(no subject)

[eateroftrees]

I'm increasingly skeptical of ableism as a term applied to neurodivergence just because honestly? Half the time the problem isn't that you're less capable, or that your ability levels are impaired or anything, it's that your brain works in dramatically different ways and people are shit to you about that.  I really can't think of the general oppression of borderlineness as ableism, it's not "You need to have stable relationships and identities? What? You can't do that? Well then you suck"; it's "You are inherently abusive so we're totally justified in abusing you back to keep other people safe" sort of shit.  Honestly that stuff feels more like my oppression for transness then my oppression for the "can't function worth shit" half of my autism.

Not to mention the number of times I've seen "disability" framed as "physical disability".  Honestly I hardly have much at all in common with physically disabled people, I mean except when I have weird muscle weakness/soreness and can't sit up comfortably.  And okay, the needing constant support for other people and being completely unable to function in society.  But still.  So I'm probably not going to stop calling this stuff ableism, I'm just... likely to be more specific because ableism is pretty fucking diverse.

It reminds me a bit of the situation with "queer"/QUILTBAG/GSM/etc; huge amounts of shit gets lumped together that I honestly think shouldn't be.

Comments

[technicolortimecoat]

I would say that psychiatric disabilities are often where impairment becomes socially constructed (i.e. what the radical model acknowledges - though I use a patched-up version of the social model that many social model-using people also use, particularly those with mind-based disabilities - ick, Cartesian dualism, but you get my point - because the constructedness of impairment seems harder to ignore for us)

It's also part of why I use the term "disablism" (which is preferred in the UK, where there seems to be a more advanced disability rights movement than in the US), because it's not based on ability, but on being labelled with a disability (even though it's a matter of being disabled in the social/radical models, not "having" a disability); hence I end up acknowledging that impairment is not the basis for the oppression

(though assumptions about abilities are involved, e.g. people saying disablist stuff in front of people with learning/cognitive/developmental/intellectual disabilities as if they can't understand)

[eateroftrees]

See, you mostly just spelled out why I hate "the" social model.

Because like, I can see how identity instability might impair my ability to do something maaaaybe but most of the time it's not an impairment in any sense of the term. But I get shit for it /a lot/

Though on the other hand 80% of what I get for autism is assumption of ability levels, sooooo~

...plus it keeps coming across to me as "YOU MUST USE OUR LANGUAGE ITS MORE PROGRESSIVE STOP OPPRESSING YOURSELF" type stuff sooooo that pretty much is the perfect reason for me to say fuck this model. (Not to mention The social model was incredibly regressive from the model i came up with on my own in college? Sooooo like... yeah. Not that you aren't aware of those critiques. But it means moreso then probably for most people the label "impairment" comes across as medicalizing disability to me.)

I'm sure my models are unlikely to catch on, 'cause reforming The Social Model is more likely to gain momentum, but still. (Though my way has the advantage of just redefining the existing language, 'cause a big problem in activist language reform models seems to be "let's arbitrarily change the words because THEORY!")

Anyway I think at this point I'm leaning towards just redefining ableism. Which I mean, I already have, but still :P

(Also lol at "removeable head without suffering" :P)