Shabbat shalom, y'all! I'm late this week, I know - I was on a much-needed vacation and then finishing the last (!) finals of my undergrad career.
So! Let's talk about ableism.
First of all, what is ableism? This trips people up, because not everyone totally understands it. So, in summary: ableism is bigotry, exclusion, and/or dismissal of people with mental illnesses, disabilities, chronic illnesses, and/or neurodivergences.
This is a pretty large umbrella, and that's great! We have such a large community for solidarity and support... when everyone supports one another. But ableism, unfortunately, runs rampant even in disability circles. Twice in the last week, I've seen blatant ableism from people in disability-focused spaces, and it's heartbreaking.
The first incident was in a neurodivergent group: a member posted asking other members to remember and make space for people with visible physical disabilities, and pointed out a trend of people with invisible disabilities defending their accommodation needs by saying things like "you wouldn't ask a person in a wheelchair to stand up" or "you wouldn't tell a diabetic they were addicted to their insulin"; they added that people do say such things openly and that these comparisons harm people with different types of disabilities.
The comments were a mess.
Some people were very vocal in their support of the post. People wrote at length about their experiences: a cardiologist who refused to treat someone because of their OCD, people who have made uninvited comments about weight and diet related to diabetes, one person who said that a wheelchair user was ruining their life by using the chair. But other people stubbornly insisted that in their (able-bodied) experience, those were isolated incidents and not a good enough reason to stop saying such things.
Here's the thing, y'all: my disabilities are invisible most of the time, but that wasn't always the case, and it still isn't all the time. My disabilities become visible when I use an assistive listening device or a cane. For a while, I was frequently in a wheelchair when I went places that required a lot of walking. And every single time I use the cane or a wheelchair, and about half the time when I use the Roger Pen, I get Looks. I've been lucky enough not to get comments, but people aren't subtle. One guy kicked my cane out from under me in MoMA. (Never go to their free Fridays if you use a mobility aid or get sensory overload.)
People do think that other people's accommodations and needs are optional. People do deny diabetics insulin. People do yank or kick walkers and canes, or touch other people's wheelchairs without consent. Using those things as outrageous examples is the ableism version of the "you wouldn't download a car" ads (remember those? #tbt) and work about as well. (In case you were wondering, almost everyone I know who grew up seeing those ads has committed digital piracy at least once. Not that I would. Nice try, FBI.)
So that thread was a mess. But not as much of a mess as the next one.
There's a group on Facebook called Autism Inclusivity. In theory, it's a place for autistics to support one another and for allistics to ask questions and learn. I got muted there a few weeks ago for trying to help resolve a misunderstanding between two members; I was accused of tone policing because apparently "I think you might have misunderstood what this person was trying to say" is tone policing. The energy in the group has been unlovely lately, but I stuck around because, y'know, education.
And then, at the beginning of the week, an admin posted a series of slides from some sort of presentation that had been given in the group. They were incredibly difficult to read, even for someone with natural 20/20 vision; the text was tiny and on a background with a strong gradient, so at least some of the text was hard to read on almost every slide. So I asked for image descriptions, because someone had clearly worked hard on the presentation and I wanted to see what they'd done.
The admin Did Not Like That. They declined to add image descriptions, telling me they had a dexterity issue. Totally valid. But then they also refused to add an ask for image descriptions to the post or to send the presentation to someone else to copy and paste into the thread. They spent more time and energy on writing long comments to me than they would have on making the post accessible.
Long story short, I continued to ask politely for a) image descriptions and b) an explanation of why the admin wouldn't seek or add them. In response, I was told off by three other admins, one of whom went through my profile to prove that I didn't need image descriptions; when I called out the profile diving, I was banned within two minutes. (Long story long, a friend of a friend was kind enough to collect an album of screenshots of the relevant threads and make them public - thank you!)
This is baffling to me, y'all. I recognize that I can be a bitch, but I wasn't in this thread; I was at my most patient and polite, even when people were being shitty to me. But even if I had been a bitch, a) the "no tone policing" rule ought to apply, and b) I was requesting something not only reasonable, but common. Tons of people need or benefit from image descriptions. (As a side note, if image descriptions would help you, let me know!) I wasn't doing anything remotely unfair or unreasonable or even unusual, and in a group about disability, it was bewildering to find the admins so utterly opposed to basic access.
The heart of the issue is this: disabled communities become so isolated from one another that they stop thinking or caring about each other's issues. This is true even in mental health spaces; I can't count the number of times I've seen people demonize psychosis or cluster B disorders in groups explicitly meant to support all mental illnesses.
None of us is an island. We all rely on each other to get through the day and fight for what we deserve. And we cannot continue to bicker over whose issues are more important; it doesn't matter anyway. Support for one type of disability helps inspire support for another. Access for one person can lead to access for others. I spoke openly in a class this semester about using fiber crafts to help me manage my ADHD and autism, and the next time the class met, another person had brought a fiber craft for the same reason. (The professor seemed delighted, but then, she seemed delighted by virtually everything any of us said or did. Professor Darling, if you're reading this, you're an icon.)
Y'all, we don't have to spend every minute of every day considering the weight of other people's problems. But we do need to spend some minutes some days doing it. We will not make progress alone. We need to uplift one another and take down the system, not uphold the system and tear one another down.
We can all do more for one another. It starts with how we see and hear one another. It starts with caring for one another. If we can do that, who knows where it can end?
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