Tag: ableism

shoujocowboy:

girlgrowingsmall:

qjusttheletter:

dysfunctionalqueer:

telegantmess:

pragnificent:

betheothergirl:

outsider-my-ass:

via [x]

[Loni (Literary_zealot) Tweeted: “It’s a privilege to just laugh with your friends and say, ‘There’s always Canada’. Not everyone has that option.”

Coffee Spoonie replies:  Literally, Disabled folx cannot immigrate to Canada.
They don’t get that I cannot ‘lol move to Canada!’, bc Canada doesn’t want my crip ass.”]

This is something a lot of people are not aware of. Canada will deny people permanent residency on the basis of certain health conditions if they cause ‘stress’ on the healthcare system (or if they are a danger to public health or safety). It’s an attempt to prevent people taking advantage of Canada’s universal healthcare, but unfortunately even if someone is immigrating for legitimate reasons, there’s a good chance they’ll be denied (it may be overlooked at times, but that doesn’t change that a family of refugees could be denied immigration if a kid has down syndrome)

We’ve still got a lot of shit to work on here

Many countries have similar laws. 

New Zealand does.

iirc so does the UK

“an attempt to prevent people taking advantage of Canada’s universal healthcare” i know people will argue economics and all but if someone has a need to “take advantage of” this country’s healthcare, they have a need to immigrate here. healthcare is a right, despite the way it’s treated as a privilege.

Holy shit, this is huge news for me. I’m planning to move there in 2-3 years. I need to do some research. Thank you for posting and sharing this info.

Reminder to every one that there are VERY few places you can immigrate to from the United States with out an advanced degree, a job, and a set amount in provable savings. Immigrating anywhere is never easy and requires large amounts of planning.

paddysnuffles:

What am I doing? 

Not getting deported. 

Because autistic immigrants get deported in Canada. We’re considered a burden on society and therefore aren’t welcome in Canada.

I know this may come as a shock, but immigrants don’t want to be deported. We didn’t immigrate for funsies.

Also, I don’t need a professional diagnosis to know. I’ve done the research, read the literature, and I happen to know myself better than anyone else.

 There’s no point to pay however much to get a diagnosis I already know the answer to and a doctor may misdiagnose me as something else. Women get misdiagnosed as utterly ridiculous things by doctors, as many believe that women can’t be autistic, as well as the DSM 5 being nearly useless for diagnosing women, as it only lists traits common in men.

If you’d like, I can provide the link to a study on this subject.

And yes, I know for certain that the resources I used for research are credible. Im a librarian. 

I realized I was autistic while doing research for a major project on information sources about autism for my graduate studies Library Science course on science, technology, and medical information (a project I got a 96% on, btw).

PSA: Some wheelchair users can *GASP* walk

annieelainey:

tiny-seedling:

annieelainey:

annarosewanders:

questionall:

cutieyama:

annieelainey:

Wheelchairs are used for many disabilities; it could be very painful to walk, one may lack the strength to walk, have hyperflexibility, shortness of lung capacity, fragility of joints, muscles, skin etc. 

REBLOG so people STOP harassing wheelchair users when they stand up and even WALK out their chairs in public.

I hardly ever add comments to posts but i feel the need to add on. A couple years ago i was in a wheel chair because of my chronic illness. I went to an amusement park with my school and each time we’d go on a ride the people who work there must ask if i was able to walk onto the ride. A lot of people found this offensive (my sister is working at disney world and she told me that whenever there is a wheel chair the cast members must ask if they are able to walk.) I of course told them i was able to walk and when i got out of my wheel chair i got so many bad glares. After that field trip i was bullied the rest of my highschool life because people thought i was faking it. It got to the point where these girls from church ended up breaking my wheel chair. Please please stop harassing people who use wheelchairs.

There are many times when due to breathing difficulities I’ve had to use a wheelchair or motor cart in the store or other places. That doesn’t mean I can’t walk or others can’t walk but it does mean we can’t go far and we do need the assistance. It’s no ones business judging people who need the help. No one should feel bad for using what the need when they need it.

I grew up with a bone deformity in my feet in ankles that was not visible to the eye and I was still able to walk. After walling for any more than about 30 ft my feet would begin to hurt so bad I could barely function. My family took a trip to disney world when I was 9 and I needed to use a wheel chair. I specifically remember hearing a woman scoff and growl about how lazy and disgraceful I was but also my family for raising such a lazy child. And this was just because I got out of my chair to go hug Tinker Bell. Please stop harassing wheelchair users who can still walk. You made an 8 year olds first trip to disney a lot worse than it should have been.

Keep telling your stories ❤

I remember a trip to the museum back when I was 10 and my Complex Regional Pain Syndrome was just starting to spread. I hadn’t been able to be in school much, so I was so excited to finally be able to be a part of a normal, exciting day with all of my friends. I hesitantly borrowed a museum wheelchair in lieu of using crutches; I felt very vulnerable and sort of embarrassed needing to be pushed around, but I wanted so so badly to be a part of the big day. After a couple hours, I set the wheelchair aside to go to the bathroom, and then lowered myself into it when I got back out. A museum guard went fucking ham, telling me I was lazy and entitled. I hadn’t fully explained my disability to a lot of my classmates, so when they gathered around to watch the shit show, I was so crushed and embarrassed. Because of that one incident, for years, I was hesitant to ask for extra help when I needed it and I ended up worsening my condition long-term. Respect ALL wheelchair users. Treat everyone you come across with respect. You are not always entitled to an explanation.

Gonna reblog this every time I see some foolishness on or offline about someone thinking a wheelchair user is “faking” because they stood up and walked some. This time it was a YouTube video and the comment section, a curse on both their houses!!!!

Could somebody be a paramedic if they were missing a forearm?

scriptmedic:

andreashettle:

scriptmedic:

Y’know, sometimes a question comes along that exposes your biases. I’m really, really glad you asked me this.

My initial instinct was to say no. There are a lot of tasks as a paramedic that require very specific motions that are sensitive to pressure: drawing medications, spreading the skin to start IVs. There’s strength required–we do a LOT of lifting, and you need to be able to “feel” that lift.

So my first thought was, “not in the field”. There are admin tasks (working in an EMS pharmacy, equipment coordinator, supervisor, dispatcher) that came to mind as being a good fit for someone with the disability you describe, but field work….?

(By the way, I know a number of medics with leg prostheses; these are relatively common and very easy to work with. I’m all in favor of disabled medics. I just didn’t think the job was physically doable with this kind of disability.)

Then I asked. I went into an EMS group and asked some people from all across the country. And the answers I got surprised me.

They were mostly along the lines of “oh totally, there’s one in Pittsburgh, she kicks ass” or “my old partner had a prosthetic forearm and hand, she could medic circles around the rest of her class”. One instructor said they had a student with just such a prosthesis, and wasn’t sure how to teach; the student said “just let me figure it out”, and by the end of the night they were doing very sensitive skills better than their classmates.

Because of that group I know of at least a half-dozen medics here in the US with forearm and hand prostheses.

So yes. You can totally have a character with one forearm, who works as a paramedic for a living.

Thanks again for sending this in. It broadened my worldview.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

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THANK YOU, from the disability community, for doing the actual research and not just relying on your first assumptions and stereotypes.

Organization of nurses with disabilities: http://nond.org/

Association of medical professionals who are deaf or hard of hearing: https://amphl.org/

When I was growing up, I was around people who were mostly pretty good at staying positive about my range of career options as a deaf person and who encouraged me to dream big. But one of the few things I was told that I likely couldn’t do would be to be a doctor. This is because they weren’t sure how to work around the “need” to listen to certain things through a stethoscope. No, it didn’t have a real impact on my career-related decision making because I didn’t really have an interest in the medical professions anyway, my interests took me in other directions. But it was one of the few limits that some people put on my vision, and even though it didn’t have a practical impact on me I still felt the constraint a bit – just the idea that something random like a stethoscope could potentially shut me out from an entire field.

Now flash forward to when I’m in my 20s, back when I was interviewing people and writing articles for a university staff/faculty publication and alumni outreach magazine. And one day I find myself interviewing a deaf EMT for an article I was writing on deaf women working in various professions related to the various sciences. And this deaf EMT had a specialized stethoscope designed to be SO LOUD that even I, a severely to profoundly deaf person, could actually hear a beating heart or the sound of nerves working! And that was with putting the buds for the stethoscope directly into my ears, which meant that I actually took out my hearing aids in order to listen instead of having to figure out how to get headphones to directly funnel sound into the eeny tiny microphone in my hearing aid.  The kind of headphones designed with buds going directly into the ear just DO NOT WORK FOR THAT, period full stop. And most things designed for hearing people DO NOT WORK for deaf people because they only use the little bitty baby amplification that hearing people use to protect their incredibly fragile ears that start to hurt at just about the point I’m starting to be able to hear that there even IS a sound to be heard. Hearing people run in terror from the kind of BIG LOUD amplification that us deaf people need. (Unless they are the kind of rock music fans who think all good music ends with actual, noticeable hearing loss at the end of the concert.) And on top of that, most things designed for hearing people naturally don’t compensate for the fact that I hear low pitch sounds MUCH better than high pitch sounds. Meaning, I can actually hear low pitch sounds if they are amplified loud enough, but for high pitch sounds – well, the first 32 years of my life they basically didn’t exist in my life, for the past 14 or 15 years the only reason I can hear high pitch sounds is because these days, with the advent of digital (not just analog) hearing aids, it’s now possible to have hearing aids that take high pitch sounds and process them so they sound like low pitch sounds. So this is what water sounds like! When it’s processed so that it’s actually something I can hear.  But somehow this stethoscope–invented when (most? or all?) of us deaf folks were still wearing analog hearing aids–managed to be loud enough for me.

Until the deaf woman EMT loaned me her stethoscope for a minute and explained it to me, I didn’t even know that you could actually hear the nerves working, not just the heart or breath in the lungs! And never imagined actually hearing it myself

And the deaf EMT told me that, for deaf people who really can’t hear anything at all even with that LOUD stethoscope, there are other machines to pick up basically the same information that you can get through a stethoscope. And she also pointed out that’s a fairly small part of being a doctor or EMT, anyway. You don’t have to be able to use a stethoscope to join the medical professions.

And … somehow, even though I had never personally actually wanted to be a doctor anyway, and still don’t want to, and still don’t miss having tried it, it was still so awesome realizing that this one last barrier that had been put on my old childhood imagination could just fade away.

People need to know.

PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.

That people with disabilities can do all kinds of things

THAT people with disabilities ARE ALREADY DOING all kinds of things.

Because … on one hand, yes, there are a FEW things that people with certain disabilities actually can’t do. They do not yet have driverless cars on the open market for everyone to buy, so until that’s ready, blind people still can’t do jobs that by definition have to involve driving (like taxi cab driver, bus or truck driver, etc). And deaf people can’t be phone operators. And although deaf people could translate between written languages, and although there are certified deaf interpreters who translate between signed languages (yeah that’s an actual thing), people who are really deaf (and not just a little hard of hearing) can’t interpret between spoken languages on the phone. 

But most of the things that people THINK are impossible for people with disabilities to do?  Can be worked around with the right technologies, devices, software, adaptations, and a little resourcefulness and creativity. 

More people need to be like @scriptmedic, meaning they need to do the work to actually research the options and find out what is already being done. And they need to talk with people who have the actual disability to see what ideas they have. Because we often have a lot of these ideas, and we often see some of our supposedly more “innovative” ideas as being actually rather boring and ordinary because we’ve been doing them since before our memories even start. Just by example – As far as I can tell, from the bits I know (I’ve only known a few adults without hands at all well), many babies born without arms seem to just naturally do all kinds of things with their feet instead, because that’s what they have to explore the world with. It seems like a “gee whiz” creative answer for people who haven’t needed to adapt to life without arms, but isn’t so innovative from the perspective of an adult who has been doing all kinds of stuff with their feet literally since infancy. As a deaf person who has been using writing as a tool of communication since, like, age 7 or something, it baffles me when I still occasionally meet hearing adults who seem to find the idea remarkable. And all that is before you even get to the stuff where we have to actually work to come up with a solution, by drawing upon more sophisticated adult experience, knowledge of available technologies, and opportunity to talk with other adults with similar disabilities who are working to solve things too. We usually have a lot, a lot of practice working to come up with solutions for things we haven’t tried before, so we are often likely to see solutions that everyone else misses–and not just for disability related accommodations.

People with disabilities don’t want to set themselves up to fail any more than anyone else. So if they seem to believe there’s a way for them to do it, you should give them a chance to show you, or explain what they’ve already been doing in the past, or explain what they’ve seen other people with the same disability do, or explain what ideas they have that they would like a chance to try out. Don’t just assume and then stop trying. Talk to us.

This. All of this.

Are you looking at creating a disabled character? Then you need to think not about what they can or can’t do, but about how they might approach the same task with different tools at their disposal.

Don’t say “X can’t do Y or Z”. First, ask, “what is actually NEEDED to do Y? What’s the process? How could I adapt it?”

I’ll be the first to say that medicine is an ableist community. We are. We almost have to be, because the whole point of medicine is to reduce disability and disease. We assume total health is the baseline, that other states are “abnormal” and to be corrected.

And sometimes that leads to misunderstandings. Misconceptions. False assertions.

And I’m going to tell you this, because I think @andreashettle would like to know this: I am, functionally speaking, a person with “normal” hearing. (I have a very slight amount of loss from working under sirens for a decade, but functionally I do just fine).

But you know what? I’ve never heard the sound of nerves. Never. I didn’t even realize that that is a sound you can hear.

So you, with your deaf ears, just taught me something about a tool I use every. single. day. of. my. life. About a sound I’ve never heard, with my “normal” ears and my “normal” stethoscope. (Okay, it’s a pretty kick-ass stethoscope, lezzbehonest rightnow.)

And for the love of all that is holy, I want to see these characters in fiction. Deaf doctors, one-handed medics, bilateral amputees running circles around other characters just to prove that they can.

I apologize for my misconception, for assuming that disability meant “can’t”. It’s a cultural part of medicine that I dislike. But now that I know it’s a thing I want to see it everywhere.

But if you’re going to do it… do the godsdamned research. Have respect for those who live with disabilities. Write better. Write real.

And above all? Write respectfully.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

orangememesicle:

I want people to be less afraid of autism.

Autistic kids need to be taught that they aren’t broken. Verbal or nonverbal, they can live happy lives and experience everything at the same capacity as everyone else. Autistic kids need to know this so that they don’t grow up into self hating adults, adults who grow up hating themselves for being a burden on their families or on society. 

I want autistic kids that aren’t afraid of themselves.

I want therapy that can teach autistic kids to be the best autistic kids they can be. I want nonverbal autistics to find a way to communicate in a way that’s comfortable for them. I want autistics to learn how to advocate for themselves and I want them to learn to love themselves and show themselves instead of repressing who they are. 

Parents of autistic kids need to be taught that their kid can live a fulfilling and happy life, because the current media representation of autistics is so bleak. The panicking, the feeling that they’ve somehow “lost” a child, is something that can be prevented with education and support. They need to see autistic adults on different ends of the spectrum, doing well and having fulfilling lives even if they aren’t fitting the neurotypical version of happy. I want parents that aren’t afraid of their children. want the anti-vaccine movement to be shut down, both for its poor science and for its ableist attitudes. I want children to survive deadly diseases instead of endangered by the fear of becoming like us.

I want autistic people to be more than “empty shells”, “changelings”, “stolen”, “missing”, “broken”. I want people to stop seeing murders as “justifiable” because they’re so, so afraid of disabled people.

Most of all, I want autistics to be seen as people.

I want a world that’s different from the one we grew up in, where neuroatypical children have the chance to be themselves without fear.

I know it’s kind of silly but I feel upset that Pokemon GO seems to only be designed for able bodied people. Is anyone else upset about this? (you can post)

theamazingdalet:

chronicillnessmemes:

The admins here are all in the US, and it hasn’t been released yet here (as I”m sure youve seen in angry US pokepeep posts. Say that 5 times fast. I just tried it and its hilarious. “pokepeep posts” ehehe. ehem) – so we don’t really have much experience with the ins and outs of Pokemon GO…that said, I was just looking into it yesterday and it does bother me. It makes me sad that this isn’t available to me, or Admin J who loves pokemon! We won’t be able to play just because of our severe lack of ability to leave the house, or travel. 

It’s something we both experienced, on a much smaller level, with the streetpass option on the nintendo 3DS when we were both playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf. There were certain things we never got to finish or do because we didn’t have the ability to, physically.

On the one hand, this is understandable. I mean, I wouldn’t want this to not exist, pokemon GO, that is, its such a fantastic concept, and I would love to play.

But on the other hand, it does really suck that we can’t interact with it. I’m not even sure how they would make it accessible, it just kinda sucks that its not, and its another thing, even on a small level, that we can’t be a part of.

I think part of it that’s hard is that this is something that disabled people have always been able to be a part of, for the most part: video games. Even when so much has failed, when there were so many things we couldn’t enjoy or get into, Video Games hasn’t been one of them. It’s something that we could all participate in, and enjoy. It was kind of this common ground between us and others, ability level aside, that we could all shout about and enjoy together. So it kind of sucks, when something that appeals to so many disabled people, is unable to be enjoyed by them. 

Video Games, while slowly trending into less accessibility with things like flashing and etc, have also been one of the places where devices have been made to enjoy, for people who normally wouldn’t be able to on a normal device. 

I’m just rambling now, but it does make me a bit sad. I know so many who would love to play it but can’t, or might have a very small ability to, (like me, who can go to the grocery but not actually travel much of anywhere else), but won’t be able to really play the game to any good point or a point where you feel like you’re really participating.

In any case, for a TL;DR, yes, I am a bit saddened by it and feel rather lost, I wish there were ways we could play too.

-Admin E,

Don’t even get me started on the 3DS! You can only earn up to 10 tokens (for each 100 steps taken) per day. They think they’re being encouraging or some shit by making it pointless to walk more than 1000 steps in a day if you’re not gonna do it every day.

Horse. SHIT. If I can’t leave home for 3 weeks and then blow it all on 3000+ steps at Ikea, I deserve the fucking credit. Or at least take the credit AND the pain away, please and fucking thank you.

Also, it never records steps if I’m, say, rolling it in my potato mercedes. Can someone who uses a wheelchair confirm whether the 3DS records rolling in any way?

YEAH, LET’S GET THOSE DRIVING CHEATERS

fuck you, buddy.

transcharlesxavier:

so i know it’s a common trope in fics for erik to use his powers to lift charles’ wheelchair when buildings / streets aren’t wheelchair-accessible…. but what if erik used his powers to literally rip the metal out of the surrounding area and melted it to make a ramp for charles

and charles would be so love-struck, because erik is trying his best to help charles without taking away charles’ agency and control over his chair (in the most destructive-to-their-surroundings way as possible)

intotheastral:

I hate that post going round that’s like “haha you wouldn’t tell a disabled guy he’s using his crutch as a crutch” ecause that very thing literally happens to people that use mobility aids.

I can’t count how many time people (including physiotherapists who’re supposed to be understanding and help me) have said “you need to stop relying on your crutches” and the like.

I literally had a physiotherapist remove my crutches from under me without my consent and tell me to walk.

And it’s not even a rare thing.

Wheelchair users get told they need to stop relying on their wheelchairs, cane users get told they shouldn’t rely on their canes etc.

I’m just so bored with the depression-centric ableism rhetoric, erasing the ableism people with physical and visable disabilities experience

Can we PLEASE stop using the “you wouldn’t tell a_” formula? It’s usually wrong about whatever its assuming, anyways.

And people with mobility aids seem to get SO MUCH ableism. Listen to the OP. They probably know more than you.

words-writ-in-starlight:

fempunkandkittens:

officialaphnetherlands:

ancientnorthmartian:

“Doctors who spent years studying the human body”

Do you mean doctors who spent years learning about abled white cis men’s bodies

do you know anything about the world besides what you read on tumblr

Okay but this is true?? Shut up with your bullshit, the medical industry for a very very long time has used the able bodied white cis male as their standard and that has very real healthcare consequences for a lot of people.

Do you know why most women don’t know when they’re having heart attacks? Why heart attacks kill more women than men? Because symptoms of a heart attack are different for women and the ones that doctors usually recognize and publicize are the symptoms experienced by men. Do you know why it’s so difficult for Black and Brown people to get diagnosed if they have skin cancer? Because doctors have been taught to recognize it on white people. People of size are constantly told that their problems are entirely because of their weight and doctors don’t even bother to look beyond that to be sure that’s the case. So those people have medical conditions go undiagnosed properly for years, and die in the process.  Fuck, even just the fact that people think it’s okay to charge women more for healthcare because “they have extra parts” (?????) is indicative of the way the male body has been considered the standard for fucking ever. And the healthcare needs of disabled people or trans people? Forget about it.

OP is 1000% right. The medical industry has used the able cis white male body as their standard of care for CENTURIES and that has real consequences for the rest of us today. It’s getting better but it’s not where it should be. So fuck off with your snarky commentary, you’re wrong. The healthcare industry is not equipped to handle the needs of people with disabilities, women, PoC, trans people, people of size, etc. and that’s in large part due to the fact that the established body of medical knowledge was created by studying able, cis, white male bodies almost exclusively.

Hey there folks, speaking as a trained EMT and a pre-med student, I can confirm that the above person is approximately 7000% accurate.  In my EMT training, I would repeatedly ask ‘’but what if my patent is a woman” or “what is my patient is a person of color” and at first all I got was shock.  Then I got confused bumbling.  I got some answers–basic symptoms of a heart attack in women, how to recognize cyanosis in someone of color, the basics of how to work with an autistic patient or someone who for whatever reason can’t communicate well with you.  In fact, EMTs and other EMS workers are getting a lot better at learning the differences between the health care for a person of color or someone disabled.  We were even told that we would need to ask our patients for their biological sex (I know, I’m really sorry, I know that there are people who find this intensely uncomfortable or even harmful, but there are real medical reasons for this and most decent EMTs will use whatever pronouns you ask them to).  But most if not all of the answers we were given about women were directly related to gynecological issues.  The guys teaching me?  They were good guys.  Nice.  Funny.  Smart.  Devoted to caring for patients.  Impassioned about protecting people, especially women and teenaged girls, from assault.  Largely not sexist toward me or their coworkers.  Hell, they were even smart enough to say “listen, boys, the women in this class have a higher pain tolerance than you, they just do, and as a rule if a women says their pain is a 5 on a scale of 1-10, assume it’s somewhere around an 8” when a kid laughed during the gyno unit.  But they just didn’t know what to say when I asked “so if you’re supposed to palpate the patient’s chest, what do you do if your patient’s a triple-D” or when I asked “so if your patient gets menstrual migraines, how do you know if this headache is a stroke or not.”  They had never been taught.  This is a real problem, one that many medical professionals work hard to remedy once they start practicing.  But this is not bullshit.  At all.  The standard patient is a cis white guy with no disabilities or chronic illnesses.  It’s a huge fucking problem and I’m going to need you to step down with your bullshit, there, friend.