Ableists will literally be like, hey this thing that directly affects you and impacts your quality of life, you shouldn’t take it personally and let yourself be a victim.
I think when people conceptualize pain and disability, what they think of is something like this:
ALT
It’s conceptualized as something you are cured from, that pain can be only temporary, and you will one day “get better.”
In reality, it’s something more like this:
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Pain is often non-linear in nature. When you see somebody in low-pain days, weeks, or perhaps longer, that doesn’t mean that they have “healed.” Not all pain is curable, and the idea that it is is only hurting people who experience pain. Yes, it is uncomfortable to imagine that we might not be able to heal, that we might, in fact, become disabled by pain that will never heal. But running from this possibility is not the solution.
Idk about y’all but I’m getting really tired of not being able to leave my house without at least one creepy cis dude telling me “how’s it going” while practically leering into my eyeballs. It’s actually super uncool and fucking stupid that this is a regular occurrence. Not that it matters, but I have a beard, a very visible beard, and STILL, because I have visible tits, I am objectified. Their desperate need to procreate like a caveman knows no bounds and I am terrified to say anything for fear of stalking and other repercussions. I just don’t know what to do anymore other than keep my guard up and hope for the best. Please stay safe out there (but also please be aware that street paranoia as a white person sometimes leads to racist biases rearing their ugly head- so be mindful of that. Typically any men I see walking around like NPCs freak me out regardless of the color of their skin, but I need to say this because we don’t want staying safe on the sidewalk, as a white person, to turn into projecting bad and racist stereotypes about Black men- because that happens all the time, which sometimes leads to death and violence perpetuated by the police, and we can’t pretend that’s not a factor in how we manage our safety. Do NOT call the police purely because some dude is following you or acting all weird near you. Be mindful of when it’s necessary and when it is not. It’s a hard thing to process but we have to think about it so we can move to a police-less world.)
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