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it’s funny when people tell me i need to learn to use person-first language. i learned about person-first language like eight years ago and asked disabled friends what they thought and they told me they didn’t like it and preferred indentity-first language so i listened to them.
people would love it if i was an ignorant dilettante who decided to appropriate disability activism on a whim but i’ve been educating myself on social justice issues for a long time. i believe that’s the responsibility we have to be good people.
my mom raised me to keep an eye out for ADA compliance and to notice what places were inaccessible bc she wanted me to be aware of those things. i took ASL in college and was amazed by Deaf culture and activism. i couldn’t believe anyone didn’t find it badass as hell.
radical social justice movements challenged me to see the world differently, rethink my assumptions, find the biases within myself that were morally wrong and work on them, live up to the moral standard i knew in my heart was right, and try to help make the world better.
i learned about the social model of disability five years ago & it blew my mind. i had to upend my thinking & re-examine the world. disability activists were radically rethinking our systems, cultural norms, & beliefs. i wanted to learn from & support these groundbreaking people
i didn’t think at first that it had anything to do with me, but as i learned about invisible disabilities and chronic illnesses i saw myself in that framework. the things i’d always been ashamed of, blamed myself for, & had built my life around so i could function
i probably just read silently for about three years as i caught up on everything i had to learn. when i felt i had a good grasp on the concepts and could be helpful and not harmful i started advocating for disability rights and talking about ableism myself.
at first i’d felt guilty thinking i might be more personally invested in this than i’d originally thought. i’d dealt with mental health issues for a long time and i’d seen myself as a friendly adjacent ally or something and i felt like who was i to think this was about me?
i felt like my issues weren’t serious enough, my struggles not big enough to count. i was still blaming myself for them and hearing the judgments i’d gotten my whole life - i was fine. i just needed to try harder. focus. be better. grow up. learn to be an adult.
i’d gone to doctors and psychiatrists for years and gotten a bevy of diagnoses, shame, and implications that i was some kind of medical mystery. but social justice movements are about listening to the people affected, and i was listening to disabled people.
disabled people were talking about these same things. misdiagnoses, apathy and lack of answers from doctors, unwarranted stigma and shame. eventually my feelings started to change. who was i to say this wasn’t about me? how could i say they shouldn’t be ashamed, but i should?
it started to feel like a betrayal to blame myself for things i was learning were not my fault or imagination. how could i let them be brave & be too scared to admit that i faced many of the same issues myself? was i scared to be seen as disabled? could i live with myself if so?
disability activism made me challenge all my preconceptions and beliefs, and i had to focus that on myself, as well. i started paying attention to what was hard for me. i asked my parents and my friends if they’d seen the things in me that i saw. i researched myself.
finally i knew and accepted that pretending to be able-bodied and neurotypical was a lie. it hadn’t ever been true and it would never be true. i was only passing bc i isolated myself whenever i couldn’t pass and avoided situations i couldn’t control.
i was relying on passing privilege and that was fucked up. i was betraying the people i admired and learned from who never had that privilege to lean on. once i saw that, there was no fucking way i could keep doing it. so i started talking about my own issues little by little.
the final step was when i had a panic attack thinking about all the autistic people but especially kids in the world who were suffering and being abused bc the world thought they weren’t full people. the world didn’t see that they were the same as me. they were just like me.
if i stayed silent and was too afraid to use the word autistic for myself, then what was happening to them was my fucking fault, too. i’d been such a lucky autistic kid with parents who let me be me, spent endless time teaching me how to live in this world, & supported my choices
and even with all that, this world was too fucking hard on me. this world is too hard on autistic people. i learned everything i know about disability activism from disabled people and that included what it meant for myself. i had to be proud of who i am. i am proud of who i am.
