Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
it seems like a lot of people these days have reached a point in their leftist engagements where they have successfully comprehended that ableism is bad and disabled people are not inherently less worthy than abled people, but like, this butts up against their engrained ideas about how people who lack a certain skill (literally any skill can go here!) are less worthy, and so they just fold that in by claiming that it isn’t difficult to gain that skill, actually, and something something “disabled people aren’t incapable of being normal humans, if they couldn’t gain this skill i consider morally necessary they’d be shitty people whose existence is harmful, and it would be ableist to say that, so if they don’t have this skill it has nothing to do with their disability”
and i mean it when i say literally anything can go in that slot. like, this was inspired by a discussion of media literacy, but it applies to so many various skills in various parts of life, and i’ve seen it applied to everything from reading body language to cooking for yourself.
…this is very enlightening. The issue is that in their brains they perceive people incapable of XYZ as less than human. So if you say “this person is incapable of XYZ because of their disability,” they accuse you of being ableist, because they perceive that as you saying “this person is less than human because of their disability.”
My cousin is autistic and has very high support needs. He hits if he’s frustrated. Ableist conservatives would argue that because he cannot control this behavior, he is a monster and a threat, he is less than human, and he needs to be institutionalized. Ableist leftists would argue that no, he can control this behavior, because I’m autistic and I know hitting is bad, or my friend is autistic and knows hitting is bad, and if you hit you are a monster and a threat and less than human. So my cousin is less than human because he hits. But not because he’s autistic! Because he chooses to hit. The conservative and leftist conclusion is eventually the same. But he doesn’t choose to hit. He’s not abusive or a monster. The knowledge that hitting is bad, or the impulse control not to hit, isn’t just universally ingrained in everyone. It’s in a part of your brain. And if that part of your brain is differently wired, you might not have that knowledge or that impulse control. My cousin deserves compassion and safety. His behavior can harm people and the people he harms deserve safety too. But he is not less than human because the part of his brain that controls his behavior is differently wired. And it doesn’t actually benefit him for leftists to come to the same conclusion about him as conservatives via a different route. It DOES benefit him for there to be communal support for both him and his parents and carers!
thank you for this addition. i saw in your tags that you were worried because the examples i used were more benign; i used more benign examples purposefully, to introduce this idea to those who may be open to it without triggering a defensive response.
my feelings on this matter very much align with yours, and in actuality, my approach to this topic aligns very much with what you have laid out here. i have encountered, time and time again, leftist dehumanization of disabled people whose disabilities cause others discomfort or genuine harm, and calls for them to be exceptions to anti-carceral thought, to be punished and imprisoned (even using “kind” methods i.e. maintaining involuntary institutionalization even while working towards prison abolition). your criticism of this attitude is spot on. my post applies to all disabilities, not just the “safe” ones.
more examples of the intersection of ableism and queerphobia
JK Rowling’s essay about trans men specifically talked about how autistic girls are being lead astray by the trans movement
in some jurisdictions, people with cognitive and/or intellectual disabilities are not allowed to medically transition at all
again, psychotic people constantly being questioned about whether their identity is a delusion/hallucination or not
queer spaces not being accessible for those who use mobility aids (particularly wheelchairs)
disabled people not having access to sex education that specifically educates them on having sex whilst disabled — and abled people not bothering to learn the same
the concept that having someone who is both disabled and queer is “bad representation” somehow. constant messaging that you’re either one or the other and can’t be both
ideas in the queer community about what the queer lifestyle looks like often does not consider that the lifestyle is impossible for people who use mobility aids and/or have a carer
I could go on and on. disabled people are constantly excluded from queer movements and queer people are often excluded from disability movements. we’re ignored. we’re pushed aside. our needs are put in the “too hard” basket, and we’re not given necessary supports to live a happy life as a queer disabled person
“This is how it feels when neurotypicals tell me to use person first language.
Actually, you can’t call yourself gay. Oh uh, I would really prefer if you called yourself a person with gay, that way you’re putting the person before the sexuality.
Actually, I don’t think you should call yourself a short person. My child is actually a person with a height challenge, and I would really prefer it if you used person with height challenge rather than short.
I don’t know, the word fan sounds really harsh. Can you just say person with interest instead? I just like the way that sounds more.
I don’t know if you cashier enough to speak for the entire cashiering community, can you please use person who bags groceries and also scans them? No its not a mouthful.
If you can’t treat me like a person because autistic is in front of it, maybe the word isn’t the problem.”]
This is exactly why “disabled” and other similar terms need to stop being treated like dirty words.
no offence but I dont give two shits how big a carbon footprint inhalers and other medical equipment have when theyre keeping someone alive. like sorry you shouldnt feel guilty over the medical device that allows you to breathe when shell can guzzle oil directly into a birds mouth and nothing happens
Remember kids: your “carbon footprint” is corporate propaganda.
furries being the next target of the culture war is interesting because of the stranglehold they have, as a demographic, over technology and infrastructure
Furries rise up, you have nothing to lose but your leashes
The pain in those words
I looked in the notes and i need y'all to understand that this isn’t conservatives “targeting furries” per se, it’s transphobia via a story that seems to confirm the “slippery slope” from trans identities to people “identifying as trans-species” or whatever.
This has been a thing for a LONG time: right wing media stirring up incredulous anger among conservatives with false claims like these about bizarre or absurd policies in “liberal” institutions. Oh, no, a public school district says kids can’t say “mom” and “dad” and have to say “gender neutral person figure!” Oh, no, on this college campus, bestiality is part of the LGBTQ+ club! Oh, no, these liberals are trying to cancel Santa Claus and make him non-binary!
It doesn’t matter that they’re totally made up. Some people will see them and not think to verify if they’re true.
Probably plus a heaping dose of ableism provided an association with autism
JKR literally wrote a manifesto against nonbinary people and trans men, and smeared autistic people while she was at it, so can y'all please stop acting like the JKR bullshit is somehow an issue unique to trans women only?
Stop acting like this isn’t a community-wide issue that affects ALL trans people. Especially autistic trans people.
Our trans brothers & nonbinary siblings in the UK deserve better than this. Stop forgetting them. Stop erasing them.
Since some people are unaware of the breadth and depth of JKR’s ableism:
In her award winning(!!!) essay, Rowling explained that she believes autistic trans men and boys (like myself) are not mentally competent to consent to our own medical care.
We’re easily influenced, you see. Gullible. Liable to be led astray by militant trans activists, social media, and the glamour and popularity that comes with being transgender.
JK Rowling, outspoken feminist and champion for the rights of women, wants to deny medical autonomy to “girls” because she thinks we’re overly-emotional, frivolous, and susceptible to peer pressure.
She has spoken directly about her belief that autistic “girls”, especially, should not be allowed to transition because we’re intellectually incapable of forming, recognising, and articulating our own identities, and especially vulnerable to “social contagion”.
But, of course, the law doesn’t (shouldn’t) discriminate, and if autistic teens and/or adults can’t legally consent to treatment of gender dysphoria, we can’t legally consent to the treatment of anything. We won’t be able to access any treatment or medication without approval from a responsible adult.
The ability of trans kids to consent to their own medical care has already been the subject of a court case (Bell vs Tavistock). It was overturned on appeal, but one of the potential consequences of that specific case was that cis teens could have lost access to hormonal contraception without parental consent.
If Rowling gets what she’s said she wants, the knock-on effect may well be that autistic people in the UK lose the ability to live independently.
This is one of the things she’s putting her social and financial clout into. Her ongoing activismisa danger to the lives and wellbeing of all trans people and all autistic people in the UK and abroad.
hey you know what’s really FUCKING annoying? the fact that the only type of neurodivergent trauma anyone ever talks about is gifted kid syndrome.
i’m not trying to say that being a burnt out former gifted kid isn’t terrible, i mean hell, i even relate to some of it what with having above average reading skills as a kid. but there are other things we need to talk about as well. like the troubled kids.
i was only allowed to stay in kindergarten if my mom was there with me to prevent me from having violent meltdowns, i would screech wordlessly when feeling pretty much any strong emotion and i didn’t grow out of it until i was almost 11, and i ended up getting kicked out of 4th grade.
no matter how hard i tried, nothing i did or said ever resulted in praise or even acceptance from people around me. at a certain point, around 7 or 8, i just stopped trying and it wasn’t until i was diagnosed with autism and put into a special ed classroom that i even moderately succeeded in math.
‘troubled’ and 'stupid’ kids are significantly more common in neurodivergent communities and the fact that only gifted kids are talked about just strikes me as kinda suspicious considering that autistic people in our society are only considered valuable if we’re quirky geniuses and ADHD experiences are only taken seriously if we’re #relatable.
i’m not saying that gifted kids can’t talk about their experiences, but i am saying that i think some of you need to take a step back and look at your own internalized ableism and how it might be affecting others in the nuerodiverse community
my late night thots no one asked for are that richard and amsha bashir truly loved julian and did what they did out of a deeply fearful, anxious love born from living in a technotopia where people who get to do the coolest things have to be super smart and brainy in a very narrowly defined way. furthermore the fact that they wanted to enhance his genes speaks to a deep sense of shame and self-hate within both of them (and we can speculate how this shows up but, for one thing, it’s clear there’s a class difference between amsha and richard and that richard is constantly trying to measure up to his perceived lack and hurting people in the process) that deserves more nuancing in fic, especially when we consider how the “eugenics wars” were concentrated in the global south and therefore most likely impacted the regions richard and amsha hailed from.
and finally, if we factor in richard’s inferiority complex about his class and race and masculinity with amsha’s pained grace and regretful acquiescence we can see why julian dons a mantle of snobbery and hauteur in order to project self-assuredness (like richard) while keenly aware that he’s wrong/imperfect/guilty (like amsha), and how all of that is also tangled up with the shame he feels about not being good enough without his augmentations, while also resenting the fact that his parents both gifted and cursed him with these talents.
tldr; the bashir family story is often contextualized through ableism and parental homo/transphobia but, imho, only fully makes sense with an intersecting racial and class framework. ableism and homophobia can’t be decoupled from race (the history of european race science is the easiest example of how race was long used as a shorthand for intellectual deficiency) and, in the case of these three characters, what we see unfold onscreen is just as much a story of immigrant/model minority transgenerational trauma as it is a story of how ableism and homophobia damages parent/child relationships. richard and amsha are also, in their own way, responding to ableism, is what i’m suggesting. and their love for julian is always shot through with their own self-loathing and anxieties around failing societal expectations.
btw body horror is stuff that doesnt naturally occur and is used to scare ppl, like extra eyes, animal parts on a human, a mouth opening in the stomach, not. disabled people’s bodies lmao.
This post was a plea to stop treating visibly disabled people as monstrous because of the differences their disabilities have caused. It was not an invitation for people to argue what is and is not body horror. It was a call out for dehumanization, not the horror genre.
bringing this back around for IFEW (international face equality week)!! take this time to educate yourself on disfigurement and similar things, and take the steps necessary to become a more accepting and understanding person!! disfigurement and disability is not something to be afraid of!!
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Stop confusing empathy with “good” and non-empathetic with cruel/ evil challenge.
