Tag: actuallydisabled

Struggling more with disability in times of political emergency

Real Social Skills

Everything gets harder under extreme stress. The situation of constant political crisis we’re living through is extremely stressful situation, and a lot of people are struggling.

This is not a normal situation. Donald Trump has been doing horrific things since the moment he assumed office, some of which we saw coming, and some of which have been awful surprises. Both the work that has to be done and the terror we’re facing on a day-to-day basis are draining. We have faced one crisis after another, and it has been completely exhausting.

The baseline level of stress and work we’re facing right now makes everything harder in and of itself — and new emergencies can intensify that. (And sometimes you might think that you’ve gotten used to it and then find that a particular crisis hits you particularly hard.)

If you have a disability, this may be affecting you differently than it’s affecting nondisabled people. Most people are having trouble right now; most disabled people are having additional disability-related trouble. That’s true in both the background sense and in the sense that the impact emergencies have on you may be different for disability-related reasons.

If you have a mobility disability, moving might be harder right now. If you have a speech disability, speaking might be harder or impossible right now. If you have sensory issues, some sensory input you are normally able to deal with might be intolerably painful at the moment. If you have an eating disorder, it might be harder to control it right now. If you have seizures or migraines or other neurological problems, your threshold might be lowered. If you have trauma-related triggers, they might be harder to tolerate, or you might be more hypervigilant than usual. If you are hard of hearing, it might be much harder to understand spoken conversations right now. And so on.

Things you’re used to being able to do might be harder or impossible right now. Coping mechanisms you’re used to relying on might not be working. This is true for everyone, disabled or not. But with disability, we’re also having functioning problems that most people around us aren’t having. That can in itself be difficult to cope with.

For many of us, self acceptance as disabled people is a struggle. Under extreme stress, acceptance can be even harder. Acceptance is a skill just like everything else — and under extreme stress, many of us are dramatically more impaired. Acceptance gets harder, at the same time that there is suddenly more to accept. But you’re still worthy of acceptance. You’re not broken. It’s just hard.

Being disabled isn’t a failure. Being more impaired in a time of extreme stress isn’t a character flaw. You’re not alone in struggling. Nondisabled people are also more impaired right now; and they also can’t make it go away through sheer force of will. The particular things you can and can’t do may be different — because you have a disability, and disability matters.

Short version: The times we’re living in involve a lot of fear and extremely stressful political crises. This kind of stress makes everything harder. If you have a disability, some of your coping skills might not be working very well right now. Acceptance may also feel a lot harder. It’s worth remembering that it’s normal to struggle in situations like this — and it’s not your fault that disability matters now. Your body is not a character flaw.

When disability professionals say “tell us your story” and mean “tell us we’re wonderful”

Real Social Skills

If a disability professional asks you to come and address their professional group, be very careful — especially if they ask you to “tell your story”. Sometimes disability professionals are prepared to learn from disabled people, but more often than not, it’s a setup for humiliating emotional exploitation.

Most disability professionals form their professional consensus on The Enlightened Approach to Disabled People without many or any disabled leaders in the room. Having already decided what they will do to us, disability professionals then bring in disabled people as validation fairies to help them feel the way they want to feel about it.

Even if the person approaching you seems nice, it’s worth being cautious — don’t trust a smile; look for evidence about whether or not they are prepared to take you seriously as an expert. Most disability professionals don’t want to learn from our expertise; they want us to help them feel good about themselves. What they usually want from us is an emotional performance that validates their self image and the approach they’ve decided to take to disabled people.

They want to feel inspired, without facing difficult truths. They want to feel moved, without changing. They want to say “I learn so much from you!” without reconsidering their worldview or professional practice,  and they want to say “You have such a unique perspective!” to every disabled speaker, while treating us as largely interchangeable. (Disability professionals who are actually prepared to learn from us acknowledge gaps in their expertise, and seek out disabled experts to teach them what they need to know.)

When disability professionals *mean* “come make us feel good about ourselves”, what they usually *say* is some version of “we have so much to learn from your unique perspective” or “my colleagues need to hear your story”. When disability professionals ask a disabled person to “tell your story”, they generally expect us to follow these unwritten rules:

  • Tell the audience horror stories about your childhood that allow the listeners to feel righteous because We Would Never Do Such Things.
  • Make sure that the stories are graphic, but not too graphic. Horrify the audience enough so that their pulses raise a bit and they feel brave for listening to you, but be careful not to horrify them so much that they have nightmares.
  • Make sure that you tell the story in a way that doesn’t make them feel ashamed or responsible for any of it.
  • Give them someone to identify with so they can feel like excellent people. Usually it’s either “my mom never gave up on me!” or “there was this one awesome teacher who showed me how to believe in myself!”
  • Don’t talk about the lingering harm done to you, or how it’s affecting you in the present. Don’t make them think about harm done to disabled kids who are facing lifelong consequences of that harm. Don’t talk about present-day injustice, discrimination, or violence.
  • Tell your story as a tragic misunderstanding. Don’t talk about discrimination or systematic injustice. 
  • Allow your audience to laugh at you. Tell self-deprecating jokes. Don’t insist on respect.
  • Don’t describe solidarity with other disabled people, and don’t attribute any of your success to other disabled people who you regard as equals. 
  • Don’t describe fighting with a professional and winning, unless you can attribute your victory to someone they can identify with. 
  •  Don’t be angry, and don’t describe other disabled people’s anger as legitimate. (Under some circumstances, it may be permissible to describe it as understandable, but only if you’re appropriately condescending and give the impression that the therapy provided by the professionals in the room would fix it.)
  • Don’t talk about disability in political terms. Say that “times have changed”, without giving any credit to disabled people who fought for those changes. 
  • Do not mention organized groups of disability activists, especially organized groups of disability activists who exist in the present and clash with disability professionals. 
  • At the end of the presentation, open the floor for Q&A. When audience members presume that it’s ok to ask you intrusive personal questions, smile and give them an answer that makes them feel good about themselves. 
  • When you’re in the audience of their presentations, do not expect this intimacy to be reciprocated, and do not expect them to show similar concern for your feelings. 
  • Understand that you’re here to validate them, and they’re not there to validate you. Pretend that what they’re doing is listening and learning.
  • Don’t break character, and don’t drop the mask. Don’t acknowledge the unwritten rules or the unwarranted emotional validation they want from you. Accept compliments about your “honesty” and “authentic first hand perspective” with a straight face.
  • Above all, do not talk about being harmed by disability professionals who there’s any chance your audience would identify with.

When disability professionals expect you to be their validation fairy, this is a form of ableism and emotional exploitation. They should not be treating your life as a story about their benevolence as disability professionals. They should not be treating you as existing for the purpose of making them feel good about themselves. They should be treating you with respect as a real human being — and if you are an expert, they should be treating you with the professional respect due to a colleague.

I am not the validation fairy, and neither are you.

Short version: Disability professionals who say “tell us your story” often mean “make us feel good about how we’re treating disabled people”. If you’re considering accepting a storytelling speaking engagement, it’s worth thinking about whether the people considering bringing you in are actually willing to listen to you.

We’re just like everyone else — and we’re also different

Real Social Skills

In some ways, people with disabilities are just like everyone else. In some ways, we are very different. Both sides of that matter. Bad things happen when either is overlooked.

We are different from everyone else in that our bodies work differently. Most people have bodies that can do certain things. Our bodies can’t do all of the things that most other people can do. That matters. Being blind means something. Being d/Deaf means something. Having an intellectual disability means something. Being autistic means something. Having a mobility disability means something. Fatigue means something. Depression means something. The way we move, communicate, think, and perceive the world matters. Thinking about the differences created by our disabilities allows us to think about how to live with them — and live well with them. These differences do not need to be cause for alarm — we’re just people, and we’re part of the world, just like everyone else.

We are just like everyone else in that we are human beings. Our bodies are important. We experience pleasure. We have feelings. When people hurt us, we feel it, and it matters. Injustices against us are important, and we have the right to resist. We learn for our whole lives. If we survive to the age of adulthood, we become adults. When we wrong people, it matters. We are able to love. We can reciprocate relationships, consideration, and efforts. And any number of other things. Basically, we are people.

We are different from nondisabled people in that we can’t assume that we will be treated as equals in any context. Few, if any, spaces are designed with the assumption that we will be present, or that our presence is important. A school with a wonderful reputation for supportive friendliness may be aggressively, or subtly, hostile to students with disabilities. A movie theater may not bother to unlock the accessible doors, or may not have accessible doors at all. Airline policies may make travel impossible. People who say they are our friends may see us as charity projects, possibly with the encouragement of teachers or therapists. Or any number of other things. The daily toll of unmet access needs adds up, especially when the barriers are unnecessary, especially when they could be easily removed if anyone cared to do so.

We often can’t even assume that our humanity will be recognized.  In our culture, we are surrounded by people who think that disability makes us less than human — sometimes even within disability community. Sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes it’s blatant. Many of us grew up subjected to therapy that would have raised outcry if it had been done to a typically developing child. Any number of books and movies raise the question of whether death is better than disability.

Conversations about disabled people often do not include us, and often do not even recognize that we have perspectives of our own. When disabled people are murdered by caregivers, the murderers often get more sympathy than the victims. Ethicists with tenure debate whether disabled people ought to be allowed to be born, whether medical treatment for people with disabilities is a good use of resources, and whether we’re really people after all. And so on. The dehumanization adds up, too.  Even when we are treated well, we live with the knowledge that people just like us are not.

We are fully human, and it is wrong to treat us as subhuman. In that sense, and many others, we are just like everyone else. We are also different. We are physically and cognitively different from other people, and those differences are important. We are also treated very differently from others, and that experience is important too. All of these things shape who we are, and the skills we need to live well. Glossing over disability does not serve us. We can get a lot further if we are matter of fact about all of this, and face these realities honestly.

Short version: People with disabilities are just like everyone else in some ways. We are different from everyone else in some ways. We are the same in that we are people. We are different in that our bodies work differently — and in that others treat us as subhuman. All of these things matter.

Open letter to disability professionals

Real Social Skills

Dear disability professionals,

I’m not sure why, but I keep encountering disability professionals who try to deny that disability exists, or to downplay its importance.

It’s so extreme that disability professionals often try to convince people with disabilities that we are just like everybody else. Even when our differences are the reason that you have a job.

We are not just like everyone else. We are alike in that we are all human, with the same basic needs and capacities that go along with humanity. We are also different, in that we have disabilities and most people do not.

Disability exists. Disability is important. People with disabilities are different from most people people in ways that matter. And we need those differences to be speakable.

Our bodies are different. We can’t make this go away by smiling, being brave, and trying hard.

The differences in our bodies matter. Most people can do things that are physically impossible for us. Most people can do some things easily that are excruciatingly difficult for us. The specifics of which things these are depend on the person and the disability. They always exist. That’s what disability means, it means having a different kind of body, a body that can’t do certain kinds of things easily or at all.

For everyone, with and without disabilities, understanding the limits of what our bodies can do is a key life skill. Everyone’s safety depends on understanding that they do not have wings, and that they can’t fly. My safety also depends on understanding that I have impaired vision, motor coordination, and executive functioning. Understanding these things means I have chosen not to drive, and that I have found adaptive strategies that enable me to cook safely.

From my perspective, the fact that I don’t concentrate hard and try to drive isn’t so different from the fact that I don’t flap my wings and try to fly. All I’m doing is acknowledging physical reality, and making choices that fit with my understanding of reality. Some of the physical limitations on what my body can do are the normal limits that apply to all human bodies. Other physical limitations come from my disability. They’re all just physical facts, they’re all just things I need to take into account when I make decisions. 

But as a person with a disability, I learned young that only some limitations are ok to talk about. If I say “I can’t fly”, no one contradicts me. If I say “I can’t catch”, people say “just keep trying”. Both are physically impossible for me. Trying hard will not make either possible. Neither will being brave, smiling, or believing in myself.

For some reason, many disability professionals seem to believe that honesty about our limitations will somehow destroy our self esteem. Actually, the opposite is the case. They want us to believe that if we just smile and keep trying, we can do anything that we put our minds to. But it’s a lie, and we get hurt badly when we believe it.

When professionals refuse to accept our limitations, they force us to attempt impossible tasks over and over. There is nothing positive about this experience. We try and fail, and we watch others our age succeed at the same tasks. If we believe that we can do whatever we put our minds to, then we feel like it’s our fault for not trying hard enough.

It hurts when people yell at us for failing, and it hurts when people plaster on smiles and urge us to smile and keep trying. “Come on, you can do it!” doesn’t sound like encouragement when you know that you will fail. It feels like being told that you’re somehow screwing up on purpose, and that if you would just decide to be a better person, you’d suddenly be about to do it. This kind of thing can go on for years, and it leaves scars. We often come to feel like we are unworthy people, and that there’s something deeply flawed about who we are. 

It’s very, very important that people with disabilities understand that we are disabled. We need to know that our bodies are different, and that some things that are possible for most other people aren’t possible for us. We can’t stop being disabled through an act of will. Our bodies limit us. That is not a moral failing. It’s just a fact of physical reality. And it needs to be speakable.

Our bodies and our disabilities are nothing to be ashamed of.  We don’t have to be different to be good enough. We don’t have to be nondisabled to do things that matter. We don’t have to do impossible things to be worthy of love and respect. We’re people, and who we are is ok.

And for professionals – please understand that when you refuse to acknowledge disability, you are teaching people with disabilities to be ashamed of themselves. This is probably not your intention, but it’s an inevitable consequence of making disability unspeakable.

It is much better to tell the truth. It is much better to support us in understanding who we really are, than to push us to believe in an impossible dream. I could dream of flying or playing baseball, but it wouldn’t get me anywhere. By living in the real world and working with the body I actually have, I can do things that matter. And so can all of your clients. There is no need for silence, evasion, or shame. Disability is important, and it’s much easier to live with when we can face it honestly.

We are people

Real Social Skills

When I see a picture of someone who looks like me, it’s usually illustrating a tragic or demeaning story.

Sometimes it’s a picture of a child, illustrating a story about how difficult life is for parents of autistic children. Or a story about how the child’s favorite thing got turned into therapy. With depressing bullying statistics.

Sometimes it’s a picture of an adult, illustrating a story about how difficult life is for parents of autistic children once their kids reach adulthood. Or a bleak story about unemployment statistics. Sometimes it’s a story about a special business or sheltered workshop for autistics that the parent is proud to say their child is involved with. With depressing unemployment statistics.

Sometimes it’s a story about how an autistic person has a special talent. Maybe they’re an artist. The story is always about how mysterious and beautifully tragic it is that autism sometimes gives people special abilities along with significant impairments. The story will not take them seriously as an artist. It will be a human interest story about autism, and no art experts will be quoted — but the headline will probably say “autism does not define him.”

This gets corrosive. It can make the world seem bleak and hopeless. It can be hard to remember that this isn’t an accurate way to describe us. That we are, in fact, more than that.

In real life, we’re people, and we do things. We do things besides be miserable or be inspiring. We have thoughts and attributes that are not convenient to the tragic plots of newspaper articles. We’re people. We do real things. And we matter.

I am not a tragic story; I am not an illustration. I am a real person. And so are you.

thoughts on dating while autistic

Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Hi! I’m autistic, and I’ve never dated anyone, although I have been asked out before. Truthfully, I’m terrified of dating or being in a relationship, because I’m almost 18 and I’ve never even kissed anyone before, and I’m embarrassed!

I’m a pretty attractive girl and very good at hiding my autism, so people are interested in me at first, until I totally mess up flirting because of my social awkwardness.

Can you tell me what dating/relationships are like, so I know what to expect/how to act? thanks!

realsocialskills said:

I can’t answer this directly because dating and relationships are different for everyone. They aren’t about scripts; they’re about building something with another person that works for both of you. I don’t know what they will be like for you. That is something that you will figure out as you get more experience.

But I can tell you some related things:

It’s ok to be embarrassed. Figuring out dating is embarrassing for most people. That doesn’t mean that you can’t date or have relationships. It just means that you will be embarrassed sometimes.

Flirting is at least sort of embarrassing even when it’s working. Figuring out whether or not someone is interested in you is at least somewhat embarrassing for almost everyone. Flirting is a way to make the process of figuring it out more pleasant than embarrassing.

Flirting effectively is a bit like learning to play the violin — just like initial attempts to play the violin sound terrible, initial attempts to learn how to flirt tend to be acutely embarrassing. That’s ok. It doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It just means that there’s a learning curve.

Also — it’s not unusual to be 17 and not have kissed anyone yet. Sometimes the way people talk about teenagers can make it sound like everyone is dating and having sex, but it’s not true. Some people are, and some people aren’t. Both are ok. A lot of people your age haven’t kissed anyone. And the people who are kissing others also get embarrassed and unsure of themselves.

(It would also be ok even if it was unusual. It’s ok if some things are harder or take longer for you than they do for most people.)

Many of the skills involved in romantic relationships are the same skills involved in friendship. And one of the most important skills involved in friendship is figuring out how to tell whether you like someone, and whether they like you.

Figuring out whether you like someone can be hard for a lot of autistic people. Among other reasons, a lot of us are taught that we have to be friends with anyone who will tolerate our company. That’s not how dating works and it’s not how friendship works either.

If you don’t like someone, you shouldn’t date them. If you don’t like spending time with someone, you shouldn’t date them. If you’re hoping that they will change dramatically, you shouldn’t date them. It’s only a good idea to date someone if you like them and enjoy their company as they are now. You can’t build a good relationship with an imaginary person.

Similarly, it’s important to only date people who like you. People who are hoping that you will change, or who want you to act nonautistic all the time, are not people who like you.

You can’t become nonautistic to please people who find autism repellant, and you aren’t going to be able to hide autism from them forever. It always becomes noticeable sooner or later, because autism affects you and your experiences and impairments matter. You are who you are, and your disability is part of that. And that’s ok, because disabled people can date, and we can do it well.

The most important thing to know about dating and relationships is that, in good relationships, the people involved like and respect each other. Respecting and liking yourself is an important part of learning to build a mutually respectful relationship. Liking yourself helps you to like others; and to tell whether others like you. Respecting yourself helps you to learn to treat others respectfully; and to understand whether or not the ways others are treating you are ok.

From the way you phrased your ask, I think that you might be having a lot of trouble feeling ok about yourself as an autistic person. I think that it would help you a lot to work on understanding that it’s ok to be autistic, and that you can be a fabulous autistic human being.

It sounds to me that you think that you have to pass as non-autistic to be dateable. You don’t have to do that. Autism doesn’t prevent kissing and it doesn’t prevent love.

A lot of autistic people struggle to feel worthy of love and friendship. A lot of us feel repulsive a lot of the time. We’re often made to feel that our thoughts, feelings, interests, and body language are disgusting flaws. But they are not. We’re ok. Being autistic is ok.

We are beautiful. The way we look and the way we move and the way we think is beautiful. Autistic beauty is real, and there are people in the world who appreciate it.

We are often taught that, unless we learn to pretend that we’re normal, no one will ever like us. (That’s the basic message of the Social Thinking curriculum, for instance). We’re also often taught that we’re not allowed to make mistakes. A lot of us feel like every time we make a social mistake, it’s showing that we’re deeply flawed and hopelessly unworthy.

That makes dating really hard, because everyone makes acutely embarrassing social mistakes as they learn how to date. (And often even after they have a lot of experience.). It sounds to me like you might feel like you have to earn the right to date by never making any embarrassing mistakes. You don’t. If that was the standard, no one would ever be able to date. It’s ok to be fallible and embarrassed and unsure of things. You’re ok.

There are people who will appreciate your beauty. There are people who will find you attractive. There are people who will love you.

You can learn how to date, and you can do it as yourself.

Doing what you must and feeling like you’re faking

Real Social Skills

Content note: This post is about the broad (inaccurate) perception that people with disabilities are faking, and ways that forces some people with disabilities to partially misrepresent the exact nature of their disability. Proceed with caution. 

Some people without disabilities believe that there are massive numbers of people faking disability, and that they must be caught and stopped. People who believe this usually don’t know very much about what disability actually looks like. They tend to assume that anyone with a disability who has non-stereotypical abilities is faking their disability.

Real disability often doesn’t look like stereotypical disability. For instance, many wheelchair users can walk, and many people who have service dogs can read, and many people have different abilities on different days depending on their energy and pain levels. This doesn’t mean that they are faking. It just means that their combination of abilities and disabilities don’t look like media tropes, because they are real people.

People with non-stereotypical disabilities can be in a very difficult place when dealing with people who think this way. It’s a pervasive problem, and people with a misplaced dedication to rooting out fakers often have a lot of destructive power over people who need disability-related support.

Being thought of as faking can mean that you lose accommodations. It can mean that you lose services that you need in order to survive. It can mean you get harassed. It can mean people are violent.

Sometimes, people with disabilities have no realistic option other than to allow people to believe that they fit these stereotypes:

Eg:

  • On a college campus, every dorm except one is completely inaccessible.
  • The main entrance to the partially accessible dorm has stairs
  • There is an accessible entrance for employees and residents with disabilities, but it’s always locked
  • In order to get a key, you have to convince Fred the building manager that you need one
  • Fred is very suspicious of disability claims, and is constantly trying to catch people faking disability
  • Fred believes that anyone using a wheelchair who can walk, stand, or even move their legs, is a faker who needs to be called out and prevented from using accessibility resources (if you don’t know why he’s wrong, read this post)
  • Wheelchair users who need access to that building are careful to give Fred the impression that they are completely unable to walk or stand. They never stand in front of him, or in a place where he might turn up unexpected. They carefully avoid referencing their ability to stand to anyone who might repeat it to Fred.
  • They may even have to outright lie about this in order to prevent Fred from taking away their access to the only door they can use. (eg: If Fred asks them directly, or rants about fakers, or makes them fill out an intrusive form).

More generally:

  • Many, many people have strong attachments to stereotypical ideas about how disability works
  • They tend to think that people who don’t fit those stereotypes are faking disability
  • Most people with disabilities don’t fit disability stereotypes particularly well
  • It’s often dangerous for people with disabilities to be perceived as faking it
  • That’s a hard situation, because:
  • There may be times when you know that if you describe your abilities and access needs completely accurately, people are likely to think that you are faking
  • But if you somewhat misrepresent your abilities in a way that fits the stereotype, then they’ll believe you about your real access needs
  • Which can put you into the awkward position of having to choose between representing the nature of your disability fully accurately and being thought of as faking, or allowing people to inaccurately believe that you fit a stereotype and being believed
  • That’s degrading on a level it’s hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it
  • It’s also a common experience among people with disabilities, and if that’s what you’re dealing with, it’s not your fault.

Some additional examples:

  • Some people who can write a little bit by hand are careful not to write in front of most people, so they they will not be assumed to be capable of the kind of writing that is completely impossible for them
  • Some people who are not autistic but have similar support needs due to less well-known conditions end up with an inaccurate autism diagnosis in order to gain access to services that they absolutely need in order to access education or to survive
  • Some people with both physical and cognitive disabilities allow others to assume that they are more physically disabled than they really are as a way of getting their cognitive access needs met without having to face certain kinds of cognitive ableism
  • Some people who can speak only a few words are careful to avoid speaking in front of most people, lest someone decide to take away the communication system they need to communicate things that can’t be expressed in their few spoken words

If you have a disability and you are not free to describe it fully accurately lest you lose accommodations, lose services, or face frightening harassment, know that you are not alone. A lot of people with disabilities experience this at some point or other. It’s humiliating and corrosive to go through, and it may make you feel like you are faking or that your needs are imaginary. It helps to remember that this is not actually your fault.

You are not faking, and your needs matter. You are a real person with a real disability doing the best you can in a hostile world. You are not alone, and it helps to remember that. There are other people with disabilities who are there, or who have been there, who understand that struggle.

Short version: People with disabilities are often forced to pretend to meet stereotypes in order to get their very real needs met. This is humiliating and degrading. If you’re dealing with that, it’s not your fault and you’re not alone.

Disability and risk

Real Social Skills

As people with disabilities, we generally have to adopt a different attitude towards risk than nondisabled peers. Most of us have to take more risks than most other people, and that can be very confusing. Sometimes it can feel like being more reckless, when it’s actually just a consequence of having fewer options.

For instance:

Housing:

  • People with disabilities often have far fewer options for housing than people who aren’t disabled
  • Accessible housing is limited
  • (Eg: if you need a flat entrance, that excludes most apartments. If you need to live alone, that excludes most affordable apartments.)
  • People without disabilities are generally in a much better position to say no to things that seem sketchy or unreasonable.
  • When there are only three apartments in a city that you can both get into and afford, it’s much harder to say no to the roommate with a loud parrot who wakes you up every night
  • Or the landlord who wants an unreasonably large deposit, or who want to insist that you go to church with them as a condition of living there, or who obviously have no intention of keeping everything in working order
  • If things go bad, it can feel like it was your fault and that you should have known better than to get into this situation
  • Especially if most of your friends wouldn’t ever take that kind of a risk (which is likely to be the case if most of them aren’t disabled or poor)
  • It might not be your fault though
  • It might just be that you only had risky options, you had to choose from among them, and you were unlucky this time
  • That’s in the nature of only having high-risk options: sometimes bad things will happen. It’s not your fault if you’re in that situation.

Similar considerations apply to equipment, travel, employment, and any number of other things. Being disabled (and/or poor) often involves having to take much higher risks than most other people have to take. Sometimes, this will even involve taking life-threatening risks to do things like go to a conference. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re reckless. It can just mean that you’re trying to live your life and that you have things to do that can’t be done completely safely.

Short version: People with disabilities often have to take more risks than people without disabilities. That isn’t a matter of recklessness; it’s a matter of necessity.

Everyone gets blamed for their condition

Real Social Skills

People with depression and other mental illnesses get told that they can get over it with diet, exercize, and positive thinking. They also get blamed for having it, and told that it’s their own fault. This is wrong.

It’s also a common experience of everyone with every condition there is. This is not unique to mental illness.

Everyone with a disability, illness, or other condition gets blamed for it. People with every condition get told that it’s their fault, that they caused it by eating wrong, sleeping wrong, thinking wrong, or not being sufficiently careful.

People with every condition get told that medical treatment is toxic and wrong, and that if they just stop believing big pharma, they’ll recover. Even people with cancer.

People with every condition get told that they’re causing their own problems by being too negative, and that they’d get better if they’d just think positively. Even people with spinal cord injuries.

People with every condition get told that they will be healed if they just have faith and pray hard enough. Even people whose condition is obviously genetic.

People with every condition get told that they’re imagining things. Even people with unmistakable visible physical conditions.

People with every condition face this kind of prejudice. It’s not unique to any group. We should stand together and acknowledge that we all face it, and that it’s wrong to do to anyone.

Short version: People with every condition get blamed for it and told that things like positive thinking and rejecting big pharma will make everything better. It isn’t unique to mental illness. It’s wrong to do to anyone.

Inclusion and accessibility don’t go without saying

Real Social Skills

People don’t know that you will meet their access needs unless you tell them you will. Many people won’t, and people with disabilities can’t read your mind to figure out your intentions.

It goes a long way towards easing stress for everyone if you talk about access explicitly, rather than assuming it goes without saying that you will do the right thing.

For instance, if your store sign says “no dogs allowed” it should also say something like “except service dogs” (don’t say guide dogs specifically, because there are a lot of reasons other than blindness that some people have service animals)

  • This sends the message that you know service dogs exist
  • And that you’re not going to kick them out of the store for having a service dog
  • This does not go without saying; people with service dogs get illegally kicked out of stores all the time

Similarly, if you ban laptops/electronics, it’s important to say “except when they are needed by students with disabilities.” (and not to demand proof of diagnosis).

If you’re organizing a retreat and there is a rule against outside food, it’s important to either make an exception for people with dietary needs, or else work with people to provide them food they can eat. And to make it explicit that you will do this, because it very much does not go without saying.

If you’re advertising an event and it’s in an accessible venue (which it should be), put that information on the fliers (and make sure it’s true). That doesn’t go without saying. Many organizations whose values suggest that they should care about accessibility routinely hold events in completely inaccessible venues. No one will know that you’re doing it the right way unless you tell them.

There are any number of other examples.

Short version: Keep in mind that people with disabilities can’t read your mind, and make it explicit that you will meet access needs, especially if your statements or rules suggest that you won’t.