• TheDoctor [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      There are a ton of emergency preparedness plans whose official stance on physically disabled people is to leave them behind. Disability activists have been sounding this alarm for years.

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 days ago

        Yeah, I keep trying to impress on the Covid Conscious folks that this abandonment they’re experiencing is nothing new and they should be seeking solidarity with and learning from the communities who have been dealing with this long before them. Not having a lot of luck.😅

        • TheDoctor [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 days ago

          I feel this. There are also a lot of people, both temporarily and permanently disabled, who have just never thought of themselves as disabled and will get very upset if you imply otherwise. I’ve had that experience talking to people about long covid. It’s frustrating.

          • Ildsaye [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            I have bouquet of hidden disabilities, which don’t in and of themselves prevent me from socially useful labor. But they do impact my ability to work to surplus consistently, and my ability to be a palatable job applicant to a capitalist firm. The violence of capitalism is far and above my primary disability, vastly overshadowing any issues intrinsic to the differences in my body. And it will come for all the “health” chauvinists.

          • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            5 days ago

            never thought of themselves as disabled and will get very upset if you imply otherwise.

            I made it to adulthood before becoming disabled and I immediately began milking that shit. Oh your store isn’t ADA compliant? I’ll totally run things over and knock shit off shelves and dare some petty bourgeois small business owner fuck to do something. I’d key people’s cars who park in handicap spots but I know sometimes people forget, not all disabilities are visible, and people put their sticker in the glove box when it’s not in use.

            The two groups of people who don’t necessarily have a disability but are seen by others as disabled are the deaf and neurodivergent.

            • QueerCommie [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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              5 days ago

              The two groups of people who don’t necessarily have a disability but are seen by others as disabled are the deaf and neurodivergent.

              Why? My hearing is extremely important to me and I can’t imagine what I’d do without it. Sure, people can have fine lives without that sense, but it’s not non-disabling. Neurodivergence can have plenty of upsides but executive dysfunction, time blindness, stimulation needs, interoceptive difficulties, social difficulties etc are definitely disabling. While life under capitalism is bad for everyone, society was especially not made for us.

              • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
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                5 days ago

                My hearing is extremely important to me and I can’t imagine what I’d do without it.

                There are a lot of hearing people who say this, I believe that Deaf people actually see this type of utterance as an incredibly, outright tediously cliché thing to say… Yet I wonder how many hearing people have actually taken the time to really think about why hearing is important to them personally, and actually attempted to imagine what they would do without their hearing, as opposed to just saying “I can’t imagine” upfront. Now this is obviously not to say that there is anything wrong with valuing one’s own hearing, I’m not exactly going around blasting airhorns into my ears 24/7 desperately trying to make myself deaf — but it is just a fact that a lot of hearing people go around with audist brainworms, that make them not think about d/Deafness soberly, as it were.

                If I were to lose my own hearing I honestly think I’d gain just as much as I’d lose — Deaf people actually have a term for this I know, “Deaf Gain” they say.

                This being said, obviously there are some number of d/Deaf people who think of (their own) deafness as a disability, just as there are neurodivergent people who think of (their own) neurodivergence as a disability. What sets Deafness apart as a cultural identity separate from disability is the shared history, the passed-down stories and values and traditions, and the languages unique to Deaf people, that make them advocate for themselves as a language minority — but cultural Deafness and medical deafness do not form a perfectly circular Venn diagram, hence why people often write d/Deaf rather than just deaf or just Deaf.

                I think it is always important to recognize that no group is a monolith and there is going to be a breadth of opinion in all forms of advocacy. I am autistic myself and personally don’t really have a strong opinion at this point about whether or not ASD “is” a disability. There are certainly aspects of autism that are just a matter of someone being a little different and society deciding to take issue with that for no good reason, but there are also aspects of autism that actually are disabling — and autism being a spectrum, I think that some people will naturally understand themselves more in terms of the non-disabling but still pathologized aspects of autism, and others will understand themselves more in the disabling aspects. So the relevant question is maybe less “Is autism a disability?” and more “When is autism a disability?”, those are my two kopeks.

                • QueerCommie [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  5 days ago

                  Thanks for your input, I agree. I actually do have reasoning why I don’t want to be deaf. It’s my AuDHD. I think I’m the auditory equivalent of hyperlexic. I can process very fast words and stuff and I have constant internal and external echolalia. Music is always playing in my head and I make a lot of noises and stuff. Hearing is like my most important sense. Podcasts and music are huge coping mechanisms. When I’m understimulated the only thing that can make me feel ok is simultaneously physical activity and music. I don’t think I could survive a world without headphones. I also need to multitask while I listen to people. It would be an interesting experience but I suspect were I deaf I would simply be understimulated all the time. I’m really curious what that would do for echolalia.

                  I think that some people will naturally understand themselves more in terms of the non-disabling but still pathologized aspects of autism, and others will understand themselves more in the disabling aspects.

                  I’m the type to tend to the former and even thinking like I’m superior, but given further thought I notice all the many accommodations I’m lucky to have, and how much I’ve struggled and the problems I still face. Thinking about it dialectically, it’s a plain truth that comparing any two things there will be relative positive and negative aspects, and even those aren’t isolated. I don’t wish I was neurotypical, but I can’t say I’m not disabled. At the end of the day, “disabled” is a sort of excuse that is helpful for getting people the help they need.

                  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
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                    5 days ago

                    I could write a lot more thoughts, but since it’s late and I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow, I’d rather just give you a few specific questions to reflect on:

                    1. If you were to become deaf in the future, how likely would it be that the deafness would be absolute and constant?
                    2. Are there situations other than becoming deaf that would lead you to losing access to these things you value?
                    3. Are the things you value as a hearing person truly as inaccessible for d/Deaf people as you think they are?
              • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                Because they could have societies composed of nothing but those with the condition and then the problems they encounter go away. For example, if everything was designed without sound, you wouldn’t have issues like not noticing an alarm or needing subtitles on movies. This isn’t the case for quadriplegics.

                Sign languages also have their own cultures built around them. There’s people who wouldn’t trade that for anything, in the same way anyone else wouldn’t want to give up their first language. For the deaf, being amongst the non-deaf is like being in a foreign country.

                Anywho, there’s some neat stuff to find if you look into deafness groups. I do not know if there are neurodivergent communities living together, only that it’s been talked about.

                • QueerCommie [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  Lol, I’m aware of the argument. Rather arbitrary and idealist. Anyway, sure deaf people can live together, but by definition they are disabled. They lack the ability to hear.

                  For neurodivergence, I’ve seen multiple people that were like “I’m not disabled? I literally get overwhelmed by touching a bit of grass or feeling sun on me.” Sure they can have shoes on and stay inside, but some of us also can’t stand shoes and love touching grass. I’ve spent a lot of time in very neurodivergent spaces, and it’s still a lot. As an AuDHDer most ADHDers overwhelm me, and I’m too much for most autists. Even in an ND utopia we’d all have to have lots of education and meds and hyper specific accommodations.

                  nonsense edit

                  Elaborating on critique of the model, why should our standard be “everything would be fine if [group] just lived with each other and made their own rules?” This is a terrible equivalency, but “Racist white people arent deficient in anything, they just belong in “whites only” places.” Idk, I don’t want to sound ablist, just critiquing idealism. My point isn’t aspie=nazi, but that we’re all human and different and we need to understand each other and seek accommodations, not isolate.

                  Of course all debate around language (“disabled”) is bound to be idealist, idk.

                  Ultimately a reasonable criterion is what do these groups themselves want to be called? I’m not in the blind community but I know lot of NDs consider themselves disabled.

                  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    5 days ago

                    Agreed… disability is a biologically relative term, not socially relative. A society which fully accommodates deafness would not actually abolish deafness.

                    Someone I know has a hearing disability. It’s not like they are unable to survive without me, but hearing would absolutely make them safer at times. For example, when walking through a dangerous part of town, there is a reason hearing people don’t wear headphones. In nature, it’s a good thing if you can hear rattlesnakes or idk, a bear charing at you lol.

                    Does that mean a deaf person cannot live a life as rich as a hearing person? I don’t believe that at all. Like said above, there can be certain subjective upsides to deafness that might balance the losses. But it’s still a disability.

          • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            5 days ago

            Unfortunately, that’s a common thing I’ve run across in every marginalized community. I find it tends to go hand in hand with that whole ‘if education is not liberating than the dreams of the oppressed is to become the oppressor’ quote.

    • btfod [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      Why the fuck even have a drill if you’re not gonna learn from it and correct the shit that was a problem?

      I just pulled my steel cut oats out of the microwave, into the trash they go.

      Gonna work hard prepping my garden beds for spring planting, then let the weeds take over.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          Which wouldnt really work either, cause in that situation I’d be selling my class mates out immediately and it may be a pretty easy guess that the guy in the locked room that is otherwise empty and outside the closet would be more likely to check the closet than to pass one of many seemingly empty rooms. They’re accidental bait if anything

        • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          It was after my time in school, but a younger cousin of mine had drills for “terrorism”/active shooters and they made them all go line up on the football field. Every kid was like “hey what the fuck this makes us sitting ducks” but none of the teachers/admin cared. I think they just had to get a procedure on the record to cover their asses.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      Imagine going to school every day surrounded by the same people who were willing to sacrifice your life. Imagine having one of those people be your teacher. That is fucked. Wanna potentially create the most justified school shooter possible? Do exactly that