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A short thread of things people end up realizing about ability and class but I wish they'd hear sooner, in no particular order. I'm happy to elaborate on any of them.
Mental illness is a disability. If it's negatively impacting your ability to function, it's a disability. Disabled scholarly work agrees on this—it's ableism that denies this.
Trauma isn't just rape and war. If your friend attempted suicide, that can be traumatic. Parents divorcing can be traumatic. Experiencing racism can be traumatic. Trauma is your brain's response, and it's not limited.
The average person does not experience pain for no reason. If you experience pain constantly (including joint pain) and don't know why, there's something wrong with your body—and it's not that you don't exercise enough or are fat.
You can call yourself trans. Transness is strengthened the more people use the term. If you're "basically cis" but call yourself trans, you're challenging cisness as a default and dissolving what that means.
The concept of laziness is ableism. If working every day makes you feel like shit, if you struggle to get basic tasks done, if being alive constantly feels exhausting—it might be your body asking for help.
Homelessness encompasses more than sleeping on the street. There's 4 categories of homelessness in the US, and "invisible homelessness"—where you technically have an address but cannot be there—is homelessness too.
We can hold these things as true while acknowledging our differences. I can call myself homeless and still note that I don't know what it's like to live in a shelter. You can be disabled but not bedbound, & know that there are overlapping experiences but also very different ones.
If you claim to respect disabled people but would hate yourself if you became disabled, you don't respect disabled people. This is also true for weight and queerness.
No one must do anything to justify their life. There is no work I must do or service I must provide for my life to contain value.
There is incredible value in hearing someone's experience and acknowledging "I don't go through that and I don't know what that's like" Give it a shot sometime—it'll make you very aware of when your experiences do overlap.
Please feel free to reply to any tweet here with questions or additional thoughts. Also remember you don't know my life story—I don't want to play the "I'm valid" card.
