I fucking hate internet funnyman “leftist” meme sites run by people who’ve never raised a finger to help people with housing insecurity that occasionally just say with their full chest that they don’t think elderly people should have constitutional rights. Elderly people are a notoriously vulnerable group for housing insecurity and acting like they’re all Mitch Mcconnell in disguise to justify advocating cruetly to them is no excuse

"Old people shouldnt get a vote bc its 'not their future'" is one of the voting takes I hate the most.

Not to mention, and don't misunderstand me here this is wrong no matter what age this is referring to, a lot of these people define "pretty much dead" as being like over 60.

YEP YEP YEP YEP YEP I FUCKING HATE THAT TOO. Especially heinous is that the elderly (which as you rightly pointed out some people think is like 60 years old) should forsake their present for other people’s future when republicans have been steadily destroying social services many seniors rely on for years

Not to mention that the unhoused population is aging significantly (due in part to aforementioned destruction of social services). According to researchers at ucsf, the percentage of unhoused adults, single adults without kids was 11% in 1990 and ~50% today. to make this headline about housing specifically is pretty gross. source

I work with the truly old. My patients are almost exclusively seventy and above. Most are eighties and above.

We see so many people hospitalized for malnutrition. We see so many people who are 70+ and either homeless in the most expected sense—living in streets and the woods, while pieces of their body rot away on them because they can’t afford medications they need—and those who are forced to stay in horrific living situations because they have no other options.

The impoverished elderly are one of THE most vulnerable groups because they tend to have very few people they can rely on in any way and they tend to be multiply disabled.

What does a homeless eighty year old do when they have a stroke? What does a homeless eighty year old do when they break a hip? When they develop a UTI because they don’t have access to enough water and sanitary ways to clean themselves, causing weakness and an altered mental state?

Often times, they die. They die miserable, horrible, preventable deaths. Those who live often never go back to the same level of independence they had before, cutting years off their life. Because what does a homeless person do after returning to a homeless life when they’ve had that stroke and they’ve been medically cleared?

So. You hate old people or whatever? Sorry you don’t like that rude guy in the checkout line and hate your aunt. These are real people who are incredibly vulnerable and nobody cares about.

Canada Engages In Eugenics

The MAID act is actually making it so that mentally and physically disabled people would be at risk for euthanasia via purposeful eugenics by a governmental body. The fact that I as a multiply disabled person have had to see multiple people defend eugenics under the guise of "it's fear mongering to talk about". I am sick and tired of people who are low support needs deciding because it doesn't affect them people like us with more severe issues deserve to be killed or left for dead.

Track Two MAID is an act that is meant to kill off people not seen as proper workers. This is totalitarian capitalism, and as a socialist there is nothing I hate more than people who support this. It is expanding to people with mental illnesses as well as including non-terminal illnesses. I should not be killed because my legs are shitty, nobody should be killed because their legs our shitty. Nobody should be killed for their mental illness, or deformity, or disability, or developmental disorder, or cognitive impairment. NOBODY SHOULD BE KILLED FOR NOT BEING A GOOD ENOUGH WORKER FOR THE CAPITALIST REGIME.

Here is one opinion piece by a counselor from Canada.

An article on teen vouge

Another opinion piece

And a final article on the subject

Do not talk about an ongoing socio-political issue if you refuse to do your research, holy fuck you people are ghoulish for defending this shit.

The groups pushing this legislation are also trying to kill off disabled children. This isn't about stopping from going through a long painful withering away from a terminal condition or illness- this is eugenics.

CANADIAN DISABLED LIVES ARE IN DANGER

eugenics is a big scary word and yet people that would claim to be left-leaning can very easily be convinced to be pro-eugenics if you just never use the word. like oh you think "dumb people" shouldnt be allowed to reproduce? you think "dumb people" shouldnt be allowed to have children? its kinda scary

remember kids:

evolution is a stochastic phenomenon and that is a feature, not a bug

we cannot predict the future. we do not know what traits will be helpful or not in future scenarios for the survival of our or any other species.

Eugenics is, fundamentally, an expression of human hubris. it's the idea that we know better, we know what we need, and we should control everyone around us to do it.

That is patently nonsense. Sure, in our current world, being blind is a disadvantage (mostly thanks to society) - but there are many animals that lost their sight because it was a benefit. And that's the tip of the iceberg.

We cannot predict the future. We do not know what will be helpful or hurtful. We should trust in the chaotic, stochastic, random processes of evolution because they've worked so far - life survived a giant volcano 252 million years ago and an asteroid 66 million years ago. The process works.

Whenever humans try to control nature - not work with it, control - it goes poorly. And so many people still think that that's a viable option. It's madness.

Learn history, learn biology. Shun eugenics.

Are you fucking seriously doing "well those people might be useful too" on a post about eugenics?

No one has to be "useful" to have a right to live. That's kind of the fucking point.

Disabilities do not have to be advantages for the being themself or for beings around them. Many disabilities are disadvantages very much fucking not because of ableism, oh yes my chronic pain is such an advantage, oh yes my friend who is allergic to literally all food is going to advance the human species.

"It's the idea that we know better, we know what we need, and we should control everyone else around us to do it"

The "we" is lovely, huh. "And we should control everyone else around us to do it"? If "we" is the human species, who are "everyone around us"? I hope for nonhuman animal liberation, but this is a post about eugenics among humans.

I'm not those "we". I'm a queer cripple from a Jewish family. I was born a cripple. When my mom was pregnant with me, doctors tried to coerce her into abortion so she would not give birth to a cripple. And I do, in fact, think that human hubris is fucking awesome, that we, individual beings, absolutely fucking know better and know what we need, obviously we need full information to do things, but we fucking should control nature where it can actually improve things. That's how insulin happened. That's how eradication of horrible contagious diseases happens. That's how the eradication of nonconsensual ageing and death will happen.

Life survived a giant vulcano. Life survived an asteroid. But unimaginable number of individual beings didn't. I weep for every fish that had their gills flooded by lava, for every dinosaur that had their bones smashed by the impact. Claiming that more individual beings don't deserve to live certainly fucking won't prevent such events of mass death. But the fact that some life survives and transforms does not make them any less tragedies. Each and every one of those beings has had, has, will have, exactly just as much right to live as me, a cripple whom eugenicists wanted to prevent from existing because I am a cripple, not because they didn't want me to suffer or something but because they deemed me unworthy of living. Right to live does not disappear when it is violated by something that is not a moral agent. If nature is unjust, change nature. When sentient beings are unjust, fight that injustice — and fight the injustice of nature too.

That does not mean trying to eradicate disabled people by whatever means. That means respecting everyone's individual autonomy.

Infighting among disabled people is NOT going to make abled people want to perform eugenics on us less.

If you don’t identify with “we” as a member of the human race as a person who believes in animal liberation, okay. Fine. But some disabled people DO identify with the human race and want it to survive.

….that is not what I said?? They put “we” and “everyone around us” as separate, and I took it as them placing the people affected by eugenics as those “everyone around us”. I also very much actively talked about wanting humans to survive, I am sorry if that wasn’t clear. But that is literally what I talked about when I was talking about the events of mass extinction. They talked about them and the “life finds a way”, but the life that finds a way is not the beings and specieses that lived before the events and died in them. I don’t want anyone to die in such events.

…….edit, also is me saying that disabled people don’t have to be useful to have the right to live “infighting among disabled people”???????????

No, your entire post is infighting among disabled people???? I can’t believe for a second that you’d really believe a fellow disabled person would honestly think that disabled people have to be useful to have the right to live. You know better than that.

There is a HUGE distinction between the idea that disabled people need to be “useful” under capitalism and the idea that the human species shouldn’t perform eugenics because limiting the human species might end to our extinction.

I took OP as being disabled, as this is a post about leftists ignoring ableism. Rereading your post, I think you took OP as abled and aren’t intending to be infighting. But I still am peeved you’d reblog this from me, someone you know to be disabled, and read “we” as being “abled people” rather than “the human race.”

OP is not being ableist.

a-dinosaur-a-day is being HUGELY ableist and outright stated that many disabilities (including ones that they believe are mostly only disabling because of social access factors) can be an "advantage" and is a form of evolution that makes our species "better" and that the reason we shouldn't do eugenics is because we don't know what might be helpful or harmful more than nature does, NOT because all disabled people have an inherent right to exist.

Revan isn't calling out OP. They are calling out the reply to OP. There is no evidence that a-dinosaur-a-day is either abled or disabled, but even if they are disabled, that's still some inspiration porn with added "ooh evolution pseudoscience" spice thrown in for good measure. It's still ableist. It's okay to call out ableism even from other disabled people, especially that DEGREE of ableism.

In case you can't see it:

Like sorry actually, my chronic pain also will never be an advantage for anyone ever. That doesn't mean that it's suddenly okay to eu-genocide people like me.

I assume this is a misunderstanding, you say you don't get how Revan could think another disabled person would think disabled people have to be useful to live when the reply in question implies exactly that.

Oh, never mind, I see you defending the idea that it's okay to use stopping human extinction as a reason for not doing eugenics.

No. The ONLY reason to not do eugenics is because disabled (and other marginalized!) people inherently have the right to live. Because if we stopped eugenics completely and humanity still went extinct, that doesn't mean stopping eugenics was pointless.

Because it doesn't matter if eugenics leads to extinction because it's BAD EITHER WAY. It's utterly irrelevant if it has unintended consequences largely outside of our control because the very intended consequences within our control are what matters!

It's fine if you don't want humans to go extinct! It's not fine to say "oh well we shouldn't kill disabled people to ensure that they can potentially maintain the survival of our species". That's using us as a fucking PAWN to potentially maintain survival of our distant descendants, centering our USEFULNESS over our inherent right to life. Any argument that is not our inherent right to life distracts from and makes that argument less potent by saying "our existence is not enough, we have to justify our existence in other ways.

I know I'm a stranger, but I'm disappointed. I expected better of you, transdove.

As a final note, it's not "infighting" to have zero tolerance for bigotry in marginalized groups' spaces. That's just the paradox of tolerance misapplied yet again. You CANNOT have a safe, effective coalition that fights for the liberation of any group if you allow bigotry against it to proliferate. Come on.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you t h a n k y o u

eugenics is a big scary word and yet people that would claim to be left-leaning can very easily be convinced to be pro-eugenics if you just never use the word. like oh you think "dumb people" shouldnt be allowed to reproduce? you think "dumb people" shouldnt be allowed to have children? its kinda scary

remember kids:

evolution is a stochastic phenomenon and that is a feature, not a bug

we cannot predict the future. we do not know what traits will be helpful or not in future scenarios for the survival of our or any other species.

Eugenics is, fundamentally, an expression of human hubris. it's the idea that we know better, we know what we need, and we should control everyone around us to do it.

That is patently nonsense. Sure, in our current world, being blind is a disadvantage (mostly thanks to society) - but there are many animals that lost their sight because it was a benefit. And that's the tip of the iceberg.

We cannot predict the future. We do not know what will be helpful or hurtful. We should trust in the chaotic, stochastic, random processes of evolution because they've worked so far - life survived a giant volcano 252 million years ago and an asteroid 66 million years ago. The process works.

Whenever humans try to control nature - not work with it, control - it goes poorly. And so many people still think that that's a viable option. It's madness.

Learn history, learn biology. Shun eugenics.

Are you fucking seriously doing "well those people might be useful too" on a post about eugenics?

No one has to be "useful" to have a right to live. That's kind of the fucking point.

Disabilities do not have to be advantages for the being themself or for beings around them. Many disabilities are disadvantages very much fucking not because of ableism, oh yes my chronic pain is such an advantage, oh yes my friend who is allergic to literally all food is going to advance the human species.

"It's the idea that we know better, we know what we need, and we should control everyone else around us to do it"

The "we" is lovely, huh. "And we should control everyone else around us to do it"? If "we" is the human species, who are "everyone around us"? I hope for nonhuman animal liberation, but this is a post about eugenics among humans.

I'm not those "we". I'm a queer cripple from a Jewish family. I was born a cripple. When my mom was pregnant with me, doctors tried to coerce her into abortion so she would not give birth to a cripple. And I do, in fact, think that human hubris is fucking awesome, that we, individual beings, absolutely fucking know better and know what we need, obviously we need full information to do things, but we fucking should control nature where it can actually improve things. That's how insulin happened. That's how eradication of horrible contagious diseases happens. That's how the eradication of nonconsensual ageing and death will happen.

Life survived a giant vulcano. Life survived an asteroid. But unimaginable number of individual beings didn't. I weep for every fish that had their gills flooded by lava, for every dinosaur that had their bones smashed by the impact. Claiming that more individual beings don't deserve to live certainly fucking won't prevent such events of mass death. But the fact that some life survives and transforms does not make them any less tragedies. Each and every one of those beings has had, has, will have, exactly just as much right to live as me, a cripple whom eugenicists wanted to prevent from existing because I am a cripple, not because they didn't want me to suffer or something but because they deemed me unworthy of living. Right to live does not disappear when it is violated by something that is not a moral agent. If nature is unjust, change nature. When sentient beings are unjust, fight that injustice — and fight the injustice of nature too.

That does not mean trying to eradicate disabled people by whatever means. That means respecting everyone's individual autonomy.

Infighting among disabled people is NOT going to make abled people want to perform eugenics on us less.

If you don’t identify with “we” as a member of the human race as a person who believes in animal liberation, okay. Fine. But some disabled people DO identify with the human race and want it to survive.

….that is not what I said?? They put “we” and “everyone around us” as separate, and I took it as them placing the people affected by eugenics as those “everyone around us”. I also very much actively talked about wanting humans to survive, I am sorry if that wasn’t clear. But that is literally what I talked about when I was talking about the events of mass extinction. They talked about them and the “life finds a way”, but the life that finds a way is not the beings and specieses that lived before the events and died in them. I don’t want anyone to die in such events.

…….edit, also is me saying that disabled people don’t have to be useful to have the right to live “infighting among disabled people”???????????

No, your entire post is infighting among disabled people???? I can’t believe for a second that you’d really believe a fellow disabled person would honestly think that disabled people have to be useful to have the right to live. You know better than that.

There is a HUGE distinction between the idea that disabled people need to be “useful” under capitalism and the idea that the human species shouldn’t perform eugenics because limiting the human species might end to our extinction.

I took OP as being disabled, as this is a post about leftists ignoring ableism. Rereading your post, I think you took OP as abled and aren’t intending to be infighting. But I still am peeved you’d reblog this from me, someone you know to be disabled, and read “we” as being “abled people” rather than “the human race.”

I did not take the op as being abled. I do not take anyone as being abled. I highly doubt abled people exist. “You know better than that” is a fucking disgusting phrase, you don’t fucking get to tell me what I know. What I do know better, however, is than to expect disabled people to not be ableist. That’s like the majority of my original blogging. I have faced so much ableism from other disabled people. I have perpetuated ableism while being a disabled person. I have seen other disabled people perpetuate ableism against other disabled people. Why the fuck is there a dichotomy between “taking the op as abled” and “infighting”.

But yeah, sure, next time an autistic person who fits into the social standards better than me tells me that since they are also autistic me not being able to do those things just means I’m an asshole (and yes, that has happened to me, and many other instances of intra disabled ableism) I’ll wipe the floor with myself before them, lest I do infighting among disabled people.

I am also fucking sick of people getting offended at me misinterpreting them or them thinking I misinterpreted them, with all these “you should have known I wouldn’t say that” — no, I fucking learned the hard way that it’s better to have a fight and perhaps clear something up than to give the benefit of doubt til the last possible idk what and end up disappointed to the point of total heartbreak. I’ve been sick of it before the last three times it happened. Also a nice “I have the right to get disappointed in you, you don’t have the right to get disappointed in me” — again, to all the people who said/did that kind of thing.

And the only part in their post that talks about ableism is when they mention that blindness is mostly a social disability. The entirety of the rest of their post is “you never know when some disability might end up useful for the survival of life, also nature is awesome and humans don’t know what they need”

I do see now how I seem to actually have misinterpreted the “we” and “everyone around us” part, but I still stand on everything else I said.

Why are people with down's syndrome always left out of conversations about neurodivergency and intellectual disorders? They deserve better.

why is it that any kind of post like this automatically devolves into someone in the comments turning it into some kind of thought experiment about eugenics? like the mere mention of people with down syndrome just existing - just existing - sends people into a tailspin of debate over the ethics of their existence, the health concerns, the life expectancy, the countries that are "eliminating" it, etc. and i have seen so many leftist spaces turn the mention of down syndrome into an abortion debate, like it's impossible to be pro-choice and also acknowledge that people with down syndrome might possibly deserve a little bit better than the current hand they're being dealt. why?

like do you realize how fucked up all of this is? do you realize how fucked up it is for a person to say "hey we need to include these incredibly vulnerable and marginalized people in our activism" and for someone else to inevitably and immediately jump into the "is it or is it not eugenics to abort"? do you realize how fucked up it is that i look in these comments and see people spouting off life expectancy statistics, as if that's somehow an appropriate answer to the question being posed? is that really where your mind goes to, when someone says a group of marginalized people needs more support? yes, they very much do deserve better.

I need you guys to listen so bad, but I’m at least glad people on Twitter are starting to talk about this. The government of Canada is expanding Medically Assisted Death to cull the poor and disabled, and now suicidal and mentally ill (these are usually interchangeable of course here). It is EUGENICS and every single disabled rights organization is against it.

Disability payments are $1,200 a month. The average one bedroom apartment rent in the Greater Toronto Area (greatest pop. area by far here) is $2,000 a month. People with mental illnesses are on months long waitlists to get even a single publicly funded session. Weeks to get privately funded care which costs at least $200 a session. There is no housing here for disabled people. We are in one of the worst housing crises in the world right now.

Doctors are now offering MAiD unprompted to young suicidal people. This woman is 21, a health practitioner literally suggested she kill herself.

This is one of the worst Disability Rights Violations we’ve ever seen in Canada. The government is killing us because it is cheaper than funding healthcare, cheaper than giving people housing and food and basic human rights.

w-wait why are they allowing *suicidal* people this??? that's... what??

It's been suggested to veterans, too. Essentially, it's being offered to anyone struggling to survive, even though that apparently wasn't the "spirit" of the bill. Folks in healthier and more privileged situations have tested to see how easy it is to ask for it, and been offered MAiD to solve their problems almost immediately.

I would like to add that ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) is so little that disabled people are literally starving keeping a roof over their heads- I've seen tiktoks of folks on ODSP getting food donations, getting excited, and then opening the food and bursting into tears because nobody donates anything fresh. I've seen someone have a meltdown because after not eating for four days... the food bank gave her a moldy tub of cottage cheese. The disability support system in Ontario is absolutely horrendous, pretty much downright criminal.

tl;dr: It's eugenics disguised as making MAiD "easier to access for those who need it".