#casual ableism
It never hit me just how much physically disabled autistics are erased from all discourse and even advocacy for the autistic community until I saw someone mention us in a very brief shoutout to autistics who’re not your low needs more stealth and able-bodied ideal. But that thought has been living in my head loudly banging pots around me 24/7 since I saw that post.
Don’t you just love it when even disability advocacy caters to the stealth, able-bodied and without intellectual disabilities ideal? Haha. Well, that sort of explains why ever since I came full into being vocal about my physical disabilities I’ve felt like, “forbidden” from commenting on anything related to autism or taking any space within autistic communities.
I didn’t suddenly become less autistic. Same impairments and differences that I’ve always recognized in myself in relation to autism are still there, unchanged. The trauma of having grown up autistic around abusive allistics as well is very much still there.
I’m the same autistic person I’ve always been, I just no longer feel like the larger autistic community (at least the loudest parts of it) wants me around anymore, simply because now I recognize myself as physically disabled too and that is a little too much for them to want to deal with, let alone give a voice to. I’m not the embodiment of “normalcy” with just a bit of a quirk on the side that low support able-bodied autistics want to present to allistic society in order to save their own asses only.
I want more community with high support needs autistics, autistics who’re intellectually disabled, and autistics who’re physically disabled. I’m tired of autistic self-advocacy being dominated by the most socially acceptable members of our communities only and of them trying very hard to hide us.We matter too.
Can we please stop teaching children that there is something shameful about having to wear glasses?
Let’s stop telling kids they have to take them off for pictures so they “look good” or so we can “see their beautiful eyes”
My mother was a photographer and she never once told me to take my glasses off for a picture. I am legally blind without them. But every school picture or picture anyone else ever took of me my glasses have been removed, either because they photographer verbally insisted or ACTUALLY physically removed them from my face and took them out of my reach without my consent. (I’ve had to wear them since I was a baby, so you can imagine the anxiety attack that happens when someone renders me blind and takes my assistive technology out of my reach.)
Why would you make a disabled person remove their assistive tech to satisfy your aesthetic? You know what sort of message that sends?
“This thing that is a necessity for you is ugly for us.”
I take them off when I take selfies, and you know why? Because with them on the camera’s selfie mode gives the error message that it can’t find a face. I have to take them off to use the face recognition because the coating I have on them to protect my eyes from UV light makes the computer and phone unable to find my face.
I do have contacts lenses I can wear, but they are massively expensive for me, because of what is wrong with my eyes, and I tend to wear them very sparingly, and often I cannot afford more. So, in person, I pretty much always have glasses on. So pictures of me without them don’t really feel like pictures of me.
Please don’t teach kids that glasses are something to be ashamed of.Even if your kid doesn’t wear them. They aren’t a curiosity or a character flaw. it is not okay to mock someone for wearing them and it is not okay to grab them off a persons face without consent. You wouldn’t tip someone out of their wheelchair because “You just wanna try it out” so why would you think it’s okay to grab someone’s glasses?
My mom and I had worn glasses for years. I remember there was a kid who was having trouble seeing the board in class. My mom told their mom that she needed to be careful about getting her child glasses. Why? Because once her kid got glasses, they would need glasses for life.
Imagine saying “I know your child has had trouble walking for years, but don’t get them crutches, or they’ll need them forever.”
