should, you have to study to be a doctor, you have to learn to swim to go diving, you have to go get a license if you want to drive. We should not have to prove we deserve to exist.
A person's "worth" is inherently based on what they can do for someone else, this is the basis of all human interaction. The issue is bigots continue to take this as "if you can physically do this one specific thing then you deserve to die". What it really means is a person's worth, to you, in your life, is based on what they can do for you- which isn't physical most of the time but rather emotional and physiological.
A person's right to exist is not defined by their worth. Everyone who is born has the right to their own bodies, their own minds, their own life and their own decisions. They have the right to choose what they do with their body, minds, choices and life. They deserve all of this because they were born. This doesn't mean they don't have to work, it means they have the right to choose what they work for. They get to choose. This is the most basic of all human rights, it is the right to be a human. It is the right to exist. And this right has never been respected for disabled people on a social and medical level.
And yes. This includes the right to take their own life if they choose to. Programs like MAID in Canada are disgusting because the state pushes for people to have "assisted suicide". That is just murder. Suicide isn't evil or demonic. It isn't tragic because "how dare someone take their own life?" Sometimes someone literally cannon escape the situation they are in. Sometimes it gets that bad. It's a tragedy because no one helped this person, and therefore no one stopped a preventable death. Not because they person never should have. Please stop demonizing severely disabled people for this holy fuck. This such a normal fucking thing among the disabled community because living is hard with a disability (mental or physical), and when living every day is hard you start debating if maybe its just not worth it to live another. You're NOT evil for that. No one is evil for that. Please reach out, and if someone does reach out to you, please offer support, that you care about them, spend time with them, and do what you can to fix the root issue (sometimes you can't. Then just care abouts the person). Don't beg, don't plead, don't guilt them. This doesn't help, tell them you love them and give them reasons to stay, things you can do to help. There are always signs, always. Its just that most people never notice. Because one of those signs is literally "being exhausted because every single day is hard to live and its never going away".
We talk about infantizlation and demonization in progressive spaces often, but the sheer volume of it, at the same time, pointed at disabled people is disgusting. If your affording your 2 year old more leway then a grown adult, you are a bigot. If you believe that something out of someones control makes them evil, you are a bigot. If you belive the state should police people's right to exist, you are a bigot. If you believe people's worth is tied to how they benefit the system, you are a bigot. If you believe that you need to be able to "tell" when someone if different for them to get acess to their rights, you are a bigot.
Why the everloving fuck is it so hard for "progressives" to understand this? If you are an ableist asshole, mother fucking your a bigot not matter how many "Black lives matter!", "protect trans kids!", and "free Palestine!"s you have in your bio. Your still a fucking bigot.
"No freedom for any of us until there's freedom for all of us" isn't just a catchphrase, it's literally talking about how as soon as you let bigotry invade your spaces, choose certain people to get rights and not others, and begin to push people out, you lost the war. Because give a bigot an inch and they take a mile, let forced incarnation (because I will die on the hill that this is what forceful putting of someone in a physc ward is) happen to certain people and then the face eating leopards have no problem doing it on mass to everyone.
Does this not make sense? Are you confused?
Because that's all anyone can seem to come up with about this awnser. I'm sorry my, and people like me's existence makes you uncomfortable and confused. Oh so sorry that you can't keep holding on to your own humanity long enough for that.
This is why empathy is not actually needed to be a progressive, because "feeling what other people feel" only extends so far, then falls flat when you have to use your brain. Empathy without compassion leads to sympathy, then pity, and pity without change leads to annoyance.
Compassion, so often confused with empathy, is taught. It is the reasoning out of "caring" about someone or something because of past information known about them and extending that help towards them. Compassion is taught, and compassion is the only way we're getting through this. And this is why believing people with ASPD are evil is in fact bigoted.
I don't care if you "feel my pain", I want you to stop being a fucking bigot.
You cannot pick and choose who gets rights. You cannot pick and choose who gets to live.
The face eating leopards never stopped eating our faces, and now that they're down to the bones they're coming after you.
So listen to the people who've been eaten by them, seen them move from community to community for a meal, you cannot win by only choosing which groups to fence in.
You cannot starve the leopards by only feeding them one type of prey.
