@natalunasans / natalunasans.tumblr.com
Disability Pride month let's not forget about the people in our community with intellectual disabilities!
I just found out about the Stay Up Late campaign to advocate for people with intellectual disabilities to have the right to go out in the evening and not have to be in bed by 8pm
I learned about it from this video:
And I found the website for the campaign which is here:
Let's support all members of our community
It’s because some people are convinced that this is “rewarding the criminals” and that morally disgusts them. “But they didn’t commit a crime yet” you say?? The same people believe that anyone who would have stolen to survive is just already a kind of mentally wicked subhuman different from themselves, and they would in fact want all of those put in prison before they even do anything wrong. This is why you can’t use logic or reason here. You can’t appeal to compassion someone chose not to have.
“Disabled ” is a neutral descriptor at worst. It just means we can’t do some things the way other people can, or at all. It’s not an insult, and it doesn’t mean we’re lesser.
Disabled culture is beautiful and wonderful. Disabled people are beautiful and wonderful. We and our worlds are not a misfortune or a consolation prize.
(abled people are not only allowed but encouraged to reblog this)
sending love out tonight to everyone who is progressively losing their abilities, whether that's movement, ability to walk, eyesight, or hearing.
it's hard to come to terms with the fact that you can't do things that you used to be able to do. I'll be honest, it feels like you're losing control of your life. it can feel very isolating and hopeless. its scary and overwhelming, and it's so hard to deal with.
you are not less than just because you can do less. im proud of you for still being here, and i wish you ease with adjusting to new ways of life. please take care of yourself, i love you.
gentle addition for the folks who are losing their mental capacity in any way, shape, or form. If you can’t think as clearly as you used to, if you don’t have the executive functioning you once had, if your memory is getting worse, if your sensory processing issues are increasing, if your episodes are becoming more frequent. Your life has inherent value and I hope I can help remind you of that.
Here's to the disabled people who aren't inspirations. Who aren't "overcoming their diagnosis" and achieving incredible things "despite their disability." Here's to the people struggling in school. Here's to the people on sick leave. Here's to the dropouts. The unemployed. The ones on welfare and disability. The ones who are economically dependent on others. The ones in the hospitals and the group homes. Here's to the ones whose struggles aren't lessened by extraordinary abilities and achievements. Here's to the ones struggling - and failing - to be average. I see you, and I hope you know that you are just as worthy of respect, support and compassion as anybody else - cause you are! Not being able to do certain things doesn't make you less of a person.
"its okay that person does [weird thing] because they have [condition]" no its okay that they do the weird thing because its not hurting anyone and sometimes people just do things you might think are weird and it doesn't have to be explained
We cannot keep telling disabled and mentally ill people that "maybe someday, if you work really hard, you can become a valuable person." We're valuable NOW. Even if we can't work. Even if we can't study. Even if we need help. Even if we can't provide for ourselves. Even if we struggle. Even if we fail. Our worth is inherent because we're here and we're human and we cannot live a happy life on the hope that maybe someday we can become good enough for society. We're already worthy and valuable as we are and we need y'all to acknowledge that.
hayao miyazaki on ableism re: AI depicting “zombie”-like movements:
presenter:
miyazaki:
the last part usually gets quoted out of context as a meme or to paint miyazaki as an unreasonable grump but he was speaking against the ableist usage of disabled people’s movements for shock value & evoking ‘grotesquery.’
Damn. I liked him before, but hearing him use his status to say ‘trying to evoke horror by body movements that real people have to deal with is fucking gross’. Powerful compassion, there.
Honestly, people generally don't want much... They want to eat their favorite food. They want to go to the seaside and smell the fresh air. They want to nap on the grass and listen to music. They want to hold their loved ones in their arms, and be held in return. They want warm clothes, be occupied with a profession/a hobby that does not smother them. They want to feel safe and unafraid. Mostly, they want to live without being ridiculed, manipulated or being forced. And this is why capitalism/modern life overall is so upsetting, depressing and even destructive. Because thinking about how small and simple things you yearn for & how hard it is to even be able to have them really wears you off
“Give people what they need: food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in, some hours of work, more hours of leisure. Don’t ask who deserves it. Every human being deserves it.”
Howard Zinn, Marx in Soho
I keep thinking about being conditionally accepted as important/valid/human/etc.
Like how in Hungary, they've removed legal recognition for trans people. Or how, before Brexit, I was a normal part of the populace. Or how I get full PIP, but they could take it away whenever they feel like it (National IDS Day, perhaps) and severely impair my ability to keep living. Or how most people don't mind my being here so much, but it's conditional - I'm white and my English is good.
Or it's all right to get Housing Benefit but only if you're also working 60 hours a week (and you're white, and your English is good), and those are also the only circumstances where it's okay to talk about being underpaid. Unless you work for Maccies, or you're a cleaner, or you work in a shop. Etc.
It just can't be right that we have an entire society in which whether or not you're valid as a human life in need of food, shelter, hygiene, respect, is conditional.
It's bad that those conditions are in the hands of a scuffle of posh arseholes who think genocide was okay when Churchill did it, but they shouldn't exist at all. No one should get to pick and choose who is or isn't worthy of life.
LOL
We need HOAs or some idiots will paint their house purple or put tractor tires in their front yard. If you want tractor tires, don’t move to a HOA neighborhood.
I couldn’t even fathom how horrifying it must be to live somewhere there are...purple houses and and yucky stuff in people’s yards. Thank God I don’t have any real problems like that.
listen my Nonna and Nonno live right by a purple house (it’s a nice lilac) and as a kid I was fucking obsessed with it because purple is my favorite color. I’d go nuts whenever we passed by it. Also it had a purple mailbox to match and it blew my mind.
No more HOAs. More purple houses.
imagine trying to control what someone else can do with or on their own property just because you don't agree with their taste in decor
NO MORE HOAs MORE PURPLE HOUSES
Related, becuase I just had to move: “just don’t move into an HOA” Do you know what a PAIN IN THE ASS it is to find NON-HOA Housing? Very nearly everything in the CO front range that isn’t a rental has an HOA these days!
Short list of the Shit the HOA at my pervious house tried to pull:
HOAs are invasive, bigoted, corrupt and cruel institutions that should never have been allowed to be created. If you live in and HOA area, showing up at the meetings to tell people what the fuck is wrong with them, Joining your HOA board to protect your neighbors and possibly organize the dissolution of the HOA is one of the best things you can do to protect the marginalized members of your community.
FUCK HOAs AND LONG LIVE THE PURPLE HOUSES AND TRACTOR-TIRE GARDENS OF THE WORLD.
ok but you guys don’t understand... this is where i live.
the color was husband’s idea, at least partly to stick it to the HOA, because the new one they got has been just awful to everybody... except the absentee landlords that are their voting base. basically what the person above me summarized (corrupt bigoted cruel etc), but we don’t have the social skills to do much against it, although we have tried some.
my dad–also a writer–came to visit, and i mentioned that the best thing to come out of the layoff is that i’m writing again. he asked what i was writing about, and i said what i always do: “oh, just fanfic,” which is code for “let’s not look at this too deeply because i’m basically just making action figures kiss in text form” and “this awkward follow-up question is exactly why i don’t call myself a writer in public.”
he said, “you have to stop doing that.”
“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.
but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.”
i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”
as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck.
“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”
so, my friends: what are you writing about?
disabled people's time has value.
months to years long waiting lists for medical appointments are not acceptable, because disabled people's time has value.
airlines requiring disabled people to board first and disembark last is not acceptable. disabled people's time has value.
the months and years many people battle to get a pittance from SSI, if they get anything at all, are not acceptable. disabled people's time has value.
pretty much every company and organization on the planet failing to provide access information is not acceptable. do you understand how much time we waste trying to find out if every. single. place. we want to go to will let us in? disabled people's time has value.
all transit needs to be accessible. paratransit is not an acceptable alternative. you have to book in advance, they often give a window of HOURS, and you often spend hours in the vehicle while they drop off other ppl.
disabled people's time has value.
Saw a post where someone made fun of another persons atypical way of typing and when they were then told that the person in question type like that because of a disability, they went “how was I supposed to just know that?” - and in case anyone wasn’t aware the answer to that kind of fuckery is:
“You’re not supposed to know that, you’re just supposed to not make fun of anyone’s harmless differences regardless of whether they’re disabled or not. You’re not supposed to be able to tell “weird” abled neurotypicals and disabled/mentally ill people apart, you’re just supposed to treat people with respect generally speaking. It’s not that hard. “I didn’t know they were disabled” is just not the excuse you think it is cause you’re not supposed to make fun of anyone for completely harmless differences regardless of whether said differences are related to a disability or not.
Your limitations, not mine.
i always get chills from this video
the value of disabled people’s lives is not measured by how “useful” we are. we don’t have to be savants to be considered worthy of life. we don’t have to “still be able to work at least” to be respected. we don’t have to be “disabled but at least good at this and that” to be seen as human.
our lives are valuable and worth living regardless of our “usefulness”. we don’t need to justify our existence. we don’t need to earn your respect by proving you can still profit off us. we’re human and we don’t need to prove that to anyone.
