wheeliewifee:sasha-smithy:siucu:d i s a b i l i t y : differently abled, not disabled.Can we stop wi
wheeliewifee:sasha-smithy:siucu:d i s a b i l i t y : differently abled, not disabled.Can we stop with this?Disability is not a dirty word. Let me repeat that. Disability. Is. Not. A. Dirty. Word.It’s not a slur. It’s not an insult.I firmly believe that we can not get rid of the ‘dis’ in ‘disability’. As a disabled person, my life is full of things I can do, things I can’t do, things I might be able to learn to do, and things that I might lose on the way. I’m a wheelchair user. I CAN’T walk for more than two steps unassisted. I CAN wheel my chair. See? Two parts of the same word. DIS and ABLED.I want people to stop hiding from their fear of DISability. I want people to know that there’s nothing wrong with needing help, that you will have to ask for help, that you’ll have to accept help sometimes, that you’ll have to relearn things you learned as a child. And I want people to know that that’s okay.I think people who take the ‘dis’ out of ‘disability’ are trying to take my identity away. And yes I do identify as a disabled person. It’s a huge part of my life whether I want it to be or not. The last thing I need is someone making my life seem like sunshine daisies just because they think I can do ANYTHING if I ‘JUST TRY HARD ENOUGH’.Take away the DIS and you take attention away from the drama. You take away notice of prejudice, mockery, and injustice. You let discrimination roll of your back because it doesn’t bother you because you know that everyone’s ‘abled’ just sometimes ‘differently’ so.I can’t reach things off the top shelf. I can’t go up and down stairs. I can’t work full-time. I can’t live without pain. I can’t wear certain clothing or eat certain foods. I can’t run miles or park in regular parking spots. I can’t jump or kick or stand for long periods of time.And that’s okay.There’s nothing wrong with that.I’m disabled. That’s all. That’s okay. It’s okay.Don’t take away my DIS. I need it. It reminds me of what I can and can’t do. It reminds me that it’s okay to live how I need to live.Here here! Fucking fuck fuckfuck.Fuck.Do you KNOW how often I and other disabled people hear “You can do anything if you try! Just put your mind to it! Nothing is impossible!" When, in fact, certain things ARE FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE.And do you KNOW how knocking the "dis” off of disability fucking plays into that shit? That fucking mindset that tells people that we, disabled people, could be abled if we just really went for it.You know, I am pretty fucking sure that there are a lot of things I could do if I put my mind to it that I don’t do because I am bipolar and have monster panic attacks and sometimes can’t even pick up the phone to call refills for my prescriptions. I don’t do them because I don’t want to sink all my time and energy into something just to prove that I can fucking do it. I have nothing to fucking prove. I’d rather spend that energy doing things I want to do, or need to do, that will benefit me more.If someone wants to identify as “differently abled” I have no problem with that. But don’t you go taking away a word that I fucking desperately need to describe myself so thatpeople fucking understand that I am goddamn fucking well truly to god fucking DISABLED. Don’t go telling me that I don’t get to decide what label to use and when to apply it. Or telling me that labels are inherently bad.Learning to work with and around your disability in order to accomplish as much as you can safely do is important, but I am telling you flat-out, we are already doing that as well as we can. If you want to help, fine, that’s great, I’ll be happy to tell you what I need. But what I DON’T need is someone coming in and telling me that my fucking disability isn’t really a disability. Or worse, implying that it is some kind of “gift.”FUCK THAT SHIT.I don’t want people seeing me as my disability, no. I really do not. But I don’t want their way of recognizing my humanity to be pretending like my disability does not fucking exist.CHRIST. -- source link
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